Prologue
Expecting…
Hospitals made Wendell Wilkins sick. It was the main reason he had chosen dentistry as his profession. He had never once been to a dentist’s office that had the smell of death clinging to it, nor were there so many nervous people pacing and bumping into one another.
The doors to the waiting room only opened one way: slamming hard against the wall, deepening the well-defined dents. Each time it did, Wendell would jump and look up to see if he could spot a familiar face. Although, each time it was only to see some new stranger running in. Still, he found himself looking up each and every time. There was, after all, someone he was waiting for as well.
And the last time, he finally found one familiar face.
“Hermione!”
Wendell Wilkins breathed a sigh of relief as soon as he saw the bushy-haired woman burst through the waiting room doors. It was somewhat embarrassing for him to be so dependent on the British girl who had been a stranger little more than a couple months ago. But with his wife in the hospital, Wendell was past the point of caring about the thoughts going through people’s heads as he rushed to embrace the woman young enough to be his daughter.
“I didn’t know if you would make it,” he gasped with his arms still around her, “when you wouldn’t pick up the phone at the office.”
Gingerly, Hermione Granger, took Wendell’s hands, doing her best to calm him down. “That’s because I wasn’t at the office today, Dr. Wilkins. You and your wife aren’t working this week, so you certainly don’t need your receptionist there.”
Wendell nodded and wiped at his sweaty brow. Any other time, he would have chided the girl for calling him Dr. Wilkins (as he and his wife were both practicing dentists, it could get very confusing), but his mind was elsewhere at the moment”with his wife just down the hall and him with no clue as to how she was doing. Wendell’s hands moved up to his hair, running through it again and again, as he took a seat on one of the hard plastic chairs. Hermione took the chair next to him, starting to look somewhat pale and shaky herself.
“Have the nurses told you anything about Monica?” Hermione asked him, as she tried to get Wendell to focus on the here and now.
“She’s still in the operating room,” Wendell said, her words doing relatively little to ease his anxieties. “I should be in there with her.”
“But operating rooms are sterile environments,” she reminded him. “They can’t let non-medical personnel inside.”
“I know that. I know that,” he confessed. “Some doctor I am, no?”
“You’re a fine doctor, Dr. Wilkins. Surely, you must know that?”
Wendell nodded and tried to let the words reassure him. Hermione always seemed to try and do her best to be there for the couple, almost as if it were some kind of duty for her.
Hermione Granger had come into their lives in a most unexpected manner. One night, just after Wendell and Monica had begun cleaning up from supper, they heard the doorbell ring. And when Wendell answered the door, there she was: this bushy-haired young woman with a suitcase in her hands and a hopeful, expectant look on her face. She introduced herself to Wendell as Hermione Granger, explaining that she was a student from Britain visiting and that someone from town had told her where she would find the Wilkins residence. It made sense to them. Wendell and Monica were originally from Britain themselves, and had been looking for a good receptionist for months. Someone from town must have thought it would be a perfect fit. Certainly, it wouldn’t be a very long term solution for their new dental office, but the Wilkins couldn’t help but feel a sort of soft spot for the girl; something they couldn’t quite put their finger on.
At any rate, Hermione Granger was an outstanding employee in every aspect. She already knew how to use every one of the machines in the office, from the telephone to the copy machine to the coffee maker. She seemed to know how the appointment system worked before either Wendell or Monica had even explained it to her, and she also had an incanting ability to manage all of the smallest details that kept the office running perfectly. Hermione explained that her parents had been dentists as well, and that she used to spend her school holidays working in their office.
But for all the good points Hermione had, she also had some very odd habits as well. Whenever she would have a spare moment, she would talk endlessly to Wendell and his wife about stories from her childhood, as though it were her favorite subject. On her desk at the dental office, she kept dozens of photographs, and she would point them out to the Wilkins every time they walked passed. One day, she had even brought her cat to the office”a gigantic ginger monster that Wendell had nearly mistaken for a lion. Wendell had never minded, though. The young woman had become something of a surrogate daughter to the childless couple.
Something that was happily changing today, if all went well.
“Wendell Wilkins?”
Wendell looked up when he heard his name called and his eyes met with another young woman. She seemed to be little older than Hermione; a student nurse who didn’t do any real medical work, but was instead entrusted to serve as a go-between for the patients and their waiting families.
“Your wife is fine,” the young nurse assured him in that Australian accent that still sounded so alien to him. “She came through surgery beautifully, but she’s still resting and won’t be able to have visitors for a few more hours.”
Wendell breathed a long sigh of relief. “Thank you! Thank you so much!” he blathered on and on, before remembering something equally as important as his wife’s health. “A-and what about…I mean, can y-you tell me…” He couldn’t recall a time in his life when he had ever been so flustered.
“The baby?” the nurse finished for him. “Would you like to see her?”
“Her?” Wendell found himself stammering. “It’s a girl?”
The nurse nodded. “Do you want me to take you to the nursery?”
But again, Wendell found himself simply too dissociated to answer the question. He was still having trouble grasping the current situation. A baby…a baby girl!
It wasn’t as though having a baby was unintentional. It was something they had planned and tried very hard for. It’s just that having a baby hadn’t been a plan for the couple for many years, despite the more than two decades they had spent married to one another.
Wendell and Monica had always had a very defined sense of a plan for their lives together: graduate from dental school, start their own practice so they could be their own bosses, and, only just recently, move to Australia. That last idea seemed like something so big and spontaneous that both of them had believed it was something that would keep them occupied for many years. But last summer, it had somehow gotten into their heads that if they didn’t make the move right then and there, it would never happen. So they closed down their dental practice, packed up everything they owned, and before they knew it, they were stepping off the plane at the airport in Melbourne, Victoria with nothing but a fresh start ahead of them.
Eventually, they settled themselves into a place called Wonthaggi: a small coastal city where people could cross the street wherever they wanted and where people thought nothing of rodents, reptiles, and other little creatures wandering indoors. It was here that they were able to set up another dental practice of their own (and the ghastly teeth of certain residents of the town would be more than enough to keep them plenty busy). It was such a pleasant lifestyle that the couple wondered what has kept them from doing this years before.
It was a rather boring day when the subject came up. Wendell and Monica were wearing grubby clothes and unpacking the last of their boxes. They had been packed away in the garage for months and they were terribly dusty. It came up at the oddest of moments. Right between unpacking a set of wood carved giraffes, Monica suddenly asked, “Why is it we’ve never had children?”
They seemed rather old to be thinking about starting a family”Wendell was forty-seven and Monica was forty-six. All this aside, the idea nagged at them. Nagged and nagged and nagged, until they finally decided to give it a try and let nature decide whether or not they should be parents.
It was in February that they finally did get their answer to that question.
“Mr. Wilkins, are you alright?”
It was the young student nurse again, clipboard clutched to her chest and leaning over to see if she could spot anything medically wrong with Wendell.
“Oh, sure, I’m f-fine,” he said. “I just need moment to sit down.”
“I understand,” the young nurse replied sweetly. “I’ll be back in a tick.”
Turning on the fronts of her sensible shoes, the girl walked away to hide in a corridor until Wendell decided he needed her.
Normally, Wendell would have considered himself to be a very calm and collected man. But nothing about these past few months could be calculated, planned, or prepared for, no matter how much research a person did. It both terrified and thrilled Wendell at the exact same time. Today, those feelings were hitting him in explosions.
“I just can’t believe it, Hermione,” he said, finally managing to get out an entire sentence without stumbling over his words. “I’m a dad.”
Hermione nodded, but remained completely quiet. She must have been overcome by the moment as well.
Hermione had arrived at their house during the seventh month of Monica’s pregnancy, just when his wife’s belly was really starting to show. The girl had been a tremendous help during the last few difficult weeks of the pregnancy. It had been quite humorous. It was two women who knew nothing about pregnancy or babies, despite being more than twenty-five years apart, trying to prepare for the birth of a baby. It had been a rather unofficial part of her duties (not a real duty at all, in fact), but Hermione had still been there for every step of it that she could. Those times dealing with Monica’s pregnancy seemed to be the only time Hermione appeared flustered in any way, and it seemed to be a great distress to her to appear imperfect in any way.
But Wendell actually found it rather cute. It showed that the great Hermione Granger was human after all, and frankly, made her a lot easier to love.
“I have told you that ‘Hermione’ is my wife’s favorite name, haven’t I?” Wendell said suddenly.
Hermione nodded quietly.
It was true. Despite the fact that Monica had had her eyes set on medical school since her first day of university, just as Wendell had, she had always had a passion for studying Shakespeare. Ever since they had first learned they were expecting, Monica had pressed the idea of giving the baby a Shakespearean name, particularly Hermione from Winter’s Tale. Wendell had been somewhat opposed to the idea, fearing they would be dooming their child to a lifetime of playground teasing, but after meeting Hermione Granger and seeing what an amazing young woman she was, the idea didn’t seem so outlandish after all.
“Between you and me, I always thought it was a bit strange,” Wendell confessed. “Not that I mean to cause offence. In fact, I might actually give in and let Monica name the baby Hermione.”
Hermione squeaked, from surprise, Wendell assumed. It wasn’t everyday someone learned that someone was naming their firstborn after them.
“The idea of it is starting to grow on me, especially now that we have someone as wonderful as you to name her after.”
Wendell put his hands on Hermione’s shoulders. “And if Little Hermione could turn out to be half as amazing of a person as you are, I think I would probably be the proudest father on the face of the earth.”
Wendell assumed Hermione would be flattered by the compliment, but instead, she stood to her feet in one swift motion.
“I have to go now, Dr. Wilkens,” she said shortly.
“Don’t you want to stay and see the baby?”
“No time,” Hermione answered, rushing towards the waiting room doors.
And that left Wendell alone in the hospital once again, quite startled by Hermione’s abrupt departure. She had become so close to Wendell and Monica during this time, he would have thought she would be dying to see their little girl.
“Dr. Wilkens?” the nurse peeked out from behind the corner. “Would you like to see your daughter now?”
Wendell looked over to the waiting room doors as though he expected Hermione to come bursting through once again, having changed her mind. He wanted Hermione to stay; he wanted it desperately. Hermione had become so close to him and his wife. It just felt wrong that Hermione should not be with them for such a wonderfully joyous occasion.
But at the same time, Hermione Granger was a grown woman with a life of her own, and Wendell really couldn’t force her to do anything.
“Yes,” he finally answered.
Smiling wide enough to compensate for Hermione being missing, the student nurse led Wendell down the hospital corridor to a clichéd sort of glass window peering into the nursery. But because Wendell was actually the father of one these infants, he was one of the very few allowed inside. Plastic cribs lined across the floor like chocolates in a box assortment, and aside from the patterns of blue and pink, all of the babies looked faintly alike. Weren’t parents supposed to be able to instantly tell when a child was theirs? Had he really managed to screw up as a father already?
“Here we are,” the girl said suddenly, interrupting Wendell’s thoughts. “Baby Girl Wilkins.”
The nurse’s hands gripped the side of one of the plastic cribs, the one that belonged to his child.
She was still bright pink, nearly more so than the blanket, and sleeping like a rock. A few strands of brown hair peeked out from beneath a new pink knit cap. Her eyes were shut tight. The lights did seem terribly bright now that he thought about it. And Wendell couldn’t believe she was his.
“Would you like to hold her?” the young nurse asked him.
Without waiting to hear the answer, the nurse reached into the crib, lifted the baby girl, and carefully deposited her carefully in Wendell’s arms. Then the girl walked away, trusting Wendell entirely with this new human life. Then again, that was probably the way the world worked anyway.
“Hi, Hermione,” he whispered to the infant. “I’m your daddy…”
Wendell thought holding his child for the first time would be an experience he would remember for the rest of his life. But instead, he felt the oddest sense of déjà vu, as though he had said these exact same words in this exact same position somewhere before. He also felt this insane need to figure out exactly where it was that he had done this before. Had it been with a friend’s baby? A younger cousin he had held as a child? No, none of these were right! God, why was it so impossible…
“Dr. Wilkins!” Wendell was vaguely aware of the young nurse shrieking his name and snatching his daughter from his arms.
The next time Wendell found himself fully alert, he was sitting in one of the nursery rocking chairs and Hermione was gone. At first, he panicked, but calmed down once he saw the young student nurse across the room holding the pink-bundled infant, bouncing her and hushing the small cries.
“Dr. Wilkins, look at me!” he heard someone suddenly order. Looking over to the side, he jumped a bit when he saw an older, rather pump nurse tracing her finger in front of his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized, “but you looked head on your feet”like you were going to faint.”
Wendell shook his head from side to side as he tried to make himself more alert. “I don’t remember.”
“It’s alright,” she assured him. “You’re not the first man to be humbled by coming face to face with his firstborn.”
“If you were to stay in the chair, would you like to hold the baby again?” the student nurse asked him, rushing over to his side. “Nurse Rikers will be right here watching you, so you have nothing to worry about.”
“Sure,” Wendell agreed, though somewhat shakily. “Alright.”
And once again, the younger nurse placed baby Hermione into Wendell’s arms, something that came much easier the second time he did it.
Then, the student nurse stood off to the side, somewhat nervous and jittery herself. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”
Wendell shook his head, but asked, “Can you let me know when my wife is awake? I know she’ll want to see the baby as well.”
The girl offered a curt nodded and ran to the nursery door to do exactly as Wendell told her. Nurse Rikers stood three inches away for a few minutes, but eventually grew bored and went off to pour herself a cup of coffee, leaving Wendell alone with his firstborn once again.
“Hi, Hermione,” he said once again, hoping for better luck this time. “I’m your daddy.”
The baby girl yawned, her mouth wide, and tried to rub her eyes. She barely made any noise and her eyes remained shut tight against the fluorescent lights.
This time, the experience was completely unique, fresh, and new. Everything Wendell Wilkens thought it would be.
Hermione by OliveOil_Med
Chapter Notes: Wendell Wilkens awaits what many would consider a blessed event. He himself is greatly excited, so he can't understand why his dear young friend, Hermione Granger, doesn't seem to be.
Thank you to my wonderful betas, Haylee and Riham.