Oh, how the tables have turned
We're running out of time
I can see it in the twinkle in your eye
You want to take my life
Valiant Hearts - Medusa
"So you´re... Witches." said Hermione´s mother
Hermione nodded. "I´m a witch. Ron is a wizard. They´re the same thing though, they´re just gendered terms in this day and age."
"Uh huh…" said the older woman. "And you´re here to… undo a spell you cast on us?"
"Right! Look, your names aren´t really Wendell and Monica Wilkins. Your real names are Winston David Granger and Simone Hamilton-Granger. Simone, you were born in Australia but your mother brought you to the UK where you grew up. You two met at dental school in Leeds, and you stayed there after you got married. We´ve lived there my whole life. I´m your daughter."
Hermione was pleading now, her voice hoarse and impossible not to believe, but the Wilkins just looked on in suspicion.
"Look, we can´t be your parents, miss. We´ve never had children; not til little Hugo here. And we´re definitely not Winson and Simone Greenger, or whatever you said. We´re not even dentists! I don´t know anything about dentistry! I work a grocer´s. My wife works in the public library. I don´t know how or why, but you´ve got the wrong people."
"No, I don´t!" At this, Hermione pulled out the photos she´d always kept on her. That she´d kept on her since the day she modified her parent´s memories after fourth year. "Look," she handed the stack of photos to her parents. It was all there; Hermione´s baby photos, their family portraits, Hermione´s first day of Reception. Her at King´s Cross on her way to Hogwarts for the first time.
Simone spoke without looking up from the photographs. "You doctored these..." she accused, but she didn´t sound convinced.
"No, I didn´t. And you don´t really believe that I did."
"I don´t understand." Simone confessed
Ron took the opportunity to cut in as Hermione choked up, face crumbling in guilt and misery. "There was a war. Some wizards wanted do away with people like Hermione. Wizards who come from non-magical families. A lot of those families were targeted and murdered. You would have been an especially high profile target because of Hermione´s involvement. They would have killed you to get to her. Hermione thought that if she could get you out of Britain, you´d be safe, and the only way she figured she could actually get you to leave is if you forgot you´d ever had a daughter to begin with."
Winston scowled. "We´ve lived here for three years. You´re telling me that all that time we´ve actually been living a lie? What next, are you going to tell us our son isn´t even ours?"
Hermione swallowed, shame-faced. "Three years ago Voldemort was revived. I knew what the war would lead to because it´s happened before. My best friend´s parents were killed, his grandparents were killed. Dozens of muggle families and blood traitors were murdered twenty years ago, and I knew that they would go after you eventually. Voldemort knew me, he would have targetted you."
Simone shook her head, befuddled. "And you´ve what, been homeless all this time? You barely look eighteen, are you saying you´ve been on your own since you were fifteen years old?"
Hermione shrugged. "I didn´t have a choice. I had a tent, I took a couple summer jobs to support myself when I couldn´t stay with Ron´s family or with Harry at Grimmauld Place. I spent most of the year at boarding school anyway. It wasn´t too difficult."
Ron couldn´t help but butt in at this. "You´ve been homeless since fourth year?! And you didn´t tell us? Mione, you know mum would have let you stay with us!"
Hermione smiled gently. "I know she would have, Ron, but she already had a half a dozen mouths to feed, including Harry´s. I didn´t want to put more of a burden on her than I absolutely had to.
"So," Wendelll cleared his throat. "What do we do now? Presumably whatever you tried to do just now didn´t work. Do we just… stay like this? As Warren and Monica Wilkins?"
Ron and Hermione looked at each other in despair.
"No," Hermione said unhappily. "We´re going to have to go to hospital."
The drive back to the alleyway was short but awkward. Hermione was squeezed in uncomfortably between Hugo´s car seat and Ron´s long frame, squished into the tiny back seat of her parent´s sedan.
Hermione begged them park in front of what appeared to be a nail salon bracketing one side of the narrow alleyway. "This way," she led. Her parents followed but warily as the woman claiming to be their daughter took them to a secluded, darkened alleyway, like the whole morning was just an elaborate mugging. Or like Wendell had begged off work on a Monday to follow a madwoman into a drug den.
Soon enough, however, the alley opened up into a brightly lit brick-paved street.
"Oh god," Simone whispered, covering her mouth in wonder and not a little fear. Winston said nothing, only clutched little Hugo tighter to him.
They all jumped when a bus appeared to Ron´s hailing. Climbing in first, Ron requested the nearest hospital equipped for spell damage.
"Yeah, alright," the driver said, pushing his long, dirty blond hair out of his eyes, allowing the family to take their seats, gawking at the size of the interior ("It´s bigger on the inside," Winston said to his wife who giggled manically.) before speeding forward.
Even with the breakneck speed, however, it was still nearly half an hour to reach the hospital, situated in a wizarding city well outside of Darwin.
Hermione led the way into the building to a front desk manned by a short dark-skinned woman. The receptionist smiled at them with vague concern. "G´day. How can we help you?"
"It´s my parents," Hermione explained. "They´ve had their memories modified. They don´t remember anything of their real lives. I´ve tried to break through but I can´t."
The receptionist hummed. "You´re sure it was memory modification and not obliviation?"
"Positive," Hermione confirmed. "I´m the one who did it."
The other woman looked alarmed but only said. "Right. You´ll want to see an ensorcelment specialist then. Third floor." She pointed at the stairwell helpfully.
"Well, it´s definitely amateurish," Healer Quicke reaffirmed. "How old did you say you were when you did this?"
"Fifteen," Hermione confessed guiltily. "I thought it would protect them!"
Healer Quicke nodded in understanding. "I read about the War over there. I recognise your face from the papers. Leaving the country probably would have been the safest thing to do. Although why you didn´t just go with them, I don´t understand. And doing complex sorcery like this without proper training… well. It´s no wonder you weren´t able to break it. There´s so many layers of fake memories tangled with new memories that it´ll take weeks to sort through them all."
"Weeks?!" Mrs. Granger exclaimed.
The healer only shrugged. "We´ll have separate the planted memories from the new ones you´ve made in the meantime. Then we´ll have to try to integrate the two lines of two memory together, unless you want to just forget everything that´s happened in the last three years? We could probably get that done today if you wanted to go that route."
Mr. Granger hefted his son up into his arms. "No, absolutely not. We want to keep both sets," he asserted, looking to his wife who nodded in agreement.
Healer Quicke pursed his lips in mild disappointment. "Right, right, of course. Since you´re muggles, I´ll set up a housecall every day for, say… What times are good for you?"
"Mornings," Simone answered. "My husband works from Noon to Seven in the evening and I work part-time at the Library on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from Nine in the morning to Five in the evening, so any time before that, I suppose."
The healer scribbled something on his chart. "How´s half-seven then?"
Harry nearly pissed himself when he stepped out of Sirius´ room on the way to the toilet only to have Walburga Black scream at him at full volume.
Sure enough, when he looked at the portrait centred prominently on the far wall, the curtains were wide open. Harry sighed and went into the bathroom. Finishing his morning ablutions, he wandered back into Sirius´ room to retrieve his wand. When he tried to use it on the portrait, however, the drapes didn´t budge. Locked.
"Filthy mongrel! Son of a mudblood whore and a blood traitor! In my house!"
"Actually," the teen corrected, seething, "it´s my house, and I´m rather of the opinion I should rip that canvas you´re on to pieces and throw it out with all the muggle rubbish."
He ignored the rest of her ranting and navigated his way down to the kitchens were Kreature was already busy preparing breakfast.
"Kreature…" Harry started, already exhausted with this day, "Why is Walburga´s portrait uncovered?"
The house elf blinked nervously at him over the pot of congealing porridge. "Mistress Walburga is lady of the house," the old elf explained with an air of both patience and dread.
"No…" Harry explained, "She´s dead. I´m master of the house now. I shouldn´t have to hear her screaming and insulting me and my family in my own house! What are you even doing here? Why aren´t you at Hogwarts?"
Kreature did not meet Harry´s eyes as he ladled the clumpy gruel into a crystal bowl. "Kreature is to be helping at Hogwarts after breakfast. Kreature will be home to sleep as well. Kreature is not a Hogwarts Elf." Harry wasn´t imagining the reproach in his voice at this statement.
"Right," Harry agreed, too tired to fight. "Right, just, do whatever you want... Except cook." Harry moved what was trying to pass for food around in his bowl, but it looked entirely unappetising. "In fact, you don´t have to worry about working around the house at all, I´ll deal with the house. You go help the Hogwarts elves. Just.. pretend I´m not even here."
Kreature shook his head vehemently, tugging on his ears in a way that reminded him of Dobby. "Oh, no no no! No, Kreature must attend to master´s needs! Kreature must keep the house! Kreature has been a bad, bad elf since Mistress died! Kreature will be a good elf for Master Harry Potter!"
"I really don´t need a house elf, Kreature. You really dont´t need to wait on me or anything. In fact, that makes me really uncomfortable. Just, you can live here, since it´s your house, and I´ll live here since it´s my house, and apart from that we don´t actually have to see each other at all, how does that sound? You´re free to do whatever you want during the day. Actually," Harry reached down and tugged off a freshly laundered sock, handing it to Kreature, "Here. You´re free for real, now."
Unfortunately, Kreature didn´t see things that way. "Kreature has displeased Master! Kreature is being fired!"
Harry was already shaking his head. "No, no, no you haven´t displeased me! You just don´t have to actually work for me anymore!"
Kreature stopped tugging on his ears. He stared at Harry suspiciously, and then cast a wary glance at the sock sitting innocuously on the table between them. "Kreature is to be going to Hogwarts now. Kreature will be back after dark to clean the house." And with that proclamation, the elf popped out of the kitchen and presumably back to Scotland.
"Christ," Harry muttered under his breath, although there was no longer anyone in the house to hear him. Except maybe Walburga, but she didn´t count. Shovelling the porridge into the rubbish bin, Harry decided to spite the elf by actually cleaning the house. Unfortunately, he only managed the ground floor before falling into an exhausted doze on one of the sofas in the reception parlour.
He woke to an earsplitting pop as Kreature arrived back home.
The elf looked at him with disapproval. "The sofas are not for sleeping Master Harry. Master Harry Potter should go to bed!"
Harry nodded groggily and stumbled up the staircase, hunching his shoulders as if to block out Walburga´s raging as he passed her portrait. It was with a sense of relief that he made it into the safety of his own bed. Or, a bed in any case.
He made a plan not to leave the room tomorrow until Kreature was already gone. He´d find some way to deal with Walburga´s portrait later. For now, he was just so tired…