AN: Hope you enjoy, this is a story that wouldn't leave me alone while I was trying to write other, so I hope I actually manage to maintain some sort of decent update schedule with it. I have no Beta and am bad about proofreading thoroughly, so I apologize for any mistakes. Oh, and solnyshko means sunshine by the way.
TRIGGER WARNING: I will only say this one time, this story is set in a very dark environment. There will be mentions and depictions of torture, rape and the degradation that I believe would be typical in the life of a slave. I know how hard reading these moments can be, so, if they will in anyway cause you pain, please find a different story to read. Writing is a form of therapy for me, but we don't all recover from things the same way, so bear that in mind and make the best choices for you when you make your reading selections.
Chapter one: The Beginning of Everything
Dear Harry Potter,
Somehow, I'm struggling on how to open this letter, this letter to someone the world believes to be dead. Though my question would be how, how can you not live when you are to be our savior? How can you not still breathe when the very populace who claim you to be gone once heralded you The-Boy-Who-Lived? Then again how could you still live if no one has seen hide nor hair of you subsequent to that night? Anyway, as you can see, I judged, and I believe I do so quite justly, that a simple 'Hi, my name's Hermione Granger,' wouldn't suffice.
I don't know why I write to you; I have no predilections towards hero worship or celebrity crush, but I thought, should you remain in existence, it must be one that's quite lonely. I feel foolish sitting here with my stolen quill and parchment about to pour my soul to a boy long thought dead, but if truth be told, I'm lonely too. I write these letters as much out of selfish need for my own release as I do out of the selfless desire to hopefully help you through my words. You see Harry I'm a mudblood, a slave to Voldemort's reformed regime just as you must feel a slave to your infantile accomplishments.
I often wonder if that's why you disappeared that night; wonder if some loving adult in your life knew of the pressures sure to come with being our worlds 'savior.' I would've done the same in their shoes, I wouldn't allow the greedy wizards of this place to pursue you; to drape you in a fame that served as a constant and morbid reminder that you survived where your parents and so many others had not. I'm so sorry to say such a thing, to recap for you such a loss that you'll never be capable of forgetting is a horribly cruel thing for me to do, but I just wanted you to know that I understand; I'm the sole survivor of my parent's joint murders.
When I was just four years old Voldemort had his second coming, the world looked to a child, a missing child, to destroy him again and as you're still absent in the magical community surely you can imagine how that went. I say this not to blame you nor condemn them for their fearful ignorance, but only to inform you that they were indeed ignorant. You'd have been only five years old at the time, a toddling, tiny, just starting to come into his own magic five-year-old, how could they expect you to save them? Even if you weren't there to feel it, how dare they put such a weight on your tiny shoulders?
I'm sorry, I said I didn't fault them their horrified misjudgments and here I go cursing them for their dread driven actions. I promised myself I wouldn't let my parents passing embitter me to the wonders of the magical world, but sometimes the communities gross lack of courage and repugnant mistreatment of you send me lividly off tangent. You see my parents weren't just murdered, they were brutalized, before my tear-filled young eyes, by Death Eater Antonin Dolohov. I still dream of their screams at night and no one did a thing to stop them. Where was the great Albus Dumbledore when they were writhing on the floor under repetitive, torturous beams of the cruciatus? Hiding away waiting for an unfortunate, orphaned young child to be strong enough to fight everyone's war for them? And look at what it got him, a loss of prestige and a bounty on his head while he leaves an enslaved, imprisoned and silenced wizarding community toiling in his wake. Sorry, sorry no more resentment, I swear; at times I forget that I have vowed forgiveness of this world's transgressions, you must think me such a jaded soul but I promise I'm not.
They say you disappeared that night, and that the Hogwarts game keeper saw you screaming in the arms of your godfather, with only a lightning bolt scar on your forehead to show of your fateful confrontation. They state that same godfather was the secret keeper responsible for Voldemort's ability to find your home that night; that he essentially killed them himself by betraying their fidelius protected location…
But I like to think he hadn't, I like to think that it was someone else that devastated your happy home that night with their disloyalty. I choose to optimistically believe that when he vanished with you on that roaring, flying motorcycle, as the Gamekeeper claimed, that he took you in as his own son instead of cutting your life short as it is thought has been done. I pray that he raised you happily isolated from the sufferings of this place. Even so, such segregation from your own kind must be lonesome, thus I write to you as a friend; as a connection to the world you've left behind for a while- although, for your prosperity only, I hope your leaving is forever, the wrongs our magical nation have done to you make your returning a death warrant. Maybe you are destined to defeat Voldemort as the wizarding populace hoped, but after what we've done, we're not worth you ever returning merely for our salvation; we're not worth that risk to your life. Chosen One or not, no child should be expected to throw themselves haphazardly into danger, nor should they be forced through the agony of continually facing their parent's deaths because they were given celebrity status in the wake of their cruelly forced absence.
Every time I hear 'Mudblood fetch me this,' or 'Mudblood clean that floor, kneel down in the filth where you belong,' I'm reminded that mine died because of my gifted magic. Sometimes it's hard to remember that it is a gift when Mudblood becomes your name and slavery your reality, but my mother breathed her last telling me that it was; telling me that, no matter what, I was a gift to them and that my magic was a gift to the world. She hadn't even known something as fantastical as magic existed until she was killed for her daughter's possessing it, yet she still claimed it was a gift; still called me, the very reason she died, a gift. Sometimes I nearly forget that I have a name, going only by Mudblood as I do these days, but it's because of my mother's words that I always remember that I am Hermione Jean Granger.
Sincerely,
Hermione
Ps. I'm sorry this letter was so bleak; I hate to perpetuate sadness and I promise you any of the acrimony in this isn't an accurate depiction of how I am. I love my magic and, despite how it's treated me, I adore the miracles that embody this world. Please don't discount me as a possible friend because of this initial writing, I had no other idea of how to introduce myself other than by telling you how I know of you, and why I can understand your departure from this place. I know it may not seem it but I truly do write you out of empathy, and to give you a happy view into this world that's so terrible right now. I promise all my future letters will be that way, cheerful. I promise that I will continue to write these and give you carefree moments in my future correspondences, whether or not you reply, whether or not you exist, because I write not only to you but to the idea of you… The Idea of a lonely orphan, persecuted and pained by a world they wish only to love and be a part of; an orphan exactly like me.
Hermione sighed as she sat her quill, down and waved over the little scoops owl in the corner. He wasn't your typical letter carrier but Pip, as she had taken to calling him, had become hers; she didn't have much in this world but she had Pip and Pip had her. He was a serious little owl, he brought Hermione down to earth when she tended to 'dance among the clouds,' as her father called her daydreaming habits, and they had met when they needed each other most…
Hermione had always been the effervescent, generous type, but even she only had so much to give, and it was on the day that she thought she had reached her limit that Pip, quite literally, fell into her lap. She was just nine years old then, living her fifth year as a Mudblood slave, and she had recently been sold to a new charge. A brutal charge. The most brutal. She had been sold to the headquarters of the infamous Dark Lord, Malfoy manor. Day and night innumerous Death Eaters, and even Voldemort himself, traipsed through that house giving her orders and often torturing her for a spot of fun. This wasn't what bothered her though, she had been with two families before and while neither were quite as unpleasant, they were still of the Pureblood aristocracy and she was still their Mudblood slave, she was used to torture and could smile her way through even the most throbbing of physical ills, but what she could not smile through was the emotional blow of seeing the man that killed her parents again.
She hadn't seen him since that night, she hadn't even learned his name when he brought her to the auctioneer for the soonest possible mudblood sale. He'd left her with a sneering man that made her glad she was not one of the beautiful women her captor had ogled at on the auction block, long before she'd even understood the tragedies that leering was inclined to cause. She had not learned his name but she would always remember his face, his piercingly appraising cerulean eyes, his scraggly, shoulder length murk-tinged hair, his prominent Aquiline nose, and his thin-lipped, foreboding smirk. His face was burned as if it were a brand into her nightmares and it was instantaneously recognizable when he passed her in the house that harrowing afternoon.
Her day's task had been dusting the tapestries to a renewed array of potent color, and she had nearly fallen from the ladder she'd used to reach the top of the floor length behemoths when he'd strode confidently down the hall. She gasped at the sight of him and it was clear that she was not the only one with a recognizance of the other as his eyes took on a gleefully malicious gleam when he saw her.
"You've grown solnyshko," He stated simply before continuing to the grand French doors at the corridor's end.
Hermione's duties were forgotten as she dashed through the manor out to the gardens, she collapsed under her favorite oak and wept for hours at the wretchedness of it all; of having to walk the same halls as her parent's murderers. When she had swiped enough of her bawling tears away to examine her surroundings, she had found herself to be sitting beside a sharp-tipped fallen branch, splintered from the great oak by some unknown force.
Suicide was a prevalent killer amidst the mudbloods, she had been told once that all knives, other cutlery, sharp objects, and possible means of harm had been cursed to prevent their use as weaponry. But surely, Hermione pondered, they would think nothing of a simple fallen tree limb. Even if they did, when would they of had the time to charm such a thing? Hermione concluded that they wouldn't have the time as she touched the fractured tip to her pointer finger, apathetic at seeing the rubied blood that pooled there when it easily punctured her skin.
It would probably hurt, to plunge a hunk of tree straight through her tiny nine-year-old body, but was it worth it? All she had to look forward to in this life was the prayer that she'd have a day free of the cruciatus or a night with some semblance of a sustaining meal aside from the meager table scraps she was allowed and she wondered if this was a life worth living. She aimed the limb true, straight for her heart, as the tears begin to fall anew, they were such gut-rending, heaving sobs that she found herself struggling to muster the strength she knew would be necessary to fling herself onto the sharp point.
She couldn't hear the avian coos of sheer agony entwined within her own. She inched it forward, piercing the thin fabric of her threadbare uniform as she solidified her resolve, and turned to brace it against the trunk of her tree, knowing her arms didn't possess the strength to drive it home on their own. All that was left for her was to stand, to pick herself up off the ground and run through her wooded demise straight into death's waiting embrace.
She could do it; she would do it, and she was about to if it hadn't been for the teeny bundle that fell smacking into her lap, right at the moment she'd solidified her resolve in her disparaging mission and made her final suicidal decision. The impact came from a bird, specifically an owl, a small one that was bleeding profusely from his broken right wing. The owl was a fighter, she could see it written plainly in his eyes, and he did not want to die. He did not wish to succumb to the misery currently plaguing his existence, but he needed help. What was an owl to do with a broken wing? Surely such a disabling injury was a death sentence.
Hermione found herself feeling a tormenting sympathy for the little thing, he couldn't make it through on his own, no matter his tenacious desire to do so. He needed help. Her help, for who else was here to give it. Hermione Granger had always been a fighter too, she fought to keep a smile on her face. She fought to bring just a smattering of happiness to the other downtrodden masses. She fought to remember her parent's all-consuming love for her and to spread such love through the hateful world.
Yes, Hermione Granger was a fighter and fighters never gave in; they never surrendered to an unkind world. Hermione was a fighter, and this other little fighter needed her. So long as there was someone around in need, Hermione had her purpose to keep fighting. To keep kicking through the tears until there was no reason left for anyone beside her to cry. To keep on living until the world she left behind was as joyous and unified as her limited circumstances and constitution could make it.
Hermione smiled distantly at the memory despite its gloomier undertones, she'd found a lifelong companion in Pip that day. And now, two years later, it wasn't her desperation she remembered, it was the happiness of finding a friend to remind her of who she truly was.
A Mudblood like Hermione was never to attend school, nor was she to have a familiar. With Pip at least she found a way to achieve obtaining the latter, despite such restrictions on her caged young life as a slave. Hermione was a lover of all creatures, big and small. So, when she came across the idea of a wizard and their familiar in a large tome she smuggled from the library, she was enthralled by the idea. She'd found knowledge of the relationship in her favorite book, Hogwarts a History; it claimed that a witch or wizard may form a bond with a magically augmented creature of some kind and that students were allowed to bring said bonded creature to school with them; although with a few limiting circumstances. This bond, it was more than that of one with a common pet, you were connected to your familiar, you understood each other to the last fiber of your beings and thus served as an amazing comfort in each other's lives. Hermione always longed for such a relationship, but -just as her desire to attend school and assuage her bookish tendencies- she thought this wish impossible. Pip more than proved her wrong that day he fell injured into her lap. He became her familiar, her family, and he was her everything in this punishing world that tried to snatch anything remotely good from her grasp.
Her lips remained faintly upturned as she tied the letter to his leg, "you must be curious who I'm writing to Pip, I know no one to take up a correspondence with, but when I tell you, you'll think me silly."
The bird canted his head questioningly at her as she sighed.
"I'm penning Harry Potter Pip," Hermione explained and the bird hooted indignantly. "I know, I know, 'Harry Potters dead.' But what if he isn't Pip? Oh, don't look at me like that," she commanded the narrow-eyed owl. "I know you hate my daydreaming, but I'm serious. He could be lonely out there somewhere, so I'm going to be his friend."
The Bird gave her another grumpy coo, "Really Pip, it's no harm one way or the other. Even if he is dead, I'm simply writing letters to no one; and if he's not, hopefully I'm bringing a little light into the life of someone who needs it."
Pip flapped his wings in irritable signification, as if to say, "seriously?"
"Yes, I know, I'll be making you fly vast distances for quite possibly no reason if he's gone, but honestly you could use the exercise," Hermione scolded. "You've been putting on weight Pip, I see you sneaking in those extra bacon scraps, and it's not healthy."
If it were possible for a bird to huff, Pip did so as he ruffled his feathers and glared at Hermione. "Oh hush, you know I'm right," she affirmed as she rolled her eyes at the posturing owl. He answered with another avian derivative of a huff, as she tied the rolled note to his taloned leg.
The owl tuned his head away from her refusing to take off, "Please Pip," she begged him. "You know I love you, and I know you think this is pointless, but please humor me. Harry could need someone, just like we needed each other, and you know I can't leave well enough alone when it comes to people in need. Please Pip," she beseeched him with watering eyes.
The owl stared her down for a few more seconds before nestling against her cheek in acquiescence, "thank you Pip," she whispered into his feathers.
The bird cooed soothingly at her as he hopped over to the window taking off into the night.
~o~O~o~
Pip loved Hermione; truly he did. She meant so much more to him than your typical witch-familiar relationship. She was his friend, his best and only friend even, but she was insane. Insanely optimistic that was, she was always smiling and chattering or humming some pleasant tune. She was one of the only lights he saw in this dark, bleak existence. But to smile through all the cruelty the world had brought upon her? To remain so persistently positive? She must be certifiable; insane in a magnificent type of way but insane just the same.
A girl like Hermione, a girl so bright, and hopeful, and just astonishingly good, didn't belong here. She had no place being dimmed and hidden by the murkiness of reality, and Pip dreaded the day her light filled, hopeful demeanor was to be permanently and inevitably snuffed. He didn't think he, or what good was left in this world could survive without her. But a muggle born, especially a witch, rarely lived past their early twenties and each day Hermione grew in age and beauty the familiar became increasingly worried for her.
Hermione was exquisitely beautiful, even at her young, prepubescent age. With her long, enticingly riotous coffee toned curls, her fathomlessly rich, long lashed chocolate brown eyes, her full, sweet pouting lips, and her adorable button nose she was just the kind of naturally gorgeous that rarely saw a muggle born live to even reach twenty. Whether it be by the wand of a jealous pureblood witch, or on the rough cock of a lustful wizard an attractive muggleborn girl was destined for a gruesome early death. Many even ended it on their own, preferring a quick demise to being viciously raped to death, which surely is the worst type of agony. Pip almost wished his wounded fall hadn't thwarted Hermione's suicidal plans that day, because he didn't think he could handle seeing her go through that horrific certainty. But, as earlier mentioned, neither he, nor the worlds remaining joys, could continue without her light.
He loved Hermione, from her easy smiles to her unyielding generous spirit; but that spirit had him flying out in the summer's heat looking for a deceased child wizard, and that he absolutely did not love. Pip gave powerful flaps of his small wings to account for the added weight of Hermione's scroll on his diminutive body, he was not meant for such work. The tiny owl noticed that he felt directed towards a certain path, this was common, an owl sensed where they were supposed to go on a letter run, but Pip did not expect to feel such a pull when on delivery to a dead recipient. He felt wards, meant to misguide and befuddle the nefarious minded, but he did not feel the suspected lost feeling associated with searching for a departed soul.
The boy was heavily warded, he probably had never received a letter before in his young life, but Pip was determined and he would breakthrough. Hermione sought only to make this boy happy and, god help him, Pip would make sure she did somehow. Pip had these desires in mind when he finally distinguished his path, a path that led to a square glass window into a child's bedroom in a lonely cabin set deep into the most desolate woods in Scotland.
~o~O~o~
Pip returned to Malfoy manor free of his original burden. Hermione beamed at the little owl as it dropped a bright red apple in her lap and ruffled his feathers proudly, he was always wont to feed her after a long flight. She stroked his feathers gently, thanking him for his nutritious offering; this was a treat she'd never have experienced without him.
The missing letter didn't mean anything. Especially without a reply attached, it was just like Pip to drop the letter in the woods somewhere so she wouldn't give up her foolish hopes, but it still made her smile brightly. As she crunched into the sweet fruit that Pip brought her, she decided that she would write Harry again. Just in case the letter really did make it to him. Writing was therapeutic for her too after all.
She snuggled down under her blanket that did little to protect her from the autumnal chill, thinking of her next day's duties. Tomorrow was a revel and she would be serving the spirits. This meant torture. This meant viewing things her young eyes should never have to see, things they would never forget. This meant Dolohov.
Curling into a tight ball she attempted to bundle against the cold. Her corner of the servant's corridors was always the most frigid, since they were right beneath the window, which she always left open for her beloved owl to come and go as he pleased. The other Mudbloods didn't seem to mind the chill much, as the antics of the girl and her bird brought a warmth all its own to the drab space.
Hermione slept with a soft, joyful tilt to her lips that night, despite her shivering and her austere morning prospects, because she had someone to talk to, even if they didn't talk back.