"Hermione!"
She dropped the t-shirt she was holding and walked obediently down the stairs towards the living room, where her parents were.
"Yeah?"
"Um..." Her mother looked at her father silently asking if it were the right thing to do. He gave a small nod. "There something we have to tell you..."
The next few moments past in a blur. She didn't want to hear what they were saying, was this some kind of a sick joke? The looks on their faces told her it was not.
Rape.
It cut through her like a knife.
Adoption.
She felt like she'd been punched in the stomach. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't believe...
The two people in front of her looked at her with worry written all over their faces. These were the two people that she thought she could trust above anyone else, the ones who would, at all costs, protect her from hurt and deciet and lies and all the bad in the world, and they... they had just admitted that they had lied to her for her entire life.
"We're sorry... we're so sorry..." Her mother was saying over and over.
"You're not my mother," Hermione thought out-loud.
Margaret Granger looked at her daughter in shock, a loud sob escaped her lips as she buried her face in her hands. Her husband, Steven tried to comfort her as best he could.
Hermione was rather calm considering what she had just been told, but she wasn't really sure how to react. It's not every day you get told by your parents that you're adopted and that you were raped and abused by your biological father as a small child. "How could you do this to me? Only now you decide to tell me?" her voice held no emotion.
"Honey, we never wanted to hurt you. That's the last thing we were ever thinking. We thought that maybe you had remembered what happened and that bringing it all up again would just be painful and unnecassary... for everyone." Steven looked at her, searching for any hint of what was to come. "We acknowledge and agree that looking back, it probably wasn't the best choice we've ever made." That was Steven, always clear, logical and levelheaded; maybe that was who she picked it up from.
"No, you're right. In fact, I would go as far as to say, it was the worst." Hermione wasn't in the mood for being civil, the anger that had been brooding underneath her calm exterior had quickly risen to the surface. "I always thought of both of you as loving, caring people and I never doubted anything you said or did for a minute. But now, I can see that you're both just selfish; you only care about making things easy for yourselves and you never cared about me!" Her eyes felt hot and tears began to gather at the corners.
"And not only do you wait until I'm 16 to tell me all this, no, that just wasn't good enough, you pick the fantastic time of telling me the night before I go back to school?!" She looked at them again with hatred, it was all she felt. Hatred. Hatred to everything. She hated her parents for not telling her; she hated the world for being so cruel; she even hated her friends for the simple selfish reason of not having to go through what she was going though.
Hermione was fed up, she felt she'd said all she needed to say and it didn't look like either of her parents were about to start talking any time soon.
"You know what? I'm leaving. I don't have to deal with this. I definitely don't have to deal with you."
"Hermione, please... don't do this. You're very emotionally charged at the moment. Don't go doing something you'll regret. Please..." Margaret pleaded.
Hermione took no notice of these words and began to walk out of the kitchen and towards her room to gather her things.
"Hermione!" Steven said firmly, trying a differnent approach. "Don't ignore your mother like that young lady. Show some respect, that's not how we brought you up! I know you're feeling angry and hurt and you have the right to be, but you have no right to-"
Hermione turned at the foot of the stairs and looked her father in the eyes. "Don't you DARE tell me what to do. What right do I have?" She couldn't believe her ears. "What right do you have to keep this from me, huh? And don't tell me how I feel. You have NO idea how I feel. I hate you!"
With that, Hermione turned and walked up the stairs and out of their sight.