Harry Potter - Series Fan Fiction ❯ Harry Potter and the Werewolf Prophecy ❯ REMEMBERING ( Chapter 10 )

Mrs Granger sat perfectly upright on the couch, staring straight in front of her. “Christmas,” she said, wonderingly. “I always wondered what the fuss was about. It seemed to matter to me when I was a child.”

“That was a time for just the three of us,” said Hermione softly. She drew a silver line with her wand, linking the vial to her mother. “This will hurt, now.”

Mrs Granger screamed. Her vision suddenly turned white, and there was a stabbing pain in her head. She was falling into the white, and it was tearing at her, burning.

“Don’t fight it!” a voice came in her ear. “Let it in!”

And there was a small girl, about seven years old, with large teeth and a mop of unruly brown hair. “I have to do it!” the girl shouted, stamping her foot. “It’s my homework!”

And she was trying to reason with the girl. “Darling, it’s past your bedtime. I’ll write a note for your teacher. It’s not your fault...”

“If I don’t do it then everyone else will hand in their work except me!” wailed the girl.

And then she was telling her husband about it, and they were laughing together. “I had to let her finish it – six sums and a story about witches.”

“She gets it from you,” he said, giggling.

And then she’s frightened, watching as the girl is changing the channels on the TV. The remote control is lost, but the girl is waving at the screen, until a documentary comes on – something about South American reptiles. “Hermione?” she whispers. “Hermione – how are you doing that?”

“Oh, I just do this,” says the girl, nonchalantly, waving a hand. “Can’t you?”

It was National Geographic - a channel they didn’t have. Later that night she tries to tune it in but it isn’t there.

And there’s a letter, a letter she doesn’t understand. It doesn’t make any sense – except that it’s the only thing that does make sense, the only thing that explains her amazing daughter.

The tiny man perched on an armchair, his legs dangling, sipping tea. “It’s always difficult when both parents are Muggles. You’ve no experience of it, have you? Nothing in your world has prepared you. But you have such an exceptional...”

They both nod. “We’ve always known how special she was.”

“It must be very strange for you, finding out that the world is so different to what you thought.”

Her husband smiling. “We’ve known there was something different ever since she arrived.”

She’s smiling as well. “We’ve been expecting – well, not this, but something like this. Before this magic thing, even. She’s been… a constant surprise. A delightful surprise.”

Talking to her daughter in the kitchen late at night, her husband long asleep. Two girls together, sipping on cold coffee. “I just don’t know how he can be so stupid all the time? I mean, Dad isn’t like that, is he? Do they grow out of it?”

And she knows that her daughter is suddenly not a little girl, and that she’s in love but doesn’t know it yet. Talking about the boy she admires and respects, and the other boy who’s rude and thoughtless but somehow always around, always there. Don’t let her be hurt, don’t let him break her heart! Hermione – yes, it’s her name, the name she’s said more than any other name in her life. Hermione says “What does he see in her? She’s good-looking, I suppose...”. And she tries to explain.

The increasing fear. The first term, attacked by some horrible creature. Saved by the two boys, who are suddenly her friends. The story told in a light-hearted, dismissive way, but she can tell the real danger, the real terror. She wants to bring her girl home, to safety, but she knows she can’t. This is the path she is on.

Every letter, every return home there’s more and more. She forces herself to be calm, to listen, to accept, and in return the truth comes out. One best friend is being targeted for assassination. The family of her other friend, the boy she loves without knowing it, they are suffering horribly.

She’s having tea with Molly Weasley at King’s Cross, and Molly is confiding her own fears. She gives away more than she means to. Molly Weasley, so different but so much in common. Talking about how strange to have a daughter. One moment seeing oneself reflected, another a stranger, a whole new person.

There’s a boy, a teenager, someone everyone likes, and he’s been murdered.  She tries to understand why and it seems there is no reason, nothing beyond mere spite and hatred. Murdered at school. How can that happen?

She finds out that her daughter, her beautiful, intelligent, daughter, is taunted and hated and feared because of her parents. Hermione’s always been part of a privileged middle class, but in this new world she’s at best tolerated, at worst excluded and despised. She feels helpless rage. Come home, she thinks. Come home where you’re safe, and loved. But she never says it.

She talks for hours with her husband about their fears. Sometimes they argue, sometimes they comfort each other. They always end at the same place. Hermione must be let become the person she needs to be.

Dumbledore dies. They’ve never met him, but feel as if a friend is gone. And the pain is so strong now that she’s curled up on the floor, screaming. Hermione has come home, to tell them…

And it stops, and she is whole again. She looks across at her husband, who’s staring at her in horror. “It’s all right,” she says. “It’s just filling a cavity.”