Polished

Polished

"Filthy...Absolutely FILTHY..." she muttered as she moved the rag across the wood floor. There was a slight twinge of pain in her knees, but she found that the longer she was on all fours the less it hurt.

On her hands and knees, a very pregnant Hermione scrubbed the floors of Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place in a vain attempt to make her surroundings fit for human habitation. She knew she could have used magic to clean the Order's Headquarters, but there was some strange satisfaction she got from using the muggle cleaning things she'd had her mother send her. Ginny had thought she was mad when she first saw the mops and brooms and colorful bottles of cleaning fluids, but the minute Hermione removed the screaming portrait of Sirius' mother with a simple spot remover, something no Unsticking Charm could remove, Ginny had stopped laughing.

Maybe it was the hormones. Maybe it was the stress of having to take care of almost everyone in Grimmauld Place ("The New Molly Weasley", Harry had called her over supper one night. They all had laughed at that, harder when Molly had playfully cuffed Harry upside his head and his glasses had fallen off his head and into a pile of mashed potatoes. How long ago was that? One month ago? Two? More?). Maybe it was the constant worry that the people she cared about could die at any given moment; that Harry could die, or Ginny, or Remus, or Hagrid or Fred or George or ...Ron....

"Ron..." she whispered. A tear ran down her cheek as she moved the rag faster across the hardwood flooring, mixing in with the pine-smelling wood polish.

What would she do without Ron?

He was her best friend, her husband, the father of her child....what if he was hurt during Order business? Or if he was captured by the Death Eaters? What if he...died?

More tears now. Her hands moved faster and faster and the pain that had started in her knees was slowly working its way up her spine, not hurting enough for her to want to stop cleaning. Because cleaning the muggle way was like being a machine, and being machine meant that she didn't have to feel or worry or think or hurt anymore and the only things she could feel now was the dull ache in her back and knees and the slight stinging in her hands from where the polish had soaked through the rags and was making her hand burn.

She hated this feeling, that unsure, empty feeling she got whenever Harry and Ron were gone for longer and longer periods of time and their owls were few and far between. She'd gotten pregnant not long after she and Ron were married; three months to the day after Dumbledore's funeral. Four months in, she was pregnant. And now she wasn't even sure the father of her baby would live to see him grow.

A loud *POP* brought her out of her miserable reverie and she maneuvered her head back to the floor, her long wavy hair blocking her view of whoever had apparated into the room.

"Hermione," someone said softly. She felt a hand on her shoulder and bit back the sickly-sweet taste in her mouth. "You need to stop this. The fumes from those chemical things aren't good for the baby."

Hermione kept scrubbing until she heard footsteps leading into the kitchen, thanking the gods of small favors that whoever it was hadn't tried to reassure her that Harry and Ron were alright. She didn't need that right now.

~~~~**~~~~

She sat back against the staircase an hour later, relishing the lessening pain in her body. She pulled her wand out of her apron pocket and moved the basket of rags and cleaning supplies back into their place in the hallway closet.

Every square inch of the flooring of Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place had been cleaned, and Ginny had run about the house waving a letter from Ron and Harry, saying that they were coming back to London in a few days, something that had made Hermione smile wider than she had in weeks.

She put a hand on her expanding belly and felt the baby kick against her hand. Her emotions were on a rollercoaster but that didn't matter right now. Ron was coming back to her and from there, things could, would, get better.

As for tomorrow, well, tomorrow she would start to work on the windows.