AN: It's all JK's. You know it, she knows it, we all know it. Disclaimer done.
Chapter Three
A Deadly Hollow
Something in Hermione Granger's life no longer suited her. She couldn't say what it was, and if she pondered the hollow feeling too long, she came down with a dreadful headache.
She studied the chemistry textbook, briefly envisioning a large pot instead of a glass flask, then shook away the distracting image. She ran her hand through her hair, cut shorter than she ever recalled it, but too short to fly away from her head or turn to shrubbery at the first hint of rain. She felt exposed without it, but her mother had a good point. She was going to be sixteen, and a young lady entering a college sixth-form did not look a mess.
At least her mum hadn't pestered her into cosmetics. A bit of lip balm was all Hermione felt necessary. She was at school to learn, and to study, not to get a boyfriend.
Her entrance exams felt too near. Her revision schedule looked inadequate. Frowning, she picked up the color-coded chart and tried to find more free time. Perhaps if she slept only six hours a night?
A meow disturbed her concentration on Planck's constant. She wanted the best possible grade for her GCSE in chemistry, maths, English, biology, and might survive a less-than-perfect score in history and physics, but she didn't wish to take chances. She needed to have her memory stuffed full of textbooks and knowledge, to even hope to attend a decent academy. A meow wasn't in her schedule.
The meow came again. Meows, like cats, did not abide by human schedules.
She looked up, wondering if it was the calico from down the way, out and about on a prowl.
A rather flat-faced orange furball with knowing eyes stood outside her bedroom window.
Not asking how the cat got there, despite her bedroom being inaccessible from the ground unless one flew, Hermione opened the window and let the cat come inside. "Poor thing," she cooed. "It's hot, isn't it? Do you need water?"
The cat jumped onto her desk, bushy tail lashing.
Hermione hurried to find a dish for the cat, and rinsed the little cup from which she'd eaten a few almonds earlier. She added a bit of water, setting it on the floor within arm's reach of herself. "Here you are," she crooned, and tentatively stretched out her hand, to stroke the lovely fur. "I haven't seen you here before, are you new? I love cats, but my dad doesn't like them very much. You're very handsome, aren't you?"
The cat drank, turned its head, and sank its fangs into the skin between her thumb and index finger.
Hermione cried out in shock, pain, dismay.
"Crookshanks!" she snapped. "What was that for?"
Crookshanks? How would I know such a word, why would I use such a name, what…
Crookshanks! This is Crookshanks! I know him! I love him! He's mine! I'm his! Crookshanks!
The cat-kneazle calmly licked up the tiny drop of her blood, and the wound healed before her eyes.
"Oh, Crooks," she gasped, and sat shaking on the floor with her beloved cat-kneazle in her arms, sobbing for the world she had regained, as her mother called her name.
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Hermione Granger lay on her bed, in her parents' home, waiting for her mother.
Her father, having seen the cat, said something about returning it to a shelter; she would worry about it later. She kept her arms around Crookshanks, the anchor to a reality she could remember only because of the same animal.
What did he do? Is it kneazle-magic? What did he do? How did he find me?
Wait, how did he get to my bedroom window? I'm not on the ground floor!
After far too long (about twenty minutes), her mother entered the room, bearing the familiar and beloved tea set. Three cups. Pot. Little bowl for sugar, with a tiny nick in its lid. Little pitcher for milk. Only two cups, this time. Dainty china with delicate floral designs.
Hating her weakness, Hermione whispered, "Mummy? I have to keep him. I'll go to the sixth form, I promise, I'll be good. I'll study hard! But please, please let me keep him!"
The trim brunette dentist set down the tray, closed the door, and sat on the bed, stroking Hermione's hair. "Oh, darling. Of course you can keep the cat. I don't know how he got here, but obviously, he's not going to stay away. Your father dropped him at a shelter in Nottingham."
Hermione flinched. She kissed Crookshanks between his ears. "Poor thing! Nottingham? Why?"
"We worried he'd find you. We couldn't take him back where you found him. Hermione, we need to talk."
Blushing, Hermione said curtly, "I know about that, Mother."
"Not that," exclaimed Mrs. Granger, and sighed, her eyes far away, her face sagging with exhaustion. "I only wanted to keep you safe, my sweet smart girl."
"Safe from what? Who I am?" Hermione stopped suddenly, then frowned. "Wait. You're not confused. You know?"
"Sit up, dear, let's have a nice cuppa."
They drank their tea. It was Darjeeling, a lovely treat for a weekday. They usually had it on Sundays. Hermione cherished Darjeeling.
"Now, no biscuits, I'm afraid, but I think you might need this in a bit," her mother said, and produced from her cardigan's pocket a Cadbury milk bar.
Hermione bit her lip. This is bad. A chocolate digestive is bad-day-at-school, and lemon tart is major-family-moment, but Cadbury milk is someone-died!
"My grandmother was a witch. My mother was a squib."
Not since she'd first met McGonagall had Hermione been astonished to such a degree. Her mouth sagged open. Her eyes bulged. Air whistled out of her.
"You can't break that ridiculous Statute of Secrecy with me," her mother continued gently, and reached out to twine her hand around Hermione's. "We kept it a secret. My grandmother... Oh, she was such a lovely person! She was a healer. She saved lives in the Great War*, the Spanish flu… She healed everyone. Magical or not. Oh, they were angry with her! So angry. She married a non-magical, too, that upset people. She hated the magical world, you know."
"No, I didn't," muttered Hermione resentfully.
"None of that, darling, this is important for you to understand."
"Yes, Mum." One lump or two, Mum? Shall I bend and bow, Mum, or is a scrape and cringe sufficient? Tug my forelock, Mum?
"Now, my mum was a nurse, as you know. Healing is in our family, I suppose. My grandmother's father was a non-magical physician. She was the first known magical in the family, and until you, she was the only one." Sad eyes focused on Hermione's. "I'm not telling this well, but it is difficult. You see, when my grandmother was found to be magical, that was around the time the wizards and witches of Britain walked away from the rest of us. They went into hiding, I suppose you could say. I don't know why. They may not. But my grandmother told me, when I was a little girl, that the wizards hated all our technology. Electricity upset their magic. Automobiles upset their ideas. They decried it as polluting the world with impurities, and they had a point, in terms of environment."
Can she get to the point? Oh, Crooks, I want her to let me go to Harry! I have to explain, apologize, he must think I abandoned him!
Her mother's fingertip tapped her nose. "Over here, Hermione."
Abashed, Hermione again looked her mother in the eye. "Yes, Mum, sorry, Mum."
Her mother's arm came around her in a brief hug. Hermione did not inherit her hugs from her mother, that was clear. Mrs. Granger preferred the dainty, proper, shoulder-touch hug.
"My grandmother chose to live in what we'd consider the normal world. After the Great War, however, that was less and less safe. Europe was in disarray in general. I suppose people wanted conformity to give them a sense of safety. My grandmother, naturally, did not conform. Until the incident."
Hermione sat up straighter, frowning with worry, and her mind racing. What incident?
"Your great-grandmother went to Diagon Alley to buy potions texts, herbology texts, for my mother to study. It never occurred to her… Or my mother… They went to Diagon Alley dressed as everyday non-magical people. No robes, no long gowns, no odd hats. Rather flapper, in fact, very Great Gatsby, you might say." A smile cracked across Mrs. Granger's face. "I should find the photographs."
Curiosity fueled impatience. "Mum? What happened?"
Her mother looked at the floor, tears glinting at the corners of her eyes. "They were attacked. The good witches and wizards of Britan drove them out. For wearing muggle clothing. What a bizarre word. 'Muggle'. It reminds me of 'puggle'."
"A baby platypus is called a puggle," said Hermione for no particular reason.
"After that, my grandmother vowed to turn her back on the magical world. To be certain nobody ever realized she was a witch, or her daughter was a squib. Another distasteful term, in my opinion. Everything about her life became rigid. Every social standard of non-magical society conformed to. Right down to that tea set," said her mother, and nodded toward the family heirloom. "It started with six cups, you know. I cried my eyes out when I broke one."
Mind whirling, Hermione grasped what she could. My great-grandmother was a healer-witch. My grandmother was a squib. My mother has always known about magic.
My mother has always known about magic!
"Calm yourself," said her mother wearily, and fussed at the sleeve of her blouse. "Yes, I knew, but your father didn't. That's the deal, Hermione. If you hadn't been born with magic enough to go to Hogwarts, then it would remain safely in stories."
"But you could have said! You knew! All along! When I was little, and things happened!" cried Hermione, her heart aching. "Why didn't you?"
A small tired smile creased Mrs. Granger's face. "We return to the beginning. I wanted you to be safe. From them. Those people who knocked my grandmother to the ground, and hexed her, and hexed my mother, a little girl, for what? Being in different clothing! Everyone has told me how afraid the magical are of being discovered, but what did they do? Beat a woman and her child! So badly that my mother had nightmares to the end of her life! No, Hermione!" pronounced Mrs. Granger, with a firm shake of her head. "Those Ministry people gave me the choice, and I choose for you to be non-magical. You are safer this way, and I won't hear any argument. You will go to sixth form, you will manage, and we will all be safer and saner for it."
Her mother kissed her on the temple, stood, and took herself and the tea tray out of Hermione's bedroom. She left the Cadbury bar on Hermione's bedside table.
She took away my choice!
Hermione willed the door to slam shut.
It didn't.
Mum let them bind my magic!
Despair overcame her.
With her magic bound, she was not a witch. She was a squib with a lot of knowledge of Arithmancy and Potions and Herbology and Runes. In other words, a muggle who read some books.
I attacked Dumbledore. I suppose this is the inevitable result. I may have ended up in Azkaban. But how do I live without magic, knowing I had it, knowing I should, knowing…
Knowing Harry is out there alone? Not alone, but…
He has Sirius, Remus, others. He doesn't need me.
I need him.
What do I do?
Her mind found nothing. Her emotions did. She curled up around Crookshanks on the bed, and with his purr rumbling softly against her, she cried herself to sleep on one last thought:
Stupid hormones!
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The Grangers were dentists. Contrary to the expectations of many, they did not make a great deal of money, although they certainly didn't suffer. The Grangers had gone into private practice from the beginning. It was a calculated risk. By acting privately, without extensive reliance on NHS, they gained freedom from capricious funding changes. They also missed the chance of guaranteed patients. Their practice had not flourished without hard work, and it was only after they had a certain income level that they bought their little three-bedroom house and set to having a couple of children.
Despite their efforts, as Hermione had deduced from the timeline of her life and theirs, they were unable to have children, save Hermione. She came along first, and easily, and then… None.
The third bedroom since acted as a place of storage. The boxes were neatly labeled, with colored labels. Red meant Christmas decorations; yellow meant Easter items, such as the tray on which they served the lamb roast. The luggage lived in that room, too.
So did a locked trunk she now knew was her Hogwarts trunk.
She knelt in front of it, tracing her fingers over the lock. It was new, and strong, and only one level of protection against her intrusion. One of her parents (and she would place money on her mother being that parent) had added a chain and padlock around it, as well.
"It's all in there," said her mother, startling her into a squeak.
Hand to her chest, Hermione gasped, "Mum!"
"It's rather early to be awake, don't you agree?"
"Mum… Please… It was…" she attempted. Logic had deserted her. She hated that, and forced out at least one small rational question. "My wand?"
"Broken."
Her mind knew that, but her hopeful heart ached nonetheless.
"Your robes are there, and your books, from both schools."
Hermione bowed her head, but her new cut meant her hair did not hide her face anymore. Her mother saw her face. Hermione knew it when her mother's hand gently touched her cheek.
"We were angry, yes, and then your father was… Well, he's not angry, since he doesn't know now. Someday, when you have children…"
"I'll never have children!" spat Hermione, scrambling to her feet and stalking to the door. "Never. I never want to be a mother like you!"
"Hermione Jane Granger!"
Her mother was a gentle-handed woman, as befit her profession, good with children in need of dental care. To have her mother come within a hair of slapping her told Hermione how very far she had overstepped.
They stared at each other, jaws set, chests heaving, so very alike despite their differences.
Abruptly, Hermione flew at her mother and crushed her in a hug. "I'm sorry, Mum, so sorry, I'm so sorry! I didn't mean it like that! I mean… How can I… Mum, I miss them."
"Hush you," her mother crooned, in that soft voice Hermione had known as safety and security from the very cradle. "Hush, darling. I know. I know. I had quite a lot to say to my mother, too, when I was your age, and I wasn't half as polite."
"You?" snorted Hermione, half-sobbing, half-laughing. "You don't even say…"
"Yes, well, your grandmother started fining me a shilling every time I used a profanity. I knew you had magic, I wanted you safe."
"Harry isn't safe," whispered Hermione into her mother's shoulder. "He's alone. Not alone, but… Mum, if you know, then you know about Voldem…"
"Never say that name."
Startled, Hermione pulled away, tripped, and sat flat on her school trunk, which was not comfortable. "It's only a name!"
"No! My grandmother may have died before he took over, but my mother knew of him. She could see things I can't. She knew things…" Mrs. Granger shuddered, drawing her night-robe tighter, if possible, and shook her head vehemently. "No. It is their war. Let them finish it."
"I'm one of them," whimpered Hermione forlornly, and found Crookshanks in her lap, rumbling a low, soothing purr. Her tears fell into his thick orange fur.
"You were. Now you're going to sixth form, and don't give me that look, we both know you'll do extremely well on the exams."
Quite a lot of her life's longings finally found words as Hermione stated sadly, "I don't want to be someone who does well on exams."
"You aren't. Now, why don't we go downstairs and make muffins?" her mother offered hopefully.
Hermione forced herself to smile.
"Cooking is chemistry and physics," her mother reminded her with a desperate little smile.
Hermione substituted herbology.
"We've lovely blackcurrants left, and Greek yogurt, and some rhubarb from the garden," her mother added, as enticement.
I'm rubbish in the kitchen. But Mum wants something normal…
"Sure, Mum. Let me wash up, and I'll do all the chopping."
Harry, forgive me. All I can do now is books. You need better than that. You need a proper witch.
Crookshanks meowed at her, then butted his head hard against her chin.
"And I'll feed the cat," added Hermione with a tiny smile. She stood, feeling a thousand years old, with Crooks in her arms. "Priorities, right, Crookshanks?"
Her mother's gaze filled with pride, before her mother bustled away.
So this is growing up. Always having a breaking heart, marveled Hermione as she plodded to her room. I don't like it at all. In fact, it's pants.
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On the first Monday of September of the year 1995, Hermione Granger tugged straight her school uniform blazer (navy blue, crest on left), equally dark blue trousers, black loafers, white button-down shirt, navy tie with slim diagonal stripes in a sky sort of blue. She ran her hands through her hair, which fluffed out in somewhat manageable fashion after she succumbed to her inner Lavender-and-Parvati, bought a magazine about hair, and tried a "curl-easing conditioning treatment". With less length, and less fluff, she seemed almost… No, she told herself, not pretty.
Boring. Much more normal.
For a non-magical value of normal, she whispered sadly inside herself.
She lifted her backpack, which could not be charmed to carry everything without breaking her spine, and set off for her first day at Haysmith Academy.
She wondered what her friends were doing. Ron, stuffing himself at the breakfast table of Hogwarts? Harry, starting a new year, in an entirely new school, living with Sirius and Remus, growing taller and breathing freer far from Britain? Her almost-friends, Neville, Luna, and, yes, even Parvati?
A scream had been caught in her throat for weeks. She wished she could utter it.
The train into London offered her an hour of reading time, which Hermione spent studying the school map and her transit guide. Once she reached London, it was time for the bus, and then a walk of a few blocks, past a lovely little park, and to the academy itself. Beyond the campus lay the usual ant-farm-like housing estates, and the sudden oppressive clutch around her throat came from thinking of Privet Drive in Little Whinging, Surrey. She and Harry had been geographically near as children, and now…
"You must be Miss Granger? Let me escort you in."
The person who asked her this was dressed in a smart subdued-green tweed skirt suit, sensible low-heeled shoes, and had the Haysmith Academy crest on her scarf. She appeared to be in her mid-forties, with tight-curled hair, and oddly unblinking eyes.
Hermione smiled politely, while her brain shouted at her. This is not right! I am meant to go in the main entrance, to the administrative offices, and this person reminds me of a toad!
"Thank you, but no thank you," said Hermione aloud, and wondered if she could finally release that trapped scream. It was London. Who would notice?
She tried to walk past the woman.
There was a sharp pain in her leg.
That's a stinging hex!
She's one of them!
Which them?
Oh for heaven's sake, Hermione, she scolded herself, you were hit by a stinging hex. Run now, figure out details later!
She bolted across the pavement, toward the students in their matching uniforms, a mob of strangers and potential bullies that, at the moment, promised safety.
Ow! I forgot how those hexes hurt! I need to ring Mum!
Why my mum?
Right, she knows the thems.
Horrible usage, that.
Having tripped into three boys of the sort to be sorted into Slytherin, Hermione made polite excuse, and hurried for the school doors. Her pulse pulsed hard in her ears. That's a them. Magical them. Not a friendly one. Stinging hex. Ministry? Why? I haven't done anything. I can't do anything! I'm a squib now!
Dread encompassed Hermione as she made her way toward what seemed to be a sanctuary of responsible adults: an office.
The eyes.
The eyes.
The secretary had the eyes of someone whose will was no longer her own.
Potion? Imperius curse? Does it matter? No. She is not safe. Find safety!
Hermione reversed, following the map she had memorized, and glad this place had no tricks up its sleeves, or whatever it was a building had. No staircases switching direction or dimension, no new hallways. All laid out exactly as the map of the building she had been given, the academy corridors and rooms ticked as expected.
She dove into a toilet.
I really need to stop this hiding-in-toilet thing.
Then again, who goes in one?
Oh. Me. And a troll. And…
Her breakfast threatened a return performance. She had a strange need to run, but to where?
It's cold.
So very cold.
Why is it so very cold?
Why can't I… I need to remember… The cold…Something about the cold and crushing of hope…
She heard things she did not remember. Harry's voice, raised in protest. Sirius Black, ordering someone to halt. China-blue eyes surrounded by white, like bits of sky punched through cloud, came nearer, and a light flashed and…
The moment they took me from St. Mungo's and blanked me is my worst memory and that means the cold is a dementor and even with my magic bound shouldn't I see it but if I do will I simply die in its kiss?
Hermione curled up tight against a wall, reaching for her magic, scraping at the odd diamond-like barrel in which she felt it being contained.
She screamed, at long last, as if being murdered, because the cold now hurt into her bones. "Expecto patronum!"
Nothing happened, save the misting of her breath on the air.
The cold grew denser. Hermione's body twitched.
Oh no.
Her shoulders burned from a cold beyond ice.
It is touching me.
Think, feel, happiness, happiness is my mum and chocolate and Harry and Crookshanks and Harry and magic and Harry and my mum and Darjeeling tea on a Sunday and Harry and…
A dreamy peace enveloped her.
She imagined the island.
They were building a sand castle. She and Harry, using hands and a mixing bowl, racing back and forth to snatch up pretty shells for the walls, a tendril of seaweed, digging a channel for the moat, laughing at everything and nothing, then collapsing on the same blanket, to drink cold lemonade and call out what shapes they saw in the clouds.
Nothing can take that from me, not even a dementor, decided Hermione, and glided into the bitter frost thinking of eating fresh mango with Harry as a papaya-colored sunset covered the sky.
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"Well, that's not what I expected," said a voice she knew.
"Which part?" said another. "The tropical fruit and bright pink frangipani flowers, or the dementor?"
"The outraged muggle mother with the weird weapons," replied the first voice. "What were those things?"
"Plaque removers."
"They take off plaques with tiny little things like that?"
"Plaque on your… Someday, you're going to sit through a term of Muggle Cultural Studies with the kids. Her mother is a dentist. She heals and cleans teeth."
"She puts that in someone's mouth? What sadistic crap is that?!"
A thump, and the second voice said, with very obvious strain, "The kind that will look appealing after I hex you into the next solar system, you bloody useless lump of fur and bad breath!"
A third voice, this one not as deep, definitely more upset, cracked across her hearing. "Stop it! I told you, I begged you…"
"The Ministry," said Male Voice Two.
Hermione yawned, and a female voice she knew very well whispered, "Oh thank goodness!" as a prayer to all possible benevolent forces in the universe.
"Mum?" rasped Hermione.
"I'm here, darling, I'm here."
"Where are we? Did you die in the cold with me and Scott?"
"Who's Scott?"
Male Voice Two, better known as Remus Lupin, informed the room, "Robert Falcon Scott, famous for expeditions to Antarctica, and so help me, Sirius, if you ask me what Antarctica is..."
"I did look at a few globes and maps the last little while," came a petulant reply from, yes, Lord Black, Sirius Black, headmaster, owner, godfather, and (as Lupin succinctly described him) mutt.
"Am I still frozen?" asked Hermione, aware on one level that she must not be, but uncertain on every other.
Something warm and damp hit her face. Her mother kissed her, while weeping. "No, my sweet smart girl, you're not frozen. An absolutely vile creature…"
"The woman in tweed?"
A profound silence fell. Hermione yawned and managed to crack open her eyes.
Lupin sat near the door of the room, which appeared to be a common hospital room. Sirius was stopped mid-step in pacing. Her mother, at her side, held a thousand questions in her gaze.
Harry Potter, with a very different scar on his forehead, cleared his throat. "We meant the dementor."
"Oh," said Hermione lightly, and smiled. "We were watching a sunset, you and I, when I froze."
Something touched her hand. Then Harry turned, said, "We need to talk somewhere else," and left the room.
The men followed.
Her mother stayed, and gently brushed a stray bit of hair from her forehead. "Rest. You never froze. You did cause a bit of mayhem, but that's rather to be expected of you, at this point."
Mum sounds… Wry? Resigned? Amused?
Oh drat. What did I do now?
As sleep took her into a far more comfortable place, Hermione decided that if this was all a dream in her dying, she would gladly accept it.
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As Hermione would later learn, via memory in a pensieve, Harry and the adults had quite a discussion. One might even term it a raging row.
After Hermione's forcible removal from St. Mungo's, they had returned to the island, despite Harry's strenuous objections. Lupin, as a werewolf, did not wish to risk the wrath of both the Ministry of Magic and Dumbledore. Sirius simply wanted Harry safe and out of Britain, particularly after seeing the malicious glee in Dumbledore's smile as he bound Hermione's magic and obliviated her.
Harry pretended to accede, what with the new school term approaching, and arrangements, and the inevitable truth of life in magical Britain: One did not cross Dumbledore openly. They had. Hermione would simply be given up as lost, and be safer as a muggle. Really, said Lupin, they did believe that.
Then Harry convinced Dobby to pop him to the next nearest island, from which place he snuck onto a ferry, to another island (quite large, by his account), and bought himself a ticket to London, England, by way of Miami, Detroit, Toronto, New York, and Paris. (According to Harry, "America's bloody huge! Takes longer to get around there than to travel around the whole of Europe! And everyone smiles all the time!")
Since Harry was traveling on Sirius's money, having "borrowed" the bank card Lupin had used, drawing on the Black family vault at Gringotts via Visa and its usual intermediaries, plus goblins… It did not take long for anyone to track him down.
He, of course, had a good working knowledge of the non-magical everyday world, better even than Lupin. The werewolf needed it to hide from the magical world; Harry grew up in it. With his father's invisibility cloak, a little thought, and some spying (a polite word for sitting in the waiting room of her parents' dental practice, cloaked, until he heard idle chat about her), Harry decided to meet her at Haysmith Academy and kidnap her back to the island, re-awaken her magic somehow, and to heck and worse with the rest of the world.
The last thing Harry counted on was a dementor.
"I reckon what I really didn't count on was Sirius and Moony catching me about to go into that girls' toilet," he admitted with a blush, as Hermione sipped ginger tea in her hospital bed. "The dementor, now, that was a shocker."
"What did they mean by fruit and flowers?" inquired Hermione's mother, sitting on the other side of the bed, and glowering at this ruffian intent on reclaiming her daughter from her.
"Ah, yeah, that," said Harry, and rubbed his neck. "Lupin thinks Hermione's magic tried to unbind itself to save her from the dementor, and somehow or other, whatever she was thinking of…"
Hermione turned scarlet.
"…Tropical fruit and frangipani flowers were all over the floor in there. Once Lupin and I sent the dementor on its way, Sirius tidied up, but we didn't know some other girl saw the whole thing. Not saw, I mean, exactly, what with them being disillusioned and I was under my cloak, but they saw fruit and flowers and Hermione, and…"
"What he is failing to say," interrupted Mrs. Granger crisply, "is that Haysmith decided that you were pranked in some nefarious manner, to yet be determined, and were rendered unconscious. The hypothermia is yet to be explained in logical terms."
"The girl ran screaming," Harry said, looking abashed. "I didn't have time to do anything, what with the school nurse and then an ambulance and all."
"Where exactly would you have taken her, in that state?" growled Mrs. Granger, clutching Hermione's free hand protectively in her own. "Back to the wand-waving filth who did this to her in the first place?"
Oh dear, I do hope I have a chance to explain to Harry about Mum's problem with magical Britain.
"She's my best friend! I didn't want to lose her! They went too far!" argued Harry, his voice rising along with a flush up his neck. "She got rid of that stupid scar…"
"You still have a scar," said Hermione meekly. "I'm so very sorry…"
"…and they, those…" Harry visibly struggled not to use profanity. "All the Ministry wanted to do was issue a warning, since no real harm came to him, but he insisted she's dangerous. Yes, she is! Because she thinks! And they don't! She asked questions he didn't like, and she found answers he didn't like, that's why they did it!"
"Harry!"
He looked at her, green eyes glowing.
"I can feel your magic," she hissed. "We're not in Mungo's. Calm down. Please. My mum has good reasons to dislike the world you're part of."
"We're part of," corrected Harry, but with less volume.
"I'm bound," Hermione reminded him around the lump in her throat. "All I can do is read books. And give clever answers on exams. I'm not enough anymore, Harry. We both know that. And the school needs Sirius and Lupin, so it needs you, or they won't be there, and then what will everyone do?"
"Everyone can…"
A nurse entered, as only a nurse can, in the quick-walking, frown-smiling manner of nurses the world over, trying to do too much for too many in too little a period of time. "Visiting hours are over unless you are family, and you are not, young man," she clipped out. "Off you go. Mrs. Granger, you are welcome to stay the night on the cot again."
For one anguished moment, Harry's green eyes pleaded with Hermione, and she found she was a coward. She needed to tell him to go away, and forget her, and find joy. She wanted to call him to her side and kiss him until they fainted from lack of breathing.
Instead, she said, "We'll talk tomorrow. Good night, Harry."
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*The Great War, better known as World War One, for those unfamiliar with that term.
I am not by any means British, but some of my in-laws are. If I muck up any Britishisms, blame them. Such as "pants" (which may not yet have been current in the 1990s, but is, of itself, so very evocative that I had to use it). Note: Past tense of lie (as in recline, in bed, etc.) is *lay*; to lie (deceive) is *lied*; to lay something down (set) is laid. Thank you for reading that.