Obliviate
Firaga Productions
01/01/2012
A/N: I don't remember where I got this idea. I just remember nearly falling asleep on New Years, then jerking awake and reaching for a notebook, no choice but to write. Here's the result. I always wondered how it would feel to have to obliviate myself from my parent's lives. This didn't turn out as angsty as I wanted. Oh well. My first Potter fanfic, so let me know how I did. :D
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. The end. xD
As Hermione Granger packed her things for what very well may be the last time, she couldn't help but tear up at all the memories she was leaving behind. A toddler Hermione beamed up at her from a photograph, cradling a small book in her arms. In another photo, a slightly older Hermione sleeping peacefully in her father's lap. A bit of parchment, yellowed from age, was extracted with care from her box of memories.
Dear Miss Hermione Granger,
We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry...
Professor McGonagall herself had delivered the letter. As deputy headmistress, it was her duty after al to inform and welcome all Muggleborns and their families into wizard society. Hermione ran a finger over the letter carefully, remembering the event as if it were yesterday. It was hard to believe at first. A witch? Hermione? No... But Hermione loved the feeling. She'd always been alone; ever since she could read, she had her nose stuck in a book. Friendships and people exchanged for a world of knowledge and imagination between the pages of a book. She never understood friendship until Ron and Harry came into her path.
Ron and Harry... An odd friendship for the three of them, right from the start. They saved her from a troll. Even after Ron had insulted her and made her cry - not the first nor the last time that would ever happen. She understood something that day though, that sometimes you don't really understand how one feels about you until after you're attacked by a fully grown mountain troll.
A photograph of a young, quite bewildered Hermione, holding a fluffy purple kitten in her hands. It was one of many odd discolourations at the hands of the young Granger witch. Green puppies, shining silver rabbits. She'd once turned a girl's black guinea pig lime green with orange polka dots. Hermione, of course, never understood how these things happened. It just did. Often, when she was hurt or upset. Like the guinea pig, for example. That girl had just been making fun of Hermione's bushy hair and large teeth. Professor McGonagall, of course, explained it all. "Have you ever made strange and unexplainable things happen, often when your emotions were running high? When you were strained or angry or hurt?" Hermione had responded with a slow nod, remembering the polka dotted guinea pig.
At the bottom of the box, she found what she had ben looking for. A locket, a simple gold locket necklace, hiding away at the bottom of the box. She opened the locket to see her parent's smiling faces, beaming from their oval frames. "So as not to forget us when you become the greatest witch in your year," they told her, the day before she boarded that first train to Hogwarts.
A tear trickled down her cheek, and before she knew it, she was sobbing. How could he? That evil Dark Lord... Robbing her of her memories, her childhood, her final year as a Hogwarts student. Her parents. She glared at her wand through her tears. He would pay for this, for what she had to do next. Oh yes, he would pay dearly. For the spell she would have to place on her parents. Her loving, kind parents. Her parents who had welcomed their young witch's new life with opened arms. Who had only asked that she not forget them. Who had followed their 11-year-old through the wizard bookstore for the first time, purchasing her necessary textbooks, and even a few extras.
"Oh, mum... Dad.. I'm going to be so behind! I don't know anything about Hogwarts.. Beign a witch.. What if they expel me? Or laugh at me? Or if I fail? I... I..." She cried into her mother's chest, clutching a huge book in her arms. Her mother had picked the book out of her daughter's arms and placed it with the other they would purchase later on. The girl's bushy head perked up instantly and she wiped salty tears from her eyes.
"You mean... I-I can get it?" Hermione asked, wiping tears away with her sleeve. There, resting on the top of the stack, was a tattered copy of "Hogwarts: A History."
Hermione let out another sob, then placed the locket around her neck and under her shirt. She placed a few photographs in her handbag, then slid "Hogwarts: A History" in as well. Wiping the last tears from her cheeks, she looked around in her nearly empty bedroom.
"You'll pay," she whispered, wishing Voldemort himself could hear her. "We will rip you limb from limb, take away your life horcrux by horcrux. You will never get away with this."
"Hermione, dear!"
"It's time for dinner, love!"
She glanced toward the door, wand in hand, and shuddered. "This is it," she whispered. Clutching her wand in one hand, bag and trunk in the other, she walked slowly down the stairs, not alerting them to her presence. She raised her wand upon sight of them, a lone tear rolling down her cheek.
"Obliviate," she whispered, forever jarring her parent's memories, wiping herself out of their photos and hearts, and then forever apparating out of their lives.
fin.
