Saying Goodbye
It was a gorgeous, liquid green summer evening, the kind that comes only once or twice in a year. The owl swooped down the lane and in the Grangers' kitchen window, where Nicole Granger tore off the rubber gloves she wore to wash the dishes and seized the letter with delight. Dear Mum, I'm sorry because I know this will disappoint you, but I'm not coming home just now. Ron and I are going to the Dursleys first to be with Harry. You know what his aunt and uncle are like; you know he needs us. Oh, but Hermione, I need you too. After that we're going to Ron's because his brother is getting married to that French girl I told you about. I'll write you again from there. DON'T WORRY. I am fine, and I am really happy to be with Ron and Harry three words crossed outHarry and Ron three words crossed outRon and Harry. I'll tell you all about it when I see you again.
But when will that be?
Nicole Granger was a level-headed, logical sort of woman. She liked things that made sense. Teeth made sense. Needlepoint made sense. Her warm, steady, quiet, unpretentious relationship with her warm, steady, quiet, unpretentious husband made sense.
Hermione didn't.
Even as an infant, Hermione puzzled her. Bottles of milk she thought were empty mysteriously turned out to be full. The stuffed rabbit she removed from the cot at night (breakable parts—not for unsupervised use by the under-threes) was in the cot next morning.
And she thought, pregnancy addled my brain. She thought, my hormones are still out of kilter. She thought, I must be more careful in the future.
Hermione, at the age of three, burst into tears on a regular basis because she couldn't color within the lines of the pictures in her coloring book and she couldn't stand for them to be imperfectly done. Once, as Nicole took her sobbing daughter in her arms to comfort her, she flipped open the coloring book to reassure, to tell her it wasn't so bad.
Every picture was neatly colored, crayon exactly to the margins of the lines, and not a millimeter beyond. She couldn't have done it better herself.
"Hermione, they're perfect," she breathed.
"No, they're not!" sobbed her three-year-old daughter.
"Hermione, they're lovely."
"No, they're not!"—sniffle—"Mummy"—sniffle—"Mummy, I did it wrong!"
"Hermione, look."
The crying stopped right there.
The summer that Hermione was seven going on eight, she had a bad go of chicken pox. She was in bed for two weeks. And for two weeks, strange things happened. Nicole would tuck her feverish, pockmarked daughter into bed with one book, one jigsaw puzzle, one teddy bear, and come back half an hour later to find the candlewick bedspread littered with books and toys.
"Hermione, you're not supposed to be getting out of bed so much."
"I didn't get out of bed, Mummy, I didn't."
"Then how did these things get here? They weren't here half an hour ago."
Hermione shrugged. "I wanted them, and they came."
"Hermione, things don't just come of their accord. They come because people pick them up and move them. Because people who are sick with chicken pox and ought to be in bed get up and get out of bed."
"I didn't get out of bed, Mummy. They just—came."
Hermione had a weakness for gingernuts. And that summer, while she was sick, Nicole promised to bake her some. But the weather was steamy, the weather was frightful, and the oven would heat up the house. So she left the dough in the refrigerator and went out to do the marketing.
She came home an hour later and found the oven on. She opened it, and she saw the gingernuts were done.
She marched upstairs. To reprimand her daughter for using the oven unsupervised, to reprimand her for not accepting what she was told, to reprimand her, once again, for getting out of bed.
Hermione was fast asleep, her breathing level and calm. Nicole stood watching her for five minutes before she woke up. Then she threw in the towel.
"Hermione, would you like a gingernut?"
"Oh, Mummy, yes! I was dreaming of gingernuts. But—but I thought you said it was too hot to use the oven today."
After that, she couldn't ignore it anymore. Where her daughter was, things happened. Not bad things, just strange things. Things happened.
And she thought, well, maybe it was just as well I had the miscarriage. Maybe it was just as well there weren't more children.
It took a lot of energy, raising Hermione.
It took a lot of courage, raising Hermione.
She got a card for the medical library at the University of Leeds. She spent a month of weekends in the stacks. Looking for hints, looking for leads, looking up symptoms. Looking for a name for her daughter's condition.
If there was one, she didn't find it.
The month Hermione turned eleven, the headmaster of her daughter's school turned up unexpectedly at the dentist's office. He wanted to talk about Hermione.
"She's the brightest girl in her class, Mrs. Granger. Off the record, if you don't mind my saying so, she's the brightest girl in the school. But before she moves up to the grammar school next autumn, I think we should have a little talk." He hesitated. "She has a lot of accidents, Hermione."
"Accidents?" said Nicole Granger, as a cold hand clutched her heart. "What kind of accidents?"
"Well—" said the headmaster, wiping his glasses, "well—it's a little hard to explain." Oh yes, thought Nicole. It is a little hard to explain. Let's see what he makes of this. The headmaster cleared his throat. "The gym shoes that she said she left at home—they turned up in her locker. After she said they weren't there. And Priscilla Massey and Miss Blacklock, they had both looked too. It was almost as if Hermione had—er—removed the shoes and hidden them, claimed she didn't have them, and then voluntarily 'discovered' them again."
"I don't think Hermione would do that," said Nicole quickly.
"No," said the headmaster, "she said she didn't. She told us that she didn't. And then last week Priscilla was being teased by a couple of boys—they shouldn't have been doing it, of course, and—er—someone punched one of them. At least, he got a bloody nose. Priscilla says Hermione was standing ten feet away, and Hermione says so too, but Miss Blacklock is pretty sure—"
"My daughter wouldn't punch someone," said Nicole. "Hermione's never done anything like that."
The headmaster sighed. "I like your daughter," he said. "I've always liked Hermione. But wherever she is, things seem to happen. She seems to have a lot of accidents, Hermione. And she seems reluctant to take responsibility for them. Just something she ought to work on, before she goes to grammar school."
Then it was summer, and she took Hermione to buy books for grammar school. Hermione skipped along on one foot, reciting Latin verb conjugations; she intended to be well up in her work before the school year began.
A stray tabby cat crossed the street and stared at the number of their house. And Nicole stared too.
"Hermione?"
"Valeo," said Hermione, "vales, valet. Valemus, valetis, valent."
That evening, after dinner, she saw the tabby cat again. It was sitting on the window ledge, and she had the strangest feeling that it wanted to come inside.
She opened the window.
The tabby cat bounded in, said "thank you" (Can tabby cats talk!), and turned, in the blink of an eye, into an upright, elderly Scotswoman, with steel-gray hair and tabby-rimmed spectacles.
And she told them.
Peter looked baffled, slightly offended, wheels turning slowly in his mind. That was always the way Peter responded to anything new. The first time he saw a bad case of leukoplakia—well, Peter was always like that when he faced anything new.
Hermione looked fascinated and—could it be?—a little frightened. Her fearless, reckless, brilliant, accident-prone daughter, just a little frightened.
But Nicole, looking from her husband to her daughter to the sharp-faced visitor with the tabby-framed spectacles, felt nothing but the purest, wholest, most unclouded relief. That her daughter was healthy. That her daughter was honest. That her daughter was normal.
Well, almost normal.
She didn't know she was saying goodbye.
Hermione had been home, what, two weeks in the last two years? She was always staying at school to study or going to the Weasleys to "work." Or possibly to be near that gangling red-haired chum of hers. Or possibly some of each, and something more.
Nicole had met Ron's parents. She liked Ron's parents. They seemed just about as normal as it was possible for a witch and wizard to be. And she thought, well, Hermione is safe with them. And then she wondered why the word "safe" came so quickly, so readily, to mind.
Because more and more, in this season of disappearances, of bridge collapses, of locked room murders, Nicole Granger was coming to feel that there was something that Hermione, and Ron's parents, and Minerva McGonagall with her tabby-framed spectacles, and even Albus Dumbledore with his reassuring soft white beard, weren't telling her. Something, perhaps, that they thought she didn't want to know.
She hadn't known she was saying goodbye.