Part Two: The Misses Granger
Moving back into the Muggle world had been Hermione's choice. However, it had been one of the three most difficult decisions she would make in her life, and she often questioned whether she had in fact chosen the right path. No one had ever bothered writing a book about this, after all. What To Do When Your Unborn Child's Father Is Presumed To Have Been Blown To Oblivion by an Evil Dark Lord. What a mouthful! Of course, he wasn't exactly presumed dead, really...Lily's father was dead...whoever he was.
She could remember, vividly, the day she had enrolled Lily in a private daycare facility in a nice part of town...the day the decision was finalized, made permanent both by words spoken and unspoken, a creed of the mouth and of the heart. A tall, pretentious woman peered down her nose at Hermione's shrinking figure, her brown hair curled into a sleek bun. "Mrs...no, I'm sorry...Miss Granger, is it? I see here that you have neglected to fill in the space on your daughter's application marked 'father'. Shall I fill it in for you? What is...ah...Lily's father's name?"
Hermione was staring down into her purse, her hands stroking slowly over a pair of pictures, her eyes welling up with pain. She had taken these pictures with a Muggle camera on the train, hoping to show them to her friends away from Hogwarts. The first was of a tall, red-haired boy, freckled and grinning next to the luggage compartment, a tiny smudge of dirt evident on the side of his nose. In the second picture, another boy, shorter than the first, with the darkest of black hair and piercing green eyes. His round glasses were sliding off the bridge of his nose as he contorted his eyebrows mischieviously, his wand 'tween his teeth. They were the only pictures of the boys she had left...
"Miss Granger?" The woman was tapping her pen irritably against the side of her glasses, still peering down at Hermione with a disgustingly bemused expression.
Snapping her purse shut, Hermione took in a great gulp of air and meekly replied, "I don't know. Er-- there is no father to speak of. Not anymore."
And she had stuck to that theory. From that moment on, Hermione established the absence of Lily's father to be completely normal, as well as everything else about the life of Lily and Hermione Granger. Hermione herself went to work as a typist at the office of a wealthy businessman and took up sewing classes in the evening. She told her classmates that Lily's father was a gorgeous but no-good lawyer who'd run off with his secretary before Lily was born and joked that now, she was the wiser, and aimed to be that lucky sort of helper herself! When Lily was old enough, she enrolled her in a private school where they taught swimming and gave riding lessons and Equestrian shows and everyone was happy.
But, on the inside, Hermione was as shriveled up as the flowers she tried her best to tend to in the garden. Her decision about Lily haunted her every free second, almost more than the rest of the terrible mistakes that had brought her thusfar. This decision meant that she could not even frame the photos of the only two men she'd ever dearly love. She'd simply have to keep them in her purse for all eternity, stealing furtive glances at their frozen, smiling faces until she could burn them and lay down to die.
Moving back into the Muggle world had been Hermione's choice. However, it had been one of the three most difficult decisions she would make in her life, and she often questioned whether she had in fact chosen the right path. No one had ever bothered writing a book about this, after all. What To Do When Your Unborn Child's Father Is Presumed To Have Been Blown To Oblivion by an Evil Dark Lord. What a mouthful! Of course, he wasn't exactly presumed dead, really...Lily's father was dead...whoever he was.
She could remember, vividly, the day she had enrolled Lily in a private daycare facility in a nice part of town...the day the decision was finalized, made permanent both by words spoken and unspoken, a creed of the mouth and of the heart. A tall, pretentious woman peered down her nose at Hermione's shrinking figure, her brown hair curled into a sleek bun. "Mrs...no, I'm sorry...Miss Granger, is it? I see here that you have neglected to fill in the space on your daughter's application marked 'father'. Shall I fill it in for you? What is...ah...Lily's father's name?"
Hermione was staring down into her purse, her hands stroking slowly over a pair of pictures, her eyes welling up with pain. She had taken these pictures with a Muggle camera on the train, hoping to show them to her friends away from Hogwarts. The first was of a tall, red-haired boy, freckled and grinning next to the luggage compartment, a tiny smudge of dirt evident on the side of his nose. In the second picture, another boy, shorter than the first, with the darkest of black hair and piercing green eyes. His round glasses were sliding off the bridge of his nose as he contorted his eyebrows mischieviously, his wand 'tween his teeth. They were the only pictures of the boys she had left...
"Miss Granger?" The woman was tapping her pen irritably against the side of her glasses, still peering down at Hermione with a disgustingly bemused expression.
Snapping her purse shut, Hermione took in a great gulp of air and meekly replied, "I don't know. Er-- there is no father to speak of. Not anymore."
And she had stuck to that theory. From that moment on, Hermione established the absence of Lily's father to be completely normal, as well as everything else about the life of Lily and Hermione Granger. Hermione herself went to work as a typist at the office of a wealthy businessman and took up sewing classes in the evening. She told her classmates that Lily's father was a gorgeous but no-good lawyer who'd run off with his secretary before Lily was born and joked that now, she was the wiser, and aimed to be that lucky sort of helper herself! When Lily was old enough, she enrolled her in a private school where they taught swimming and gave riding lessons and Equestrian shows and everyone was happy.
But, on the inside, Hermione was as shriveled up as the flowers she tried her best to tend to in the garden. Her decision about Lily haunted her every free second, almost more than the rest of the terrible mistakes that had brought her thusfar. This decision meant that she could not even frame the photos of the only two men she'd ever dearly love. She'd simply have to keep them in her purse for all eternity, stealing furtive glances at their frozen, smiling faces until she could burn them and lay down to die.