Disclaimer: I don't own HP!
Author's Note: Again, all credit goes to mellowenglishgal! I adopted this from her and this is all hers!
"Well…here she is," Dad said lamely, and Hermione glared at him before looking at the others in the room. There were three other people. Wizards, was her first thought, catching sight of the woman's robes rather than her face. Wizards. I'm…not Muggle-born, she thought, stunned. The woman stood up immediately, with a delicate rustle of the expensive embroidered silk robes and the tinkle of her little earrings. Hermione glared at her. She was very lovely; tall, slim, graceful, with a coiffure of gorgeous golden curls that cascaded to her strong yet elegant shoulders. She clasped elegant hands in front of her as she watched Hermione hopefully. Scowling deeper, she glanced at the two men. One was definitely older, maybe in his early fifties, but with a head of light brown hair, graying in places.
Oh god. His teeth. Because he had smiled. She would never be able to look at a picture of Steven Tyler again. Because this man had her teeth. Huge white teeth, straight, neat, too big. His face was thin, the cheekbones defined, the nose pert, a tiny bit of stubble below his lower-lip.
She glanced at the younger man. He's not a man, she corrected herself, looking at him. He was her age. And what was more, she recognized him. Vaguely; he was in her Arithmancy class, the only Slytherin. But he was very tall and excessively handsome. Oh holy Garrett Hedlund, she thought, because that was the figure to which she could most closely compare Theodore Nott. A lot of the girls in her year—their year—liked to look at Teddy Nott, even if he was deemed too proud to talk to anyone, except perhaps Draco Malfoy or Blaise Zabini.
Urgh!
I'm related to the Notts.
My dad tried to kill me!
The fucking twat almost got us all killed.
"Hello Harmonia." Hermione glanced around. There's another girl? I have an invisible identical twin? But the woman was looking directly at her.
"My name is Hermione," Hermione growled obstinately. The woman blinked once and nodded, and even smiled slightly at Hermione's rudeness.
"So Peronel got that wrong," the man said, frowning at nothing in particular. "You'll have to forgive us—" he man started, and she glared.
"Why?" Her snap at him stopped him short. She glanced at the woman, with a sinking feeling realizing she had her eye-shape, if the man's coloring. Widely-spaced, the woman's were a light blue, giving her a dreamy, poetic, far-away look. Probably married her for her looks, she thought snidely. She had read about pureblood families. Marriages were rarely based on love. Financial or political status mattered more.
"Hermione, don't be rude," Dad admonished, giving her a look. She glowered back. I'll be rude if I fucking want to, she thought, challenging him with a look. Mum used her hip to open the office doors and came around to them from the other end of the long living-room, holding three tea-cups.
"I'll be back in a minute," she smiled, but it was strained, and she disappeared through the study again, returning with three more cups of tea, balancing two atop a Tupperware box filled with bourbon creams. Dad moved to one of the armchairs and sank down weakly, reaching for his tea, which he gulped down to have something to do. Theodore sat watching his hands as he clasped them, resting his forearms on his knees, his dad was making little exclamations about the bourbon creams—which were a thoroughly Muggle biscuit—and the woman was holding her teacup in trembling hands. Hermione had no sympathy for her feelings whatsoever.
"So, I think…well, I think we should start with some explanations," Mum began tremulously. "I don't even understand all of this myself."
"The fault is mine," Mr. Nott said, half a biscuit perched between his lips—my lips, Hermione thought, her eyes burning.
"William, of course it isn't; don't say that," his wife said gently. "It's Peronel's fault. And mine for taking her word so faithfully."
"Get on with it," Theodore said impatiently, scowling at his parents. "I want to know. And Hermione's never been very patient in discovering new things." He glanced at her and Hermione tweaked an eyebrow. They had been rivals for the top grade in Arithmancy since third year, and before now she'd never actually heard his voice. He never said a word in lessons, but still managed to maintain that just-below-Top grade she always beat by a half-mark or something infuriatingly close like that. His voice was deep, raw, like his—our—father's.
"Well," Mrs. Nott started, taking a steadying breath and a sip of strong builder's tea, "it begins when I went into labor with you, Hermione," she said, and gave Hermione a glowing smile that made Hermione feel slightly guilty of the dark looks she'd been giving her. "William had gone to Venice on a business venture that week—you were two weeks early—and my…my sister, Peronel, was the only one I could contact. She helped deliver you, and when I asked whether you were alright…she said you were stillborn." Hermione had never had any siblings—well except him sitting there, she thought—but she felt like she did have brothers and sisters through the Weasley family, and through Harry's close friendship. But she could not even imagine one of the Weasley boys doing that to their brothers—definitely not to Ginny.
"Whatever her motives were then, I don't know," Mrs. Nott said tearfully. "Jealous, I have always supposed, because I married William." Hermione glanced at Theodore, who shot her a mildly expressive look that told her there was an amusing little tidbit to learn, and at her—at William, who shook his head slightly, squeezing his wife's hand comfortingly. "She had always loved William. I suppose it was too much for her that I had his child as well as—well, him," she gave William such a glowing smile Hermione wondered how he could not jump her right there. His dark eyes roved ravenously over her exquisite face, and Hermione's regard for their love for each other warmed.
"So…what did she do with…with the baby?" Hermione asked, unable to say 'me'.
"Well—and I have to say, any woman who has ever given birth knows that our hormones are all over the place, and we're exceptionally vulnerable," she said tremulously, and Hermione thought she was probably reliving the experience, or the memory of it anyway. "So when she left the room with—well, with what I assumed was a dead baby, well, I was too upset to do anything."
"You never cried when you were a baby," Jean said, sniffling even as she smiled. "You remember, I told you that? Never, ever made a peep unless it was a giggle…You were such a sweet baby." And what's that supposed to mean? She was going to ask, but didn't.
"Peronel confessed everything she had done last Christmas, on her death-bed," William said, and his wife's features hardened and she nodded. "She told us she had taken you to a Muggle household in the countryside, that the name was Granger. Teddy discovered you." Hermione glanced at Theodore and narrowed her eyes. He gave her a wary look. "Oh—you mustn't think Teddy had any involvement in this. He only found out last Christmas we had a 'stillborn child' before he was born, when he was digging through my files," William said, arching an eyebrow at his son. Theodore rolled his eyes, bored. Insolently handsome, like Sirius, she thought, with a pang. What Sirius wouldn't have given to see how low and malicious some people could go to torture their families!
"So what do you want with me?" Hermione asked, but her voice was despondent, not aggressive. Her parents—her birth parents—glanced at each other and at Theodore. The woman's eyes sparkled.
"We—we would really like to get to know you, Hermione," she said, her lyrical voice constricted. "Teddy's told us all he can about you, but…" it hardly fills an A3-page, Hermione thought, glancing at her brother."We know you turn eighteen in September, and so if…if you wanted to come and stay with us for a few weeks, perhaps during the summertime before you finish school, we would really love it. But, of course, we understand that you have a family already." The woman—her mother—gave Hermione's parents a warm smile.
"And from what Teddy's told us, they've done a remarkable job with you," William smiled, flashing all of those oversized white teeth. Hermione flushed embarrassedly. Her dad always said her failing, like her mother's, was her inability to take a compliment if it wasn't work-oriented. "Prefect?" She nodded. Yes, she was a Prefect. If only I didn't have to work with lay-about Ron, she thought with a tiny sigh.
"Hermione, why don't we go upstairs," Mum suggested quietly. "We can talk. Charlie, don't you dare eat all those biscuits." Dad glanced guiltily at his wife as he retrieved two biscuits from the box and William helped himself again, grinning. Hermione followed her mother upstairs, around the landing to her bedroom, which overlooked the road and the field beyond, filled with horses.