Pottered

By Killing Curse Eyes

Chapter 1: Hermione's Parents

-o-

After arriving home from her New Years sleep over at Harry's Hermione spent the day laying in bed staring at the ceiling and thinking about what she had said. Did her parents accept magic? They'd asked about the castle, and her grades, but she realized their letters never once asked about what she was learning in her classes. And they seemed overjoyed when she decided to keep up with some of her muggle classes.

She knew they loved her. They told her often enough. In every letter they assured her they were proud and that they missed her terribly. But were they really proud of her? Would they have preferred if she was a muggle (or squib, if Harry and Tom's hypothesis was right) like them?

"Mum?" Hermione called from her room one evening before bed. "Dad?"

"Yes, dear?" Her mother answered loudly from the living room. Hermione slowly made her way out of her room and to her parents. She was wearing a long light blue night gown and her bushy hair was pulled back into a ponytail.

"Can I speak with you guys about something?" she asked hesitantly. "Something important?"

Oliver and Mai Granger exchanged looks, but nodded. "Of course dear." Oliver told her. "You know you can discuss anything with us."

Hermione sat down in her favourite chair and took a deep breath. "Before I got my letter... How did you feel about my magic? When you weren't sure what it was?"

Hermione bit her lip when her parents took awhile to answer.

"To be honest we were scared." Mai admitted. "We had no clue what was going on."

"I don't know how to tell you this Hermione. Just know that we've always loved you and always will." Oliver added.

"We're very science based people, Hermione, you know that. But we seriously considered that maybe we were wrong that maybe... you were..." Mai trailed off.

"Yes?" their daughter asked nervously. She had a bad feeling about what they were going to say.

"We thought you were... Possessed, or something." Oliver answered after a pause.

"Like by the devil?" Hermione asked for clarification. Her parents nodded. "But you're atheists!"

"I know. We didn't believe in god or the devil before, and now that we have an explanation we still don't, but for a time... we were really questioning things." Oliver ran a hand through his short and slightly curly black hair.

"Oh merlin..." Hermione whispered.

"We always loved you Hermione." Mai assured her. "And we always will."

"You mean it?" Hermione asked in a small voice.

"Of course." Her parents smiled warmly.

"Would you have preferred if I didn't have magic?" Hermione asked the next difficult question.

"I- to be honest dear, magic scares us. You can do so many things we can't even understand. There are so many ways your people could hurt us, and we'd never know." Oliver said.

"So you would have." Hermione said blankly. Her mother stood up and walked over to her. She bent down to her knees and put her hands on Hermione's shoulders. She stared her straight in the eye.

"Yes, Hermione. We would have. But that doesn't matter. It wouldn't make us love you any more or less." Mai said. "We just had so many dreams for you, and now we've found out you'll end up doing something we can never hope to understand.

"Our family will never get to see you graduate, or go to university and we can't even tell them why. It's... it's hard. They might never see you get married, and the more you integrate yourself in that world, the more you step out of ours. You step into a world we don't understand and can't help you navigate."

Hermione sniffled. Her parents didn't want her to be a witch. Harry was right.

"Shhh, baby girl. It's okay. We understand you can't help it." Oliver soothed. "It's who you are, and while we can't... understand magic, we know it's part of you, and we love that part of you, too."

Hermione nodded and hugged her parents for a long time. After several minutes she silently extracted herself from their embrace and went to her room. She had a lot to think about.

-o-

AN: The oneshot I promised for 100 reviews! It's short, but all Pottered stories will be. They're just missing scenes, some short, like this, but others might be longer. It's also late, but I was trying to make it longer before I gave up and decided fuck it.

I view Hermione's parents as decent muggles, but still inherently scared of what they cannot understand. Especially when understanding the world is important to them. They had their whole ideologies flipped on their heads.

Thanks for reading,

Eliza