Disclaimer: see chapter 1.
Help!
by Katta (KET on ff.net) (katta_t2002@yahoo.co.uk)
Chapter 9
Hermione fished the phone out of her pocket with the great trepidation. Not many people had her mobile number and she couldn't understand why any of them would be phoning her at six o'clock in the morning. The display showed her parents' number which did nothing to allay her fears.
'Hermione!' shouted her mother. 'Where are you? Your father is so much worse! I'm taking him to the hospital straight away. I went to wake you, but you weren't there!'
'I'm not far away mum – just out for a walk. I'll be home in a moment!'
She switched off the phone and turned to Micky. His problem suddenly seemed of no importance to her.
'I've got to go. You heard what Snape said. Run for your life. Don't go near Snape or any of Malfoy's properties.'
Micky looked at her but said nothing and she walked out.
Thank god for being able to apparate. Wherever it was they had been, she was home in a matter of minutes. Her mother was frantic when Hermione walked in and she could see for herself how much worse her father was.
The rest of the day passed in a blur of hospital waiting rooms. Hermione's father was sent for test after test before he was finally allowed to collapse into a hospital bed. The nurse shooed Hermione and her mother out, saying that she was going to give him an injection against the pain. When they were allowed to return, he was so out of it he couldn't speak to them. Suspiciously, Hermione asked the nurse what he had been given and was told it was morphine. While her mother bustled off in search of something, Hermione started to argue that morphine was dangerous and addictive, when she realised that the nurse was looking at her with silent sympathy. It was at that moment that Hermione really understood that there was no hope – it didn't matter one iota whether the morphine was addictive because her father wasn't going to live. She sat silently by his bed as he slept and cried. But she had to pull herself together when her mother returned and drive them both home.
Hermione found it very difficult to listen to her mother's bright and brittle chatter about the treatment that the doctor had told her they would try. She kept saying, 'When daddy comes home …'. Hermione wanted to shout at her, he is not coming home! But she was very fond of her mother, too, and she knew that this was just her way of coping, so she kept her mouth tight shut.
Over the next few days they spent more time at the hospital than Hermione had spent in her entire previous year. Her father would have bright periods when he would chat, but then pain would overwhelm him. The nurses seemed happy to give him morphine on demand and after each injection he would become incoherent and then fall asleep.
On the fourth day, he asked to see Hermione's mother on her own and had a long talk with her. She emerged crying and wouldn't at first say what they had talked about. Finally she admitted that he had told her where to find his will and details of his life insurance, and given her instructions for his funeral.
Hermione got no chance to talk to him that day, but the next day it was her turn for a talk on her own with him. She came into the room and he looked pale and drawn but he had not had any morphine and was perfectly lucid.
'My poor girl,' he said and stroked her cheek. She smiled bravely but felt the tears pricking.
'I want to tell you about something that it is very difficult for me to talk about,' he said. She wondered what he meant. With difficulty he pulled himself upright.
'I don't want to tell you this to hurt you, but because I think you will one day begin to wonder about it yourself. And if I'm gone you'll always wonder what I thought about it. So I want you to know.'
What on earth was he going to tell her?
'Hermione, I'm a medically trained man,' he continued. 'And I do know something about genetics. And I know that two blue-eyed people cannot have a brown-eyed child.'
Hermione stared at him, but the moment he said it she knew he was right. That she knew it too and that somewhere deep in her mind she had long ago logged the fact that she was brown-eyed and they were both blue-eyed.
'I have never spoken to your mother about this,' continued her father. 'It is my belief that she knows it too, but has simply chosen not to acknowledge the fact.'
'What …' began Hermione, but her father held up his hand.
'I want to tell you what I think,' he said with emphasis. 'I do NOT think your mother cheated on me. She simply hasn't got it in her to do that. I have thought long and hard about it and I have decided…' he paused for a moment to underline what he was saying, '… that there was a mixed up at the hospital.' He said it with a finality that made clear that there would be no argument about this. Then his face dissolved in a loving smile and he stroked her cheek. 'But it really doesn't matter to me. To me you'll always be my girl.' Hermione hugged him then, tears streaming down her cheeks.
***
Less than ten days later, Hermione's father died in the night. She and her mother arrived at the hospital to be told the news. Hermione's mother was bereft. She kept saying, 'I should have been there for him.' Hermione felt quietly felt that it was better that he had died in his sleep but didn't say so.
The funeral was the most painful thing that Hermione had ever gone through. She felt so lonely. After the funeral, the doctor came round and gave her mother a sedative. Hermione sat in the window and looked out on the lovely summer's day and thought about her father.
She loved her mother, of course, but she had always felt that her father was the one who really, really understood her. He had always been so proud of her, of her achievements at school and everything she did. In her heart of hearts she suspected he had disapproved of her magical abilities, but he had understood that it was part of her and had supported her very step of the way. Her mother, dear though she was, would never, ever understand her like that.
***
Hermione's aunt Mathilda had come to stay and after a week or so she managed to convince Hermione's mother to come away with her. Peter was holding things together at the practice. Their lawyer was an old family friend who was dealing with the will and all such like, and in any case Martin Granger had spent the last few weeks at home putting his always tidy affairs in complete order. There was really nothing that required her presence in Reading. Aunt Mathilda invited Hermione to come, too, but she was beginning to feel as if she was suffocating. It seemed harsh with her father only a few days dead, but she just had to do something to take her mind off it or she would go mad. An endless rehash of her father's life and incipient canonization of his every deed was beginning to grate on her nerves however much she had loved him. So she said she would stay in Reading to be close to Oxford where she would be doing her studies. But the truth was that for the first time since her phone rang in that motorway service station, she had begun to worry about Snape and Micky.