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Chapter 12

Hermione sighed, setting down the book and rubbing her eyes. She was so tired… Funny, since she'd just spent three days sleeping. Voldemort would be furious if he found out that she wasn't in her room… But she had already made up with Harry (not to mention made out), and she had been bored after he'd left. So she'd snuck away to the library, hoping to get some of her more prevalent questions answered.

Those questions had been brought up because of her dreams. Oh, she still couldn't remember them, but some of those feelings were ones she had only experienced a few times in her life… so it was obvious what they were associated with. There were also questions that had come up after finding out about her past…

It was taking forever to find everything, but she thought she'd finally figured it out. Well, everything out, actually. Everything she'd been wondering about herself, and the fact that she was the daughter of Lord Voldemort and Professor Dumbledore's great, great, great…etc…granddaughter.

She had been wondering for some time why she wasn't a Parselmouth. After all, wasn't her father one? Then why wasn't she?

During her summers, she had taken a few classes at the local college. One of the classes she had taken was Biology, and she'd learned about genetics. She knew that the whole Parselmouth thing didn't make any sense at all, and it was annoying her to bits.

But now she believed she'd figured it out.

It was a newly discovered trait that was not inherited according to Mendelian genetics—it really had everything to do with magic. And it skipped a generation. At first she had thought that it might have been connected to the Y-chromosome—so it would be a trait for males only—but she had discovered a few females throughout history to have had it, so that couldn't be the case.

So that was why she wasn't a Parselmouth. She supposed that meant that her children would have it… Hermione shuddered. Wonderful. So now, when her children were angry, they would set snakes upon her.

Not that she was afraid of snakes… Quite the opposite, in fact—she rather liked them, and had actually convinced her parents to let her keep a garden snake that she had found in their backyard when she was nine years old. It was just the fact that, for that one thing, her children would be more powerful—in a way, at least—than she was. That probably wouldn't be a good thing.

Not that it was a given that she would have children, of course… But she rather hoped she would, in the future. Although she knew that she would spend at least the first five years concentrating on her career before having children. But first, of course, she would have to get married.

Hermione shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts. She needed to find her mother's papers. Voldemort had mentioned that she kept a diary, and she was quite anxious to read it, to find as much information about her mother as she could. He'd said that he was certain it would be somewhere in Hogwarts, because that was where Dumbledore had been, and she was very close to her grandfather.

***

Hermione smiled in triumph. She'd found it, her mother's diary, in Dumbledore's office in the cabinet that housed the pensieve. There was a note on top of it…

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A/N: So sue me. This was an extremely short chapter, I know. It sucks. You'll hate me more later. In fact, I think I have hit an all-time low with this story. ARGH!!!

Oh, and I'm uploading this so soon after uploading the other chapter 'cause these are both so short… The next one's longer, don't worry.

Disclaimer: If I ever tell you I own this, please hit me over the head with a frying pan (or an equally heavy object) and ask me to gather my sanity.

dracohermioneshipper: Because I said so. *giggles*