Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or anything you can recognise from any books or TV series or movies. I do however take liberties with the plots or mentions provided by JKR or other writers. The only profit I'm getting out of it is improving my English.
Title: Secrets & Keepers – Supernova
Rating/Warnings: R/M [AU; identity crisis; teenage rebellion; canon typical violence; profanity; discussion of and references to past events of gore nature; references to off-screen original character deaths; pure-blood propaganda]
Characters and pairings: Hermione Granger with the Granger family and wide assortment of original characters (some of which were referenced in Secrets & Keepers – Collision Curse) and surprise guest appearances from canon characters. References to Collision Course pairings and a couple of minor OC pairings. No Hermione's pairings aside of brief mentions about her crush on Lockhart.
Summary: Hermione learns the hard way that there's a lot of truth that shouldn't be passed around. It's a story of multiple crises starting from identity, trust in one's loved ones, the trust which one's friend put in one. It's a story of doubts which people voice about other people. It's a story of friendships that are forged in crisis. It's also a love story as much as a story about love. A pre-PoA AU.
Word count: About 760.
Spoilers: Canon spoilers for PS/SS, CoS and pre-Hogwarts PoA. Linked to but doesn't require reading of Secrets & Keepers – Collision Course.
Chapter summary: Hermione suffers a minor set back in her quest.
AN: It's a very short chapter but one that I think is necessary in these days stories about coming for age when your main character is a girl. At the moment it brings very little to the plot, it might become more significant a couple of chapters more down the line. It also shows her relationship with her Mum, something I wanted to explore while keeping the Grangers relatively removed from the core of the story. For those looking for fun there's a chapter eight coming on schedule, it's another chapter that I think should be in a coming of age story but was way more funny to write as it's pure Hermione.
This story updates on Tuesday.
Also dedicated to all of my readers who stuck with me for so long. Thank You, I hope that You will find this story enjoyable. I would be the most grateful for constructive criticism.
Beta read by Regnbuen
Secrets & Keepers - Supernova
Chapter seven: 3rd & 4th July 1993
3rd & 4th July 1993, 34 Willoughby Road, Hampstead, London.
The headache that started in the Beady Bunch shop continued for the rest of the day and into the night. By lunch it was joined by stomach ache that made her change her plans. By the time she returned home she felt so miserable that she crawled straight into bed. She managed to doze off for a couple of hours and arose only to yell towards the kitchen that she wasn't hungry and that she was going to take a bath instead.
Upon undressing she discovered the initial cause of both her headache and stomach ache and she cursed. As a daughter of doctors she entered Hogwarts aware of what menstruation was and ways to handle it. As a teenage witch and a Muggleborn she also had a health talk with Madam Pomfrey on the subject too. Reassured by both her mother and Madam Pomfrey that she could come to them when it started, she smiled and promised that she would. And then promptly forgot about it since it didn't concern her yet.
Of bloody course she would get her first menstruation at one of the worst possible times ,and by the look of it she belonged to the unlucky lot who had it rough. Last year she brought home potions that helped with the worst symptoms of menstruation, but since Madam Pomfrey warned her that they only had a couple of months shelf-life she disposed them when she returned to Hogwarts. This year however, amongst the army of potions she brought with her, that particular potion was missing. She forgot to ask and Madam Pomfrey didn't offer it to her.
She seethed through the clean-up, of both herself and the state of her clothes. Without breathing a word to her mother she took a couple of sanitary pads from her stash and brought them with her into her bedroom hoping that she wouldn't need all of them.
She hadn't, but that didn't change the fact that the rest of the evening and night was pure misery. She managed to fall asleep in the wee hours of the morning and woke up just in time for lunch which made her feel queasy. Coupled with a headache that didn't abate at all, she locked herself in her bedroom after posting a big, fat sign that had 'Hermione At Work' on it.
That didn't deter her parents from asking whetever or not she would come down for dinner, for a movie, for a card game, for a midnight snack. Luckily by the next morning Mum brought a cup of herbal tea, a plate of plain toast, a sheet of ibuprofen, a thermoform and an entire bar of milk chocolate into her room.
"It sucks but it gets better," she told her as she ruffled her hair affectionately.
"Maybe when you're dead," Hermione muttered grimly. "I'm a witch and due to the increased lifespan of magical folk witches are known to menstruate at the minimum into their late sixties. Some really unlucky ones keep menstruating way into their late seventies. There are also records of a few women that gave birth well past their seventies. One at one hundred and one, and two others at one hundred and three respectively. That means they had to menstruate all the way up to their hundreds! I will most likely spend the rest of my life bleeding every month for a couple of days. Do you have any idea how many gallons of blood that's it?"
"I can give you a better guess than your Dad," Mum offered with a soft smile. "Although I never liked to think about it. I was blessed with a regular cycle and only one rougher day a month once my cycle stabilised. Yours will too."
But I'm not your daughter and you cannot apply your own experiences to me, had been on the tip of her tongue but she managed to bite it down in time.
Not yet. Not until it's the last resort and I have no other way of finding my biological mother, she decided. One day though…
She might not have been her biological mother but Mum was still Mum. Her soothing, gentle touch eventually lulled Hermione into a nap after which (mostly thanks to the tea and ibuprofen) she felt a bit better, physically at the very least.
Her inner turmoil on whether or not she should tell Harry the truth had not abated.
TBC