Written for the LiveJournal DramioneLove Mini Fest - Round 3 (2018)
Prompt #: 45 -"Tea party" - 8 yr. old Hermione wanders into a tea shop she shouldn't be able to see.
Disclaimer: "Harry Potter" is the property of J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros. This fanfiction was written entirely for fun, not for profit, and no copyright infringement is intended.
Hermione is eight when she sees the shop. If she hadn't been trying to count the number of shingles on the roofs of the buildings adjacent to the shop where she and her mother are, she would never have noticed. It's a quaint little store, incongruously squeezed in between a dingy newspaper stand and a fry shop. The storefront is painted white, so white that it shines with an almost ethereal glow. There's a sign on the front door that reads "Welcome" in neat gold letters and a little tree bursting with white roses on the doorstep.
She likes roses.
Hermione tugs on her mother's dress.
"Mum, can I go look at the flowers across the street?" she asks. "I'll be back soon, I promise."
Her mother, looking longingly at a matching set of blue coasters and plates, just hums."Yes, dear," she says absently, and Hermione runs out of Royal Stafford and into the street before her mother can say no.
There are a few people on the streets, but none of them seem to notice the gleaming white facade that they pass by. Hermione gets a couple of odd glances from a smartly dressed man in a tweed coat sitting at a nearby cafe when she stops in front of the shop, but as soon as she steps on the doorstep, he turns back to his newspaper and his cooling meal of toast and eggs. Odd, she thinks, then dismisses it from her mind when she looks at the roses.
They're beautiful. Even her grandmother's English roses pale in comparison to the white roses in front of this little tea shop. They look perfect and dew-bright, no spots of mildew or rot staining their petals, and even though no one seems to be inside the shop at the moment (the green curtains are drawn across the windows), they seem to be well-cared for.
She can't repress the insatiable urge to touch one of the roses, just to see if the petals are as satiny-soft as they seem at first glance. It shouldn't hurt to just touch them, she reasons, and she reaches out to touch the biggest one in the center of the arrangement.
The flower rears back and hisses, before curling its petals around her finger. Hermione only has enough time to marvel that, yes, it is as soft as she imagined it to be before the rose jabs her with a thorn.
"Ow!" she shrieks, more in surprise than in pain. It doesn't hurt that much, but dark red blood wells up on the meat of her palm. She doesn't have enough time to move her bleeding hand away from the tree and to her horror, drops of blood drip on the pristine white roses and stain them wine-red.
"Oh no!" she cries. She clumsily tries to wipe off the blood with a handkerchief, but the blood just seems to spread like quicksilver until all of the roses, even the ones that haven't been contaminated by her dirty blood turn uniformly red.
Now you've ruined them, silly girl, a voice whispers in her ear.
She doesn't know what to do. None of Grandma's thick gardening tomes said anything about the effects of blood on plants, and so she just stands there petrified, clutching her bloody handkerchief.
Suddenly, there's a tinkling of a bell and a quiet click, followed by a series of click-clicks and a whirring of machinery as rusty cogs groan.
The door to the shop slowly creaks open.
"Who's there?" someone asks warily from inside. It's a child's voice, high and petulant, with a posh British accent. "Father? Is that you? A-am I allowed to go outside now?"
"H-Hello," Hermione says nervously. She hides her hands guiltily behind her back.
"Who are you?" The person says sharply. The voice is nearer now, but whoever it is chooses not to show themselves from behind the door that is half-open.
Hermione doesn't really know what to say. What if they saw what she did and decided to call the police on her? She told her mother that she would be back soon! What would her parents say?
"I said who are you, and what are you doing here?" The voice snarls, and Hermione can't help but bawl.
"I-I really like roses," Hermione wails, "A-and I just wanted to look at them, I swear, but o-o-one of the flowers bit me and now they're all red and I tried to wipe off the blood but the color spread and I'm so so sorry but please don't call the police."
"What are you talking about, you stupid girl?"
"The roses in front of your shop," Hermione sniffles. "And I'm not stupid. Take a look at them if you don't believe me."
The voice just harrumphs.
"You aren't angry with me for ruining the roses?" Hermione asks hopefully and the voice tuts.
"What's more important is afternoon tea," it admonishes. It hesitates before continuing, "...If you were coming here for tea, you're late. But you might as well come in before Father arrives. Close the door after you, it's getting drafty."
Hermione steps inside, pushing aside the heavy silk curtain that blocks the entryway to find…empty space. Well, that isn't completely accurate; there is a garden table and a grandfather clock in the middle of the nothingness inside the shop, surrounded by chairs containing toys.
At the head of the table is a little blond boy who cocks his head when she enters the shop. He studies her from head to toe with an expression that looks too shrewdly adult on his young face. He's the only living person there; surrounding him are stuffed toys and wooden horses and porcelain dolls sitting around in a circle, looking vacantly ahead of them with eyes made of glass beads. Some of the dolls jerkily move their limbs from time to time, in an odd pantomime of human movement.
It's eerie, to say the least.
"What are you doing there, gaping like an idiot? Sit down." The boy waves his hand and an armchair silently appears at his right side.
Hermione sits down and a plate, accompanied by a tray of scones, still steaming slightly from the oven, quietly materializes in front of her. A few brightly colored jars of spreads and jams hop over from the center of the table and stop when they reach her water glass.
The boy is still staring at her with his colorless grey eyes.
"What?" she asks defensively, narrowing her eyes.
"No one from Outside has ever been here before," the boy simply says, not taking his eyes off her. "Father looks very much like me. He has pale skin and pale eyes and pale hair but you—you have color."
"Thank you," Hermione ventures, not knowing whether to feel insulted or flattered. The boy reaches out as if to touch one of her brown curls—and then wrenches his hand away from the air, as if stung by an invisible barrier between the two of them. For a moment, something that looks like pain and yearning and hope flashes across his face before he schools his expression into the stern adult look from before.
The boy turns his unsettling gaze from her towards his plate. He leisurely spreads clotted cream and apricot jam onto an already buttered scone. Then he heaps two spoons full of white sugar onto his diabetic concoction.
"What's the matter with you? Cat got your tongue?" the boy asks snidely.
"N-no," Hermione replies faintly, watching in muted, fascinated horror as he finishes his scone in three big bites. Her parents would probably have an aneurysm if they saw the amount of sugar on his plate.
They dine in comfortable silence. Hermione ignores the boy when he looks curiously at her face, her hands and her hair. She had bristled at first when the boy's gaze lingered on her tan (from long summers spent in Nice, where her maternal grandparents live) and her untamed mass of hair, but after the first three or four times the boy glances at her, it becomes clear that the boy isn't trying to be mean.
The grandfather clock chimes four times. The boy hastily cleans his sticky fingers with his napkin and checks the fobbed watch at his side.
"Father will be back soon," the boy says after consulting his watch. "You should go now."
"Why?" Hermione asks.
"Father doesn't like Outsiders," the boy says. He looks crestfallen before a thought occurs to him and he brightens. "Come back tomorrow at four o'clock sharp. Don't be late like today, or I won't have time to play," he orders.
Hermione scowls. Who does this uppity little boy think he is to order her around like a maid? "No," she says.
The boy looks startled for a moment. "Why?" he asks, brows furrowed.
"Because you're a rude little boy, and I don't want to play with rude little boys like you." Hermione crosses her arms across her chest and glares at the boy. He wrinkles his brow again and adopts an expression of intense concentration. After a moment's thought, he tries again.
"Come back and play with me?" he wheedles plaintively.
"Only if you say please," Hermione said primly.
The boy grimaces. "Please?" He begs, and Hermione reluctantly folds.
"Excellent." A satisfied cat-like grin stretches from ear to ear on the boy's face. "Remember," he warns her, "don't be late."
"Hermione, darling, there you are," her mother's voice floats somewhere above her, and Hermione blinks. She groggily rubs her eyes and tries to sit up. Her mother's arms steady her and pull her up into a standing position.
"You must have been tired, waiting for your silly mother to pick out her plates," Helen Granger says, fussing with the leaves stuck in her daughter's hair. They're sitting on the bench in front of Royal Stafford. The sky is slowly streaking with red and orange and yellow across the horizon.
"Had…had tea," Hermione yawns. "With a strange boy who eats too much sugar for his own good."
"Somebody's hungry, isn't she? Let's go home now, dear. "
"But Mum, I really did have tea," Hermione protests, but her mother just chuckles.
"Come on, now. I'm sure your father will be closing up the practice soon. Since it's already this late, how do you feel about curry?"
Her mother waits for her as Hermione puts on her muffler and her mittens (when did she take them off?)
"What a marvelous shade of red those roses are, your grandmother would approve," her mother remarks, looking across the street.
Hermione turns toward the area where the shop with the little boy is supposed to be. There's…nothing between the fry shop and the newspaper stand.
Except for a flowerpot containing a tree with red roses.
AN: I would have never have had the motivation to post this story if my lovely beta hippie_girl_31 didn't contact me to offer to edit my work!
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