A/N : An incredible amount of thanks to you MsBinns for your help on this story, for your opinion and input. She graciously let me borrow a piece of "Australia" (If you haven't read it, go now! She updated today!) for the first segment in this story.
Thank you also Ari for reading this so promptly and for your corrections and kind words :)
I recommend listening to "Falling Slowly" from Once the musical for this. I've seen the musical for the first time this week and I was blown away by its intensity. The title of this fic is obviously inspired by the song (but it's a bit far etched ;-))
She turns five, and it's her best birthday yet.
Her mother lets her help bake her cake. She feels like a big girl as she stands up on a chair to reach the kitchen counter top and put the ingredients together. She even manages to proudly break an egg without letting any shell fall into the mix. They are making a sponge cake with melted chocolate on top, her favourite.
Later, the five candles shine brightly on top of the cake as her mum puts it in front of her, singing brightly and off key. Her dad snaps a picture before the wind enters through the nearby window and puts them out.
She's instantly upset.
Everything has been perfect so far, exactly as she foresaw, and she wishes the candles hadn't been blown out by the wind before she could even properly look at them.
As promptly as she thinks it, the candles light up again.
She's astounded and quickly raises her head to look at her parents. They seems as surprised as her, and she doesn't understand it. She stares back at the five candles in awe and vaguely hears her father ask her mother if she put magic relighting candles on the cake.
She doesn't catch sight of her mother shaking her head in reply.
…
She is seven the first time she sees the Reading Room at the British Museum.
Her father takes her to see the Hoa Hakananai'a Easter Island statue. He gets lost in extensive explanations and descriptions about the mystery statue and doesn't notice her walking off. She wanders by herself in the gallery, it's full of ancient artefacts, and she looks in bright interest at the thousand years old objects before she ends up in front of two high wooden doors.
She wishes she could see what's behind it.
Almost as soon as she thinks it, she notices that the door on the right is slightly open. She doesn't recall if it was already like that when she arrived in front of it. She shrugs the thought away and finds herself sliding inside the room unnoticed.
She looks up at the round dome above her and the harsh afternoon light passing through the lower windows make the golden embellishments shine brightly, almost blindingly. She can smell the peculiar smell of old books and her body lights up in excitement when she lays eyes on the endless rows of shelves covered with books from ground up to the windows rounding the lower part of the dome. They are everywhere. She walks slowly, almost reverently, toward the nearest shelf and lets her fingers caress the soft leather covering the books. Her eyes quickly scan the golden titles and her mind twirls with all the words she's yet to read.
"Miss?"
She jumps out of her reverie and turns around abruptly as her cheeks flush brightly. She prepares herself to be scolded by the librarian in front of her, but the woman, who she reckons is about her grandmother's age, looks at her warmly.
"You are not allowed to be here young lady, the Reading Room is closed to the public today."
"I'm… I'm sorry, the door was open you see and I saw the books," she says breathlessly, slightly overwhelmed by the knowledge that she is not supposed to be there.
"It is quite fine, don't worry," the older woman says amusingly, "But I'm sure your parents are looking for you."
Her dad is indeed talking frantically to one of the guards when the librarian takes her outside the Reading Room and back into the gallery. He is beside them before Hermione has time to fully register his agitated state.
"Where were you?" he asks her.
She can't quite make out his tone, torned between crossed and distressed. She opens her mouth to utter apologies but the librarian speaks before her.
"The Reading Room. The door was open and she saw the books," she grins, imitating Hermione's intonation on the last few words.
Her father chuckles and she instantly relaxes.
"Sounds like my daughter. Thank you for escorting her back here. I'm sorry if she was any inconvenience."
"Oh no, not at all. We're closed today, going over the inventory and I was getting a bit bored. She was a nice distraction."
Promising to come back another day when the Reading Room will be open, they bid the librarian goodbye, leave the museum, and walk to Covent Garden where they grab ice cream. They sit on a bench and spend the rest of the afternoon watching the people walk around the square, inventing their lives and imagining where they are headed. She laughs so hard her stomach hurts.
She never wants this day to end.
…
The first couple of months at Hogwarts, she is torn between so many things it makes her head spin.
She misses her parents, very much. She writes them daily, extensively describing the castle, her teachers and the rewards she gets from answering correctly in class. She doesn't mention any friend, because she doesn't have any.
Hogwarts feels like she belongs. She is absolutely elated by magic. The spells come easily when she practices them, her thirst for knowledge is indulged by her teachers and the library is breathtaking. But a sharp pang of loneliness follows her around all day, as she tries so very hard to fit in in this world that makes complete sense within the depths of her being.
Then it's Halloween. And Ron Weasley calls her a nightmare. This boy, who grew up in a world where magic always existed and was always real, thinks she's an outsider. All she tries to do is show them she belongs in the Wizarding World just as much as any wizard born.
She locks herself inside the girls bathroom all day and lets her sorrow out. She cries because she can't seem to find her place, because she suddenly misses her parents even more. She wants her father to hug her and her mother to kiss the pain away. She craves recognition, because she doesn't know who she is. She is utterly lost, caught in between worlds.
Suddenly there's a loud crash and she is facing a twelve-foot tall troll. She screams, completely terrified. Before she has time to understand what's happening, Ron and Harry save her.
They came back for her.
The thought exhilarates her. So much that she lies. To her professors. Her pulse quicken in guilt, but she discovers a new warmth inside her that makes her heart soar.
She has friends.
…
Before her second year starts, she begins to realise that she won't be able to fully have both worlds together. The commotion with the Malfoys at Flourish and Blotts, when they went to get her schoolbooks and meet with Harry and the Weasleys, utterly terrified her parents. So much that her dad started to express doubts about the Wizarding World as soon as they left Diagon Alley.
She hasn't really told them about the Philosopher's Stone and the dangerous situation Harry, Ron and her were in at the end of last year. She just said that they were rewarded for solving one of the hardest enigmas Hogwarts ever had. She detailed Ron's brilliance at chess, Harry's agility on a broom and how her logic skills got them through an intricate riddle.
But now, as they hint that the Wizarding World makes them uncomfortable, she feels her heart break. Her parents will never fully understand her life. She's only twelve, and she already feels herself drifting away from them.
She realises that a lot of things will never be the same.
...
She doesn't come home for Christmas. For the first time in her life, she doesn't spend Christmas day with her parents. They don't drink hot chocolate all snuggled up in her parents bed as they listen to Christmas carols on the wireless. She doesn't witness her mum teasing her dad's attempt at cooking them a Christmas dinner. And the next day, they don't take a walk along the Thames, stopping to admire the lights and storefront around London.
Instead, her parents receive a letter from McGonagall, on Christmas day, telling them that she is in the infirmary.
She feels so stupid.
They write back, worried and asking for explanations. She replies by dismissing all their worries and simply tells them that she had an allergic reaction to some magical food on Christmas day and that it's not as bad as her professor made it seem.
The lie makes her sick with guilt, but she cannot bring herself to tell them about complicated potions and petrified students. They'll take her away from the Wizarding World. As much as she hates herself for lying to her parents, it wouldn't be as much as if she wasn't allowed to perform magic ever again.
She's back to her old self by the end of January and everything is almost forgotten. She writes weekly letters to her parents, describes her classes, extensively talks about their Defense against the Dark Arts teacher and all his exploits that she read about.
It doesn't last.
...
She figures out what the monster from the Chamber of Secrets is, and before she has time to warn Ron and Harry, she is petrified.
She wakes up almost a month later to five letters from her parents on her bedside table. McGonagall tells her that she had no other choices but to explain everything to them. Her heart sinks. She knows that she will have disappointed them greatly. She feels the bitter taste of her lies and disappointment rising up in her throat.
When she comes back to London at the end of the year, the ride home from the train station is deafeningly quiet.
She closes her eyes, willing unshed tears not to fall, and try to envision a world where magic doesn't exist. All she sees are Ron and Harry's faces, and she knows that she has changed forever.
…
Before her third year, she spends the summer in France with her parents. She tries to make up for the lies she's told. She is afraid she will never fully be able to regain their trust.
She apologises endlessly and tries to explain that magic helps make good in the world. She also tells them that Hogwarts is the safest place there is and that her professors are the most competent wizards in the Wizarding World.
It's hard to explain how thrilling magic feels.
Unfortunately she isn't allowed to perform magic outside of school.
She receives the Daily Prophet by owl every morning. Her parents make no comment about it. Her mother shows interest in the moving pictures though and Hermione details how photography works with magic.
"We'll have to take a picture of us with one of those wizard cameras," her mother says sincerely.
Hermione can feel them warming up to magic again and she promises herself she will try everything she can to stay connected to both worlds. She will keep telling her parents all about what she is learning so they won't feel ignorant, so they'll understand. But even to her almost thirteen years-old self, the promise seems half empty.
It'll be impossible for them to understand something they're not experiencing, something she can't show them, but that is defining who she is becoming. She fools herself and refuses to accept that the distance between her and her parents will be growing larger as she will spend more time discovering the extent of her magical abilities.
She watches her parents sweetly bicker over their breakfast and her heart cracks slightly.
...
The school year starts and she's barely a few days in when she already knows that things will only get worse. She's too busy. She has been allowed to use a Time Turner and was told not to tell anyone.
So she lies.
Again.
She writes less, tells her parents her classes are more demanding, that they have more work. They understand, because education, whether it's magical or not, is important to them no matter what.
The more she gets involved in the Wizarding World, the more she drifts away from her parents. She's always known it but has been denying it. She does her best to merge the two, because both are a part of her. She realises with raw sadness that the Muggle world is becoming more and more foreign to her. Her parents are becoming strangers.
Christmas at Hogwarts is a disaster and she wishes she had gone back home. She spends most of her time in the library, alone.
Ron is particularly infuriating. He makes her angry and breathless in ways she doesn't understand. The few letters she sends home are filled with lengthy paragraphs about yet another argument with Ron.
Because she needs to be involved and she is revolted by Buckbeak's treatment, she helps Hagrid with his trial. She does her best to understand the magical laws that are bringing prejudice against magical creatures. As she does, she discovers many narrow-minded people and laws. She realises that Malfoy calling her a Mudblood the previous year wasn't just a foul name thrown between children. Actual competent wizards are for a strict regulation of all forms of magical creatures that are not pureblood wizards.
It's the first time she is this scared.
…
She asks to go to the Burrow for the end of summer holidays. Everyone is going to the Quidditch World Cup and even though she doesn't enjoy Quidditch that much, it's something she wants to see.
Her parents tell her it's fine, great even, that they have a conference to attend to in London and that she would have had to be on her own anyway. They seem oddly cheerful to let her go to the Burrow.
She's pretty certain they lie, that there's no conference.
"I wish I could show you magic!" she blurts out to her mum the next day, while in the middle of preparing lunch. "There's so much you can do. I could cook a big dinner, or clean the house in a few minutes! I could warm up your tea or make your cup bigger. I could fix my teeth..."
"That's absurd, you don't have to use magic to fix your teeth, that's what braces are for!" her dad interrupts loudly. He walks in and scratches his head sheepishly. "I was- erhm- you know, walking by and I heard-"
"What your father means is that magic doesn't solve everything," her mother sighs, throwing her husband an annoyed glance. "So make sure you only use it for purposeful meaningful things and not to fix things that can be fixed otherwise."
"I will. I promise I won't disappoint you."
"We know."
...
She is crying, in her four poster bed, on Christmas day.
Her hair is a mess, her dress all wrinkled, she can still sense Viktor's dry lips on hers and she isn't sure how she feels about it. She's still dazed after her fight with Ron. She doesn't know what makes her head spin most, the fact that she had her first kiss tonight, or that her best friend infuriates her so much.
She wants her mother to hold her and tell her that you can't die of a broken heart, that things will be better, that Ron Weasley is an idiot.
But she can't. Because Hermione decided to stay, once again, at Hogwarts for Christmas and go to a stupid Ball.
She's so angry with herself for choosing this evening over hot chocolate and warm hugs from her parents.
In a fit of wild unbearable emotions, she pours it all in a letter to her parents.
They reply quickly. Her mother describes how boring their Christmas is compared to hers, how they spent diner with dull friends and ate underwhelming food. It's controllably written, as if they are holding back. All this time she has been the one putting distance between her parents and the Wizarding World. But now, she feels they are the ones being distant. It makes her heart ache. She isn't sure writing them was such a good idea.
She feels nauseous for the rest of the day.
...
On the drive home from the train station, she doesn't tell them that Voldemort is back and that he made his first casualties amongst one of her schoolmates. Instead, she lets the guilt of the lie eat her up as she casually explains how she created an organisation to protect House Elves. Later, she gets agitated as she informs them how some silly journalist made her Harry's girlfriend and how revolting and puerile it had been. She catches her mother's smirk before her father asks about Ron.
"What about Ron?" she replies sharply.
"Well," her mother starts carefully, "you haven't mentioned him at all since you came back. How is he?"
Oh.
"He's good," she replies dismissively.
They get home and she rushes upstairs to unpack.
After a while, Hermione sits on her bed and sighs sadly, she doesn't know when she'll have to pack again. The future is becoming uncertain.
She reckons Ron and the Weasley's must have arrived back at the Burrow by now. She closes her eyes and pictures the crooked house held together by magic, smells the freshly cut grass from the garden and she can almost feel the rough used velvet from the sofa under her fingertips. Her heart does somersaults in her chest at the thought.
She lets herself been enveloped by the warm feeling it gives her before she allows the guilt back inside her. She can feel herself fading from the Muggle world, and she is certain her parents feel it too.
"All unpacked?" her mother asks gently from the threshold of her bedroom.
Hermione nods absentmindedly as her mother comes sit next to her.
"You never did really tell how Ron has been this year?"
There's a knowing smile on her mother's face, and Hermione becomes flustered and agitated as she replies.
"Well, there was this girl from a French magical school, and she's part Veela, which makes her very attractive to men, Ron got the biggest crush on her. It was quite embarrassing."
Hermione smiles wistfully before chasing Ron's face away from her mind. She grabs one of her schoolbooks she'd thrown on her bed earlier, and stares at it. Magic is an important part of her life, and with the events currently happening in the Wizarding World, it is all becoming bigger than everything else. It scares her. She wills herself not to cry and braces herself to ask her mother questions she isn't sure she wants the answers to.
"Mum," she stares at the golden letter on the book cover, "Did you really had a conference to attend? Last August? Wa- was Christmas really as boring as you described?"
She finally looks up at mother, eyes wet but tears restrained. Her mother sighs and replies tenderly.
"Although it makes me sad, I've always known you weren't mine to keep," she grabs Hermione's hand and squeezes it strongly. "You've always been special. And I say that in the best way, in the best way."
Her mother seems pensive for a moment. She takes a strand of Hermione's hair and carefully puts it back behind her left ear. She stares intently at her, both hands now grabbing Hermione's.
"You belong in the Wizarding World."
"But I belong here too, with you and dad-" she cries, tears now falling rapidly on her cheeks.
"Your father and I will always be here for you, always," she sighs deeply once more, her voice shaking slightly. "But there's things that we cannot teach you and that you need to learn. It hurts to know that I- I can't be the one to teach you those things. You're a witch Hermione, and no matter how brilliant you are, you can't learn everything on your own. Someone has to show you, and it can't be us."
When the first tear falls from her mother's eyes, Hermione hugs her. She chases the lies she's told away from the forefront of her mind, her parents can't know everything that is happening right now. Magic isn't all good, she has to protect them. She holds her mother tightly and tells her she loves her.
She doesn't want to let go.
…
She arrives in Grimmauld place and is caught off guard by Mrs Weasley as she hugs her tightly as soon as she passes the front door. She smiles at Ron over the older woman's shoulder, relieved that he still seems cheerful despite his father's attack.
When she's asked about her original plans for Christmas, a skiing trip with her parents, she eludes the question quickly.
Truth is, her parents' disappointment is nothing compared to the guilt ripping her insides as she told them more lies.
Keeping them in the dark, for their own protection, she reminds herself, about what is really happening in the Wizarding World, is a vicious circle.
She's afraid she will never be able to turn it around once they finally manage to get rid of Voldemort.
…
It gets reasonably warm towards the end of July.
Her father wants to go to the local public swimming pool that was just renovated that year. She refuses to go.
Her mother thinks she's self-conscious about her body, but really it's that her body still holds the mark from of the curse she received a few weeks prior.
She lets her mother smother her with ridiculous remarks about her looks, oftenly prompting her father to add a compliment or two as well. She laughs and smiles, but she also knows that they are doing this because they think she needs the reassurance.
She lets them believe it. The alternative would mean telling them about a group of teenagers, her friends, fighting dark wizards and almost getting killed. She can't bear it. Lying is easier, but she hates herself for it.
She has a scar now though. It's unlike anything she's seen. It slashes her sternum in two over a few centimeters. A dark bruise is still visible on her skin around it. Madam Pomfrey told her it may never fade.
Getting scars means that it'll get even more difficult to hide what's happening in the Wizarding World to her parents.
It'll be harder to protect them.
…
She goes home for Christmas. She's a mess. She doesn't recognise who she is.
All because of a boy. Hermione Granger, who always managed to be independent and headstrong, is reduced to a heartbroken teenager. Also she's crying a lot. Which is not her, at all.
She's so out of herself that it takes her three full days before she realises that she's seventeen now and is allowed to perform magic outside of school.
She has dreamed about the day she'll be able to show her parents the wonders of magic ever since she found out she was a witch.
Now that she can, she is bashfully anxious. The first spell they'll witness, her first really deliberate act of magic in front of them, has to be perfect.
On Christmas day, she sets empty glass jars all over the living room, her parents look at her confusedly. But then she takes her wand out and she can feel the anticipation in their curious eyes as she makes them sit on the couch. She gets nervous, but manages to perfectly conjure bluebell flames in every jar. When she has them all light up, she looks at her parents expectantly and holds her breath.
Her father gazes at her with too bright eyes for a long time before whispering hoarsely.
"Beautiful."
...
The summer after her sixth year is the worst of all since she first left to Hogwarts.
The lies are getting more elaborate, it's almost too much to handle. The shock of Dumbledore's death and the pending colossal task Harry, Ron and her are set to accomplish, weight heavily on her shoulders.
Her parents notice her darker mood. She explains that her school's headmaster died a few days before the end of term. She tells them he was very old and had a heart attack. She tries to make herself believe the lie but she can't.
She begins to map out the biggest lie of all. The one that will make her parents forget about her.
She locks herself in her room, researches and plans. While she does, she puts more and more distance between her parents and her. She's closer yet further away from them than she's ever been. She forces herself to be distant, not to protect them, but herself. When she'll be gone and won't have parents anymore, they won't remember, but she will.
But it doesn't last.
When she has it all figured out, she debates telling them everything, letting them know before making them forget. But she's afraid that once they'll know, she'll change her mind.
Instead she gives herself one week before setting her plan in motions. One full week to make happy memories with her parents. Pieces of their lives, not filled with lies, for hers to keep when the hunt will be too much to bear. She begs them to go the the museum and eat ice cream in Covent Garden. They go shopping on Shaftesbury Avenue, walk along the Thame and take a picture of the three of them with a wizard camera.
It's awkward and she knows her parents can tell something is up, but they're too happy with her cheerful mood to say anything.
When the week is over, she almost panics. She sits on her bed, takes controlled breaths and closes her eyes. She tells herself she can do it. She knows too well that the world is unsafe for people like her parents, because of who she is. She finds strength in the knowledge that she will perform a cast so intricate that no matter what happens, her parents will be happy and safe. If they can live, she'll have accomplished her task. Voldemort won't have them, she'll make sure of it.
…
It's just Harry and her, and she wants to give up.
She wishes just for one day without worries. One day where she knows her spell protected her parents with certainty. A day with Ron back by their side. She feels so empty. She doesn't feel anything anymore.
Somehow, it's almost a relief. She doesn't have to worry about her parents, she doesn't have to worry about Ron, she just have to watch out for Harry. But even he can take care of himself. He's used to it. She feels bad for thinking it, but truth is, the war is making her bitter. Feeling nothing is good. It makes her more focused on the task at hands.
She doesn't recognise the person she's becoming.
…
Ron comes back.
She hates him.
Because he makes her feel again. There's too many emotions at once, so she hits him because that's the only way she can let the pain and anger out. She doesn't want to feel again. Feelings make things complicated. Ron being here reminds her that she loves him. That she is loved too. That she performed magic on her Muggle parents, probably disowning their trust forever. She feels overwhelmed and dizzy.
She had wanted to give up, but now she can't. Not with the way Ron is looking at her. Not without seeing her parents again.
She'll fight this war as long as she'll need. So she can one day explain to her parents that she didn't drift away because she finally found her place in the Wizarding World and they couldn't be in it, but because it was all bigger than all of them.
She just couldn't turn her back on it.
…
She finds her parents.
She's walking alongside Ron, looking for their house and they appear a few hundred meters from them. She stops abruptly and stands frozen, as she looks at her parents for the first time in almost a year. She watches them bicker from afar, transfixed at how like them they are.
Ron reaches for her and he gets her out of shock. She feels sick. She takes deep shaky breaths, completely overwhelmed by how far they've come and how much more there is to be done. She dreads their reaction, knowing that she will have no choices than to reveal almost all the lies she's told since she turned eleven. She craves for her mother's hand in hers and to smell her father's cologne again. It's too much, she cannot move.
Her parents leave, to the cinema she thinks she heard them say and it takes her a long time to move. She's afraid she'll lose them again if she leaves. It's a stupid thing to think but she can't stop her mind for spiraling anxiously. Ron takes her hand and brings her back to reality.
It hits her.
She's found her parents.
Suddenly, the lies don't matter. The horrors of the previous year escape her mind because her plan worked. They didn't die. And she realises it will take a long time to restore their relationship, but it'll be okay because they survived.
All of them.
She laughs freely for the first time in years.
That night with Ron, she finally lets herself forget about lies and guilt, about scars and nightmares, and allows herself to be intoxicated by his skin against hers. And for the first time, it's good.
But when the sun rise, doubts invade her mind once again and she confesses to Ron something she's been afraid of ever since she uttered her first lie to them.
"They'll never forgive me."
...
She brings her parents back from Australia.
And relentlessly tries to mend the bond she broke when she modified their memories. If she's honest with herself, it had already fractured long before she casted the spell.
She takes her parents to the British Museum. The Reading Room is under renovation and the books have been moved out. She is oddly disappointed that she won't get to revisit the place she saw only for a few minutes when she was a child but that engraved itself clearly within her memory. They walk around the round room and reach the Great Court. Instantly her breath is taken away by the criss-crossed window ceiling and the vastness of the room. It's not quite the dome of the Reading Room, but it's close enough that she is brought to tears, reminiscing on how, with time, things change and evolve.
They leave the museum and go for ice cream.
"It's almost exactly as I remembered," she tells her dad.
"Almost exactly yes," he looks at her, eyes shining too brightly.
She's not sure she'll ever forgive herself for everything she put them through. For all the lies she's told.
She's not who she used to be. Things between them are not as they used to be. They have to relearn about each other. Australia changed her parents. She hasn't been honest with them since she was twelve and took desperate drastic measures to protect them without telling them. She has been spiraling between lies for years, caught in between two worlds. She doesn't remember how to be honest with them.
She's always been afraid they'll reject her because magic is so hard to grasp.
But the war is over now, and she'll make sure laws are changed.
She can finally foresee a life where she doesn't have to chose.