Hermione sat looking down at the little white, pink ended stick in front of her in horror. She already knew of course, but the confirmation was devastating in it's own way. She had no idea how this school year was going to work.
"Honey?" Her mom's clear, calm voice rose from downstairs, calling her to action. She huffed, stashing the stick in her trunk, not to be found by her parents while she was gone. Taking the stairs quickly, Hermione joined her parents for dinner.
Her father smiled as she sat, primly placing her napkin over her lap and crossing her legs. "It's weird to be losing you again so quickly."
Huffing our a laugh, Hermione smiled at him, "You're not losing me. It's school." It was a lie though and she knew it. Her parents did too. It was seventh year and after this year, she wouldn't be returning home for summer breaks. Instead, she would complete the process of transitioning into a completely different world than her parents. As excited as she was, she was also terrified.
Hastily, she picked up her fork, eager to banish the conversation from her mind. Unfortunately, it wasn't so easy for her parents, wishing to tie her back to them. "Whatever happened to that boy from the library that you liked so much?"
Hermione's eyes went wide, "How did you-"
"How did we know? Don't be silly. A mother always knows. You were so upset about you and Ron at the beginning of the summer, you burrowed yourself away there. Then you came home one day and suddenly, you weren't so sad anymore. We knew you met someone."
Her parents shared a look, smugly between each other, and Hermione's face scrunched as she decided what to say. It was true that she was devastated after Ron ended things. After Harry and Dumbledore got back from finding yet a fake Resurrection Stone ring, just like the one that had mangled Dumbledore's hand last summer, the Final Battle had waged at Hogwarts. Harry and Dumbledore had realized that between the two of them, they had two thirds of the Hallows, just as Voldemort had. When Malfoy had killed Dumbledore but Hogwarts hadn't fallen, Voldemort himself came. When Harry got the wand from Malfoy and Neville got the ring from Nagini's corpse, it was short work to get rid of Voldemort.
Hogwarts wasn't the same for the final weeks of the school year, and neither were she and Ron, but that didn't mean she'd found new love this summer. Ron had said all sorts of kind things during their break up, but one of them hurt the most. She wasn't exciting anymore. Oh, he didn't say it like that. He phrased it very nicely. But the truth was, without the constant threat of death and the fight for their lives, she and Ron had no spark, and this summer she'd been desperate to find that spark somewhere.
Her foray with a kind-eyed boy in the back of his SUV in the library parking lot hadn't exactly sated her urge to find adventure, but it did show her that wasn't the way for her to go about things. She had been happier though afterwards. It had given her a new purpose, and she'd decided to follow the boys in their quest to become aurors.
Heart tightening painfully at the thought, she swallowed down her bite of peas to answer her parents. "It didn't work out."
Her tone or her face told her parents that this conversation was not to be continued. While they thought she was mourning her supposed failed summer romance, she was mourning the ending of her career before it ever began. She swallowed thickly, telling herself it was not the end, and wishing she could believe it.
A/N: I noticed about halfway through this that all my paragraphs started with H so I'm seeing how long I can keep it up! Let me know what you think!