after you | dramione

1. loving you

5th June, 2008.

The sky was turning gray, thick blankets of smoke and dust covered the thin air, just then, Hermione predicted it would rain. With a heavy sigh, she closed her Hogwarts yearbook, making sure to place it back in her sacred cupboard where her little infant wasn't allowed. It was the only thing she had to keep safe from the little girl, and about now, she had down an okay job in not letting her get to it despite her futile attempts.

Everyday would begin like this - Hermione would take out her school yearbook, trace her fingers over two moving pictures only in the entire lot of students, first would be her own, and the second would be of that one familiar platinum blond haired boy who, after all these years, she still hadn't forgotten, not even a single detail of his; the time they had shared together, in love, in each other's arms.

Each and every memory of the love they had shared was still vivid in her brain, like a fresh memory just experienced.

She would cry, close the yearbook and head over to her infant to start the day with the only family she had left. Though at 10 years of age, Demetria Jean Granger was as mature as any sane adult- she'd take great interest in Muggle studies as well as magic, though her mother forbid her to go anywhere near magic. This was the same reason Hermione had decided to send her to a Muggle school rather than hogwarts, even after it was rebuilt after the war, she didn't feel safe to send her only daughter there. Yes, it was the safest place one could ask for but Hermione had lost too much, even before the actual battle had begun, she had lost the boy she had loved, lost her friends and even more than she actually tried to think of.

And today was his birthday.

Demetria was an extraordinary child, she was gifted, that much Hermione could tell, she had inherited her brains and also that of her father's, knowing that he was no loser back in their school times.

"Demi, you need to get out of bed sweetheart, I know it's Sunday but you hav-" Hermione pulled the blanket from her body, revealing a sleepy child, her blond and slightly wavy hair with charcoal gray eyes portrayed an absolute image of her genes, you could ask someone in the streets here and there and even they'd know the exact roots of her family, that's how influential they had been before the war, now, it was a mere name treated with utter disrespect and disgust.

Everyone knew how the Malfoy family had joined the Dark Lord's army of deatheaters, how that they had been defeated, every deatheater was caught and locked up in Azkaban, probably for the best, wondered Hermione.

It was odd, a name that was once so powerful now, being completely treated like dirt under one's shoes.

"Demi, you need to get up right this instant," sometimes Hermione forgot that she had become a mother now, while motherhood held its joys, it also held a great deal of patience and work. Seeing Demi happy was without a doubt, the only thing that kept Hermione going. She was a young mother, still 28, thanks to having a child at the early age of 18, so everyday was equally as surreal to Demi as it was to Hermione.

"If I get up right now, will you show me that yearbook you so secretly hide in your closet?" Demi peeked from under the blanket (after she had snatched it back from her mother) at hermione.

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Nice try sweetheart, let me think," she pretended to be submerged in deep thoughts with a finger under her chin, "No."

"But mum-" the little girl was quick to stand to her feet, completely forgetting that her mother hated it when she stood on the bed. In her words it made the bedding look wild.

As her eyes fell on the seething woman in front of her, she gulped before stepping down, eyes never leaving. "Please?" Demi tried one last time but she already knew the answer, it would be a plain no, just like it had always been, just like it had been for the last five years when the little girl had observed her mother crying day and night because of a school yearbook, she wanted to see this book for herself and figure out what had been bothering her mum- so she could burn down the stupid book if she had to, only to make her mother stop crying.