Chapter 14
Hermione was of age in both the wizarding and muggle worlds, and therefore did not need a guardian during the holidays. She had set aside that time to deal with her parents' estate: will, business, house, and possessions. She met with their solicitor and discovered that as the only child of financially savvy parents she was going to be fairly well off—especially after she sold her parents' house and practice.
The buyer was an elegant blonde woman in her mid-twenties, named Pricilla Hardwicke. She and another dentist had recently split apart from their large former practice and decided to begin one together. Priscilla loved the house, the clinic, the garden, and indeed, the whole neighborhood.
Hermione liked her at once. Priscilla bought everything outright, but told Hermione she would always be welcome to come and stay there when she left school, until she got a place of her own. Hermione thanked her with a smile, but she knew she would not be returning to live in her parents' house again after the holidays.
For the first week of the holidays, Hermione threw herself into the task of sorting through her parents' things. She arranged to have the furniture auctioned off, except for a few pieces that she wanted to keep, and by the end of the week she had closed the door on her childhood.
That took her until a few days before Christmas. Then, with everything done and all her loose ends tied up, she went quietly and thoroughly to pieces.
And no one was there to pick them up for her.
She walked through the halls and rooms of her childhood home, her sobs echoing in the emptiness. Until this, she had been busy enough to forget the immediacy of her grief, but now there was nothing standing between her and the painful, stark reality that her loving parents were gone forever.
She forgot to eat. She sat on the couch with one of her Grandma Granger's homemade blankets around her shoulders, lost in nostalgia for when she was a little girl and the house always smelled of cinnamon during the Christmas holidays.
Her grandmother had died when she was in her first year at Hogwarts, so she felt as if she had never properly mourned for her either. Living so far away had disconnected her from her family and given her a sense of unreality about their deaths. Now, she was faced with a large, empty house, vacant and sterile, that used to be filled with harmony, love, and doting parents and grandparents.
Ordinarily she would have gone to the Burrow for the entire holiday, but this year she had turned down their invitation. She knew how much business she had to do with tying up the loose ends of her parents' lives. She hadn't realized how little time it would take her to pack things up with magic, and when it was all finished, she still had two days to go before she could join the Weasleys for Christmas dinner.
Hermione got her photo album out of her trunk and expanded it to full size. This was one of the prized possessions she had kept and shrunk to pack away. She opened it up and started crying again.
There they were, waving and smiling on the first page. Simon and Mani Granger had been a fair-skinned, late-fifties Englishman and a dark-skinned Aborigine woman in her early forties.
With a 16-year age difference, being an interracial couple, and coming from the opposite ends of the world, the Grangers had certainly faced their share of prejudice and criticism.
Hermione had been glad to discover, at age 11, that the wizarding world seemed fairly color-blind. Her parents did raise eyebrows in Diagon Alley, but that was for being muggles, not for being interracial. She still remembered the horror she'd felt, when she discovered that in joining the wizarding world she had traded racial prejudice for pure-blood magical prejudice. Disillusioned, she had written to her parents, begging to come home.
Her mother had written back, a wise, calm reply. Hermione turned a few pages and pulled it out of the photo album. She opened it up and re-read what her mother had had to say.
"It's human nature," Mani had penned, "to fear and feel threatened by what's different. So they have to convince themselves that 'different' equals 'inferior' so they don't risk being thought inferior themselves. It's all really just a pack of nonsense thought up by people with low self-esteem.
"Promise me you'll never buy into that rubbish. I know you won't—we've raised you to be conscious of injustice wherever and whenever it rears its ugly head. Your father and I know that you will do this magical community a lot of good, Hermione (I can't bring myself to call it a 'wizarding' community, my love, because doesn't that just discriminate against the witches?). Well, whatever you call your new world, know that we are both very proud of you. And if you ever get confused and start believing the tripe they try to sell you, dearest, just think of the very definition of your loving mum's name.
'Mani' was an Aboriginal name that meant "equal."
The words rang so true that Hermione dried her tears. Her mother's clear words of encouragement bolstered Hermione's mood like little else could have done.
After that, she was able to find some refuge from her grief in her beloved books. Not the ones she had brought with her from Hogwarts, not her textbooks, but in the muggle novels that she had grown up reading and had saved from being auctioned off. That kept her busy until Christmas Eve, when she went to church and stayed late afterward to accept all the condolences and well-wishes of her parents' social circle.
She woke on Christmas morning with a sinking feeling. Afraid to open her eyes, she kicked her feet toward the bottom of the bed and felt… nothing.
She had no presents.
She had a moment of sheer, panicky despair until she remembered that her gifts had probably been sent to the Weasleys; they had a family tradition of everyone opening gifts together.
Having given them an excellent reason not to stay with them for the whole holiday—having to take care of her parents' estate—she knew she wouldn't be allowed to beg off going to Christmas dinner and presents.
Christmas at the Burrow was a little strange without Ron there. Hermione felt out of place. She had never felt completely comfortable there anyway—there was always too much noise and activity for her tastes. Growing up an only child of older parents had given her an appreciation for solitude and privacy that went against the grain of the Weasley's family culture.
They were friendly enough, to be sure. Hermione was greeted with hugs and glad shouts of welcome. The house rang with laughter, noise, and activity.
In the midst of it all, Molly found a few minutes to spend with Hermione. She hugged the young woman tightly and expressed her sympathies once again for the loss of her family. Arthur took her aside later and told her that no matter what might or might not ever happen between her and his son, she would always be considered a member of the family and as welcome as any of the ginger-haired Weasleys.
Hermione smiled and hugged the older man, thanking him with a voice that broke. She appreciated the sentiment, but at the same time, she couldn't help but resent it a little. The Weasleys were all good, but they weren't her family. No one could ever take the place of Mani Granger's lively wit and outspoken nature. Molly Weasley meant well, but she was nothing like Hermione's mother.
Nor was Arthur anything like her father. Simon Granger had been the best dentist in the city. Where Arthur came across as hen-pecked and diffident, Simon had been a strong, decisive individual. His quiet strength had perfectly balanced out his younger wife's more ebullient, occasionally strident personality.
No, the Weasleys were nice in their way, but they were no substitute for Hermione's real family. They also, she realized, all had the same family habit of trying to fit other people into their own molds. She had noticed that tendency in Ron and in his mother, but today when everyone was opening presents, she had a prime opportunity to observe it to some extent in every ginger-headed member of the clan.
Hermione's presents were a bit "young" for her tastes, including the glittery pink jumper that Mrs. Weasley had knitted for her. She swallowed her sigh and pasted on a smile, resolving to pass them along to someone else as soon as she could. The magical gifts—the gags from Fred and George, the Quidditch tickets from Ron and Harry (who had owled their gifts from an unknown location), and the "Witch Weekly" magazine from Ginny—only went to point out to her all the ways she was unlike them. Molly wanted to keep her young and become a mother to her; Fred and George thought she was too serious and wanted to "liven her up a little." Ron and Harry thought she should have more of an appreciation for Quidditch, and Ginny thought she should spend more time thinking about her looks.
In a way, every single gift from them was a criticism.
After dinner, when many of the younger crowd ran outside to try a little Quidditch practice, Hermione stood in the doorway and just watched them. Their family was so different from hers that no matter how welcome they made her, she knew that in her heart she would never consider herself part of their family. She was grateful for their sentiments, but at the same time she felt a little put out with them for trying to take the place of her own parents.
No one ever could. The Grangers were a small, quiet, loving but dignified family. Nothing like the Weasleys. And without Ron there, Hermione felt a little left out. Ginny, constantly trying to outdo her older brothers, was out there on the Quidditch pitch laughing and taking risks just like they were (and trying to distract herself from Harry's absence as well, Hermione suspected), and Hermione went back into the living room to read.
Everyone came in from the Quidditch match pink-cheeked and laughing, wafting in gusts of cold air as they shed their jackets and blew on their hands. Hermione put up with the noise as long as she could, but developed a splitting headache soon after everyone came in and was glad to leave.
She returned to her dark, empty, echoing house and went straight to bed.
Author's note: After reading DH, I wondered why Hermione would have thought to send her parents to Australia - did they have family there, or what? Then I started wondering about Hermione's strong sense of injustice, as evidenced by S.P.E.W., and wondered what her parents would have to be like, in order to instill her with that sort of character. If you think about it, an interracial marriage - particularly where one party is from Australia - makes sense. So if you're offended by the idea of interracial marriages, well, tough cookies. And if you're more familiar with Australia, Aborigine language, etc. than I am and spot any inconsistencies, feel free to let me know about them. Thanks! And as ever, please review. Next chapter is on its way in a few days.