Title: Choices
Author: chromatic.daydream
Chapter: One of One.

Author's Note: A small, possibly rather OOC piece about Hermione and her mother, the relationship they share, and the conversation that may take place before Hermione leaves for the Burrow, and the Horrcrux Hunt.
The end contains DH spoilers, so be warned!

…
She had spent quite a few restless and worrisome days at her parents house; wandering from room to room with a book in hand, letting her fingertips brush over the feel of the couches, and the walls, eyes taking in where each and every object was placed in the room as if willing it to embed itself into her memory forever.

Now finally the day was here, and Hermione Granger sat on her bed, neatly made, on top of the quilt she had slept under since she was a child. Her room had changed very little since the age of eleven when she left for Hogwarts, only gained new books and quills and clothes for a few precious days when she came home each summer. In many ways this room was not her room at all but where she slept when she came home to visit, yet Hermione couldn't help but let her fingers trail over the stitches in the quilt, drinking in the pale blue of the walls, the way her childhood muggle books were still alphabetically ordered, the stuffed animals that sat neatly on shelves.

"Hermione?"
"Mum?"
"Might I come in for a moment?"

She only nodded her head in approval, shifting over on the bed slightly to allow her mother room to sit comfortably. And they did for several minutes, Helen Granger's eyes looking unabashedly at the profile of her only child.

The woman sitting beside her resembled little of the eleven year old girl she had sent away all those years ago to a world she knew nothing about, and while she had seen and known it for a long time, it was hard to admit that she didn't really know the woman who was sitting beside her.

Certainly, Hermione still had the same bushy brown hair that she had always had (although it was beginning to show signs of taming into sleek curls), and her nose was still as perfectly shaped as the day she had come into the world (a nose that Helen was proud to say came from her side of the family), and her daughter's eyes were still the perfect color of chocolate that seemed to be almost un-natural. But it was what reflected in those chocolate eyes that made the older woman sigh.

"Hermione?"
"Mum?"
"Is there anything you want to tell me?"

It was such an open-ended question from her ever-practical mother that threw Hermione off-guard, turning to look away from her bureau to her mother. She looked quite the same as she always did, Hermione noted, with the exception of a few extra gray hairs and several more lines around her eyes. She was still her mother, and would always be her mother, and the seventeen-year-old woman felt a pang in her chest at the knowledge that she may never see her mother again.

"I'm not going back to Hogwarts."

Silence met this confession; Hermione slowly dragging her eyes away from her mother's partially opened mouth and tilted head to stare back at the bureau, detailing every picture that had been lovingly placed into the frame around the mirror. She vaguely heard her mother ask 'Why not?', but still her eyes stayed focused, drinking in childhood summers at the beach, her with her grandparents before they had passed, before her vision came to rest on the single moving picture of Harry, Ron and her in the Gryffindor common room.

"Because there are more important things in life than school, Mum."

If the first confession hadn't shocked her to the absolute core, this second one did, Helen Granger sitting in disbelief. This could not be the same daughter beside her who wrote home once a month to detail the fascinating things she was learning in her lessons, the same daughter who was at the top of all her classes, the same daughter who was sure to receive the Head Girl's badge.

Slowly, Helen turned her eyes to stare in the direction of Hermione's, falling upon the moving picture that seemed to have her rapt attention. One of Hermione and Ronald and Harry in their common room, Hermione had told her several years ago. The three were laughing merrily in the shot, Hermione sandwiched protectively between the two men on the couch.

"It's got to do with them, doesn't it?"

She didn't even need to ask for clarification who the 'them' her mother referred to was. Hermione knew that the blame was going to come back to them no matter what, because it couldn't be intelligent, studious Hermione who followed the rules and brushed her teeth and didn't get into trouble that would volunteer herself willingly to most likely go to her death.

But she had made peace with that part of the puzzle weeks ago at Dumbledore's funeral, wrapped in Ron's protective embrace. It was Harry's destiny, and it was Harry's prophecy, but it was their destiny be there beside him at whatever end they might meet. The woman sitting beside her, the woman who carried her for nine months, brought her into the world, nurtured and cared for her and then sent her off into the wizarding world wouldn't see it like that though.

Because sometimes Hermione thought that Helen Granger still looked at her like the eleven year old that kissed her on the cheek the first year at King's Cross and with a trepid wave and a nervous smile disappeared through the barrier to platform 9 ¾.

But that eleven-year-old child was nothing like the seventeen year old witch that nodded her head once in reply.

"I could try to explain, Mum, but I don't know if-"
"If I could understand?" She bit back.
"No. If I want you to understand what we're going off to do."
"Why does it always have to be them, Hermione? I know Ron and Harry are your friends, but haven't you gotten hurt enough? Haven't you sacrific-"
"Have you ever maybe thought that this is not their choice, Mum, but mine?"

There was something that shone in her daughter's eyes now, a fierce flame of courage and determination that Helen had only ever seen when her child was intent on proving a point, and had always run to her books to do so. But this time Hermione didn't reach for a book, or take a breath to quote a passage, or something one of her professors said.

Instead she took a breath and shook her head, eyes gazing longingly at the pictures as curls loosened from their ponytail fell about her shoulders. She took a breath and instead began to read from her heart.

"This is not a choice about going back to school, or not. It's a life and death choice, and while that scares me, Mum, it's still not really even a choice. It would be easy to go back to school and stay safe, but since when have I ever done what's easy, Mum?"

She paused.

"I'm seventeen and I'm going off to save the world, Mum. And yes, it is with them, and it is because of them. But there are no other two people I'd go off to save the world with, Mum. There's no other two people that I'd trust my life to, and there's no other two people I give up my life for."

The honesty of those words hit Helen harder than any other words had ever hit her, for even the notion of her daughter dying was inconceivable, let alone willingly doing so. She stayed silent, tears pooling in the corners of her eyes, desperately wishing for something to come to her, anything she could say that would make Hermione, her beautiful, perfect daughter Hermione, realize that she didn't need to do this.

But somewhere deep down she knew that that there wasn't anything she could say.

Silence washed over the room again as Helen fought to keep her composure, drawing her eyes closed, and then opening them, and closed again before she took enough of a breath to look at her daughter.

The curls of Hermione's hair blew gently in a breeze coming in from the window, her eyes shut closed tightly as her chest rise and fell, and Helen could almost see her brain working to sort the situation out. She looked so poised and elegant sitting there, and Helen couldn't understand why she hadn't noticed that before.

A sharp whoosh from the living room cut through the silence, and Hermione's eyes opened instantly. Downstairs, they could hear the sound of someone brushing themselves off, and Helen's chest constricted even further at the sound of Ronald's voice mixing in with that of her husband's. She had the sudden urge to march downstairs and tell that young man exactly what she thought of him, and his world, and the path he was leading her daughter down.

But she was caught from her thoughts by the painful heat of Hermione starring at her, chocolate eyes clear and purposeful once more. The determination almost seemed to radiate out of the young woman's body as she stood up and smoothed down her summer dress.

"I wish it could be different, Mum. I really do. This is my choice though, and my choice only. You and Daddy brought me up to stand up for what I believe in. And I'm going to do that, not just for my world, but yours too. I'm sorry I can't do what's easy, Mum. But we both know that's just not who I am…"

With a tight-lipped smile Hermione let her hand drop from her mother's shoulder back to her side, and with a graceful swish of her dress turned to stand in the doorway, wand now gripped tightly in her hand.

"Ron?" She called over her shoulder, still facing towards her mother perched on the bed's edge.
"Yeah?"
"Would you mind taking my things along to the Burrow? I'll be there in a few moments, I promise."
"Hermion-"
"Ron, please? Please take my things and go!"

Her voice must have gained a slightly hysterical edge to it, as she heard no more sound from downstairs than a heaved grunt as Ron grabbed her things. Suddenly there was nothing; nothing but the sound of her father's feet on the steps heading towards her room, and Hermione's chest heaving as she tried to calm her shaking hand, biting her lip as her chocolate eyes locked once more with her mothers.

"Obliviate."