Written for Kaitlyn for the Caesar's Palace Valentine's Day exchange!
Prompt used: "Why are you following me?"
Character used: Hermione.
WC: 1,010
Hermione looked out at the expanse of the park with eyes that held a tired wisdom. Around her, the rustling of the leaves made quiet music. She sat on this bench in silence, lost in a haze of memory as well as the holes of memories unmade. Deep breath in.
Her eyes followed a couple enjoying a leisurely walk on the path. Deep breath out. She stood and walked briskly towards them, but before she reached them, her legs suddenly stopped. Rooted to the spot in the grass as if leafy tendrils had curled around her feet, she watched helplessly as the happy couple walked out of her sight.
As they followed each other around a bend, they laughed, probably at something funny one of them had said. Hermione's heart twisted inside her chest. They were happy. Just like they'd been every day for the past two weeks. They looked happier than they'd ever looked. How could she ruin that?
The vines around her ankles went limp, and she wandered slowly out of the park, wondering what was wrong with her.
"I'm going to do it eventually."
A man with red hair stared at her through the floo call. "Take your time, 'Mione, but you know that they'd love to get their daughter back, right? You don't have to be afraid."
Hermione sighed, thoughts already drifting to the remembered afternoon. She wasn't scared, but guilt pooled in her stomach. "Yeah, maybe."
Hermione thought there was a kind of sadness that could only be found in a sweet spring day, when the flowers' fragrance in the breeze was beautifying yet overwhelming, when baby birds' disjointed song was hopeful yet fleeting. To her, the moment was already a memory.
In the distance, a dentist and his wife picnicked near a pond. They lounged on a checkered blanket, just like in the paintings, sharing sandwiches and smiles.
If she told them what she had done, they would be angry, angry about her altering their realities and their memories, angry at her for putting herself in danger. They might forgive her, but she didn't think they'd forgive the wizarding world for making her into a child soldier, for being prepared to make her and her friends into martyrs. It had been painful for them to see their own child drift farther and farther from them, to have a childhood that they did not know, to grow up in ways they did not understand.
They'd missed the the Christmases together, the birthdays, the afternoons after school, the nights at the kitchen table relearning algebra. Hermione had missed that. Perhaps their life as retirees in Australia was a lie to Hermione, but it was a happier existence. And what is the harm in a lie if they never knew it was one?
She sighed, longing for something but at the same time not wishing things were any different.
"Hi, I don't really know how to explain this to you, but you have a daughter, and I'm her!" Nope.
"This may come as a shock to you, but magic is real, and I erased your memories, so I'm going to restore them now. Please don't be mad at me." Absolutely not.
"I know I'm a stranger to you but I actually need to abduct you and bring you to England. Also, I think it's really weird that you two have Australian accents now and I hope you go back to normal when I cast the spell."
Hermione stared at herself in the mirror, feeling ridiculous, then laughed without any humor. Maybe she seriously would just abduct them and portkey all the way to England.
Hermione found herself at the park again, following these two people who looked like her parents but weren't, if identity is a combination of memory and emotion and a few things in between.
She watched from afar, admiring the way the sun glinted off the water in the fountain and trying to summon some inner peace. She hadn't planned on kidnapping her parents today, but she wanted to exist in this moment, this space where time felt like molasses, where she had paused her parents' world and brought them into a pleasant, foggy dream. Where she acted as arbiter.
"Why are you following me?"
Hermione was jolted from her thoughts. "Excuse me?"
"You've been following us for weeks now. At first I thought you might just be coming to the park frequently like we do, but I think it's uncanny that you walk the same route as us every day, even when we change ours." Hermione's mother sounded Australian. God help her.
"Oh, um, you see," Hermione stammered, realizing she had left her portkey back at the bed and breakfast.
She grabbed both of their hands and Apparated.
Hermione's father retched beside her and she found herself fumbling through the bedside table to get the portkey, which was, fittingly, an actual key.
"What on Earth are you doing?"
"Honey, I'm calling 000."
Hermione felt tears pricking at her eyes. Everything was not as she had wanted it to be. She should've been more careful; she shouldn't have let the situation go on so long; she shouldn't have overlooked this; she shouldn't have she shouldn't have she shouldn't have- shouldn't she shouldn't have let Dobby die, she shouldn't have let the younger Hogwarts students fight, she shouldn't have gone to Hogwarts, she shouldn't have-
She pulled out her wand and whirled around.
"Accio phone." And then, she undid the memory enchantment.
Slowly, the feeling in her parents' eyes changed. She saw them go from coldly afraid to wateringly sad, to sharply angry, to relieved.
Hermione shut her eyes, feeling as if time had started again, but not easily and more like it had been thrown into full thrust. "I… I had to protect you during the War. They would have found you and then tortured you for information."
Arms around her. Warmth.
"Let's take you home." Hermione opened her eyes to forgiveness and pride and felt her voice come out as a whisper.
"Okay."