Disclaimer: Grangers, etc., are intellectual property of J.K. Rowling and this work intends no infringment.
The summer she was almost, but not quite, eighteen:
Dr. Granger and Dr. Granger name summer their favourite season as it's the one they get to spend with their only daughter. They never entertained the idea of sending her away to public school when she was an infant; even then they were too deeply attached to their small brown-eyed girl, who gurgled quietly in her pram and seemed always to be seeing things beyond their vision. Later, when she had grown old enough to join play groups, and never actually learned to play – when she had grown old enough to know she was not quite like other children, and that the ways she was different were ways that could hurt her – Dr. Granger and Dr. Granger felt justified in their future plans of keeping their daughter near to them, and safe. See, Dr. Granger said to her husband, She doesn't thrive with her own age group. She's too mature. She does better with adults. And Dr. Granger agreed, because he had eyes to see and ears to hear, and indeed his little girl found children puzzling creatures whose random behaviours she could not decipher, no matter how she worked to decode them.
Yet when she was eleven-about-to-turn-twelve, there was a strange occurrence of an owl tapping at their window with his great claws. He carried a letter addressed to 'Hermione Jean Granger', who read the letter and passed it to her parents, who thought it perhaps an elaborate joke though they could not imagine who would play such a trick on them. They were dentists, after all.
Hermione had been excited to discover this new world composed of magic. Dr. Granger smiled benignly and said, We'll discuss it once we know more, dear, now come to bed. Hermione rolled her eyes and ran one small hand through her mane of hair (Honestly, Dr. Granger had said, That's half the reason your hair puffs up so much, you must stop touching it so incessantly, darling and Hermione had replied, Oh bother, Mum, you know I don't care about my hair).
Once Hermione was tucked in and safely dreaming, Dr. Granger poured Dr. Granger a nightcap of scotch, on the rocks. It had been her drink for the last five years; before that, his wife had favoured gin. He himself drank whiskey. Dr. Granger accepted the drink with the absentminded gratitude of habit and said, Scotland, the school is in Scotland. That's much too far.
Perhaps, Dr. Granger replied. He kept his tone enigmatic, because though he had always intended to keep Hermione close, he recognized the need for a shift in plans. It was not like there were other schools that taught magic nearby. And magic was something Hermione must learn, he knew, as without learning and control there would still be the power that she occasionally unthinkingly let loose. Power without control was a dangerous thing.
Must we let her go? Dr. Granger asked. Normally she was the one to make decisions in their family. She had massive intellectual and analytical strength; she could compose lists of benefits and disadvantages with as little effort as it took to breathe, could organize and marshal her thoughts in a coherent manner which automatically lead to the most logical of answers. They had been study partners in medical school, and her cerebral ferocity had been as bright as a bonfire, as refined as the sharpest scalpel, even then.
Dr. Granger replied, I'm afraid we must.
Hermione was, of course, ecstatic.
Summer, Dr. Granger and Dr. Granger's favourite season – the time when their daughter comes home. They out-do themselves each year. Paris, once; Rome and Venice, a pleasant few weeks touring Switzerland. The summer she is fourteen-about-to-turn-fifteen, she tells them not to plan anything too extravagant as she has a wizarding event she has been invited to. They had plane tickets to the Americas, but adjusted their plans as requested. It was bittersweet to know that their daughter had friends who invited her to things, that she was no longer wholly theirs. The summer she was fifteen-about-to-turn-sixteen she told them she would only be coming home for a week or two. That was more bitter than sweet, but she told them she had been invited to take part in an intriguing project and of course could not say no. The summer after, she begged to stay at her friend's house.
All told, Dr. Granger and Dr. Granger have barely seen their daughter for the last three years. They are readied, though heart-worn, to agree to whatever will take their seventeen-about-to-turn-eighteen daughter away this summer season; only, she surprises them by not saying anything about leaving home. Rather, they pick her up from the train station and drive back to their house two hours away, and she is quietly talkative in the backseat. She holds her cat in her lap, not petting but with her left hand beneath his head and her right resting on top of his side.
The first night home Dr. Granger offers to take them all out for dinner. I'd rather have something you cooked, Dad, Hermione says. She gives him her smile, the one that is a strange amalgamation of his smile and her mother's smile, with that extra added twinkle that is just her, and his heart melts inside him as it did when she was a newborn placed in his arms the first time, smelling vaguely of generic hospital soap and unnamed baby scent.
Of course dear, he says, and they all of them eat at the kitchen table with the summer sun spilling on their faces, about their hands.
Hermione chatters pleasantly and Dr. Granger looks to Dr. Granger, and the mother and father share a quiet, pleased smile.
Their daughter is precocious. She is smarter than they had any right to expect her to be, but occasionally Dr. Granger wonders whether it is good for her to be quite so clever. She wields her intellect like a bludgeon at times, bowling others over to bend to her will; and she seems to think that just because it can be done, it should be done. That if she thinks it should be done, it is the moral thing to do. That is the folly of all children, the arrogance, of course it is – but it has stronger repercussions for Hermione, who can do more, whose actions are not the relatively harmless ones of average children, but who can exercise her massive brain and effectively change the world.
If she had stayed at home with him, Dr. Granger would have had her reading philosophy at age twelve. It was his minor at university, and of course ethics were required classes for soon to be medical practitioners. It would have been well worth it for Hermione to have read moral treatises, for her to begin the mental gymnastics of philosophic thought rather than the rote memorization and compilation of fact that was so emphasized by schools, even magical ones.
Of course if his daughter had stayed at home, if Dr. Granger had managed to lead her through a quagmire of centuries of twisted thought, if she had taken it seriously, if she had realized her own smallness in the face of these great minds, then everything might have come about differently. But if and if and if, so many places for mishap to occur.
The summer their about-to-turn-eighteen daughter comes home and stays home and does not speak of leaving home is a pleasant one at the outset, with the weather balmy and not too warm. Dr. Granger tentatively talks about going on a trip, and Hermione smiles. How about Australia, Mum? I've heard some fascinating things about the aboriginal peoples there, and they have the most interesting mythology.
Dr. Granger beams fondly. Her smart girl, she thinks. I'll pick up some tickets, she agrees, and gives in to her maternal urge to lean down and smooth her daughter's hair from her face in one long stroke as if petting a cat. Instead of shaking her off with a scowl, as she has so often done before, Hermione leans into the caress, eyes closed and expression blissful yet sad.
Dr. Granger wanders off, turning in the doorway to get a last glimpse of her girl sitting on the chesterfield with her knees curled to her chest, reading one of those old books whose covers she can never decipher and whose lettering seems to have been done by hand.
Hermione is reading a book on complex memory charms and mental magic. It has a section on Legilimency in it as well. She bookmarks that section for Harry, though she doubts he will listen to what it is she tries to teach him. It might be important though.
Hermione reads more now than she ever has before. She needs to be prepared. She needs to know everything she possibly can. She needs to keep the people she loves safe.
The people Hermione loves and will kill (and do worse) to keep safe number only four, because she has done the arithmancy and knows any more will be too much; any more, and she won't be able to ensure that they will survive.
The list is, in no particular order:
Her mother
Her father
Harry
Ron.
What she is willing to do to ensure that they survive is something she doesn't think too deeply on, because the depths of what she is capable of occasionally frighten even her. Though not too much, because she is young, and she justifies her each act to herself, puts the things she has done that might be reprehensible on a relative moral framework. Tells herself that it is not the worst thing anyone has ever done in the history of the world. Tells herself she does what she does for and out of love. Tells herself the means do not matter, it is the end that is paramount.
If asked where she learned such heartfelt ruthlessness from, Hermione would say, I learned it beneath a castle when I watched one boy sacrifice himself for the sake of another. Or she would say, I learned it in a hospital bed when I woke up to my best friends' relieved faces. Or she would say, I learned it from the face of an innocent convict who would go through hell and had done to ensure the life of the one he loved most. Or she would say, I learned it from having to watch my best friend's heart break over the body of a dead boy. Or she would say, I learned it from a toad of a woman who was despicable yet who taught me the things I needed to know by negative example. Or she would say, I learned it from betrayal, and I hope you'll never know. Or she would say nothing, nothing at all.
If Hermione had been on the other side of the war – or if she had simply not been on Harry Potter's side, if he did not have her bending her intelligence to his intention – he would lose. This is no great mystery, and something Hermione realizes: she is essential to him, he needs her to be there like he needs his arms or his legs. The responsibility is a great weight but she bears it up.
She reads more books.
Dr. Granger finds his daughter asleep in the den more often than not, at late hours with the lamplight cozening her in warm yellow glow. She looks quite young and quite beautiful, her sun-kissed skin and thick tangled hair. There are stacks of books by her feet, one pile 'read' and the other 'unread'.
He picks her up carefully, arranging her long legs over his arms, tucking her torso and head to his chest. He carries her up the stairs to her room and lays her down. It is too warm for a full set of blankets, but he pulls her linen sheet over top her body, murmurs softly the old sing-song that was once like magic for its power to put her two-year-old self to sleep.
'My sweetest girl,' he thinks, and his chest is so full of bemused tender love that it seems he cannot breathe, that his lungs cannot expand for lack of space.
She is dreaming of hexes and of fire; there is a line of a frown dragging across her forehead. He smoothes it away with his thumb.
Two days before they are to leave for Australia, Hermione sits down at the breakfast table. She has a large mug of coffee in front of her, heavy with milk and a little bit of sugar. Her school trunk is by her feet.
Dr. Granger is slightly alarmed. She says, Are you making a quick trip to visit your friends, dear?
Hermione says,
They've known the names of her friends, of course, and that they are important to her, that she worries about them – especially the one named 'Harry', who tends to be picked up from the train station just after they've come for Hermione, whose guardians are unpleasant sour looking people; he is the boy with the untidy hair and the thick glasses that don't manage to mask the distinctive colour of his eyes, the boy with the strange animal grace and the snowy owl.
Hermione tells them, His parents were murdered and he was the only one to survive, and that has made him a target. There is a war brewing in the wizarding world, and the aggressor is using as his rallying point blood – blood politics, whether witches and wizards come from a family history of witches and wizards or not, if they are Muggle-born, like me. It's become dangerous to be Muggle-born, moreso than in the past.
Dr. Granger was never aware that it was a dangerous thing to be Muggle-born at all, but he can see how the prejudice could develop.
I'm a part of the war, Hermione tells them, earnest, Even if the war hasn't officially been declared yet, I'm in the thick of it. I have been for years. And she tells them. Everything.
At one point Dr. Granger has to leave and be sick in the bathroom. He has never had a very strong stomach when it comes to anxiety and stress. His wife sits stony at the table with her hands clenched and her eyes blazing. She is very angry at Hermione's years-long deception; she doesn't appreciate knowledge withheld.
Once Hermione has finished, they stare at one another, a family triumvirate. Hermione's cat wanders in from the living room, glances at them with his feline disdain, and wanders back out – perhaps sensing the tension.
All right, Dr. Granger says, her mouth a grim line. What does this mean then? How are we going to get you to safety?
Hermione shakes her head. You must understand, she says, Without me, Harry will fail. He's a good boy, the best one I've ever known, and he has such a good heart. But he doesn't plan far enough in advance, and he doesn't know enough. It would be like a lamb going into the butcher's, and I can't let him die. And Ron would go with him, and I can't let him die either.
Dr. Granger feels a thickening in his chest, a weightiness that hadn't been there before. He knows before she says anything, he knows she is going to walk out of their house and into danger. He can't let that happen. So before Hermione can answer he stands, he goes to his little girl and he picks her up and he holds her close. He holds her tight. He whispers into her ear, No. You are not allowed to do this. You are our daughter and you are coming with us. We are leaving this bloody country.
She's crying in his arms, forehead tucked against his neck and jaw. Dad, she says. Dad.
He puts her down and turns to his wife and says, Helen – you're mostly packed for Australia, right? I'm sure we can transfer the tickets up a few days. He feels very calm. His wife makes an abortive nod, before her eyes widen as she looks behind him, and he strangely registers that she looks almost afraid. He turns back around. His daughter is holding a wand to him. Like a weapon, or a threat. She is still crying. She looks so very very young.
I'm sorry, she says.