Hi! thaliatheawesome here! So, this is my first regular Harry Potter story. I hope you like it? There will probably be two or three chapters… it won't be that long.

I realise this probably won't be everyone's thing, but if it is, that's great.

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. At all. Yet. (rubs hands together and does evil grin.)

Hugo

It all started when they went out for a family dinner when Hugo was eight, and his sister Rose was ten, soon to be starting Hogwarts with Cousin Al, and there were a group of smart-looking people dressed in green and black at the table next to them.

One was a boy about Hugo's own age, with a pointed little chin and sleek blond hair that looked like a ridiculous imitation of the older man next to him- his father, perhaps, Hugo noted, taking in account the woman sitting next to them in a deep green dress with a silver necklace around her throat and a black fur coat resting on the back of her chair.

His own mother glanced over at them, holding up her glass of wizard's wine to take a sip, then pausing with her pupils dilated in shock, hand still in the air, clutching the stem of the glass so tightly in shattered and split deep red liquid all over the pristine tablecloth.

She quickly vanished it with a quick scourgify, and nothing more was said to Hugo or Rose, but Hugo was still innately curious about the family sitting near them, the mere sight of whom had made his mother break a glass.

And why Ron had looked so annoyed at them being there at all.

It was Rose who had inherited their mother's genes.

His sister was the smart one, the person who topped every class in the year. (Well, except Herbology. She was awful at it, but Professor Longbottom was too nice to say so.) She was good at Quidditch. She was pretty, with long hair and sparkling eyes. She was even really nice.

Hugo, however, drew a blank, not showing any signs of great intellectual or physical ability. At eleven, while thirteen-year-old Rose held a massive Christmas party at their house with all her friends from Hogwarts, Hugo went upstairs and lay on his bed thinking until they were gone, although he knew they were all clamouring to see 'Rose's cute little brother.'

It had to be said for Hugo that he noticed things. Hugo was an observer, always had been. Not nosy. Just… someone who saw stuff.

He noticed, when his father's favourite sports broom disappeared, exactly where it was. Behind the garden shed, and no, he had not put it there. (Although he had seen James Potter doing so.)

He noticed when his cousin Victoire started going out with Teddy Lupin for the first time, long before they kissed on the station platform. He was only surprised no one else could tell.

And he noticed something else. When his mother had some kind of work party thing that she needed to take him to, and while she was talking to her friend Padma, the man from the restaurant was standing a few tables away, sipping from a glass of Firewhiskey, looking morose and bitter.

After a while, Hugo's mother asked him to fetch some drinks. He dutifully went and got a glass of Butterbeer and one of lemonade, but when he returned she wasn't standing there any more. Hugo whirled around, some of the lemonade slopping messily over the edge of the plastic cup and dribbling onto his hand, when he finally noticed her. Standing at the other edge of the room, arguing with the man.

Hugo wandered over in surprise, hovering a few metres away from his mother, wondering if he should interrupt with the drink or not, and then they raised their voices and he could hear every word.

"Draco, what in Merlin's name are you trying to imply?"

"That you're being talked about on the streets! That people think you and Ron are unhappy together! People are betting on if you're breaking up!"

Hermione's ears reddened. "Shut up about my marriage! What business is it of yours, anyway?"

"It's the whole damn world's business now! Hermione, everyone knows who you are! Harry Potter's precious little friends, the Golden Girl of Gryffindor and the 'loveable' idiot. You don't understand anything about how this works, because you're Muggle-born! I'm trying to help!"

"You think I need your help? You're an ex-Death Eater! I'm not going to accept anything from you,Ferret."

Hugo couldn't see either of their faces, but he could picture them, both equally contorted in anger.

"Well, go to your precious husband, then! Because obviously he's told you all about what's going on."

"How would Ron know? He doesn't hang around with all your drunk and aged pureblood bastard friends!"

"Everyone knows, they just don't want to tell you. You can be quite scary, you know. Now, if you'd stop brandishing that invitation like it could possibly do me any damage…"

"Oh, I'm well aware it's impossible to bruise your precious ego," Hugo's mother retorted, but all the anger had gone from her voice and it had been replaced by sadness and evident confusion. "Draco, is this really happening? How did Ron not tell me?"

"Because," the man – Drake?- said, "I think he's scared."

"Scared of what?" Hermione said, her voice shaking slightly, brown silky hair slightly caught up under the shoulder strap of her dress, face flushed with heat. "Scared of telling me he wants a divorce? What about the kids?"

"Oh, no. He's not scared of that…" the man leant forwards and said quietly, but just loud enough to hear.

"Any rational person would be scared to lose you, Hermione."

Hugo first realised on the train to Hogwarts.

He met up with Albus and Rose and Lily, and a few other Gryffindor people who'd tagged along.

And they'd all been talking quite amiably while Hugo stared out of the window dreamily and ate a Chocolate Frog.

Then the compartment door zoomed open, and a group of kids with ties that had the Hogwarts crest, not a specific house – not yet, anyway – on them, and that was when Hugo first met Scorpius Malfoy.

He looked a lot like his father.

His parents weren't happy.

Hugo could tell that. Oblivious Rose could tell that. Even a stranger could tell that.

Hermione wanted Ron to spend more time at home, and Ron was annoyed at Hermione because he'd heard she was friendly to 'that git Draco' at the party, and Hermione snapped at him and suddenly they would start arguing like there was no tomorrow.

And then they'd both storm off, each equally stubborn, and Hugo would be left to cook for himself that night, because if there was one thing Rose was bad at, it was cooking.

(Which didn't make sense, as she aced Potions.)

But overall, his parents fighting made Hugo unhappy, and a day later Ron would say he was sorry to Hugo and take him out to see a Quidditch game, and Hermione would apologise and look all tearful and have a mother-son night with just the two of them, talking and eating Muggle food and watching old movies on the TV Grandpa Arthur had found and eventually wired.

And Hugo would smile wanly for both of them, and they would ask him what was wrong, but what could he say?

I'm scared you're going to split up.

I don't want my family falling apart.

I miss you.

Nothing really seemed adequate, and if he said what he thought, he knew his father would look embarrassed and upset and rub the tip of his reddening nose, and his mother would get tears in her eyes and her voice would go slightly wobbly however much she tried to hide it by letting her bushy brown hair fall across her face.

In another attempt at awkward reconciliation, his mother insisted on personally driving Hugo and Rose to Diagon Alley, by car, to get their school stuff.

Rose was babbling away excitedly about subjects and whether she'd made the right decisions about the ones she'd cut, and Hugo stared out of the window and noted that there was a cloud that looked like their dining table.

Predictably, as soon as they came out of the Leaky Cauldron and stepped into Flourish and Blotts, Rose was assailed by a crowd of friends and sailed off with an apologetic glance at both Hugo and their crestfallen mother.

So then Hugo and Hermione were left together in awkward silence, and after a few attempts at conversation that Hugo just couldn't seem to be able to think of anything to say to, she glanced at a stand overflowing with books on the 'science of magic' and perused the pages, while Hugo was left leaning against a shelf and attempting to tap out a rhythm with his feet.

He saw a flicker of a familiar blond figure in a window, a glimpse of arrogant features twisted into a look of surprise, but then Hugo blinked and they vanished and he was left wondering if he'd imagined it or not.

Hugo heard the news at school.

When his owl Russet, a present fro his last birthday, arrived with his subscription to the Daily Prophet, the headline was glaringly obvious: Society Queen Killed In Freak Accident.

And, when he looked down, he read the whole story; how Astoria Malfoy had been killed in the collapse of a wizarding fashion store in Paris, and how the editor 'offered his sincere condolences.'

To who? Hugo thought. To her friends? To the woman herself? To her family?

Personally, he felt sorry for two people.

His schoolmate Scorpius and his mother's friend Draco.

When Hugo came home that summer, things felt… strange.

His father moved around the house with a morose and angry expression, and Hermione seemed to be attempting to cover something up on her cheek by letting her hair fall across that side of her face in an unusual fashion for her, and Rose just sat in the kitchen and chattered away, not really caring if anyone was listening or not.

Hugo sat by his window imagining he was a bird, wheeling around in the sky, and drew a little picture of the flight path on the roof of his mouth, using just his tongue.

Uncle Harry and Aunt Ginny came round for Sunday lunch one day, but everyone was tense the whole way through the meal, and afterwards, when James and Lily and Albus and even Rose went into the garden to play Quidditch, Hugo opted out and sat downstairs by the window feeding Russet owl treats.

Lily had considered sitting with him (she was also terrible at Quidditch) but eventually followed her siblings and cousin into the sunlight, her hair glinting as she moved.

But then Harry and Hugo's dad sat down to chat about Quidditch and Hermione and Ginny went upstairs, and everything was perfectly normal, and then then there was the sound of them screaming at each other and a bang which made dust float from the ceiling and settle on top of Russet's feathers, and Uncle Harry ran towards Hugo and almost shoved him outside before Apparating upstairs so quickly Hugo didn't even see him disappear.

He never found out what the fight had been about, but he did know that there was a patch on the walls of his parent's room that never retained it's original colour from the blackened and mottled shade it was now, almost as if someone had thrown a bucket of coal at it.

Also, he saw the Potters a lot less after that.

Then, one evening, his parents had another massive fight- something about quality family time- and Hermione hugged Hugo and said she was sorry, and climbed into the muggle car she'd bought five years ago - in case, she'd said at the time, and he'd had never asked what for - and drove off into the night leaving a confused and lonely Hugo behind.

He never found out where she went, but he could guess. Oh, he could guess.

By the time Hugo was thirteen, he'd got used to being by himself.

His parents argued more and more, Hermione leaving for short periods had almost become a habit – which the whole family hated, albeit for different reasons - and the whole time Rose was home she was tight-lipped and stressing far too much over her OWLs, and when their mum was home she would be rushing over to help her daughter study and consider subject options and Ron would appear in the evenings and then things would grow far too awkward.

He wasn't completely friendless. He knew some people - the Potters, although Harry and Ginny had grown apart from Hugo's parents a little and it rubbed off on their kids - and all his other cousins, and at home there were always Lorcan and Lysander Scamander, Aunt Luna's toddlers. And he had his- albeit never there- sister.

But, although he was a classified weirdo, he didn't exactly have enemies. He mostly stayed out of the Gryffindor-Slytherin wars… apart from when James made him join in.

But James was leaving, and also, with Scorpius Malfoy flatly refusing to play the game any longer, it had kind of drifted into an unsung pause.

That didn't mean things were any better at home, though.

Sometimes, mainly when Hugo's father wasn't around, Hermione would go out to see a 'friend' and return with glowing cheeks and a distant smile that lit up the whole house for days.

Hugo wondered how much that happened when he and Rose were at school. He thought probably quite a lot.

He knew his mother felt guilty that she was never really there. She tried to take him out one day, to a fancy restaurant just off Diagon Alley, filled with the elite and rich and famous.

It wasn't Hugo's kind of thing, but he knew she was making an effort to do something nice for him, so he smiled and listened politely while she rambled a little about her old school days.

Then he noticed Draco Malfoy for the first time in several months, sitting alone at a table quite near them, drinking wine with a distant look on his face like he hadn't noticed them.

Hermione saw him too, and she faltered in her tales of Uncle George and his brother Fred, who had died before Hugo had known him, and Hugo tactfully got up and pretended to go to the toilet- but not fast enough to miss seeing Hermione jump up and run towards Draco Malfoy's table, the two of them hugging each other like old friends.

And Hugo decided that appeared to be a pretty accurate description for them now.

At least, he hoped it was just that.

By the time Rose was seventeen and studying feverishly for her NEWTs, and Hugo was fifteen and had kissed Lily Potter - only once – their father was almost never around, and Hermione was sad and stressed, and he never really saw his sister either as she was always achieving some award for something academic.

Hugo found it okay. He had a lot more time to notice things.

But, eventually, when he noticed Draco Malfoy arriving on their own doorstep, right below Hugo's room, one evening and whirling his mother away, he realised that things weren't really okay at all.

Hugo was reading a book.

It was a good book – about dragon hunters in the Middle Ages who fought wars and were heroes – but his head felt a little funny, like it was stuffed with cotton wool and floating away. The words were scrambled around, tiny black ants on a sea of white, and jumping all over each other haphazardly, with no real order at all, too the point where Hugo wondered whether he had that Muggle problem- dyslexia- and had to look away from the book.

But he could still see the pieces in his mind's eye - a sea of chaos and unhappiness where nothing made sense and fathers hit mothers and mothers fell in love with other men and nothing happened like it was meant to.

Hugo did not see how his life was fortunate at all.

Draco Malfoy and his mother had established themselves as friends.

The problem was, Hugo did like Draco. He could be sardonic (a word Rose liked using) and dry at times, but he was funny and reasonably kind and he made Hermione happier than Hugo had seen her in years.

Also, Ron was there less and less, his Quidditch career escalating into a pit he was desperately trying to salvage it from, and Aunt Ginny and Uncle Harry hadn't been round in ages.

Hugo got used to doing things for himself.

But, on Christmas Eve, five years since this had all begun, when his sister was at a friend's and Ron was still at work and Hermione was nowhere to be found, Hugo sat down on a chair next to the empty wooden table, staring at the corner which was supposed to have a Christmas tree in it, and family sitting around it and luaghing, together and not arguing at all, and finally, he cried.

"Hey!"

Hugo spun around in the corridor leading towards the Potions classroom, to see a couple of bulky older Slytherin kids standing there with big, stupid grins on their faces.

Hugo was small, to put it bluntly. He had been prematurely born and had never quite recovered from his unfortunate toddlerhood as a scrawny and seemingly impermanent baby, and at the age of thirteen he was still far shorter than you would expect someone his age to be. It was as if his head was stubbornly resting on the 140cm mark, and it was this that caused a lot of people to notice him. Unfortunately.

Before he knew it, they were mere metres in front of him.

"Looks like a first year, don' he?" Ogre #1 said, looking pleased with his own incredible wit. "I wonder if he's had ini- inititaton yet?"

His friends gave deep, throaty laughs.

Hugo's eyes flicked between them. "Shouldn't you have someone telling you what to do?" he asked slowly. "I wasn't aware it was the new fashion for Incredible Hulk models to walk around without some kind of scrawny leader."

Ogre #2 looked confused. "Incredibly what?" he asked dumbly.

"It's probably a mudblood thing," Ogre #3, who up until that point had been fairly silent, spoke up, his voice like nails trailing down a blackboard and forgetting where to go halfway down.

Ogre #2, bored already, grabbed Hugo with ease and led the stampede towards the boy's toilets.

Hugo kicked out, but it was about as much use as attacking a brick wall.

"Ha," said Ogre #3, leering without opening his mouth.

The one dragging Hugo yanked on his tie. "Come on."

Coughing and spluttering, Hugo twisted around with difficulty and dug his feet into the ground. "Can you guys not do magic or something?" he asked, stalling for time as he had no particular urge to get his head dunked into toilet water. "That would be quicker, you know."

"Get 'im to shuddup," Ogre #1 grunted.

Ogre #3, the most literate of the trio, looked towards Ogre #2, who promptly raised his fist above Hugo's stomach.

Wincing, Hugo attempted to squirm away, but then-

"What the hell are you doing to my little brother?" asked a furious voice. "Petrificus totalus! Impedimenta! Furnunculus! Relashio!"

All three were thrown back, skidding onto the ground as the sound of running footsteps echoed down the hall. "Hugo! Are you okay?"

Hugo rolled his eyes and moved out of his sister Rose's grip. "M'okay, you can let go…"

He glanced down at the three Slytherins. "Better than those guys, anyway. I think that one might be turning into a living fungus, though. Although you might want to do something to the third one… I think he'd trying to get up."

Calmly, Rose pointed her wand at him. "Levicorpus."

He was suddenly jerked into the air with the speed of a clumsy viper.

Rose collected all of their wands and left them clamly in a heap just out of their reaches. "Hmm. What were you doing so close to Jerk Site HQ alone?"

Hugo rolled his eyes. "Rose, I'm thirteen. I can look after myself."

"Didn't look like it," she muttered, dusting off her robes. "Are you going to say thank you? Otherwise you might not get so lucky next time."

"Thanks," Hugo said honestly. "Wait… Rose…"

"Mmm?"

"You did magic in the corridors."

"Yeah," she gave a wry smile. "Even Mum did that occasionally."

"But they'll find out when these guys wake up. The teachers, I mean."

"I'm not going to obliviate them. They might forget their lesson. If I get told off I'll say I was protecting my baby brother."

"I'm not that much younger than you," Hugo grinned and headed off down the corridor, feeling – inexplicably – happier than he had done in ages.

Hey :) How did you like it? Please review! I don't mind if you thought it was terrible, but I would prefer constructive criticism to flames :)

If you did like it, it would be great if you could check out my Percy Jackson/ Harry Potter crossover Persassy the Professor, or even any of my other PJO, Kane Chronicles and Maze Runner fanfictions.

Also, this will probably end up as Dramione, but not Hermione-centric. Hugo remains the main character here.