By Sweet Audrina
Summary: Upon inheriting her uncle's considerable estate, Hermione Granger uncovers the secret of her beloved deceased relative…and discovers more about herself. A massive rewrite of an old story I wrote some time ago. VERY Non-HBP compliant.
Author's note: I know the old story has been receiving tons of reviews, even though I haven't updated in well over a year…but I'm just not pleased with it. Sorry for this decision, but please enjoy the new story smell!
Disclaimer: Not mine.
It was raining, and every drop that pelted Hermione Granger's broken body brought her closer to a pain-induced unconsciousness. She struggled futilely to sit up, to look her enemy head on, but her body was useless. She could barely make out the figure of the Death Eater, her vision clouded by a stinging combination of tears and rain.
"Scream if you like…I actually prefer it."
Hermione attempted to choke out biting reply, but it came out as a humiliatingly kittenish whimper. She was exhausted. It was very likely that the majority of the bones in her body had shattered during her fall from the precipice on which her friends still fought. They would all die, most likely. She did not even know where Harry was, and she doubted a single one of them had noticed her descent.
"Your school is in ruins, and your loved ones are sure to fall. I am certain my Lord has disposed of Potter by now." Bellatrix Lestrange crouched down, and Hermione could see that the eyes through her mask were shining with mock pity as she asked, "Do you really want to live?"
Hermione felt no shame when she shook her in the negative.
Bellatrix rose to her feet, and somehow Hermione knew that she was smiling. The woman looked down at her victim, poised like a cobra over a mouse.
Hermione shuddered at the woman's chuckled response, "I just want to have a little fun first. It's not every day that one gets a chance to kill someone from Harry Potter's inner-circle. Forgive me if this takes longer than you planned."
As the Cruciatus took hold, Hermione did manage the scream she had been holding inside.
8888
"Wake up, Her-meany!" Four-year-old Simon Granger, was disturbed to find his favorite cousin flailing about in her sleep, mumbling incoherently. He had discovered her in this state after his mother had sent him upstairs to fetch her for breakfast and was now perched on the edge of the bed, shaking her arm as gently as he could.
After some cajoling, Hermione opened her eyes. Relief flooded her when she recognized her young cousin staring inquisitively at her.
"Hello, little Simon," she greeted with false cheer. She sat up and pulled him onto her lap, ruffling his unruly brown hair.
"Were you having a bad dream?" the little boy asked.
Hermione nodded. "It was only a teensy bad dream, poppet. You came just in time though."
Simon beamed at this. "I saved you?"
"Yes, you did."
He clapped his hands, delighted to be a savior. Suddenly, he remembered his purpose. "Auntie Jane says breakfast is ready." He slid off of her lap, landing gracelessly onto the hardwood floor. Being quite resilient, as most four year old boys are, he merely shrugged off the tumble and stood back up. He turned to Hermione and held out his hand, which she took.
8888
Hermione followed Simon downstairs to the dining room, which was filled to the brim at the moment with frizzy haired, bookish Grangers. Hermione was immediately surrounded by a small army of younger cousins, led by Simon's twin sister Dinah, who fancied herself to be second in command to Hermione.
The reason for the Granger home's ample population was not a very cheerful one. Hermione's great-uncle Ralph had just died, and he had essentially been somewhat of the patriarch of the family.
The reading of his will was to be done at Hermione's parents' home, since her father was a particular favorite of Ralph's. More so, Hermione was a favorite, taking time after her final year at Hogwarts to take care of her long ailing uncle. She had considered it a small task, when compared with the horrors she had faced shortly before then. Her parents had been more than happy with her decision to disconnect from the wizarding world, having taken notice of her bruises and her possession of a slight limp.
Breakfast was a very uneventful occurrence. The Grangers, while very obviously in mourning, tried to keep the conversation light with stories of their patriarch fromwhen he was in his prime. Stories of schoolyard mishaps and other cheerful things prevented anyone from falling too deeply into melancholy over their loss. Hermione was grateful for that, although she did not offer any stories herself. The past year had turned her into a quiet, introspective sort of person, and her memory/dream had been troubling her mind greatly. She knew she had been saved that night, or otherwise her presence at the family breakfast table would be impossible. She just wished she could remember who had come to her rescue.
8888
Hermione had just regained consciousness, finding herself in a very comfortable hospital bed. Harry and Ron were standing vigil, although both of them should have been resting as well. Harry had a great deal more scars to contend with than just his fashionable lightning-bolt, and Ron had a cast around his right arm and a bandage around his head that was more than ready to be changed.
Harry and Ron denied that it had been either of them. All they could offer in regards to her fractured memory was that she had been discovered, broken and unconscious after the battle, with Bellatrix Lestrange's corpse lying just a few feet away. Hermione knew she could not have summoned the strength to do the deed herself. Someone had intervened.
"Someone strong," Ron remarked. "They actually used their bare hands."
Hermione blinked in surprise. "Their bare hands?"
"Whoever saved you must have really hated her. Her neck had been snapped like a twig," said Harry.
Hermione felt slightly ill at the notion. "But you have no idea?" she asked, a tinge of hysteria in her voice.
Both Ron and Harry shook their heads. "Not a clue…"
8888
When Hermione finally broke from her reverie, breakfast was winding down, and she had barely touched her plate. Her mother glanced at her, curiously. "Darling, are you feeling well?" Jane Granger had been horrified to learn of the extent of her only child's exploits at Hogwarts and was now perpetually worried sick that Hermione would drop dead at any given moment.
"I guess I am not as hungry as I thought. Please excuse me." Hermione took leave of her bewildered family and sojourned to her bedroom. While she was still within earshot, she heard her mother's forced apologetic response.
"It always takes Hermione a bit longer to become presentable, and I think she just wanted a head-start in order to be in time for the reading. All that ridiculous hair, you know." A dead silence followed Jane's faux-pas, and Hermione could imagine a few Grangers smoothing over their hair defensively. Jane always forgot to mind her manners when her husband's family's unfortunate trait was involved. Had she been in a lighter mood, Hermione might have laughed. 8888
Once, in the safety of her room, Hermione sat in front of the mirror on her vanity table and peered in wearily. Her hair was still indeed as voluminous as ever. Age did not seem to bring it into any state of agreeability. In her opinion, her eye color was a dull sort of brown, and others would call it a pleasing shade of honey. While her nose, and more recently, her teeth were features she could tolerate, she despised her over-voluptuous lips and pasty, freckled complexion. Her figure was a burden to herself; she lamented the small size of her breasts and the substantial size of her bottom. All in all, a very unremarkable looking girl, Hermione thought with a small degree of misery.
It then occurred to Hermione that feeling miserable about her looks at such a time was extremely shallow. She had just lost her dear Uncle Ralph, and she would never see him again. There were others that she would never see again: Dumbledore, Hagrid, Lupin, and that was not to mention a great deal of the students with which she had attended Hogwarts.
"I am a horrid person," she moaned, while dragging a brush through her hair. The brush then got stuck in a snag of hair, mid-stroke. "Serves me right," she squeaked painfully, as she tried prying her tresses from the bristles.
"Hermione, do hurry up! The lawyer has arrived," Jane Granger called up the stairs to her daughter.
"I will be right there!" she replied, opting to fashion her hair into a plain, but serviceable bun.
8888
"Pardon me?" Hermione was dumbfounded.
Ralph Granger's lawyer cleared his throat and reiterated, "To my great-niece, Hermione Jane Granger, I bequeath my estate in Lower Luxor, and--" He proceeded to read off a sum of money that made Hermione's head reel. Ralph Granger had been a very wealthy man, gathering most of his net worth from his first marriage to a woman no one in the family could quite remember. She had died very early into the marriage, and their courtship had been a brief one.
Hermione barely registered the respectful murmurings of 'Congratulations' the announcement garnered from her relatives.
"B-but, what am I to do with all of that?" she whispered to her father.
Denny Granger smiled and squeezed his daughter's shaking hand. "Live quite comfortably, I imagine."
8888
Hermione was still in a daze after the reading was finished and her relatives had departed. Her mother was quite at a loss as to what to do with her daughter and busied herself with housework, while her father brewed tea for Hermione and himself.
They were both sipping tea at the kitchen table when he spoke. "Why don't you spend the summer in your new home and invite a few friends? It's quite a large place, and I imagine it might be very lonely, but some company may cheer it considerably."
Hermione bit her lower lip, thoughtfully. "I had not thought of that. I suppose the burden of my inheritance would not be so great if I had people to share it with, right?"
Denny laughed out loud for the first time in a week. He adored his little girl's seriousness and often teased her for it. He rewarded her perplexed look with a kiss on the forehead.
"Only you would consider a beautiful home and an ample income a burden, my dear," he explained, wiping a tear from his eye, mirthfully. Looking at him, Hermione could tell that it felt good to laugh again. If only she could experience the same feeling.
8888
Ron and Harry were only too happy to join their friend on a journey to her new estate. They had been both been living at the Weasley homestead since the final battle. It was something Molly had insisted upon, until they found proper residencies. It was actually more like until she found them proper residencies, as most of the advertisements for homes they picked up in the city were deemed 'inappropriate'. Hermione's estate was approved of immediately, even though Hermione tried to explain that it would most likely only be for the summer.
"Oh, I am sure you will fall in love with it the moment you all set eyes on it," Molly prattled on, heedless of Hermione's practical nonsense.
All three of them found themselves agreeing with Molly's prediction once they arrived.
The home itself stood at three stories high, and reminded Hermione of what Mr. Darcy's Pemberly might look like. It was quite old and large, but it lacked the forbidding look that most ancient homes tended to have. It rested comfortably atop a hill that overlooked the sprawling grounds, reflecting off of a pond that might have been dazzling had it been kept up a bit.
This was Hermione's first visit to her uncle's estate in Lower Luxor. Ralph had accumulated several estates throughout his life, but 'The Grange' had achieved fairytale status in Hermione's life through the stories he told about it. Apparently, his first wife had jokingly given the home its name as a play on Ralph's last name and an estate in the book "Wuthering Heights". Although the rest of the Grangers had not known the woman who penned the name very well, the name stuck throughout the years.
"I fancy Malfoy Manor in all its former glory couldn't hold a candle to this place," Harry remarked, breathlessly. Hermione and Ron nodded in agreement.
Hermione then grinned. "Shall we?"
Without another word, the three of them raced to the front entrance of their summer home.
8888
Severus Snape's peaceful stroll through the forest near his home was disrupted by the sounds of merriment coming from the property beyond the forest's edge.
Impossible, he mused, that place has been deserted for ages. That was what Dumbledore had told him, when he had banished Severus from Hogwarts a year ago…
8888
"You barely escaped with your life, Severus. The Dark Lord and his followers will be relentless, now that they know what you are," Dumbledore explained, trying to assuage Snape's outrage.
"I will not be banished like some contrite boy, Albus! To be cast off like this is an insult to all I have ever done for you--"
"Enough!" Dumbledore bellowed, silencing the angry man's ranting. "I am not doing this for your safety, Severus, not yours. Have you forgotten Justine?"
Severus scoffed at this. "Of course not. But, perhaps if you just sent her into hiding…it is not as if she constantly requires me at her side."
Dumbledore shook his head sadly. "No, I have noticed the distance between the two of you. But consider what would happen if you were captured. The Dark Lord could certainly find her through you." He paused, to allow what he was saying to sink in. He noticed Severus paling ever so slightly. "If you care for her, you must be hidden with her, at all costs. Surely you would not tell me that you do not care for her. I know her mother was a disappointment--"
"I am not a spiteful man!" Even as he said it, he knew it was a lie. He bowed his head in defeat. "I will do as you say."
8888
He had just started to get used to life in the home Albus had obtained for him. It was quiet and peaceful, save for the times when Justine became unbearable. Even though the war was over and the danger had passed, he was quite content to remain where he was. Dumbledore had provided for him in his will, in addition to the comfortable living Severus was making from the pharmacies he sold his potions to. Life had been kind up until these sudden intruders had impeded upon his little part of the world.
He kept a safe distance while he observed the newcomers. The sight of them made his blood run cold. It was Potter, Weasley, and the girl whose face was now seared into his memory, the little know-it-all herself.
"Damn."
8888
Author's note: Like I said, it's VERY non-HBP compliant. In fact, it was originally written before the release of HBP. I am doing a rewrite because while I enjoy the story, I want to go over it and flesh out the characters, while trying to plot it out a bit better. I hope you all like it! Also, many, many thanks to my beta, Distempered, who shows me that she corrects because she cares. Who loves ya? wink