Disclaimer: I do not own anything that is in this story, except the plot, and any characters that you do not recognize. Everything else belongs to J.K. Rowling!!!

A/N: In response to a review I received, no the last few chapters haven't been flashbacks, they have been happening along with the fic. Thanks for all of my reviews and enjoy.

Yankee Accents

Chapter Nine: Morning Tea

Written By: Auburn Lily

Hermione stood in Flourish 'N Blotts, as wave after wave of shock knocked her down. Her fingers tingled, and she barely noticed when Ginny came back to her side.

"Hermione," she said. "Hermione?" she repeated a bit louder. "Hermione, we've got to get going."

"Ginny?" Hermione asked, absently twirling a strand of hair around a finger. "Ginny, what just happened?"

"Umm, I just bought a book by Professor Trelawney, and Draco's wife just asked you to be his mistress." Ginny replied quite bluntly.

"Okay, just making sure," Hermione replied, covering up her hurt with mere confusion and annoyance. And they left the shop, and continued on their way down the narrow, cobblestone street that was packed with anxious witches and wizards.

But, when Hermione got home that night, she couldn't help but express the misery and regret that had filled her to the brim the moment she had seen the elaborate wedding band that encircled Auset's brown finger. Her eyes choked on their tears, and her throat choked on her constricting heart that was forcing its way out of her swollen mouth.

---

Hermione woke that morning, and many mornings after that bright eyed and falsely spunky. When she was around other people, she didn't think about Draco, or his Egyptian family, because it almost felt like it wasn't realistic to do so.

But, when she wasn't around others, she couldn't help but think of him. She never thought of Auset, or any of his children. She only thought of him, bitter resentment and anger radiating off of her in heat waves, which shattered every material object in her path. She couldn't get over the fact that he had actually married.

And Jessamine had said that he would never get married.

It was positively unthinkable. That all those years she had spent wallowing in the memory of him, he had gotten married. She felt rather ashamed that she assumed he would wait around for her to come back.

And Hermione couldn't get over what Auset had said to her.

"I want you to keep being his mistress."

What an absurd request. Hermione didn't dare to think what would have to happen in order for her to fall into a trap like that. She didn't know what it was Auset was scheming, but she had a feeling that it wasn't good at all.

And then, quite unfortunately, there was the part of Hermione that secretly desired to become his mistress. She would never admit this to anyone, even herself, but somewhere it lurked, hidden in the depths of her deepest turmoil, boiling and boiling, guarded by iron spiked, fortress walls.

When Hermione was alone, she couldn't get the voices out of her head, voices from past and present, voices that haunted her, voices that painted dark splotches of color under her devil's chocolate eyes, and voices that reduced her body to a mere blob of pale, almost translucently washed-out flesh.

Voices that haunted her at night, when her defenses were low.

"Hermione, love, will you marry me?"

"Hermione, don't go in there!"

"Hermione, please stay, Hogwarts needs you."

"You'll make a wonderful mother, Hermione, caring and loving and nurturing and kind… and caring and loving and nurturing and kind…"

"He's quicksand, Hermione."

"Hermione, he loves you."

"Hermione… Hermione… Hermione… Hermione… Hermione…"

They were everywhere, and Hermione had a bad feeling she was going insane. The voices wouldn't stop. Everything she did to try and get them to stop was ineffective… if anything, it made the situation worse.

"Hearing voices isn't a good sign, Harry, even in the wizarding world," she remembered herself saying, her voice reverberating off the walls of her skull, resonating in her ears, sending tremors of vibration through her brain.

They wouldn't stop… they couldn't stop… they didn't stop.

---

It was already the beginning of February. Hermione had been in England for little over a month, and for some reason, she seemed to wake every day with serious morning sickness. She didn't dare tell anyone about the situation, and she didn't want to prove her theories correct. If what she suspected was true, she didn't know what she would do. She refused to go through what she had gone through almost nine years.

Hermione woke one morning, about a week into February, to go see Molly again in St. Mungo's. She had gone the weekend before, and it hadn't seemed that she was getting any better.

Although Molly had aged an incredible amount, she still seemed to hold her sanity. She wasn't the least bit senile, and this in itself was amazing, for she had aged an estimated amount of thirty years.

"Hermione, dear, hand me that cup of tea, there," she had asked, as they sat in Molly's suite. Early morning light filtered through the windows gently, and Hermione took the mug of lemon-scented tea from the coffee table and handed it to Molly.

"I'm going back in two weeks," Hermione announced. She was the first and only visitor of that morning, and Molly searched Hermione's eyes over the thin rim of her porcelain. "I'm going to try and get some more leave so I can come back."

"Hermione, why are you going back?" Molly asked after a few minutes of collective silence.

"Because I have a job, and an apartment full of my belongings, and I've made friends back home," Hermione answered.

"Can't you stay?"

"No," she said shortly.

"Well, I think you should. You were offered a nice job, and all of the people who really know you are back here. Back home."

"People here don't know me anymore. And this could never be my home again. Too many bad memories."

"They would know you if you let them. You haven't changed as much as you think you have. I can still see the old Hermione in there, hiding underneath a load of rubbish." Molly thought aloud as she finished of her tea. She reached for the Daily Prophet that lay on her nightstand, and rifled through it, searching half-attentively.

"I don't think it's a load of rubbish," Hermione replied respectively. "It's me."

"It's not a you anybody knows around here. You haven't even spent any real time with Harry or Ron. Don't you remember when they were your best friends?" Molly asked assertively.

"Yes," Hermione lied convincingly, or at least she thought it was convincingly. The truth was she didn't want to spend any time with either of the boys, because she suspected it would be harder to return to Delaware.

Molly arched an eyebrow at this response, but didn't reply. She perused the newspaper some more, and nibbled on the end of a flaky-looking croissant.

"Anything good looking in there?" Hermione asked after a few more moments of silence.

"No, not really," Molly closed the newspaper once more. "New minister Bartimaeus Coulter-something-or-other, messing things up as usual."

"You know, I'm not the only one around here who's changed. You've changed, obviously, and Ginny's changed. Ron still eats as much as he used to. Harry's changed too."

Molly sighed, and turned her faded blue gaze to Hermione. "You've got to understand something about Harry, Hermione." She said. "The woman he loves has been gone for nine years and she's leaving him once again. You obviously understand what it is I'm talking about, because I know who it is you're thinking about when you're not doing anything. Don't leave for the same reason you left last time. Don't be chased out of this country again. If what you really want is back in Delaware, than that's beyond my control. But I don't think that it is."

The amazing thing about Molly was that she possessed this incredible sense. It was almost as if she knew everything about everyone that she cared about.

Hermione crossed her arms over her chest, and turned her eyes to the landscape that lay beyond the glass windowpanes. The trees and lush hills were fake, of course, because they were right in the middle of London, where smoky automobiles turned ivory streets to oily, sooty slush, and where factory pipes reached the clouds and emitted inky-black, wispy tendrils of pollution into a thick, snow-cloud laden atmosphere.

But what Hermione saw was a beautiful spring morning. Trees blew in the distance, tall and gargantuan, and heather and peony and daffodil blanketed the rolling hills. In the distance stood a tall, stone castle on a cliff, above a sparkling lake where a giant squid basked its tentacles in the shallows. If Hermione searched close enough, she could almost see three teenagers, two boys and a girl, walking across the grounds to their favorite study area.