Chapter one: Magic Trick

He liked London. He didn't mind the rain, so long as he had enough pairs of socks. He liked the people, the posh air to everything that wouldn't have felt so in the States. He liked the history. So when the BAU was given a long vacation after the Anthrax scare and Emily mentioned going to London, he metaphorically jumped at the chance. Garcia had physically jumped at the chance, Morgan made some obscene suggestion about accents, and Rossi mentioned cigars that he wanted to try that one couldn't get at home. JJ had decided to spend more time with Henry and Will, however, as well as Hotch had planned some time with Jack.

"So who is this girl?" Morgan asked.

"She's an old friend's daughter. She just graduated school, but has a few months before she turns eighteen. However, her parents have this opportunity to move to Australia like they've always wanted. In fact, I knew Daniel when we were kids and he spent a whole year speaking in an Australian accent so that he would fit in."

"Why don't they just take her with them," Rossi asked with a chuckle at her story.

Emily glanced out the window of their commercial plane. "She won't talk to anyone anymore. Apparently a couple years ago her friend died at the school, suicide, and she just ignores everyone now. They're leaving the house to her, but they want someone there until her birthday in September to make sure she doesn't run off or get herself into trouble."

That didn't seem right to Spencer. So, they were going to abandon her after that? Had they tried to get her help? Obviously there was more to the story if it was still affecting her so strongly. Had she been the one to find the body? Had they been romantically involved?

"Charming," Garcia grimaced.

"I remember her," Emily said. "She's a good kid, smart, and they think I can help her. But, we'll be staying there until the end of September when we get to go back to work. There's a going away party tonight and it will just be us and her and London. I've missed London."

Spencer had never been.

"I don't need a babysitting party."

They looked at each other with expressions she knew well. That what-are-we-going-to-do-with-our-troubled-daughter look. She'd only avoided it before now by continuing her magical education. But now she was graduated and couldn't find it in her to escape to that world where she was an adult, though Remus and Sirius had certainly offered her a home. No, but she'd offered instead for them to move with her once her parents gave her the house in September. The only people from that world she still kept in contact with.

"Honey," her mother started in that pitying voice. "We understand that you've been hurting, but shutting yourself out isn't the answer. Go out, live. They're only here until your birthday, and you like Emily. Don't you miss her?"

"I didn't really know her enough to miss her," she said. This was true. She'd been a child, and while she had hero-worshipped her then, she was a much different person and she would be disappointed if Emily wasn't also.

"Must you always be this difficult?" Her father asked. "Can't we have a nice day before we move and you completely stop talking to us?"

"I'm not the one leaving," she remarked hollowly, looking out the window that she stood at- her arms wrapped around her in defense.

She heard the shifting of furniture and clothes, her parents standing up likely to finish the last of their packing. They sent most of their stuff ahead of time and the house she grew up in felt empty. Her father spoke again, probably because she'd upset her mother too much for her to say anything herself.

"And whose fault is that, Hermione?"

"Emily!"

Spencer watched his friend run to embrace the woman who'd come out of the grand house. It was larger even than Rossi's, though obviously older and possibly passed down through the family. In a second story rounded window he saw a face, but when he looked properly, there was only the swinging of the curtain where someone had just been.

"It's so great to see you again," Emily was saying to their momentary hosts. "I've missed you both."

"Letters and phone calls don't quite work out as well as being in person," the man, Daniel, said. "This must be your team."

Spencer grabbed his bag and swung it over his shoulder before walking up to the open door where introductions were being made. Daniel wasn't particularly tall, with brown hair and a balding spot he hadn't managed to hide effectively. His wife, was lovely. A rare woman that was obviously aging well, with honey-colored hair pulled back in a clip.

"And you must be Dr. Reid," she said, bringing him out of his observations.

"Spencer," he told her, taking her offered hand to shake.

"Of course. Come in, come in, everyone before it starts raining again. There's a storm being called for tonight."

He ducked inside with everyone else, behind Rossi who only glanced at him for a moment before smiling and looking back to Daniel and his wife. The inside of the house seemed empty, and he supposed they had sent their things ahead of time. There were no pictures on the walls, though there were still nails where frames had once been. It looked bare. There were two lonely sofas in front of the fireplace with dark red upholstery and golden feet underneath them.

"Hermione made those," the woman said, seeing his interest. "She's always been... very gifted."

Spencer hadn't heard the girl's name, Emily hadn't mentioned it. Hermione. "Shakespeare?" He asked, thinking it the most likely of where her name came from.

"Homer," Daniel said, "My wife's name is Helen, and well, we quite thought it appropriate. But Hermione likes to pretend it was Shakespeare. She loves to read."

"She used to," Helen interjected quietly, looking over to Emily. "We don't know what else to do. We've tried to talk to her ourselves, and we've tried to get her to talk to other people as well. We've encouraged her when she insisted on staying at the same school, and we welcomed her when she came home, but she's not our Hermione anymore. She's so different. Frighteningly so."

"What exactly are the circumstances behind the... suicide?" Morgan asked. "Emily didn't tell us much about it. Was she romantically involved with him or was she there?"

Daniel and Helen glanced at each other nervously, motioning for them to sit on Hermione's sofas. "Not exactly," Helen said.

Daniel nodded. "She and Harry were close, closer even than Em and I were as kids, but she often referred to him in jest as a brother. It was rather sudden, and well, we don't know much about it ourselves. Hermione won't talk about it, and her school was very private in their affairs as boarding schools often are."

Garcia looked at her phone with a frown and Helen pointed to it sympathetically. "I'm afraid electronics don't work here very well. Something about our grid tends to destroy phones and other things. I can't remember the last time Daniel and I were able to make a call without the phone cutting out if we weren't in the driveway."

She chuckled awkwardly. "Well, we ought to show you all to your rooms. I had hoped Hermione would come out of her room to greet everyone, but it hasn't been a very good few days."

"You make me sound like a terminal illness," a voice said.

Spencer, and everyone else, glanced to the stairs where a girl stood with one hand on the banister and the other in her pocket. She was a perfect blend between her parents, with brown, slightly bushy hair that reached just past her shoulders. There were ink stains on her fingers and an orange cat at her feet.

"Not at all, Hermione, darling," Helen said stiffly. "We were just hoping you'd make an appearance."

"Hey, kitty cat," Emily greeted jovially, obviously with a nickname from years ago. "Been a long time. You look so grown up."

"It's strange how that tends to happen after eight years," Hermione said stubbornly.

She scanned each person, and each person whom her eyes roved over shifted uncomfortably. When her eyes landed on him, her eyebrows pulled together in slight confusion. No one moved.

"How about you show everyone their rooms," Daniel asked. "Or, come sit down and get to know everyone. Let Emily make introductions."

"That won't be necessary," she commented. "I only came down to get some thyme from the window garden."

She came down the rest of the stairs and through an archway that Spencer could see the kitchen through. Everyone glanced at each other, the girl's parents looking at Emily in distress. But Emily just watched where Hermione had disappeared through in confusion. Apparently, she had thought her friends were perhaps exaggerating. Then she seemed to have an epiphany, snapping her head to look at Spencer.

"Show her a magic trick," she hissed. "She loved them as a kid. She wanted to be a magician."

"Um," Helen tried to contradict, her eyes wide at the suggestion. "I'm not sure that's the best idea. She doesn't-"

Hermione came out of the kitchen again, a few sprigs in hand of various herbs, but Spencer had the distinct feeling she knew she was being talked about. She headed towards the stairs again, ignoring their existences, and Spencer blurted, "Do you want to see a magic trick?"

Generally, people either said no or yes, but it always made some sort of conversation and Hermione it seemed needed to open up in some way. Even if it was only responding to a magic trick. But at the point the words left his mouth, her parents both looked nervous and she stopped with her back to them. She slowly turned on her heel to face him.

"Magic trick?"

He couldn't identify the tone she used, but he didn't like it. She took a few steps closer and he thought, this was good. She was interacting with someone. She could've kept walking away. So why were her parents sending their daughter warning looks?

Spencer kept random quarters up his sleeves for things like this, crazy as that seemed, and he was glad for that as he stepped closer to pretend to pull one from her ear. This usually helped with kids, though granted they were usually much younger than the seventeen year old in front of him.

When he held the quarter in his hand from her 'ear', she smiled a sardonic smile at him. "My turn," she told him, stuffing the herbs in the pocket of her shirt.

Hermione put her two pointer fingers together and pulled them apart to reveal a string. It looked as though she were drawing the string into the air and it only appeared to be stuck on her fingers. She locked eyes with him, snapped her fingers, and it fell to the floor. Only, it wasn't a string anymore. But a rose. And when he looked back up from seeing the rose, she was walking back up the stairs.

Helen showed his team to their rooms, each one set up with a bed and a chest of drawers- painted with different colors and named accordingly. His was the 'Blue Room', with ocean blue walls, a sandy-colored rug, and a painting on the wall of the coast. It seemed Helen and Daniel had a few things to do that afternoon before the going away party and encouraged them all to explore the house and make themselves at home.

"Just, it might be best to leave Hermione alone," Daniel said as they left. "She's impossible to talk to when she's like this. I doubt even that we'll see her tonight before we leave, but this has been a long time coming. We've said our goodbyes."

His team all seemed to take the opportunity to unpack their bags in their respective rooms. Spencer was done quickly and found himself in Rossi's room while his friend unpacked. Rossi was put in the 'Green Room'. As the name suggested, the walls were a deep green and there was a large picture on one wall of a forest with tall, lush green trees that reached for the sky.

"You seem uncharacteristically quiet," Rossi said. "Are you trying to figure out how she did the rose trick?"

Spencer couldn't figure out how she'd done it, and it was obvious by the way he carried the rose around with him while trying to work out the answer. "I don't get it. She had short sleeves on, and even if she hadn't, it was impossible for her to anticipate I would ask her if she wanted to see a magic trick."

"Did you notice the interaction with her parents?" Morgan asked, appearing at the door. "And her father saying it's been a long time coming? Maybe she's just not over what happened to her friend. They admitted they didn't know exactly what happened, and they didn't mention whether she had any other friends. And young as she was... how old was she?"

"Fifteen, in her fourth year of boarding school," Emily sighed, coming in and sitting on Rossi's bed. "I just tried to talk to her and she was just as coldly polite as she was downstairs. That's not who I remember her to be."

"Eight years is a long time, Em. She's grown up during that time. And something like that happening to her at fifteen? That's a big thing."

Garcia came in at that point with a pout as she joined Emily on the bed. "I can't get a good signal anywhere in this house."

Rossi sighed. "Is this to be our conference room, then?"

No one paid him any attention. "Helen did say that would happen."

Yes, she had, and her explanation made no sense. Spencer couldn't think of anything that would cause the things Helen mentioned. No signal, okay, that wasn't too far-reaching, but for phones and electronics to just not work?

"Is that the rose she did the trick with," Morgan asked, pointing to the yellow rose Spencer was carrying.

"It is, but I have yet to figure out how she did it. I mean, you guys saw it. Any thoughts?"

Emily shrugged. "She was really good at that stuff when she was a kid, and today, I'm not sure what I saw. It was so fast."

Spencer tried not to be disappointed, but failed. "Well, that's one mystery added to the rest."

"There's a library here," Emily said, seeing his deflation. "Want to go check it out?"

It did not storm that night, but Hermione knew it would storm the next day. Instead, there was a clear sky and a large tent erected in the gardens that one could hear laughter and music from. She'd told herself that it was the last chance, knowing the unlikeliness in her heart of seeing them again. It didn't hurt that she had spoken to both Remus and Sirius about it, and they'd encouraged her what she'd been saying in her head all along. So she put on a nice dress that her mother had bought her and went out to join the festivities.

She could feel them watching her when she entered, and they thought they were being sneaky about their glances. She'd heard them talking earlier. Knew they were meant to 'get through to her'. Part of her wondered if her parents thought she'd kill herself, if they would come to check on her one afternoon and she'd poisoned herself. It wouldn't have been any use to tell them she had no interest in doing so, just as it wouldn't do anything to tell these strangers so. It would say that she had it in mind, even if it was only in that she wouldn't. They didn't understand that Hermione had too much to do.

"Hermione," Emily called her over, waving her over with a hopeful grin. So Hermione drifted that way to make her feel better, if she was already going to be at the party. At least if she played the part they would be less inclined to hover when she needed them to leave her be.

"Good evening," she greeted with a smile. "I must apologize for earlier. I was incredibly rude."

"Think nothing of it," the colorful blonde said. "Hi, I'm Penelope."

Hermione smiled. "Yes, and judging by the disappointment when my mother mentioned the lack of working electronics, you must be the technical analyst."

Garcia blinked, but held on to her smile as she shook Hermione's hand. "Our very own British Reid. This will be fun."

She glanced over to the tall one, with the purple tie and rumpled shirt from tucking in it into his pants in a haste. But the next to introduce themselves was the muscular one with the grin. She remembered his voice.

"Hey, Derek Morgan. Prentiss has told us a lot about you."

Hermione was sure she had, but she was a much different person than she'd been at ten. A stranger. "It's good to meet you, Derek Morgan. I hope I live up to it."

"Hermione?" Her mother's voice asked, the hope in it obvious. "I'm so happy you came downstairs."

She hugged her, and Hermione felt even more like a stranger. Things used to be different. They used to be close. Harry used to be alive. Hermione hugged her back and felt her father out a hand on her shoulder.

"Come dance with me, Mia."

He hadn't called her Mia since she got her Hogwarts letter. The reappearance of the old name struck her heart harder than she'd have expected. But she took her father's hand and let him lead her to the grassy area of the backyard garden that had been cleared. She hadn't danced since the Yule ball with Victor, in fact, her last dance had been with Harry before hers and Ron's fall out.

"I can't tell you how much this means to your mother," he said low to her as they spun around. "That you came to see us before we leave."

"How could I refuse," she remarked tonelessly.

"I love you, Mia," he told her. "We both do. Promise me, that after your birthday when you're with your friends, that you'll at least send us an owl."

They expected her to disappear into the Wizarding World, she realized. They thought they would never see her again, and she couldn't even tell them otherwise. No, she would likely never step foot in the Wizarding World again aside from the occasional Daily Prophet. She could mail order for any supplies, and most of the things she needed she could grow on her own. With Sirius and Remus staying with her, there was no one else she cared to see.

"I will," she promised as the dance finished and her mother came back over.

Her mother, who looked like she might cry. "Hermione."

With her name, Helen repeated everything her husband had said. But she couldn't find the right words the way he had.

"I know, Mum," she said.

They embraced again, and they announced that it was time for them to leave- that they had a late plane to catch- and they were suddenly surrounded by guests. It was easy for Hermione to slip away from the crowd and walk back into the house.

A/N: New one! I'll try to update regularly, but I'm really bad at my mood changing- and with it my interests. It picks up, I promise. Let me know what you think!

Acacia.