Granger Girls by Borgin
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A/N: The plotline came to me after reading Make Lemonade by Virginia Euwer Wolff. There are also references made to Gilmore Girls, a very cool television show on the WB on Thursday nights at 8 eastern. It's a show that greatly deserves some applause. Also, please review and leave some constructive criticism.
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And they told me that I was too responsible to become pregnant from a silly night out with a close friend.
And how wrong they were.
Yes, I always wanted to be a mother, but I never expected it to happen without that one special person. I was Helen - too responsible, too intelligent to forget about birth control. And now I feel utterly ridiculous.
And since my baby is now grown up, it makes me feel so much worse - to know that she will have opportunities her birth deprived me of.
My baby. My little girl. The one who changed my life.
Hermione.
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They said that having the baby would ruin me. That I wasn't strong enough to carry her the entire nine-month period. I disagreed.
It had been my wish to have a child. And now that I was impregnated, the wish would be coming true.
I began to read the old mythology texts when I became too large to attend school. Look through baby name books. And I even read through the dictionary - I had a rather large one that I had wished for long before my parents bought it for me.
And I finally found the name Hermione.
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And when she was born, I knew that I would regret nothing. She was born with the mass of hair - my hair. In fact, my mother told me that she greatly resembled me. And as she grew, the only noticeable resemblance to her father was her overly large teeth. But it made no difference to the matter - even with the teeth she was extremely beautiful.
And we grew up together, in a small town, where I would help her study, and she would help me cry. We cried often - it was something that kept us together. She cried over the teasing she received from the other children, and I cried over the lack of my suitable other. But he came.
Charles Crowe Granger. He came into our lives, and taught us both to fly.
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Even with the birth of my daughter, I had been able to receive my dental degree. And as it happened, Charles was a dentist as well. And we had many similar interests - love for old movies, and a shared interest in listening to Bach and Beethoven. Neither of us liked Mozart very much, but loved listening to Vivaldi's Four Seasons. And we would get together, and listen to music, eat a light dinner, and dance in the living room.
And before long, we were married.
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Hermione never thought of Charles as anyone other than her father. He adopted her as his own child, and she loved to spend time with him, as he told wonderful tales of magical lands and princesses locked in towers. It had surprised Charles greatly that Hermione, the reader she was, had never come across a book of fairy tales. I did remind him, however, that The Wizard of Oz was both of ours favorite movie.
And he was the most accepting when her Hogwarts letter arrived. He read the instructions carefully, and thought of looking up Hogwarts in the telephone book. And after that listing failed, he tried McGonagall, Minerva, and then Dumbledore, Albus. After the first two failures, we were surprised that the latter attempt worked. He got through to someone who he described as a kindly gentleman, and before long, we had made plans to get Hermione to receive her school supplies. It was a rather odd concept to me, as I had been forced to accept reality early on, but to both Charles and Hermione it had seemed to be a wonderful adventure. And after much debate, I had given in to letting Hermione buy quite a few more books than required. Charles had pleaded with me, saying, "And if you don't let Hermione buy these books now, imagine how guilty you'll feel when she is away at school all year." It was a long try, but the begging worked, as I laughed and gave in.
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It was hard to see my daughter grown up then. Now, as I watch the television shows, I see more and more young mothers with brand-new lives in their hands. But I connect greatly to the show entitled Gilmore Girls. Rory is surprisingly like my Hermione, and in many ways I can connect to Lorelei. We both were young mothers, and greatly supportive of our children. I was seventeen when my daughter was born, but I was very dependent on my parents until I had my first real job. And Hermione's had a father since she was eight - her real father left my life the night Hermione was conceived. I believe that his name was Joffrey, and that he was a local university student who had happened to be at one of my friend's gatherings - a friend of her brother or something like it.
But never will I regret my daughter's birth. She has made life meaningful for all of us.
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And now, she'll be heading home from that school of hers for the last time. I am standing outside the platform, waiting for her. Hermione, the darling of my heart. She wrote and told me that she had been recommended for a teaching position. But she declined; saying that the best thing for her would be to wait a bit, live a bit more of life. She said that she wanted an American high school diploma, for a change in setting, and to complete the education required for her to attend a Muggle university. I asked her why? Why become an American student when you could find a well-paying Wizarding job here? We had looked through job listings in the Daily Prophet - most required completion at a worthy magic school, and success in either an offered elective or an otherwise-required seminar.
But not my Hermione. She is very much an over-achiever, very much like me.
Us Granger girls would never like to see fate get in our way.