Shades of Grey
Wise words
The rest of the Christmas holidays passed without incident, with the exception of Fleur announcing that she was pregnant, causing Mrs Weasley to dissolve into tears of pride whenever she saw her eldest son and his wife. The trio and Ginny flooed back to Hogwarts the day before term began and made their way towards the Gryffindor common room to relax before lessons resumed, or in Ron and Harry's case finish their Christmas homework. Hermione was sat in her favourite squashy armchair by the fire reading her Arithmancy textbook, or at least pretending to.
"You know Hermione," said Ginny quietly leaning over to her, "if you want to pretend to be reading to avoid talking to me then at least have the book the right way round" Hermione started, she was indeed holding the book upside down. She grimaced, closed the book and looked at Ginny,
"Sorry Ginny, I've just got a few things going on at the moment" Ginny looked at her friend sympathetically,
"Hermione I know things have been tough for you lately, especially as it was the first Christmas without your parents but they would want you to be happy, to move on, they loved you so much, you were their Hermione" Ginny said passionately obviously expecting Hermione to cheer up, on the contrary Hermione slammed the book on the small table in front of her and stood up so quickly that Ginny started,
"How on earth can you know that they loved me? You never even met them!" she shouted,
"Hermione of course they loved you, you were their daughter!" said Ginny quietly, clearly hoping to avoid a scene as people were starting to stare at them,
"No I wasn't!" Hermione screamed, Ginny's eyes widened and Hermione fled from the common room not even stopping when she heard Ron call her back, she ran until she couldn't run anymore.
She found herself near the Divination tower. She sat down against the wall and pulled her knees up to her chest, she knew that she shouldn't have shouted at Ginny and definitely not told her about her parents. Hermione's day had now progressed from very bad at breakfast to worse. She pulled out the crumpled letter from her robes pocket and read it again,
Dear Miss Granger,
Thank you for your letter of the 26th December, after looking into the adoption records around the time of your birth unfortunately neither my colleagues nor myself have found any record of yourself or your parents. It is possible that during the last war the paperwork was somehow lost, or that your biological parents never registered your adoption. Again I would like to express my regret that this matter could not be resolved.
Yours truly,
Heidi Gugworth
Hermione crumpled up the letter and threw it to the other side of the corridor. She hugged her knees tightly and allowed tears to trickle down her face. She wasn't sure quite how long she sat there in silence until she heard hurried footsteps to her right, she turned and saw Professor Lupin running towards her;
"Hermione thank heavens here we've got all the ghosts and staff looking for you, not to mention half of Gryffindor!"
"Sorry Professor" sniffed Hermione apologetically, she saw a silver shape fly out of Professor Lupin's wand and knew that he was sending a Patronus to the search party, he turned to look at her with pity in his eyes, Hermione looked away wiping her tears with the back of her hand, she felt Professor Lupin sit down next to her,
"Here, have this" he said passing her a handkerchief, "Why did you run off like that Hermione?" he asked gently,
"I don't know" she whispered "I just needed to be on my own for a bit"
"Molly told me about the letter Hermione, is that it?" he asked pointing at the crumpled piece of parchment, Hermione nodded,
"I hurts to know that my true parents didn't even bother to register my adoption, it's like I didn't even matter, I was just an inconvenience"
"You don't know that Hermione, they could have lost the paperwork, or there could have been a perfectly logical explanation as to why they didn't register you"
"I…I just feel lost" she said quietly,
"Well" said Professor Lupin "there's a sure fire way to find yourself Miss Granger" he said lending his hand out to her, she took it and stood up straightening out her robes,
"What's that then?" she asked
"Being around people who love you" he smiled "So to the Gryffindor common room", she nodded and smiled,
"To the Gryffindor common room".
A/N Hope you liked this chapter, sorry about the slight delay but I am very busy getting ready for university! Please review! Also please check out my profile as it has details of a new story that I am starting with my best friend miss.mermaid-of-the-lake!
Love you all
Laura
xxx
