A/N: Thank you all so much for your reviews, favorites and follows! Who knew so many of you would be delighted about Pansy getting a taste of her own medicine? You can follow me over on tumblr (nauticalparamour) where I post sneak peeks, story updates and answer questions. Huge thank you to lanamarymack for alpha/beta reading this chapter!
Please let me know what you thought of chapter thirteen and be on the lookout for chapter fourteen in a few days.
Sirius drove in silence for a few minutes, but Hermione couldn't stand to sit there with so many questions swirling around in her head.
"Why did you come get me?" she asked, quietly, keeping her eyes glued to her lap.
"Because, in case you didn't notice, you were suspended for fighting in the fucking library," Sirius said, his teeth clenched in fury.
"I figured that," she said, feeling ashamed. "What I meant was why did you come to get me?"
"Did you know that I'm still listed as the emergency contact on all of your school forms?" he asked. "Your parents are too irresponsible to even update one simple form, so I've got to be the one to come and get you."
She felt her heart squeeze in her chest. She knew that her parents were irresponsible, of course she did. But, what did that make Sirius? If he knew they were irresponsible, how could he think that he had any moral high ground if he knowingly left her with them. She started to laugh. "And you seem to think you're much better, leaving me with them," she said, bitter and mean. "I know you don't think I'm worth it, so in that case you don't get to be disappointed if I don't act the way that you expect me to."
"You don't understand. One day you will, when you are older," Sirius said, his knuckles going white on the steering wheel. "There are some battles that shouldn't be fought."
"I think the real question is if I was ever someone you cared about? Because it seemed easy enough for you to give up the fight," she snapped, tears springing to her eyes. God, she wished she wasn't going to cry. She didn't want him to think that there was anything behind this tough exterior. "Never mind that I'm a person, not just a thing that can be left behind."
Sirius didn't say anything, but from the corner of her eye, she could see how tortured his face looked. "I think—" he cut himself off for a brief moment, his tongue wetting his lower lip while he weighed and carefully measured his next words. "I think that it would be best if you and Harry didn't spend much time together."
Hermione's heart sank, utterly filled to the brim and overflowing with disappointment of her own in Sirius. She hadn't wanted to believe her parents when they said that people like Harry, Sirius would never accept her because of her last name, but it seemed that Sirius was only too quick to affirm them. Even though the same thing had happened to him.
"Because of my parents?" she asked, straining to speak over the knot in her throat.
"Because of...because of the people that you are now choosing to surround yourself with," he said firmly. "Harry is a good lad. I can't have him getting mixed up with..." He trailed off.
"The wrong sort," she said, leaning back into the seat. "People like me. People like our family."
For once, she was grateful when they finally turned onto her parents' street because it meant that she could get out of the suffocating stillness of the car. Sirius surprised her when he parked and shut off the engine and made to get out.
She jogged around and stood in front of him on the curb. "You don't need to come in," she insisted with an imperious look. "I know my mum won't be keen to see you."
"No," Sirius agreed, sternly. "But someone has to do what's right and tell them what you were up to."
Once again, Hermione was upset that he somehow thought that she wouldn't do the right thing, though she was not looking forward to her parents' reaction. She stomped up the front stairs and pushed open the front door.
Her parents were surprised to have someone home at the hour of the day, as she wasn't expected for another hour or two. They were sprawled out on the settee with one another, watching the tele. Her mum was the first to see the bruise on her face and hopped into action like a doting mother.
"Hermione! What happened?" she asked, cradling her daughter's face and turning it so she could get a better look at the bruise under her eye. Her thumb gently pressed along the bone, wanting to make sure that nothing was broken.
"What happened?" Sirius asked, having entered after her, but remained as of yet unacknowledged. "What happened is that you've had Hermione back for barely one month and already you've ruined her!"
Her mum pushed Hermione behind her so that she could face her cousin. "You! What the hell are you doing in my house?" she demanded, practically snarling.
"You should be thanking me for returning your daughter to you when the school had to call me because she'd been fighting in class!" Sirius answered. "You couldn't even bother to update her emergency contact."
"Oh, and I know just how much of a burden this was on you, cousin," she sneered. "You've made that very clear to us."
"You wanted to be a parent, Bella, so buck up and do it," he shouted back. "Don't make me be the one to come in and clean up your messes."
That stung even more and Hermione felt the tears that she'd been keeping at bay so far slip down her cheeks when she closed her eyes tight. God, he really knew how to throw a ten year relationship in the toilet didn't he? And to think, there had been times that she wished and hoped that Sirius had been her real father all along. At least Rodolphus never referred to her as a mess before.
"Get the fuck out of my house and don't come back!" her mum screamed at the top of her lungs, making Hermione jump in surprise.
Sirius was shocked too. His feet remained glued to the floor as he stared at Hermione, perhaps realizing for the first time that she'd heard every word that he'd said. He stared into her brown eyes and saw nothing but the betrayal that she felt. And then, he turned around and walked out of their townhouse, shutting the door behind him.
Once the interloper was gone, her mum turned around and started shuffling her to the kitchen. "Rodolphus, something frozen, quickly," she ordered. "We don't want it to swell anymore than it did."
"I'm sorry," Hermione said, before she started sobbing, the whole mess of the day crashing down on her. Her eyes were bleary, but with her mum to guide her, she was sitting at the kitchen table not a second later.
Tender hands pressed a bag of frozen peas to her cheek, cradling her face up to the light to look her over for any other cuts and bruises. "Now, darling, tell Mummy what happened," her mum said softly — like she was a six year old who had scraped her knee.
"Pansy Parkinson kept saying such horrible things about me and I don't know — I just snapped," Hermione said, still crying. It felt odd to be so vulnerable around her parents, people that she had kept out for so long by building a wall between them that could never be crossed. "I pushed her and then the next thing I knew we were fighting."
Her dad pulled the peas back and got a good look at her bruise. "You haven't broken anything, which is good," he said gruffly. "But you'll have a good bruise for a few days."
"I haven't even looked at it," Hermione told them, feeling helpless. "They made me wait in the Headmaster's office and then next thing I know Sirius was there."
"Don't worry, it looks fine," her mum said, giving her a conspiratorial smirk. "And I bet that little bitch looks worse than you do."
"Well..." Hermione trailed off, knowing that it was wrong to feel anything but remorse for her actions. "I bet she will think twice before she mouths off to me again." She couldn't say that she had won the fight, mostly because it hadn't really ended, but she knew that Pansy had underestimated her and she wouldn't do it again.
"Why don't you go upstairs and lay down for a while," her father suggested. "Have a nap. We can talk more when this is over. Rab's bringing dinner."
"That sounds nice," Hermione said, thinking that it would be nice to actually have dinner like a real family. And the nap sounded even more heavenly. She hadn't realized how utterly exhausted she was until he mentioned it. Taking her peas up the stairs with her, she felt the fight leaving her body with every step.
She was asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.
Hermione wasn't entirely sure how long she'd slept for, but when she woke up it was dark outside and she could hear the quiet murmurs of her parents talking with her uncle in the kitchen. Softly, she crept down the stairs, pleased to see a takeout pizza on the table between them.
Rabastan was the first person to notice her. "Hey kiddo," he greeted her, even though she wasn't a kid anymore. "How's the face?"
Hermione grimaced, her hand darting to the sore spot on her cheek and touching it tentatively. "It's been better," she told him after some assessment. "You should see the other girl if you think this is bad." She hadn't seen Pansy, but she hoped she'd at least left some sort of mark on the other girl, even if that was an uncharitable thought.
Her uncle laughed and opened the pizza box for her to take a slice for herself. "I'm sure she's in a worse state than you," he said with a cheeky grin. "We Lestranges know how to throw hands. You know your granddad was a boxer?"
She looked to look at her father, surprised. "I didn't," she answered, wondering just how much she didn't know about her own family.
Her father nodded. "Yeah, and he wasn't afraid to box my ears if I gave him any trouble," he revealed with a frown.
"And you certainly gave him plenty," Rabastan quipped.
That was decidedly not fun to hear. Despite their many faults when it came to parenting, they had never struck her — not when she was a child and not now. She was glad that her father had not simply continued to do something simply because it was what he had experienced, especially when she'd brought them heaps of trouble since coming home. She couldn't imagine what kind of punishment Sirius and Remus would have waiting for her. Probably be grounded for all of eternity.
"Thank you for being so understanding about this," she said softly. "I know it can't be wonderful to hear that your daughter was suspended for fighting in school."
"I don't know if that's how I would put it," her dad answered, a grim look on his own face, making him look years older than he actually was.
"Yeah, but you weren't mad like Sirius," she argued back, still remembering the thunderous look on her former guardian's face when he'd picked her up. She didn't think she could remember seeing him that mad.
"I may not be like my cousin in his overdone displays of righteous anger," her mum said with a frown. "But, I am mad."
"I'm mad too. I never thought that you would do something like this," her father agreed, gruffly. He looked at her with disappointment in his light brown eyes — the same shade as her own. "I can't even begin to tell you how disappointed I am in you. I said we would talk about this later, not that we would never talk about it. You can't expect that we would just sweep this under the rug."
Hearing that even her father — Rodolphus Lestrange — was disappointed in her behavior was like a vise on her heart, squeezing down. "I didn't imagine there would be no consequences," she said, struggling to get the words out. "But I thought you'd have a little sympathy for me."
"I never want my daughter to be hurt, but you didn't need to put yourself in that position, either," her father explained. "You are better than this, Hermione. You are better than all of this. You don't have to fight and scrap for every crumb that you come across. And you certainly don't need to hit another girl just because she made you angry."
The hypocrisy was stunning to her. "Well, I've only learned from the two of you," she said, all piss and vinegar.
"Then you should have learned from our mistakes!" Her mum said, anguish clear on her face.
Hermione stood up from the table abruptly. "You two are bloody funny, you know that?" She demanded. "You have absolutely no right to tell me how to behave!"
"We know that we weren't there for you growing up," her father answered, obviously embarrassed. "But we are still your parents. And you have to listen to us."
"It's not that you weren't there, it's who you are!" Hermione shouted at them. "All three of you are criminals — stealing, drugs, assaults — and you have the gall to tell me how to behave when all I was doing was defending myself from a girl who has it out for me? Standing up for myself for once? Fuck that. I'll behave however I bloody want to!"
After she'd gotten that out, there was absolutely no way that she was going to stick around to see the looks of devastation on her parents' faces. She wasn't going to feel bad for the rude way that she'd snapped at them. But, she needed to get out of the townhouse and as quickly as possible. Her feet carried her to the front door, the blood rushing in her ears drowning out any calls for her to come back.
She slammed the door behind her.
Before she knew it, she was wrenching open the front door to Theo's townhouse without thinking. It was only once she was in the empty living room that she was grateful his father wasn't home because that would be an awkward conversation to have.
Belatedly, she wondered if maybe she should have done more to make her presence known before just storming into a home that didn't belong to her. Maybe she should have shouted for Theo like her mum did. Instead, she was too focused, too intent on climbing up the familiar stairs — a mirror of her own house — to Theo's childhood bedroom.
Swinging the door open, she announced herself. "Theo."
Her friend was lying in bed shirtless, reading a novel. It seemed that she did catch him by surprise, because he was up and scrambling not even a millisecond later. "Hermione? What the fuck?" he asked, looking for a spare t-shirt on the floor and pulling the soft fabric over his head.
"Oh god, I'm sorry!" Hermione said, suddenly flustered and apologetic about what she'd done. She immediately turned the other way. She wasn't entirely convinced if it was because she wanted to give him some privacy or if it was to keep her eyes from wandering. Biting her lip, she thought she'd seen a flash of green on his chest, perhaps the aforementioned tattoo, but she hadn't been able to make out what it was.
His room was no longer the dinosaur paradise that it had been when they were children. The green walls were free of posters and other adornments, except for some pictures he had pinned around his mirror. One thing that hadn't changed was that his bookcase was absolutely stuffed to the brim with books of varying sizes, though the comic book collection had obviously been pared down over time. Theo had always loved to read, same as her, and she was glad to see that he hadn't let that part of himself go, even if he had given up on school.
"You can turn around now," he said, sarcastically. "It's not as if there was anything to hide. You just caught me by surprise."
When she turned around, she saw that he'd pulled on a graying black t-shirt that looked well worn and soft. He was running his hand through his brown hair, pushing it back out of his eyes and into its usual style, rather than the bed head he'd had before.
"I'm sorry for coming over without asking," she said, wishing that she hadn't been so rash.
"I don't mind having you over," he said, his blue eyes filled with mirth. "But it seemed like you had something to tell me — so out with it."
Hermione bit her lower lip, thinking over her silly plan now that she was forced to vocalize it. It seemed so silly, so petulant to run away from home, even if it was only for the night, but she knew that she couldn't return home. Not after the day she'd had.
"Do you have a car?" she asked, broaching the topic broadly.
"You know I do," he answered, looking at her curiously. "Do you need to borrow it?"
Hermione shook her head slowly back and forth. "I want you to take me out," she said, only to regret her phrasing when she saw the excited look in Theo's eyes. "I mean, I want you to take me out of the city. Just for a while. I need to get away from this fucking place and I thought…I thought that you might be good company to have."
He looked far too pleased with her request. "I think I could do that," he answered with a smirk.