A/N: Sorry it's taken a few days to get this up… been busy with school and such. Anyway, here's chapter four:
"Wow…That's a change…A big change!" Hermione exclaimed.
Cora Lawrence walked over to her daughter. Looking at their images in the mirror, she began to point out all the features Hermione possessed now that she was her true self.
"See, you have long, beautiful dark brown hair, the exact same shade as your fathers," Cora paused to fan Hermione's hair out around her shoulders, "And you have my eyes, a crystal blue, which every first born child on my mother's side has inherited. And you have my nose, and mouth. You have your father's ears. Hermione, my darling, you are most definitely my daughter!" Cora proclaimed, starting to tear up again. She hugged Hermione briefly, and then gestured for Damien to come over to them.
She's right…I don't know why I didn't see any of this before…What's strange is how I look right now… Everything looks like it fits better somehow…
Damien stood behind his wife and daughter, and there was a brief moment of silence. Damien put his arms around both Cora and Hermione, making the reflection in the mirror appear to be a picture of a family portrait.
"I'm so glad we found you Hermione," Damien said softly. He then turned to address the Grangers.
"Thank You so much for raising our baby girl! We couldn't have asked for a better outcome other than raising her ourselves."
"It…it was more than our pleasure Mr. Lawrence. Hermione is a very special girl, and I am proud to have raised her as my daughter." Mrs. Granger responded, trying not to sound heartbroken at what was to come next.
"So what now?" Hermione asked bluntly.
"Well, your mother and I will wait for you to gather your things, and for you to… say your goodbyes to the Grangers, and we will meet you in the foyer. Take as long as you need, dear, we are in no rush." Damien explained.
"Yes, of course, take all the time you like Hermione." Cora chimed in.
"Alright, I'll just get my trunk and wand from upstairs, and I'll meet you in the foyer in a few minutes." Hermione said, turning to go out to the hall, and back up the stairs to her old bedroom.
Once up there, Hermione sat on her bed and looked around her room one last time.
… I love this room. It's been my room for so long! And my bed! I love my mattress! It's perfect for me; it's not too hard, but too soft.
Hermione rolled off her bed, not wanting to think too hard on what she was leaving behind. She proceeded down the stairs and met the Grangers in the kitchen. Another memory filled place. She first looked to Mrs. Granger, the woman she had called "mum" since she could talk.
"I love you, mum! You are such an amazing mother. I feel so lucky to have been raised by you," She hugged her tightly, and then turned to Mr. Granger.
"I love you, dad! I've learned so much from you! You have helped make me the person I am today. I am so happy to have been your daughter!" She hugged him tightly too, and promised them both that'd she'd write to them, and that they would be seeing each other again.
With that, she picked up her luggage and walked away, down the hall, and through the living room (pausing to slip her photo album into her bag) to front foyer, where her parents—her real ones—stood. She smiled nervously at them.
"Are you ready sweetheart?" Cora asked her.
"As ready as I'll ever be." She replied. Hermione Jane Granger then walked out the door and into her new life as Hermione Elizabeth Lawrence.
A/N: It would be just plain evil of me to leave this chapter at this point wouldn't it? Good news is: I'm a bit of a devil, but my angelic side is showing through in this case… here's the next part of the chapter:
Hermione walked outside and parked on the street was a limousine. This was peculiar, given that her new parents were pureblooded wizards. What was more peculiar was that there was a driver who just got out of the front and opened the back, apparently expecting someone to get in.
"Are you alright, Hermione?" her mother asked her, noticing Hermione's puzzled expression.
"Well, yes, but I was wondering… are we going in that?" Hermione asked, pointing towards the limousine.
"Of course we are dear. What were you expecting?" Damien asked his daughter.
"Well, I was thinking we would use side-along apparition… or some other form of magical transportation." Hermione said, as though stating the obvious.
"Yes, that would have been more convenient, using side-along apparition, but there are too many risks." Cora told her.
"What do you mean?" Hermione inquired.
"We can't apparate in the middle of a muggle neighborhood, in the middle of the day, for starters. The noise could raise a lot of questions from the muggles living around here. Aside from that, you could splinch yourself, because you don't know where we are going. We definitely don't want that to happen to you dear." Damien explained.
"Oh, I suppose that makes sense." Hermione conceded. With that, they got into the back of the limousine, while the driver took Hermione's luggage and put it into the trunk of the car.
The driver closed the door, and got into the front seat, and pressed the button to roll the partition down.
"Where to sir? Home, or someplace else?" asked the driver.
"Yes, Renaldo, home it is." Mr. Lawrence replied.
"Alright, home it is then." Renaldo confirmed, and replaced the privacy partition.
"Do you usually use a muggle limousine to get around, or is it just because of me?" Hermione pondered aloud.
"Well, we don't normally use it no, but we have Renaldo and the car available on call. You never know when you might need to use muggle transportation these days. We have some other cars that we drive ourselves, but we thought it would be nicer to pick you up in the limousine, so we can talk without being distracted by the road." Cora explained.
"May I ask a slightly personal question?" Hermione asked.
"Of course, dear, you may ask anything you'd like. I'm sure you have many questions for us." Damien answered.
"Well, I was wondering… my mum and… I mean the Grangers told me that I was taken from you by the Ministry because they decided that you were "unsuitable" to raise me. Well I was wondering, why exactly the decided that?" Hermione asked, slightly apprehensively.
The Lawrences looked at each other, as if deciding mentally, who would explain it.
"That is an excellent question Hermione. I'm afraid it is a rather long answer though." Cora began.
"When you were born, Hermione, a prophecy of sorts was made about you. Well, not a prophecy exactly, but a prediction. It was said, that you would grow up to be a very powerful witch; you displayed magical abilities even at infancy. We were so excited to see how you would grow and excel at magic." She paused here, as if not sure how to go on. She looked at her husband, who nodded, and continued on for her.
" Well, at the time, the Dark Lord, was at the peak of his power. He was looking for more and more followers, and resorted to recruiting as many pureblooded wizards and witches as he could find. We were some of those purebloods.
"Now, what you have to understand is, we had already decided that we were going to be neutral in this war. We refused to side with him and become Death Eaters, especially since we just had a baby, and because we both feel that blood status is…overrated to say the least.
"Is all of this making sense so far, dear?" Cora asked.
"For the most part, it makes sense, but I want to hear the rest of this before I ask questions." Hermione replied.
"What happened after we refused to join ranks with the Death Eaters is what caused our reputation to go down. You-know-who caught wind of how promising your magical abilities were going to be, and he tried everything to get us to join his cause. He wanted you to grow up hating muggles and muggleborns, and become a powerful member of his legion when you were old enough. He did everything short of killing us to persuade us to join him.
" Instead, he decided to take his revenge on us in a different way. He used his Death Eaters to make it look as though we had joined his side, and had stared murdering muggles and muggleborns too. One of them wrote a letter to the Ministry, claiming that we had planned on raising you up to be a weapon for the Dark Lord.
"We fought as hard as we could against it, using up many of our connections to people within the Ministry, but it was too late. Our name and reputation had been destroyed, and we were then deemed "unsuitable parents" for a promising child like you. The next thing we knew, we had half the Ministry's best aurors in our home, demanding that we give you up, and…and, well you know what happened after that." Damien finished.
"How did you manage to get me back, if the Ministry did all of that?" Hermione inquired.
"We never stopped trying to prove them wrong. We managed to convince the right people inside the Ministry to drop the accusations against us, as they never had proof of anything the Death Eaters framed us with, and then a family friend pulled some strings to help us find your whereabouts. We owe them a great deal, but he refuses to take any sort of gratitude, except for the pleasure of our company in a few nights to meet you." Cora explained.
"Oh. That's quite a story." Hermione said, not really knowing what to say or how to feel about the situation.
"I'm sure you probably have more questions than answers now, but I hope that explains things a bit more to you," Cora commented.
"Well, it does clear things up more, but I do have more questions." Hermione responded after a moment.
"Well, ask away, darling, we will answer any questions you have." Damien encouraged.
"What do you do for a living?" Hermione asked, deciding to start with her simpler questions.
"Well, we have a family fortune, large enough that 4-5 generations of Lawrences won't need to work for a living, but we do have jobs to keep us occupied. I used to be an unspeakable for the department of mysteries in the Ministry, but my "position was terminated" after what happened with you, and so now, we run a store selling rare magic and some muggle books. I was offered my job back as an unspeakable, but we are much happier with the store. We both have an affinity for reading," Cora explained.
Hermione stared at them, open-mouthed, looking as if she had just seen a hippogriff fly by the window.
"Are you serious!? A rare-book store? How many books do you have? Can I see the store? Oh my gosh! This is amazing!" Hermione fired out question after question, evidently excited about this revelation.
Cora and Damien smiled at each other, glad to know that they made their daughter happy.
"We have roughly 2,500 titles in the collection, but have found a few copies of some of them bringing the total to about 3,000 books in the store all together. And, absolutely you can see the store. You can take any of the books you like. I'm assuming you like to read? It's a bit of a family trait. Your father and I actually met in the Hogwarts library, when reaching for the same book." Cora smiled, remembering that day.
Hermione was beaming by now. She was extremely pleased to know she had so much in common with them already. Whatever nervousness and anxiety she had going into the car, was slowly beginning to evaporate. It was there, but now that the atmosphere was slightly less awkward, Hermione felt more comfortable delving into her next several questions, hoping to discover more similarities.
A/N: So how was it? I tried to give the biggest back-story I could without becoming boring. I hope you all liked the idea of the rare-books store, as it will play a slightly more pertinent role later on. As always, any questions, comments, or concerns are welcome and will be addressed in the next chapter, or if necessary, I'll email you back.
Luv ya,
Dreamysilverdragon08