Childhood Sweethearts Remember

Chapter 2: Taking a Fall

The next day, Hermione woke up late. It was almost noon. She stood up and went to her walk in closet thinking how easily she could get used to being rich. She stripped off her extra large T shirt and put on her new clothes for the day.

Quietly, she snuck downstairs, not wanting to alert her parents that she was awake. As soon as she got to the kitchen, she rummaged through the refrigerator looking for something to eat for lunch. She had been so angry yesterday that she had stayed up in her room all night, refusing to come down for dinner.

She was just about to pull out some turkey in order to make a sandwich but then a hand stopped her. "Frida make food for Miss," the house elf said. "That Frida's job!" Hermione frowned at the thought of having a house elf. S.P.E.W. had not gone over well in school but that only served in making her more alert in Elf rights.

"No thanks, Frida," she said. "I'll get it myself."

"Hermione, dear," a voice said from the doorway. "Let Frida take care of you." It was her mother, who seemed to be very different now that they were out of the muggle world. She was wearing black robes and makeup. It appeared as though finally she cared about what people around her thought.

"Mum! You're wearing makeup!"

"Of course dear. Now that we're home and around RESPECTABE people, I have to look my best." Hermione rolled her eyes at her mothers comment.

"Mother that's just silly. Muggles can be respectable too. You were even good friends with some muggles."

"Nonsense," he father finally said, coming up behind Patrice and giving her a kiss on the cheek. "We were pretending to be friends with the muggles but we always despised them. Fowl creatures they are. Not worthy of air."

Once again Hermione rolled her eyes. Deciding upon ignoring her parents and her lunch, she ran out the back door and into the back yard. She noticed that there was no fence separating their yard from the Malfoy's and this gave her an icky feeling. Her encounter with the young Malfoy yesterday had left her more than a little confused.

She looked at the backyard with a sad expression. Why couldn't she remember any of this? It was all new to her... the house, the 'friends', the house elves... everything. She took a seat on the edge of the sandbox and began building a sand castle.

"So you retreat to the sandbox once more when everything is too much, heh?" he said from behind her. "That was your favorite place as a child. OUR favorite place. I always knew that if you were confused or angry, I could find you in the sandbox."

"Malfoy, just leave," she sighed. "I don't have the strength to deal with you right now. Please, juts leave me alone."

"You know your parents are worried about you. Said that you didn't come out of your room last night," he said, ignoring her pleas for him to go away.

"Well what would you do if all of a sudden your parents told you that they've been living a lie since you were seven years old and they were really evil, and... OH YEAH, they erased your memory? I doubt you'd really want to talk to them either."

He sat down next to her and began helping her with her sand castle. "I guess I'd lock myself in my room, skip every meal and never talk to them again," he said sarcastically.

"I guess it has to actually happen to you before you know how you'd react. But could you do me a favor?"

"What?" he asked, not sure if he would actually follow through with doing a favor for a girl he had been known to hate for so long.

"Stop talking to me about things from our childhood. All I remember from my youth is muggle things, like playing T ball with my friends, or running around in the backyard with some of my neighbors. Never in all my memories was there a boy with platinum blonde hair and a forked tongue!"

He snickered at her anger. "I'm there, somewhere, beneath all those false implanted memories, I'm there. I've always been there. Come with me. I have something to show you," he said, grabbing her hand and leading her into the forest behind their houses. They walked for a while in silence, neither one knowing what to say. Finally, they got to a rather large tree and Hermione walked up to it, getting a strange vibe. She looked at the tree trunk and found a carving inside a heart.

D M

&

H G

She stepped back, annoyed at what she had seen. "Malfoy..." she said cautiously. "Was that... is that our...did we do you that?"

"Don't you remember?" he said as if she had lost her mind. "This is our tree. We carved this in the day before you left. Look up!" She did and was amazed at what was there. "That's our tree house. Your father built it for us when we were little and we loved coming here and so finally, before you left, we came here and marked it with our initials."

She began to climb up the trunk until she got to the tree house. Looking around, she found an old beat up couch and counter top with boxes on top of it. She picked up one of the boxes and observed it carefully. It was a pretty box with moons and suns all over it, stars shimmering brightly. They would appear and disappear at random. Hermione assumed it was bewitched to do that and so she didn't say anything.

She opened it up and found a picture album. Viewing its contents, she nearly choked. It started out with pictures of her and Draco as babies just wearing their diapers. No doubt about it, he definitely was a cute baby.

She kept flipping through the pictures and all of them were of her and Draco. One of the pictures was the cutest thing ever, at least it would have been if it wasn't of her and Malfoy. They were holding hands and running through the sprinkler in the back yard, laughing and smiling.

"Your mum put that together and gave it to me as a present the day before she took you away from me for good," Draco said softly with a hint of sadness in his voice. Hermione looked at the pictures again and noticed something odd. She had darker hair, almost black.

"My hair," she whispered. "But, how?"

"You're mum changed it so I couldn't recognize you. She put a charm on you to make your hair this brown color. Now that you're back, she'll be taking it away soon enough. It's surprising though. I like it both ways."

Hermione took a few steps backwards with the photo album still in her hands. "I'm sorry but this is just too much for me to handle right now." She kept walking backwards and then it happened. She slipped and fell out of the tree.

"MIA!" Draco screamed as he watched her fall onto the forest floor.

Her head was spinning and she felt as though it was going to split in half. "Ugh," she moaned as she sat up. Opening her eyes, she finally noticed her surroundings. She was on a couch inside her 'new' house. "Huh...What?"

She was pushed back down on the couch in order to get her to stay resting. "You need to relax. Lay down. You hit your head pretty hard." It was him. He put an icepack to her forehead and stroked her cheek lovingly. "I was frightened when you fell," he admitted.

"I never would have expected that from you," she said while looking into his eyes. "This really is way too much though. One minute, I'm a muggle born witch who you despise and then the next thing I know, I'm a pureblood and you're here treating me as though I'm precious."

He sat down next to her on the couch and sighed in frustration. "I know what you mean. It's not fair, though. I LOVED you. Granted it was only a seven year old love but I know what I felt and I know that you felt it too, even if you can't remember. I asked you to marry me one day and you said yes."

"But we were only seven. Why would you ask me to marry you?" she asked sounding more confused than ever. She sat up just as he stood, raising his arms up in frustration.

"BECAUSE I BLOODY WELL LOVED YOU! THAT'S WHY! People always told me that there was no way I could have fallen in love at seven but I did! You were my everything. We were best friends since we were in diapers. You used to sneak into my house, up to my room when your parents were yelling at you for complaining too much about living in the muggle world. We spent so much time together growing up that it would have been impossible for me NOT to love you!"

"I don't get it!" she hollered back. "If you were so in love with me, how did you not recognize me when we met up in school? Even with the hair color... my eyes, my voice, it's all the same."

"Not to him," her mother said, coming into the room. "We placed a disillusionment charm on you so no one would recognize you."

"But then why did you bother with the hair color?" Hermione asked.

"Dark hair is a well known characteristic of the Reins family. The ministry knew we had a daughter your age and we didn't want them to get suspicious."

Hermione laid back down on the couch and let out a long breath. "This is going to be one long summer."

A/N... OMG... I never expected such a response. That was amazing. Thank you all so much.

I know it's weird to have them in love so young but you know kids and how cute they can be, always trying to be so grown up.

I hope you like this one. In the next chapter, more will be uncovered about her parents and why they had to hide but the Malfoy's didn't. Thanks a bunch to all the reviewers and I hope you do the same for this one.