Muted voices in the living-room.
Except that it couldn't be, because it was…way past Hermione's bedtime. And she was in bed, as everyone ought to be at this hour. Her parents, of all people, couldn't possibly be entertaining right now, particularly since they were supposed to go to the wizards' shops in the morning, have been supposed to go to the wizards' shops for weeks. Early to bed and early to rise were Granger words.
Crazy dream, that's all. Hermione decided to go back to sleep.
But when muted voices became raised voices, she had to pad out of her bedroom and down the stairs to investigate, sudden light stabbing into her eyes, floor cold under her bare feet. Once she had stopped squinting against the light and she could actually see, she realised that there really were people in the living-room with her parents. Not even neighbours, a couple of strangers with foreign accents.
The man was younger than Daddy. And fancy. Fair hair and serious eyes and wearing a dressy overcoat.
Better than the woman, though. She was maybe even younger. Slight and sharp under a wide-brimmed black hat and holding a pointy stick.
Hermione scrubbed her face with her hands and tried to wake up. "I know this is a silly sort of thing to say," she said from the doorway, "but are you magic?"
"Hermione! What are you doing out of bed? Goodness, you shouldn't be here!"
"I can't sleep, Mummy. You're being too loud and it's ten o'clock."
The strangers said nothing at all. They stared silently, until the woman eventually said, "Fuck me," then, right after uttering that profanity, "She takes after her mother. Not the eyes—those are Bourbon eyes. Fuck me. She's all grown up."
Those were bewildering words. And people. "Daddy? Who are they?"
"Nobody important," Daddy said, but it didn't take magic to know that was a blatant lie. He glared at the strangers. "I think it's time for you to leave. You're upsetting my family."
"Don't be absurd," the man said, "this girl is no blood relation to either of you. I think I would remember it if I gave my daughter to two fools."
Hermione was now wide awake. "Is this some sort of joke?"
"No," the woman said. "Why? Was it funny?"
Everybody talked at once. Yes, this man is your father; yes, you are adopted; no, we didn't want you to find out this way. Yes, it has something to do with Hogwarts; yes, that's why the letter was addressed to a Miss H. Granger of Bourbon.
Hermione vaguely remembered this incongruous postal mistake and the witch-professor pursing her lips and saying, "I don't suppose any of you know what's this about?" and "I'll make inquiries in any case."
Daddy thought these inquiries had been uncalled for. "You're about eleven years too late to be making demands," he said, red-faced and furious, "that's when the adoption papers came through. You have any more questions, you'll ask them to our lawyers. I'm going to sue you for this."
A moment of silence, then the man who had fathered Hermione said softly, "Well, Liesel. I never heard of that one before. Suing me. They really are muggles."
"Convenient," said the woman. Liesel, supposedly. "Your daughter goes missing. Falls right in the hands of innocent clueless muggles. Convenient."
"Is that why you won't put your wand away? You can be suspicious at times, my dear. Has anyone ever told you that before?"
"Let's assume I put it away and he attacks you. I'd have to snap his neck. That's the best I can do wandlessly."
The man spoke severely, "You are not killing anybody in front of my daughter." Once he'd decided the message had sunk in, he smiled shyly at Hermione. If he thought it was comforting, he was quite, quite wrong. Especially when he added, "Why don't you go up to your room while I talk to Mr and Mrs Granger? Liesel shall keep you company."
Hermione didn't want to go anywhere with Liesel, and if the shouting were any indication neither did her parents—could she still call them that?—but it didn't matter anyway, because the pale witch was already marching purposefully off and dragging Hermione with an iron grip on her arm.
When they were upstairs, she randomly emptied Hermione's school bag on the floor, and handed it to her, informing, "You got ten minutes to pack."
"Pack?"
"Pack. Clothes or toys or whatever. We're not coming back here."
"We?"
"What are you, a parrot? Yes, we. You and me and your father. We're not locals. We're not even nationals."
Hermione wondered if this woman had some mental issues. "Where are we going?" she asked, idly curious about just how mad she was.
"A place called Bourges. It's where your people live in France. Now get packing."
Answer: really mad. And scary. So better humour her. Hermione picked up books and threw them hastily into the bag. "Are you family too?" she asked, partly because she wanted to know, partly because she was trying not to be a parrot.
"Not exactly. You're my goddaughter."
"Really? Then why have I never met you before? Or this man who's supposed to be my father?"
"There's no supposed about it," said Liesel, completely missing the point. "We lost you when you were a baby—your magic was weak, we couldn't trace you. Took you for dead until this woman from Hogwarts told Nathaniel—"
"Who's Nathaniel?"
"Slim, blond, soft voice? Looks like a tortured poet? Your father. Nathaniel de Bourbon. Thirty-first head of the Bourbon family. You'd be the thirty-second generation."
Hermione wasn't sure she wanted to be anything yet. "What do you mean, I got lost when I was a baby? How do you lose a baby? Where were you?"
"It was ugly," Liesel answered evasively, glancing at the door. "Better to be lost than dead, though. I think they're done down there."
Hermione didn't need to be told twice, she ran down the stairs, bag bouncing against her back, and heard her mum banging away in the kitchen and talking at the same time.
"—and this is her, in costume for her first school play. She played an asparagus, she was enormously convincing. Oh, and this one was taken when she came in first in the math competition—you would have been so proud of her, Mr Bourbon. She stood up to that awful teacher—a sexist pig, he wouldn't let Hermione answer any of the questions and she was the only girl competing."
"Why does that not come as a surprise? She appears to take after her mother in many ways, and my wife was quite—ah—animated. And please call me Nathaniel."
Hermione had no time to ask about this apparent newfound friendship. She had to stop the Maths Competition Story. "I wish you wouldn't tell people that. It's embarrassing!"
"He's not people, he's your father," Mum decreed madly, gesturing toward the kitchen table, "of course he has a right to know."
"That teacher was embarrassing," Daddy snorted, shaking his head. "Teaching's not so much a calling these days, not like that bloke off the telly who gets kids to sing in choirs. If you take my meaning, Nathaniel, the only reason anyone teaches these days is because they take a more relaxed view on job requirements."
"I daresay nobody doubts the need for existing legislation to be updated."
"Hear, hear! Helen, darling, would you mind making a cuppa, before Nathaniel and Hermione leave. You know how it gets cold at night."
"What, am I really—am I going with him?"
Daddy was suddenly, eerily expressionless. "What has gone into you, Hermione? Where else would you go? You can't possibly stay with us."
"Why can't I?"
"You must go," the thing with Daddy's face said, "Where else would you go? You can't possibly stay here."
Normally, this would have scared Hermione. Happily, she'd been upset for most of the night and couldn't muster the energy anymore. "What is this—what are you talking—you're my Daddy, I'm your—"
She didn't finish her sentence, because her mum dropped the tea cups with an awful crashing noise and whirled around.
"Not mine," she hissed, wild-eyed. "I have always hated your voice. You are not mine. Do not speak. Leave my house. Mine would not have spoken. Mine knows better. Leave my house before I make you. I do not know what you are. Leave, leave, leave!"
The door was slammed behind Hermione. After a pause, she leaned against it and listened to the things with Dad and Mum's faces laugh inside.
"Guess that means no tea," a soft voice reflected next to her and she realised she hadn't been the only one thrown out.
"It doesn't matter," she said, shoving tears away from her eyes, "I didn't even want it."
"Determined little thing, aren't you?" said the birth-giver Bourbon wizard guy. "Well, what would you say to pumpkin juice?"
Hermione had thought their departure would be dramatic, but it wasn't. One moment they were sitting on the doormat, the next they were lurching to a centuries-old wizarding village whose name she couldn't pronounce, a cluster of sloping cobbled streets and provincial cottages and sleepy harmony. They walked in the marketplace and admired the silhouette of a mansion peeking above the smoke from the chimneys of the cottages.
"There is a fine room for you upstairs," Nathaniel Bourbon assured.
Hermione nodded. She could do with a room. It wasn't like she had much of a choice, anyway. "I should call Mum and Dad," she said aloud, remembering broken tea cups. "Though they probably don't care, do they?" Quickly, she added, "It's not my fault they got angry."
"There is no fault to be had. The disapproval of people like them is praise to people like us."
Okay, that was…a bit mean? Here was a man—Hermione's alleged father—who talked about people like they were insects. It should not make her feel better. "I was supposed to go buy my school books tomorrow."
"We can still go, and at home there is a very extensive magical library for your amusement."
"How long can I stay with you?" What with the events of the evening, Hermione was beginning to doubt it would be anything as simple as, say, Matilda and Miss Honey's happily ever after.
"Well, forever," her father said, frowning, like she was asking an unreasonable question. "We are a family, and I know we haven't actually had the chance to be that to you, but family is forever. There is nothing else like that, I promise you."
Satisfied, he took her hand and walked away while Hermione was still reeling, off-balance, utterly bewildered. They were on their way to the house before it occurred to her that this was an odd and not particularly reassuring sort of promise.
The mansion was three-story high and all elaborate, carved beige-and-peach stonework, dizzying in its detail: flowers and filigrees, twisting vines and swooping ribbons. Two life-sized winged women framed the doorway, their arms reaching upward, their hands holding lit torches of bundled twigs, their faces fascinated by something Hermione couldn't see.
"These statues have been there for a thousand years, since the druids," said her father, "they are a very precious part of our family legacy."
It was early in the morning, after Hermione'd had her long-awaited sleep, that she was introduced to the true family legacy.
She was looking through elegant parts of her new home—looking had to be a better word for it than sneaking or snooping. A more polite, less nasty word. She didn't know that she'd been looking for him until he showed up at the top of the stairs.
Hermione didn't recognize him, but she did. She knew the grin, the tilt of the head, the flushed cheeks as if he'd run a mile. He was sunburned and familiar with brown eyes that reminded her of hers, Bourbon eyes, Liesel had called them. Light-lashed on him, dark-lashed on her, but Bourbon eyes all the same.
They looked at each other in the entryway. "Hello," she said.
"You're my twin sister," he said.
"I suppose so, yes," Hermione said, but she hadn't really known until she'd said it.
"You were dead for a long time," her brother said, words coming out lilting and splintery because of his French accent. "Come on, then. We'll have breakfast then we can go play hide-and-seek. Or I have charmed paint, if you like. I'm Lucas, remember?"
"Um. Aren't you going to ask why—where I've been? Do you know?"
"Father just said you were in Britain but I figured out the rest."
"Figured what out?"
"You're an explorer," he told her smugly. "You were exploring muggle Britain."
"…Not exactly."
"Don't be boring."
"Are you willing me to be an explorer?"
"That would be so much fun!"
"But I'm not. I'm eleven and I've never drawn a map, everyone knows where London is." At his crestfallen expression, she quickly added, "But I do know loads about muggles. I know everything there is to know about toothpaste to tell you the truth."
Lucas punched the air. "Knew it! I'm a Bourges expert," he said sportingly. "It's short for Chateau de Bourgogne-l'Archambaud, ancient seat of the Bourbons in the countryside. The ballroom is very good for playing Quidditch, there's a secret passage to the library through the pillar in the music room, the kitchen is full of lunatics—but don't tell them I said that."
"A secret passage?"
"I'll show you."
Bourges deserved a thorough exploration, and that was what they did all day, running from the tiled hall where their voices echoed, to the third floor filled with antique furniture and the detritus of family shipwrecks. They studiously inspected intricate silver flower brooches and monogrammed wax seals until they had a mess of cobwebs in their hair and probably spiders too.
"We could become the insects overlords," Lucas said, wiggling his dusty eyebrows, and then their father found them, laughing like jackals in the darkness at the depths of the attic.
They were a few days into December when Hermione's father took her back home for a visit. She'd asked, just to see if he would, and he did.
It was a peculiar visit.
Helen Granger's face, so open and pleased when she opened the door, went briefly panicked and unhappy at the sight of Hermione, then closed down completely. A polite expression, appropriate for strangers.
The only thing Hermione felt was unexpected relief, like she almost dropped something but caught it back in time. She wasn't sad, not anymore. It was impossible to care about losing anybody when you've won the Bourbons. They were the best thing to happen to Hermione since magic.
Which was saying a lot, since magic was the best thing to ever happen to Hermione.
Her life was now a mixture of the two, that must be what made it so perfect. Her brother was her friend, her father was understanding to the point of scary. Instead of asking, why don't you go out and make friends? he said, would you like me to show you the flower-conjuring charm?
"That's my smart little girl," he said when she succeeded on the first try. Hermione was pleased she was. She was also Miss Bourbon, or the young mistress, or, more often than not, Hermione-and-Lucas, half of the Bourbon twins. She was good at being all these things. She took to the French language and the art of spelling with speed. Grammar, vocabulary, deportment. Magical theory, the history of druids, herbs and incantations.
Within a month, her father'd set up a daily routine perfectly designed for two young magical children. Breakfast was at eight, except on Sundays and Saturdays. Then a long walk in the gardens, then their tutor made them study and practice spells until lunch, then they were free to do what they liked until dinner, as long as it didn't involve horseplay, though Lucas tended to transgress.
Despite the ever-present possibility of chaos, it was the best part of Hermione's day. The games were never boring and she could be as annoyingly herself as she wanted because her twin didn't mind. It wasn't so much that he put up with her insufferableness as that he honestly didn't notice it. He thought Hermione was amazing, and nothing she did or said convinced him otherwise, even when she dragged him to the library. Their father moved his desk there so they could all be together as they worked. He was some sort of wizard businessman though he never seemed to do any impressive magic—he studied parchments with long, embossed titles in French or Greek, or mathematical books so advanced they might as well be in another language, for all Hermione understood of them. She quite liked maths but she'd only just been learning about negative numbers; it'll be a few years yet before she was ready for Babylonian Numerical Models of Quantitative Finance, 3rd Edition.
Liesel was included in this routine, in the abrupt, erratic way she seemed to do most things. She wandered in and out of the house at odd hours, leaving random gifts in her wake. It was like having one of those slippery fairy godmothers. Her third gift was a framed photograph of Hermione's mother, a woman with wild, curly, brown hair and Lucas's infectious grin. The caption read Alix Bourbon, née Gauthier.
"Good friend," said Liesel. "Couldn't stand her at first. And she could wind you up worse than anyone I ever met. And there was that time she pushed me out a window." She smiled, apparently pleased with the memory.
Hermione did not understand their friendship and deeply did not want to. Another thing she did not understand was this bored attitude everyone in this country took toward her coming back after a lifelong absence.
When her father's business partners met her, haughty and conservatively-dressed men named Beaumont and Delacour and Hautlecoque, they made interested faces and asked, "How?"
"Slight mishap," her father replied.
"You old sinner," they told him, and laughed raucously as they let themselves in his study.
Out of everybody she'd seen so far, only Roland Rosier—distant cousin—had the most extreme reaction. He gaped for a while, then rubbed his forehead and said, "Well, welcome back." And that was it.
Then again, if you can walk through fire and teleport, Hermione figured, you probably take most things in stride.
Or maybe they were just being French.
One of them even took a liking to her. Beaumont. He said the muggle world was a 'place filled with oddities and horrors too great to describe' and believed that 'Hermione's willingness to travel there proves great fortitude'.
Once he showed up to a business meeting with his daughter. "Nathaniel, I've brought your girl company," he declared grandly. "She'd be a good influence on mine. Circe knows the daft girl needs it."
Sabine Beaumont was thirteen and annoying. She talked constantly. An endless stream of babble, about stupid stuff. If it weren't for the babbling, she would be interesting, which was the most annoying thing of all. For one thing, she was in her third-year at Beauxbatons, the same place Hermione would be off to next year. (Not a prospect that filled her with joy.)
"So, like, what do you do for fun around here?" Sabine asked when she'd run out of things to say about celebrities and boys. "I know you have stables. We live in the city, we don't have horses."
"I don't like horses that much, I usually play with Lucas. Or read."
"Oh, yes, your brother. He's sooo cute. Your father is sweet too, and he adores you. But you must be so angry for what happened. Or do you love them, regardless?"
Love them? The family who didn't take care of her, abruptly came back to sweep her away, then gave her back everything and more? Love had never even entered into it. "It's my life."
"Such a weird, abnormal life."
"You really are quite daft."
Sabine Beaumont reddened, blustered, and never came back to Bourges again. Her parents apologised profusely.
Hermione had the weird feeling they would've apologised regardless who was at fault. Pumpkin juice and a fine room, her father'd said. That was what he'd offered; that was what she'd accepted. But there was more to this than he'd admitted: there was a whole world out here, new to her, where people flattered and fawned on him, where he gave orders and servants impassively carried them out, where whole organizations put themselves at his service.
Only accept the best, were Bourbon words.
A/N: This is my new account because I'm writing again, however friends asked (threatened) that I repost this old WIP. So it might sound familiar. Please leave a review if you want it updated, even if it's just two words.