DISCLAIMER: The Harry Potter Series and its extensive franchise belong exclusively to J. and all the parties that she happened to allow copyright. I own none of the characters, nor the settings, nor some of the quotes from the fifth book. I'm just playing around a bit with her characters within her HP world.
A/N: Please keep in mind this is more or less a crack fic, with non-canon ships and somewhat AU setting.
It all started with the familiar trope of a long lost daughter returning to the fold of a loving yet inexplicably confused family. (Though in her case, confusion trumped love by three to one.)
Hermione Granger (because it is Granger, regardless of the resounding nonsense that Sirius Black has been spouting for about a quarter of an hour now) stared at the Black's family tree with a disapproving frown and an overwhelming itch to scratch her name (Hermione Lyra Black - how ridiculous) and face of the damn tapestry with whatever it was at hand (she would prefer stabbing her wand through it, but considering the underage ban, even her nails would have sufficed at that particular moment).
"No", she said, in a deadpanned tone of voice, still refusing to look in Sirius's direction. She might want to claw his face off instead.
A beat of silence, an uncomfortable shuffling of clothes (Is he pulling his sleeves over his hands again? Merlin, he's thirty-six and that is too old for any such nervous tick.), and Sirius cleared his throat:
"I do not think denial will mean anything at this point, Hermione."
"No." She repeated again, louder and increasingly hysterical, "No. No. No!" Rounding on the wincing man, she hissed as she jabbed an accusing finger in his chest, "My father's name is Richard Granger. My mother loves him, I love him and who the bloody fuck do you think you are to come up to me sixteen years after an uncertain one-night-stand claiming relations?"
In hindsight, she should have said all that in a level-headed and reasonable voice and refrained from making a hole in his shirt with her aggressive accidental magic. Yet, if everyone did as they should, people would all have woken up and found themselves in heaven.
She cut off his efforts to explain himself (again!) with a snarl that had no business being on the face of a respectable young lady of reputable upbringings:
"No! I was born and raised by perfectly kind, courteous, and caring non-magical parents! And no one has any right to transfigure this into an elaborate lie just so my roots can be deemed 'more worthy' by people I don't give a rat ass about!"
Sirius blinked at her, entirely forgotten his placating hand on her shoulders as his jaw slackened in an entire two seconds of confusion. Then he, too, exploded spectacularly into her face:
"Do I look like have that much free time in the first place? I never care about this blasted tapestry before seeing your face conveniently on it, right below mine! And I would care less who bore you, or raised you, or whether or not they are Muggles, if not for the fact that every evident is pointing at you being my child!"
Outraged that he dared think that he had the right to complain, Hermione took in a deep breath and prepared to fire back (Who cares about the noise, anyway? He has made sure to cast several silencing spells on the walls before beginning his ridiculous explanation.) Sirius beat her to it, though:
"Think, you cantankerous girl! I slept with a Muggle sixteen years ago, now my mother's portrait valiantly refrains from spewing insults at a fifteen-year-old supposedly Muggleborn, Kreacher looks constantly torn between spitting in your face and groveling at your feet, and now, when I do a simple cleaning spell on the damn family tree tapestry, your name and face appears to branch right out of my burn-off face!" Still looking thunderous in the face, he shook her, though lightly, and somehow, desperately, "You are the brilliant one here! You tell me what these mean!"
She crumpled then, not from the force of his manhandling, but from the sheer implications of these hints and what it would do to everything she knew and everything she thought about herself. As frustrated tears spilled from her eyes, Sirius ceased his overemotional state and took shuddering breaths from his position above her head. He padded her back in hesitant and awkward movements, and did not look away when she stared up into his eyes. His grey eyes that she swore was the same shades as hers in the light.
"It can't be..." She grabbed his face with both hands (not to search his features, which she already caught all kinds of similarities - chin, nose, Merlin forbid, is that her eyebrows on his face?) and sniffled in resignation.
He sighed, face tight but determined in its efforts to appear less likely to vomit than he felt, and whispered back:
"And yet it is."
The year passed as it should. After managing to survive an uneventful summer wherein Hermione developed instant stomachaches of various degrees each time she saw Sirius, a school year of horrific pink toad loitering about at all hours of the day, an extensive melodrama of building underaged armies and several pubescent tantrums from all kind of sources, Hermione felt as though she had every right to pat herself on the back for a job well done (conveniently forgetting the emotional shenanigans resulted from Sirius's occasional coded letters asking after her health and study, too much drama, even for her). That was, until the climax of Harry's disastrous telepathic dream with Voldemort.
"Harry, think about this", she said, "Harry, you've dreamed about the place, that's all", she persuaded, "Harry, how on earth could Voldemort have got hold of Sirius when he's been in Grimmauld Place all the time?", she pleaded, "Harry, Sirius told you there was nothing more important than you learning to close your mind!" ('Harry, I love you but can you just please, please think for a moment before rushing yet again into another danger that we could have just avoided by thinking it over first? Yes, I care about what happens to him, too! But should we just make sure that you aren't just having a particularly gruesome dream first?')
And on and on it went.
It was no use, though, because Harry, being Harry, would always be that lovable idiot who act with his heart before remembering the existence of his head. Had Sirius also mentioned something of this sort in his letters before? 'The lack of a brain can be compensated by other virtues, but Merlin forbid if Gryffindors start lacking a spine!'
And thus begun their perilous plan of infiltrating into Umbridge's office to double-check the credibility of Harry's nightmare.
It turned out, to her horror, that said nightmare seemed pretty credible, after all. She did not show it to the boys, but she was shaken up. He Who May Be Her Father was missing, potentially being tortured by Voldemort and Harry was stressing her out with his own brand of hysteria. And just to make the whole situation more exciting, Umbridge gleefully invited herself into the mess.
"With whom have you been communicating?" The toad screeched like a banshee, hand still twisting Harry's scalp. Hermione could she him wince in pain from where she was wrestled to the ground by the Bulstrode girl. With every laboring breath and gritting answer from Harry, her rage built up. How dare she? HOW DARE SHE?
She struggled to calm her roiling worry and mounting rage, all throughout the course of Malfoy bringing Ginny and others in, Snape strolling in discussing Veritaserum, and only snapped out of it by the time Cruciatus Curse was mumbled out of Umbridge's lips. Horror filled her. How low could the Ministry get when Crucio was allowed for use on children? She searched her mind for a solution. Sirius is missing, and Harry's about to be Crucio-ed. No, she must not let this happen!
"It's illegal!" She cried, already knowing that the toad would not listen to reason, "The Minister wouldn't want you to break the law, Professor Umbridge!"
It went ignored, of course. The bitch looked too hungry, too anticipating to stop now. Yet, like any villain in Muggle's book, Umbridge stopped just long enough to gloat evilly in front of Harry. The Dementors... the hypocritical bitch! For someone who hated Magical Creatures so much, she sure had found it easy to make use of them in despicable ways... Then it occurred to Hermione, of course!
"Harry - we'll have to tell her."
He looked so confused and defiant at her that she just knew that he had no idea what she actually meant. Never mind. He would, soon.
"We'll have to, Harry, she'll force it out of you anyway, what's … what's the point?"
She turned and started weeping noisily, willing the tears to at least gather at the corner of her eyes. Her friends were all giving her disbelieving stares of various degrees. All, except Harry. Ah, he caught on.
Umbridge smiled like a Cheshire cat, the stretch of lips made her face even bloater, and unbelievably uglier. Hermione mildly wondered how could the toad wake up every morning staring at the mirror and don't feel like smashing her head into the basin out of respect for everything beautiful and decent in the world. Well, overdosed shamelessness must be a pretty convenient thing to have in life.
Teary eyes and sniveling voice, Hermione sputtered out a tale of desperate children looking up and down for Albus Dumbledore, eager to report news of some imaginary weapons that could wipe both Umbridge, Fudge, and the bulk of the Ministry off the face of the Earth. The toad was buying it, so ecstatically so that her raucous laughter rang through the office and her face scrunched up in a victorious sneer.
"Lead me to the weapon." She demanded, teeth still bare in a horrific smile and eyes fairly glittered with greed, "Show me."
And so Hermione did.
She had to admit, grimly but triumphantly, that there had yet any sight that make her more gleeful than that of the centaur herd boring Umbridge away thrashing and screaming like the filthy toad that she was. She would have enjoyed it more, if the thought of Sirius still in Voldemort's clutch wasn't plaguing her, and if Ronan and the grey centaur didn't immediately turn their attention upon Harry and her.
After much pleading, explaining, and appealing to their conscience, all to no avail, even Hermione had to admit that the possibility of them getting out of this situation unharmed and non-traumatized must be close to zero. At that exact moment of despair and terror, Grawp appeared and made the entire afternoon even more bizarre.
"HAGGER!" He roared, "HERMY! WHERE HAGGER?"
Trying not to feel intimidated by the bare fact that a giant remembered who she was and was howling her name at the top of his lungs (and ignore Harry's incredulous mumble of 'You always attract the strangest sort, Mione' beside her), Hermione squeaked breathlessly:
"I don't know! I'm sorry, Grawp! I really don't know!"
Then came the giant's grabby hand. It came down hard, scattering all centaurs around and galvanizing both her and Harry into action. She, in the form of scuttling back in sheer terror and he, in the form of bravely (but somewhat stupidly) gearing up for a futile resistance against the offending giant hand.
He was saved, though, by the greater stupidity of the centaurs, as they heroically launched dozens of arrows into the air and instantly initiated a mini-war with Grawp the Giant for no other reason than that he creeped them out. (What? He scared her, too. But you didn't see Hermione shooting sharp objects in his direction, no?)
In the midst of the madness that followed, Harry rounded on her:
"Smart plan. Really. Where do we go from here?"
He made it sound like it was her fault, maybe he actually believed that. She understood that he was upset and worried about Sirius. She understood, really. Yet, it was nearly obscene how much his words still hurt. Hermione hid it, though, just as she always had.
"We need to get back up to the castle." She said, softly but not weakly. She refused to become as emotional as he did.
Harry snarled that by the time they had actually achieved that, Sirius would already have been dead. His agitation was contagious, and it made it exceptionally difficult to be rational and logical.
He believes that I do not care. She realized with a sinking heart. Of course he does. I have not told him who Sirius is to me, and all he ever heard about him from me are complaints and disapproval.
Still, it hardly seemed prudent to disclose this kind of information at that moment, with centaurs' arrows flying overhead, Grawp's roar splitting the air, and rocks and trees being flung carelessly on the head of the bowmen. She decided to switch to technicalities first.
"We can't do anything without wands. And Harry, how exactly were you planning to get all the way to London?"
Fortunately, and almost magically, Ron and the other three appeared in front of them at that exact moment, bearing their wands and good news of Malfoy's bat-inhabited face. Intel exchanged, the discussion then turned to the number of people going and the means with which they could go to the Ministry. In the end, it was decided that they would all go, and Thestrals would be the chosen transportation for this particular mission.
Hermione stared dubiously at the general direction that Harry had indicated her Thestral was neighing, feeling more and more stupid as time when by. Am I even looking at it right now? But when everyone was mounted and Luna helped direct her to sit on it, a very different feeling started spreading across her limbs. Dread. Mind-numbing dread. She hated flying, even flying on things which she could actually see (aka brooms). How could she possibly..? How...? It was standing still and she was already dizzy...
And then the invisible thing beneath her lurched up and Hermione held on for dear life without thinking of anything other than expletives and prayers to Merlin.
They landed at the Ministry, half vomiting, half bleating, and all miserable. Theirs was the most conspicuous covert operation that Hermione had ever known, what's with several occasions of being noisily lost, encountering malignant humanoid and non-humanoid forces in every other corner of the Department of Mystery, and fighting their ways through brains, prophecy balls, and Death Eaters of dubious level of intelligence and moral standards. The only upside about it all was that He Who May Be Her Father was not actually there or being tortured in anyway. The downside, though, was that they had all been rushing to their death quite voluntarily without any justifiable reasons.
I will die here, she thought, miserably, and angrily, at sixteen, without even getting my OWLs, or NEWTs. And feeling remarkably indignant that life was so unfair as to cheat her of the OWLs' results that she had fairly bleed for during the studying and the test.
At the very moment that Antonin bloody Dolohov (that was a name she was introduced to later)'s spell reached her and pain exploded across her chest, Hermione's last thought had been At least they might put my OLWs results on my tombstone. What a grand thing it would be. 'Hermione Jean Granger, she passed all her OWLs.' Maybe.
And then there was darkness.
She had not been awake for the majority of the epic battle between the Order's members and the Death Eaters, definitely not when they appeared dramatically in columns of light, or even when Dumbledore swept through the hall with overwhelming power. She was blearily opening her eyes, though, through the haze of pain, when she heard Harry's soundless scream. It was always like that. She would always know what he needed even before he articulated it. Even in her pain, his terror snapped at something inside her. What could possibly be so devastating to Harry...? They were still in the Department of Mystery, in a large, rectangular, and dimly lit room that made her head even more fuzzy just trying to make out what was what. As she swept her bleary eyes across the battleground and trying hard to place a name to every face she caught, she saw Sirius, and Bellatrix. He Who May Be Her Father was still laughing. Bellatrix was waving her wand in that particular movement. She had seen it before. That. The pain was making her stupid. It was... classroom, spiders, Moody,...Avada Kedavra. Oh.
It was like the pain disappeared, or her consciousness did, because for a glorious moment, Hermione Granger did not think, did not feel, barely remembered that she was still angry at Sirius, and just hurled her body -heavy, wounded and clumsy- up toward Sirius's general direction. Thanks Merlin she had been close to where he was.
They collided with a resounding 'Oomph!' and tumbled unceremoniously into the Veil, Harry's roar of despair shattering the haze of her pain and Bellatrix's green spell sizzling her hair.