There was so much time Hermione didn't know what to do with it all.
Eventually it began to feel unnatural and anxiety-inducing. A cold sensation of dread would unfurl in the pit of Hermione's stomach when she tried to relax for too long. It was the worst when Draco was away, which he was twice a day when he left to check the wards on the island.
She would visit Ginny and James for half an hour by herself, but when visits extended closer to an hour, she would begin growing tense with discomfort.
Empty hours felt like all the futile, poisonous days in Malfoy Manor.
She couldn't turn her mind off. James was so much like Harry, but when he wasn't, he was a baby, and Hermione's hands would nervously run over her stomach as she watched him interact with Ginny.
James talked constantly. He treated Ginny's mood like a touchstone that he mirrored back at her. Ginny mothered instinctively. She had an immediate sense of what James needed and seemed fluent in understanding the garbled words that rapidly, and sometimes tearfully, poured from his mouth.
Hermione was sitting on the veranda of the house watching while James was gliding around on a tiny broomstick that hovered a foot off the ground.
Ginny looked over at Hermione and noticed the strained look on her face. “Topsy, could you take James to the beach?”
Ginny sat down next to Hermione and, after a moment's hesitation, reached out and lightly touched Hermione's hand where Hermione had unconsciously wrapped her arms around her stomach.
Ginny didn't say anything, didn't ask any questions.
Hermione had noticed that Ginny very rarely asked questions when Draco wasn't present.
“I don't know how to be a mother, Ginny.” Hermione said after several seconds.
The corner of Ginny's mouth turned up, and she gave a small laugh. “You've mothered practically every person you ever been friends with. Harry and Ron would have died in their first year if it hadn't been for you.”
Hermione swallowed. “That's not the same. I don't even know how to interact with James. I can read him a book, but I don't know how to tell why he's upset or understand what he's saying. I can't tell that he's tired. I don't know how to read children. What if I can't figure it out?“
“Well, they don't start as two year olds. You get to know them. At the beginning they just want to sleep, eat, and be cuddled. If it's none of those things, it's probably a nappy change. You get to two years old one day at a time. Don't worry, I'm going to be here. And Topsy knows everything about babies. She could probably single-handedly raise an orphanage.”
She leaned back on her hands. “When James was first born, I didn't want to let him out of my arms, but I didn't know anything about babies except what I'd read. I never knew any babies growing up either, you know. Nursing sounded easy when I read the chapter in the book, but when I tried, James was squirming and screaming. I couldn't figure out how to make him latch on and stay on, and I was so scared I'd break him if I held too tight. I started crying, and James kept screaming louder. Topsy had been there for a month, but I didn't trust any of Malfoy's elves. I was on the verge of hysterical before she managed to convince me to let her help get James nursing. You're not going to be alone.”
Hermione looked at Ginny for a moment. “I'm sorry. I can't imagine what it must have been like to be here alone for so long.”
Ginny just gave a tight laugh and looked away. “I think it was a lot better than anywhere you or anyone else was that whole time. I really don't have any room to complain.”
“Still.”
Ginny nodded, and her expression grew pained as she looked across the garden. “Sometimes — I think about all the time I spent hiding the pregnancy, and it feels like a pit in my chest that I'm going to fall into someday. Sometimes I wish I had just died with them. It feels so wrong that I'm alive when no one else is.“
“Don't say that,” Hermione said. Her voice was strained and sharp. “You shouldn't think that. Harry cared about you being alive and safe more than anything else.”
Ginny looked down. “I know. I know — I'm not — it just feels that way sometimes, you know? That I'm only alive because I did something selfish and lied to everyone. Mum would have been so excited. She always said she'd be the world's best grandmum. She never even knew.”
“If anyone had known about your pregnancy, Voldemort would have looked for you. Draco wouldn't have been able to pass someone else's body off as yours. You and James are alive because it was hidden.”
Ginny still looked grief-stricken, but she slowly nodded.
“Harry said—” Hermione hesitated and felt a wave of guilt that she hadn't told Ginny sooner. “Before he made me promise to take care of you both — he asked me to tell you he'd be thinking about you to the very end.”
Ginny was quiet for several seconds before her mouth curved into a tight, wistful smile. “I'm really glad you told him about James. I'm glad he knew that least.”
Hermione reached out and gripped Ginny's hand. They sat in silence for several minutes, sharing the weight of all they'd lost.
Hermione buried herself into the lab when she couldn't handle all the excess time. If she were being productive, she felt able to breathe. It was nice to be creative without feeling like any amount of time she was spending there was countdown for someone's life.
There were countless things she could do. Draco had brought enough books and supplies to keep her occupied for years.
Draco, however, floated.
He checked the wards obsessively. He read. He practiced using his prosthetic hand. It took him two weeks to stop breaking the internal mechanisms, but in the process he figured out how to do considerably more with it than Hermione had expected. Then he'd sit in the lab and watch Hermione work for hours on end.
He didn't have anything to do with Ginny or James unless Hermione prodded him to.
Hermione left him alone about it. If he didn't want to do anything else for the rest of his life, he was entitled to do so. She liked having him nearby. If she couldn't see him, it would sit like a knot in the back of her mind, and she couldn't focus for as long before she had to go find him and reassure herself that he was alright.
When he was there, she could relax and focus.
She'd look up from a potion or from working on his new prosthetic and find him just staring at her with an unveiled expression of possessiveness that shivered down her spine and felt like fire in her veins.
She realised he'd muted the tendency at the manor. It had been buried under everything else. Smothered by his conviction that she'd never forgive him, that he'd die.
But as weeks shifted into months, his possessiveness reasserted itself. It was addictive, getting to relish something she'd never had more than snatches of.
She'd put down whatever she was doing and just drown in him. Kissing him, pulling his clothes off, and holding him in her arms, feeling him alive. They were both alive. They'd survived, and they had each other. He'd slide his hand along her throat, kissing down her sternum, and she'd hear him murmuring “mine” against her skin.
“I'm yours, Draco. I'm always going to be yours,” she'd tell him, the way she'd always used to tell him.
But there were ripples at the edges of her consciousness. Sometimes, when she looked away from Draco, Hermione would find Ginny's strained expression as she watched them.
Hermione refused to let herself notice it.
The only external thing Draco took an interest in was keeping track of the news regarding Europe. The elves brought an entire stack of newspapers every week: European, Asian, North and South American, Oceanian. Any Wizarding newspaper that was translated into English, the elves were instructed to purchase and bring back. Read collectively, it was possible to get a vaguely accurate account of current events.