December 2009
Hermione rolled her shoulders back beneath her usual glamour and pushed open the creaky door. Though the sun shone weakly on the cloudless afternoon, she found the local pub as dim and dank as ever. As her eyes adjusted, she regarded the familiar motes of dust dancing through the air. She scanned the patrons inside until she landed on the one she sought, and with a huff, marched across the sticky floor.
She lifted herself onto the empty barstool next to her father. With a swish of her wand, Hermione vanished the pint in front of him with a silent Evanesco.
Hugh Granger, who knew himself as Wendell Wilkins, turned and glared at her. "Hey! I wasn't finished with that!"
"I thought I told you to stop serving him," she grumbled at the balding man behind the bar. He hunched over a copy of the Daily Prophet. The headline screamed IT'S ANOTHER BOY FOR THE BOY WHO LIVED!
He rolled his eyes. "And I told you, his Sickles are as good as anyone else's."
Wendell looked sheepishly at Hermione. "I've no idea what he's talking about, but seeing as I apparently know you, would you mind paying him these Sick-things?" He patted his hands at the back pockets of his trousers. "Must've left my wallet at home."
"Sure thing," Hermione sighed. She opened her trusty beaded bag. There were fewer beads than there used to be, and little threads sprung loose from time to time. She held her chin high as she gestured to the bartender. "How much does he owe you?"
The amount didn't matter. It wasn't really her money she spent, anyway. She set the coins down on the polished bar and grabbed her father's arm.
"Who are you, exactly?"
No anger welled up inside her. No tears were held back. They never came anymore. She didn't feel anything at all as she repeated her most common phrase of the past nine years. "I'm your nurse, and I'm taking you home."
Silence was the third companion in their walk home. Side-along Apparition would have been far more convenient, but even if she could explain it to him, Muggles never tolerated magical travel methods well. In fact, she couldn't remember the last time she'd Apparated.
Hermione helped her father through the enchanted gate and up the hill to the property she still struggled to think of as hers. Cyclamen Cottage and its gardens housed not only their family but all manner of herbs and potions ingredients, everything from aconite to zebra lilies. Hermione tended to them all, day and night.
"Starting to look familiar?" she asked, but she knew the answer. Wendell didn't respond.
Her mother clawed open the door as they approached. Judy Granger loomed stoic and proud, even in a full-length housecoat.
"Out numbing that skull of yours again, Wendell?"
"I don't know who you think you are, but I've already had enough of a talking-to from this one," he pointed at Hermione. "She says I'm her patient!" Wendell pushed out his lower lip in a pout, and Hermione could sense he was already sundowning. It came earlier and earlier with each passing day.
"Mum, he can't help it, it's —"
Wendell groaned. "She's your mother? Why is your mother here?"
"It's the same old song and dance with you, Hermione. Let him accept responsibility for his actions!"
Hermione dragged her hand down over her face and took a steadying breath. The same old song and dance. Wasn't that the truth? It had been years of this.
Wendell, both faded and fading, brushed past them both and gripped the stairway bannister. "I'm knackered, gals. Going to turn in. G'night."
"Typical," Judy sniped, pinching the bridge of her pointy nose.
Hermione followed her father. "You'll be over it tomorrow, Mum. Promise."
"What happened to never going to bed angry? I'm still here!" Judy crossed her arms and huffed, an excellent impression of her daughter. When she received no response, the woman shuffled to the living room, biding her time.
Sometime later, Hermione returned downstairs. It took a great deal of cajoling, but she persuaded Wendell to down her latest concoction, a new memory potion she'd infused with elements of Amortentia. She used the base notes of her mother's cologne, the commercial-grade bleach that sanitised the original Granger Dental Centre, and fresh-cut grass.
When she'd first smelled her own Amortentia, it came as no surprise that fresh-cut grass featured among the top notes. It reminded her of Saturday afternoons before she'd gone to Hogwarts. Before she knew about dark wizards and torture and the toll of war. Hugh Granger would come in, sweaty from mowing the lawn, and he'd spy Hermione watching cartoons on the telly. He'd scoop her up in a big hug and say, "Hello, pet!" All the while, Hermione tried to squirm away. What she wouldn't give for one of those hugs now.
Her mother sat on the couch, looking at nothing in particular. A half-finished scarf, still attached to her knitting needles, lay in her lap. "Is he in bed?"
"Yes, I've given him a larger dose of the new potion I'm working on, and something to calm him. Although, I'm worried he's building up a tolerance to the latter." Hermione didn't make eye contact with her mother, crossing the room to her office instead. She needed to journal about the day's events and compare them to last week, and the last iteration of the potion. But Judy followed her, undeterred by her daughter's attempts at avoiding her. The moment she reached for her desk drawer, her mother unleashed her anger.
Judy Granger might not have all her faculties back, but she quickly eclipsed her husband, for reasons Hermione could not explain. And she was plenty capable of fury.
"Why can't you keep an eye on him?"
Hermione sighed and rubbed tired fingers between her eyebrows. "I could ask the same of you. I'm working as hard as I can, I need to focus! I can't be babysitting Dad while I'm handling delicate magical essences."
Her mother snorted. "You think you're so important because you've got magic. Your magic is what put us here in the first place."
"As if I could ever forget that." Hermione looked at her mother. Her mum. Her whole world used to revolve around her mum. Before Hermione found out she was a witch, she idolised her. She followed her around the dental centre, preening under all the attention from the oral hygienists. Just like your mum! they said, A future dentist if I ever saw one! She remembered a younger version of Judy Granger beaming with pride, over the moon that her only daughter was so smart, driven, and begging to follow in her footsteps.
Hermione almost wished that first owl from Hogwarts had never come.
"Can't you try what worked for me?"
Hermione couldn't bear to tell her mum the truth. What Judy thought "worked" actually didn't. Judy surfaced, lucid and irate, only every other day. Today, she was Judy, but tomorrow, she'd be Monica Wilkins. Hermione couldn't decide which days were worse. On Judy days, they fought. On the other days, Hermione barely got her mother to open her eyes. Some days it got so bad that she resorted to the Muggle method of tube feeding because Monica, after years of attempts to be erased from Judy's mind, either couldn't remember to swallow or she fought Hermione tooth and nail on everything, including what she served for breakfast. But no matter what each day brought, the nights were worse. The dark house seemed like it would swallow them all whole.
"I did try, Mum."
"You keep saying that! You've said it for years! And yet he's getting worse!"
Hermione didn't know what to say. The silence hung between them, full of everything from the past decade. A long moment passed before Judy spoke again.
"I hate living like this. He's here, but he's not Hugh."
"I know, Mum. I know." Hermione reached deep inside herself, willing tears to come. She wanted to show the shell of a woman in front of her that she empathised, that she hurt, too. She reached out, tentatively, to hug her.
But Judy remained beyond reaching. She swatted Hermione's hands away. "You don't know what it's like to see your husband like this," She had a wild look in her eyes now — she was out for blood. "We've never even met the man!"
Hermione glared at her mother in a clear warning. "Mum —"
"You may have been married nine years, Mrs. Malfoy, but you have no idea what it's like to be a wife. And you never will."
Most of the time, Hermione felt like she was drowning.
She found no solace in the past, present, or in her thoughts of the future. The past that followed her all across the Wizarding World marked her body and soul forever. Her future proved too grim to contemplate. And the present... the present required her full attention. She pushed herself to be grateful for all that she had — her parents, her health, a beautiful home in a quiet part of the country — and buried her deep longing for the things even magic could not give her.
Each day she got up early, tended to her parents' ever-growing medical needs, and kept the house tidy. At night she conducted her research into memory, more specifically, the effects of Obliviation. It had been the routine for the last nine years.
Nine years of dwindling hope.
Nine years of failure.
Not only had she failed to fully reverse the effects of the Obliviation, a precaution she had to take during the war, but she also failed to keep her Muggle parents on a trajectory to healing physically and emotionally. She strayed from the narrow path of the light, finding that it shifted and changed all around her. It became easier to wrap herself in shadows, and as much as she thirsted for truth, she drank deeply from the well of forbidden, darker magic. She practised spells she wished she didn't have to know, and read books so malevolent they turned her stomach inside out. They wouldn't have made it into even the restricted section at Hogwarts, such was the twisted, deranged ranting within. But there were kernels of knowledge beneath the layers of bigotry and blood purity, and so they were the only books that had given her any hope.
That hope had come at a steep price.
Still, Hermione persevered. She had no other choice.
She stooped over her desk littered with parchment and all manner of magical and Muggle books about healing, memory, and more. Untangling herself from her current reading, Magic and the Muggle Mind, Hermione glanced at the grandfather clock. Midnight already, and the book was less than illuminating. It contained no new revelations concerning the reversal of Obliviation on Muggles.
She gently placed the book on top of an ancient tome she'd turned to time and time again. During the hunt for horcruxes, Hermione took it upon herself to investigate the old Riddle House in Little Hangleton. She'd knicked the book, thinking in spite of, or perhaps because of its provenance, it might be useful. It reeked of dark magic, and its anonymous author focused on what one could do with Muggles after Obliviation. The ideas inside horrified her, written in a hand as crooked as the author's intentions. Several spells spoke of cruel experimentation: one for maintaining organ function on a vivisected Muggle, another for reattaching and rejuvenating mangled or diseased genitalia. Many of the potions recipes were crossed out, having done more good than harm. She refused to read a section detailing testing performed on Muggle infants.
Despite the sickening subject matter, she'd pressed on, driven by her shame and desperation. Though she battled with herself, she'd modified several of the spells and potions for her own use with some success. The scar on her arm throbbed each time she touched the book, a cursed remnant that beat in tune to the Dark Magic surrounding her. It was dangerous, what she did, but she couldn't stop. It was the only thing to produce results.
Wendell wandered downstairs in his nightshirt. His bony knees and elbows caught the lamplight, covered in sallow, shiny skin. She knew so much more now than she had at eighteen — the brain and the body are connected, and as grey matter withers, so does the rest of you. Her father's reaction to the Obliviation and subsequent reversal had eroded much of his frontal lobe, while Judy's incomplete reversal made her brain look pitted and hollow on magical scans. If she'd known, she wouldn't have made the same choices. She wouldn't have fought so hard to bring their memories back.
"Say, where do you keep the brandy around here? I could use a nightcap."
"Sorry Wendell," she said, pasting a smile on her face. "Maybe there's some upstairs?"
There wasn't any brandy upstairs, of course, but it was imperative to get him back in bed before Judy noticed his absence. Hermione took her father's thin arm and led him up the narrow staircase. The charmed floorboards kept their footfalls silent. She missed the way Crookshanks used to curl around her legs as she climbed each step, but he, too, was gone now. The bedroom her parents shared lay at the end of the hallway.
"You know, you remind me of someone." Wendell's glassy eyes scanned her face.
"Do I?" Her response had no curiosity behind it. There'd been many moments like this. She knew better than to hope.
"Yes, I'm sure of it. Maybe we met at uni…."
"Hush, you'll wake Mum." Hermione bit her lip. She hadn't meant to call her mother Mum again. On Judy days, Wendell only knew her as Judy. Gods, she was so tired. Just a little further.
"Don't know what you're talking about, pet."
Hermione froze. If only she'd had a Pensieve, or a phial open so she could've captured his words. She already wanted to replay them, a secret hope blooming in her chest that Hugh Granger had spoken to her. She tried to turn him towards her, but he broke her grip as he quietly entered the bedroom and closed the door.
There was no use dithering in the hallway. Hermione sought her own room, and a wall of hot air rushed out to meet her. She always kept her fire going, in part to drive out the dampness that would harm her vast collection of books, but mostly appreciating the way the flames greeted her after a long day. But today had been unseasonably warm, and in her exhaustion all she could think about were soft, cool sheets. She cast Glacius Temporalis, a quick cooling charm of her own design, and relished the speedy drop in temperature.
None of the Malfoy properties, including this one she and her parents now inhabited, had Muggle heating or air conditioning. There were so many Muggle comforts the Grangers missed now that they were permanent citizens of Wizarding Britain. That was the one thing Order of the Phoenix member Sturgis Podmore had done for her: even after all she, Harry, and Ron had sacrificed — their childhoods, mainly — to defeat Voldemort. After endless pleas on her part, he'd allowed her to bring her parents back from Australia and live in the Magical world. Funny how the Statute of Secrecy could be bent if you had the right connections. Two years post-war, a stamp from Minister Podmore and one Portkey later, she and her parents found themselves back in Wizarding London. They lived in a dingy little flat in a seedy part of town, making do.
That's where all the real trouble began.
But tonight was not for thinking of the war, eleven years past now. (Had there been a 10th-anniversary gathering? She wouldn't know — she shut her Floo years ago, and turned away all owls or guests.) Nor was it for churning through memories of the friends she hadn't seen, spoken, or written to since her marriage. Tonight she stared at the ceiling, turning her father's words over and over in her mind. She couldn't get too excited, that wouldn't do at all. But he'd called her pet, he'd talked about Mum.
She changed into her pyjamas, climbed into bed, and had just settled down when the one other important happening that day burst to the forefront of her mind.
Harry! Harry had a son!
Hermione rocketed out of bed, ran barefoot back down the stairs and through the parlour, out the front door, and finally down the lane. Please, she thought, let the Dorseys still be on holiday!
The neighbouring house stood empty, and as she'd hoped, a haphazard stack of the Daily Prophet lay against the gate. A Lumos revealed the top paper bore the headline she saw earlier in the day. She tucked it under her arm and walked back home.
Back in her study, her heart galloped in her chest as she watched the moving picture. Harry, Ginny, a little boy, and a baby were cuddled together in a big bed, looking all loved up. Ginny smiled at Harry, the baby nestled in her arms. Harry ruffled his older son's hair. The image struck her; vibrant and too real. Hermione stifled a sob. Another boy. She hadn't even known about the first one.
What else had happened in the last nine years?
The article revealed Harry's first son's name to be James Sirius. A touching tribute, in her opinion. The newest Potter's name was Albus Severus. A quote from Harry recounted how important both namesakes were to him growing up at Hogwarts, and how essential both had been in ending Voldemort's terrifying chokehold on Wizarding Britain. She heard her friend's voice in her mind, his signature strength and clarity of purpose ringing clear.
And at the bottom of the page, such an afterthought that she had almost missed it — another quote.
"Albus's godparents are the same as James's — Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. Their friendship during my youth is the reason I'm alive today. Ron, mate, my boys will see your kind heart and unwavering loyalty as they grow. I hope it rubs off on them. And Hermione, my deepest wish is for them to know you as I do. Your warmth, wit, and generosity of spirit are guiding lights."
Speechless, Hermione set the paper on her desk and leaned back in the chair. She touched a hand to her cheek. Tears flowed freely down her face, clinging to her jaw before dropping to their deaths. She observed the pattern they made on the carpet below — tiny dark daisies, blooming and spreading. When was the last time she'd cried? She didn't need to dry them, but the evidence of emotion disturbed her. Siccesco.
Harry had two sons. She had two godsons. He didn't hate her for disappearing. He didn't hate her for never telling him why, and never replying to his letters years ago when she still accepted mail. She should have known that Harry would always love her. Harry Potter didn't have the capacity to hate.
Was it enough for him not to hate her?
No. Even though she loved Harry, and he hadn't meant to, he'd hurt her. But worse, Hermione hated herself. He didn't know it, but she'd married their worst living enemy.
Willingly.