CHAPTER TWENTY: Life Away From Home
The sunlight came down in bright beams that seemed to trail Hermione as she followed the now-familiar path back to her home. She used the word 'home' loosely. It was little more than a place where she kept her belongings and slept. No matter how seemingly beautiful and peaceful Luxembourg was, it would never be home for her. She would have easily traded the mild, sunny winter days for the cold, rainy ones of London.
For her father's benefit, she had tried to accept this new way of life. The one summer she had spent in France with her parents turned out to benefit her greatly, since French was one of the main spoken languages there. She had shown a positive attitude towards their living arrangements and had kept up the same studiousness at school as she had done at Hogwarts – for a while. After spending a month trying to adjust, she had come to the conclusion she would never belong in an isolated out of the way country. She couldn't hide away knowing she was safe when almost every other person she cared about could be in mortal danger at any given time.
Through researching what few magic books she had been secretly able to pack with her, she discovered there was a small wizarding township located on the outskirts of the main city. She would quite often skip her morning class to go to the small café there and check out that morning's copy of the paper. The café carried some of the more larger wizarding newspapers in Europe, the Daily Prophet among them. More times than not it was trivial information, and it frustrated her to no end that she couldn't get a precise account of what was going on in England – that was until about a week ago. She had grabbed Friday's paper and splashed across the front cover was an article outlining a Death Eater attack on several Ministry of Magic officials. The Aurors were reporting there was no motive behind the attack and the investigation had halted there, much to the outcry of the general public that more was not being done. The simple reason for that was the decline in Aurors. They couldn't be spending their time searching for the motive of every attack that occurred when there were barely enough of them as it was. The dwindling Auror numbers had all but sealed Fudge's fate for being replaced. The Prophet was reporting daily about the fear spreading across wizarding communities throughout Britain. People were panicking that there would not be enough Aurors should Voldemort decide to strike in larger numbers.
So many times she had been tempted to send an owl to Ron, even though she knew he was all right, and had even gone as far once as to write a whole letter before stopping just short of sending it. There was a very good chance the owl would be intercepted, but that wasn't her main concern. If Ron wrote back and she wasn't home, or worse yet if the neighbours began noticing owls showing up at her bedroom window during the day and spoke to her father about it, he would be furious. So she and Ron were stuck sending letters to each other the traditional muggle way. She had shown Ron how to do it during their last Hogsmeade visit. The post office there had a small section devoted to muggle methods of delivering post in case any Hogwarts students needed to send letters or packages to their muggle homes. She had carefully gone through the process with him, and if not for their circumstances he never would have paid that close attention to her explanations. The post was delivered straight to her house and her father assumed it was one of her friends from her old street that she still kept in touch with. Hermione had decided it would be best to have Ginny write on the envelope to avoid arousing any suspicions. So far it was working, but it was such a slow process she wondered how she had ever survived the muggle way growing up. She was so used to receiving mail the following day instead of a week or two later. But for the moment it was all they had.
Ron would talk about the Gryffindor Quidditch matches and what was happening at Hogwarts in his letters, and sometimes Harry or Ginny would write a few lines, but there was never any mention of You-Know-Who. She trusted him enough that if anything did happen he would write and tell her. It had been over two weeks and he had still not responded to her latest letter. She knew it was pointless to worry. If the post was coming all the way from Hogsmeade then there were bound to be times when there would be delays.
She couldn't remember the exact moment when she had fallen in love with Ron, but it seemed to be amplified that much more now that they were apart. They had never been apart for this long before, except for the summer between first and second year. Writing letters was fine, but it was nowhere near the same as seeing him, touching him…
She wondered if it was the same for him before quickly banishing the thought. She knew how Ron felt, and she was fairly confident that being apart for an unknown length of time wouldn't change that. But sometimes the little seeds of doubt would creep into her mind when she allowed them to. When they both had enough time apart would they realize they were better off friends? That it was perfectly natural for two people who had known each other for so long and been through so much, to develop certain non-platonic feelings, but should never have acted on them? She knew it was more anxiety about all the changes in her life than any serious doubts about her relationship with Ron, but it still would have been nice to have someone to talk to about them.
She was almost 'home' now, and would still have a few hours to herself before her father returned home from work. There was only one dentist in the area, so her father had rented office space in the same building and now had his own small but growing client list. The other dentist in the building had readily agreed to it because now he could take sick days and vacations without having to worry about sending his patients to the next city over.
She dropped her keys off on the small table by the front door and proceeded towards the kitchen. She planned on grabbing something to eat and then going through the next chapter in her Transfiguration book. Her plans didn't include finding her father sitting at the kitchen table waiting for her, with a pile of books stacked beside him. She didn't have to look too closely to realize they were her Hogwarts texts and several other magical books she had picked up over the years, including Hogwarts, A History.
"You went into my room and searched through my things?" She cried, outraged.
"I didn't have a choice," he said, raising his own voice. "The school called my office today and said you've been missing classes. They said all your marks are either borderline of failing. Where are you spending all your time?"
"Nowhere," she lied.
"Hermione," he began, his voice stern, "I moved us here to get us away from all that, and now I find out you're still carrying on with that magic nonsense and writing to those friends of yours."
Just knowing that he had looked at her letters from Ron were almost enough to make her lose her temper completely. That was more of a violation of her privacy than snooping in her room and finding her books. "You can't expect me to stop caring about them just because you made me leave," she argued.
"I made us leave because it wasn't safe," he responded to her argument. "But you've completely jeopardized that by writing to them. You have no idea who might be watching the post."
"I never wanted to leave!" she shouted, feeling the weeks of frustration and loneliness finally breaking through. "How can I worry about my own safety when there's people I care about who are in danger all the time. I can't stay here, don't you get that?"
Her father abruptly stood up from the table. "If your mother and I had just followed our original instincts you would never have gone to Hogwarts and she would still be alive!"
Once the words were out of his mouth, he looked truly sorry to have said them, but Hermione was already up in her room with the door slammed shut before he could utter an apology.
It wasn't until Hermione was sure her father had left the house before she dared to open her bedroom door. It was Saturday morning and she had kept herself shut up in her room since the previous afternoon. She knew it was only safe to leave now because her dad had gone into the office for the morning. He always saw patients in the mornings on Saturday's, and now that was working to her advantage. She didn't want to have to do this, but she couldn't live like this anymore. She could respect and even understand his reasons for bringing her here – he feared for her life. He had already lost his wife and she, her mother, but running away wouldn't change any of that or who she was.
She had tried to make him understand her world, but he didn't want any part of it, and now she was being forced to act. Hermione never thought she would reach the point where she would have to choose between her family and the wizarding world, but here she was, right at that very crossroad. She had been wrestling with the choice for weeks, and now it didn't seem as though she had any other option. She loved her dad, but she couldn't live in fear – his fear – for the rest of her life.
She filled her backpack and a duffle bag with her belongings, mostly clothes and some toiletries. She didn't know where her dad had put all her books, but they would have been too heavy to carry anyways.
She didn't think of what she was doing as running away. It was more like returning to the place where she belonged so she could make a difference, perhaps even save lives. That was the kind of thought that helped her stick to her resolve as she began the trip to the Luxembourg border.
I know this chapter was really short, but I promise the next one will be longer.
