Chapter Nine: Holly
Her hands were slippery with potato starch as Hermione peeled potatoes with her father, and she realised with a pang of guilt that she had not spent Christmas with her parents since her first year. Her parents were not big on holidays, so it never felt like she was missing them during the winter, but had it really been five years? In second year she had been in the hospital wing for the holidays, third year she had spent at Hogwarts with Harry and Ron, fourth year was the Yule Ball, and fifth year she had spent with the Order at Grimmauld Place. How had they had so little time together as a family? It made her feel all the worse when her parents were obviously so happy to see her home for the holidays.
She was going to send them away in two days, and they were making plans for the rest of the holiday with her. Her father wanted to take her skating—"remember when I used to take you to skating lessons?" (she remembered clearly)—and her mother wanted to take her to visit her great aunt Emmeline for tea. They had plans to see a film.
It was too much. If Professor Snape wasn't due to arrive shortly after their Christmas dinner she knew she could never find the strength to send them away. She swallowed the lump in her throat and returned to savagely peeling the potato in her hand.
"Is something wrong, Hermione?" her father asked, peering through his glasses at her.
"No, nothing really...just trouble with the boys," Hermione said, deflecting from the truth.
"Your mother and I thought something like that might've been why you've come home at this time of year," her father said. Hermione felt the guilt settle deeper in her gut, because it was true. If she hadn't been quarrelling with Ron, and if she wasn't sending her parents away soon she wouldn't have returned home for Christmas. "What's the problem?" he asked gently, setting down his own half-peeled potato.
Hermione laughed tearily. "It's silly. I asked Ron to go to a party with me and he ended up snogging another girl."
"Ah," her father paused. "Do I need to attack him with my dental drills?"
"That would be difficult to arrange, but it probably would make me feel better," Hermione said with a weak chuckle.
"I'm sorry to hear that, honey," her father said, awkwardly drying his hands with a towel. "Well, you know, you've had lots of ups and downs with the boys. I'm sure you three will survive this mess once again." He patted Hermione on the back and then turned to check the turkey in the oven.
Hermione smiled tightly. This was the reason why she found it difficult to open up to her father about anything—he always had the perspective that any problem was temporary, which always felt as if he was minimising her problems in the moment. It was his way of trying to make her feel better but it grated. Still, at least he cared.
Christmas dinner was a quiet affair. Richard and Jean Granger had not invited any friends, and they had no close family to invite, so it was just the three of them sitting at their dining table for six.
Conversation had started out well. Hermione listened attentively to their latest tales from their practice and enjoyed the life updates on some of their clients. She didn't even mind when her mother had pointedly brought up that her receptionist's daughter had found yet another boyfriend. It wasn't until halfway through the dinner when she talked about how she was helping the school hospital wing brew potions that the conversation took a frosty turn.
"Does your school have a lot of accidents requiring healing potions?" Jean asked, cutlery frozen over her meal.
Hermione swallowed. "Mum. It's not that—it's just normal things like bruise paste or calming draughts—"
Her mother pursed her lips. "And why are they prescribing calming draughts to a school full of children? What do these children need calming from?"
Hermione could not answer for a moment. "Maybe they have anxiety," she offered weakly.
Both her parents exchanged glances at this, but said no more.
It wasn't until later that evening when Hermione was scrubbing dishes the non-magical way, one eye on the dishes and another on Crookshanks to make sure he didn't get at the leftovers, that she realised she had forgotten to hide away the luggage that she had packed for her parents. She had packed their summer clothes in their suitcases while they had been busy at work because it was summer in Sunshine Coast, Australia, where she was sending them.
She ran upstairs to her room, dreading what she would see, and found her mother staring oddly at the suitcases.
Her mother slowly lifted her head and looked at Hermione. "Hermione, love, what's this?" she asked.
At least the suitcases had not been opened.
Hermione's mind blanked. "I, um…"
At that moment, her father entered the room. "Going somewhere?" he asked, arms crossed over his chest.
"I just wanted to see if I could shrink suitcases! They seem to hold more things than my trunk and I thought it would be nice to have suitcases instead of a trunk this year," Hermione said, thinking fast on her feet, voice remarkably steady.
Her parents didn't seem entirely convinced.
"You know if anything's wrong, you can tell us," her mother said softly, taking a seat on her bed.
Hermione glanced at the clock on her bedside table in alarm. It was a quarter to nine, which was when Snape said he would arrive.
"Nothing's wrong," Hermione said, forcing herself to calm down. She focused on the words, and willed herself to believe them, a lying technique she learned from Snape.
"I'm feeling rather thirsty," she said. "Let's have some tea?" She gestured to her bedroom door, and sagged in relief when her parents left her bedroom.
They had barely set their things down for tea when a knock sounded from their front door.
"I'll get it!" Hermione rushed to the door before her parents could move.
She opened the door to reveal a very disgruntled looking Professor Snape, who was dressed in a black wool coat with a dark grey and green scarf.
"Oh hello, Professor Snape, what a pleasant surprise!" Hermione said loudly for the benefit of her parents, and gestured for him to enter.
Snape's eyebrows went up at "pleasant surprise", but he did not comment.
Hermione heard her parents emerge from their living room.
"Hello, Professor Snape, welcome," Jean Granger said, staring quizzically at the man. "We weren't expecting you," she added, though not rudely.
"Apologies for the surprise call. Our staff has been discussing some news and we felt a short visit in person to announce it would be appropriate," Snape said smoothly, handing over his scarf and coat to Hermione. Her parents exchanged a glance. "It's not bad news," he added hastily, but her parents did not seem settled.
"Well, come in, we've just sat down for some tea," said Jean, looking pointedly at Hermione.
Everyone awkwardly exchanged glances before Snape cleared his throat.
"I know you must be very curious what brought me here late Christmas Day. Hermione has been chosen as the apprentice for our Hospital Wing Matron and as such needs to cut her holiday short so she can start early on her apprenticeship," he said.
"That's good," Richard Granger said. Both of her parents were smiling, but not very enthusiastically.
"It's a small Hospital Wing, but becoming a Healer is very much like becoming a doctor," Snape elaborated.
"Oh, that's wonderful news!" her mother said, smiling wider. Both of her parents now seemed very pleased with this news, and it was at that moment that Snape shot two Stupefys in rapid succession at them both.
"Did I really get an apprenticeship with Madam Pomfrey?" Hermione asked, quickly turning the lights out, as Snape indicated.
"Yes, but the apprenticeship won't start for a while. Altering their memories would be easier if the last thing they felt for you was joy instead of worry," Snape said, going around the sofa to approach the Grangers.
"Stay near me in case I need you," he said while he held the eyelids of her father up. He leaned his forehead Mr Granger's, and began to softly intone in a low pitched voice while maintaining eye contact, the only word that was intelligible from time to time being "Hermione".
Hermione clenched and unclenched her hands against the muted floral pattern of the living room sofa, unable to relax while keeping guard over her parents.
What felt like an age later, Snape gestured towards her. "The memories."
Reaching into her pockets, Hermione unshrunk two jars filled with glowing silver whisps, each marked with a different parent's name. The memory creation had been rushed in the two weeks before the holidays; Hermione had not slept well for weeks with worry over the fear that she had forgotten a detail or aspect of their life in the false memories that she had created, but Snape had assured her that the job was thorough. She handed the jar for her father over to Snape, and slowly Snape dropped each memory near her father's temple, where the silver strings of thought were immediately absorbed into his head.
Snape moved on to work on her mother, using the same process of leaning against her forehead and chanting under his breath. Ten minutes had passed when her mother suddenly sat up.
"Hermione, no!" Jean gasped. Hermione's heart rate immediately spiked to a rough staccato.
Snape swore and Stupefied Mrs Granger again, then turned to Hermione.
"It might be easier if you were the one who laid down the charms for your mother," he said. "Her mind recognises my presence as foreign and she is very reluctant to part with memories of you."
Hermione's heart continued to beat wildly. She knew the theory of how to suppress the memories, and had even practised the intonation, but the thought of actually doing it made her sick.
"Can I have a moment?" she asked.
"Of course." Snape returned to the seat he had previously taken while they drank their tea, and sat motionlessly. Hermione squinted at him in the dark—his black jumper and trousers stood out against the pale floral pattern of the sofa, and his face was a pale slash that peeked out through his black hair.
Hermione waited until her heart had stopped racing and her palms had stopped sweating to approach her mother. With shaking hands, she brushed back her mother's hair from her face, and tried not to think about what she was doing.
She leaned her forehead against her mother's, and opened her mother's eyes to make eye contact.
"I'm sorry, mum," she whispered, before slowly starting the same chant that Snape used. She searched her mother's mind for memories of herself, ruthlessly suppressing any that she found. It was slow going, as her mother seemed determined to hang onto her memories, but there wasn't much left for her to do. Snape had managed to reach her baby years. It was gut-wrenching to feel the elation her mother felt when she held her for the first time, but that memory had to go, as well as the memory of the moving performance that her mother and father had seen of The Winter's Tale, where they decided on the name "Hermione" shortly before she was born, for the virtuous and beautiful Queen of Sicily.
Finally, she finished. She released her hold on her mother's head, and looked at Snape in confusion when he handed her a white handkerchief in the gloom of the dark living room. He gestured to her face.
She touched her fingers to her cheeks and felt moisture. Oh. She was crying.
Taking the cloth from Snape, she hastily wiped her tears away.
"I can do the memories," she said, reaching for the jar of false memories that Snape held.
Snape held onto the jar for a moment, before he handed them over. "As you wish," he said.
Hermione felt another wave of nausea as she slowly dropped each fake memory into her mother's mind, establishing that she was Monica Wilkins, that she had met Wendell Wilkins at dentistry school, and that they never wanted children.
"Alright, what next?" Hermione asked, wiping her palms on her jeans.
"I'm going to take them to the hotel and fabricate two dead bodies, just what I do every Christmas," Snape replied dryly. "Wait to be contacted by the authorities. Remember the name of the solicitors that I've sent you."
Severus carried the bodies of the Grangers into their car one by one, and loaded the trunk with their luggage.
"You know how to drive?" the youngest and still conscious Granger asked him, eyes wide.
Severus rolled his eyes. He had been driving since he was a teenager; Tobias had made sure of that by teaching him with the lorry the cotton mill had used, when he had briefly been employed there. He wondered how long Granger would continue to think he was a Pureblood despite the mounting evidence.
"I do. But if you will remember, the whole point of this exercise is to crash the car. You needn't worry," Severus said, sliding into the car. It was a surprisingly old and slightly shabby car considering the occupation of the Grangers, but their entire house had been a lot more modest than he had expected. He hoped that meant they had a healthy retirement fund.
He left Hermione without another word, and tried to enjoy his short drive to the nearest hotel. It was silent in the car, aside from the light snores of Mr Granger.
He pulled up to The Unicorn Inn, a 16th-century bed and breakfast where Monica and Wendell Wilkins had reservations for the evening.
He rennervated the Grangers, Confunded them into thinking that he was the cabbie and that they had a flight tomorrow from London to Brisbane, from where they would then go on to the Sunshine Coast.
"Enjoy your trip," Severus called with forced cheer after the Grangers, and waited for them to enter the inn before he sped away.
The drive along the woods was silent and relaxing, away from the Grangers. Severus was a little unsettled by the memories he had of younger Hermione—especially of Hermione crying about the relentless bullying that happened at school and how her parents had handled it by telling her to be the bigger person and that "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me" (a lie that had him grimacing, as words were weapons he used to hurt people with frequently). He had expected memories of parents who fawned over her every achievement, but instead he saw parents who rarely understood what made her proud of herself, though they had encouraged her to do as much book learning as possible, with not-entirely-subtle guidance to go into medicine, which the girl seemed to have at taken to at least.
Some memories he had expected, like those of an overly-precocious young Hermione who would read everything and anything, who would ask difficult to answer questions and would not stop babbling about interesting ideas she came across. It was surprising how few memories they had of their daughter once she had gone off to Hogwarts.
But he could not deny the love they felt for her, even though they had no idea what to do with a precocious child who made strange things happen, who turned into a young woman approaching adulthood who lived in an entirely different world from the one that they knew.
Severus parked the car slowly on the winding road that ran through the woods, and set up some Notice-Me-Not charms around the perimeter of his "accident".
He took the two chips of teeth he had taken from the Grangers (with an unspoken apology for wrecking their perfect smiles, but he knew they could fix that), and dropped them in separate beakers of Skele-Gro. The thick green substance bubbled, and soon he extracted two full sets of teeth from the beakers.
He Accio'd any remains of his hair or clothes from the Grangers' car, and then transfigured two fallen logs into bald and nail-less bodies of the Grangers. Severus set the teeth into the fake bodies with a grimace at the resulting squelch, and set about implanting and replicating the bits of hair and nails that he had collected from the Grangers. Siphoning a little blood from the vials he had taken from the Grangers, he spelled the volume to grow, then filled their "veins" with the resulting "blood". Fingerprints came next, and then Severus cast a spell so the bodies would mimic rigor mortis and slowly decay. Finally, he Conjured some clothes for the bodies.
He levitated the false Grangers and some conjured luggage into the car, artfully arranged them in their seats, then flipped the car off the lip of the road. A loud crash sounded through the silent forest, and the bodies crashed into the shattered windshield, spraying blood in a wide arc onto the dimly lit snow.
Lips curling in satisfaction, Severus cancelled his Notice-Me-Not charms, and then Apparated to his next appointment.
"Severus, please do come again soon," Lucius Malfoy said, his patrician drawl a shadow of its former glory.
Severus inclined his head. "You know my post keeps me busy, Lucius, but I will try."
He held his breath, and then Apparated to the gates of Hogwarts. The walk back to the castle doors through the swirling snow was just another brilliant addition to his day that seemed to have no end. At least the heavy silence that blanketed the path from the gate to the castle door was comforting—a side effect of the snow and the late hour. It was a welcome change from the discussion of Muggle torture methods over champagne and canapés at Malfoy Manor.
Severus paused in front of the staircases, then headed down to the dungeons after debating the merits of seeing Dumbledore. There was no need to make a report immediately as nothing he learned was time sensitive. He could take some time off for Christmas, though it was Boxing Day already.
His shoulders were tense until he passed through the wards of his rooms, where he headed straight for the secret chamber behind his right-hand bookshelf.
Vials upon vials of memories lined the walls. Tonight, he added two new ones—one of Macnair planning the death of another Muggle-born wizarding family, and Draco looking pale and shaken after his audience with the Dark Lord, with a thin trickle of blood flowing from his nose.
Scanning the walls brimming with so many vials containing similarly awful memories, Severus was seized with the urge to blast it all. Instead, he slowly backed out of his chamber of memories and headed to bed, where he paused at the small pile of presents piled on the trunk at the foot of his bed. There was Albus' usual lumpy package of socks, Minerva's usual bottle of spirits, and Sprout's usual gift of herbs. They were the only ones whom he had not been able to dissuade from giving gifts over the years. On top of those three sat a Christmas card, a new addition.
He picked it up, frowning down at the glittery snowy landscape on the front of the card. Inside, it simply read Happy Christmas Professor Snape. There was no name, though he knew that handwriting anywhere. It was Granger.
He stared at the card, almost not comprehending the message written on it. It seemed like such an inane, mundane thing to hold in his hands. None of his students gave him Christmas cards, though other professors often received them. His heart gave an involuntary lurch in his chest.
Severus carefully set the card back on top of his pile, and then he let his body fall into his bed, where he fell into a restless slumber.
Hermione woke to the sound of heavy pounding on her front door. Hastily, she threw on trousers and a jumper, and ran down the two flights to the front door.
"Hello?" she greeted, opening the door to reveal a greying policeman and a severe-looking younger man dressed in tweed.
"Is this the Granger residence?" the older of the two asked, moustache bristling in the biting cold.
"Yes, how may I help you?" Hermione asked, heart thudding. This was it. This was when she would find out if their plan worked or not.
"I'm Inspector Lanning, and this is the coroner, Mr Ash," the older man introduced. "Are you of any relation to Jean and Richard Granger?"
"Yes, I'm their daughter," she said faintly.
"We have some bad news for you. Could we come in?" asked Inspector Lanning, eyes already sweeping past Hermione into the hall.
"Of course, come in," Hermione ushered them inside, and sat them down at the same sofa Snape had sat on not twelve hours ago. She was surprised at the efficiency of law enforcement.
After politely declining a drink, the two men looked at each other before Inspector Lanning spoke.
"I'm sorry to disturb you on Boxing Day, but this could not wait." He took a deep breath. "This morning, your parents were found dead at the site of a car accident in the woods near Finstock. Mr Ash has determined the cause of death to be an accident, and we have confirmed their identities with their driver's licenses. He's here if you have any questions."
"Oh," Hermione said. She let her whole body tense and freeze, and she did not repress her need to take deep breaths. She was not sure if her nerves and sense of anticipation at carrying out her deceit were coming across as a realistic response to the news, but she hoped the inspector and coroner would read it as shock.
"Did they pass quickly?" she asked in a quiet voice.
"Yes. It was over very quickly based on what we could see. We're very sorry for your loss," the coroner added, eyes softening at her rigid posture.
Hermione had not slept well the entire night, and it wasn't difficult to feign a look of dazed exhaustion.
"Thank you for notifying me," she said, voice trembling with nerves.
"Do you have any relatives or friends you could stay with?" the Inspector asked.
Hermione nodded, as to get the two men to leave as soon as possible. Now that the "death notification" had happened, she needed to plan a funeral, talk to the solicitors Snape suggested who dealt with Muggle affairs, go to the bank to transfer some of the funds from her university account to "Monica and Wendell Wilkins", and finish the rest of her holidays.
"I have a great aunt who lives nearby who I'll ring soon," she said. "I think...I'd really like to be alone right now," she added, letting her lips quiver.
"Are you sure, Miss Granger?" Mr Ash asked.
"I'm sure," Hermione said with a sniff. "I really just need some time alone. You know. To process." She hoped she wasn't laying it on too thick, though her sense of unreality at the whole situation was not fake at all.
The inspector and the coroner exchanged glances.
"Alright. If you ever need anything, call us at the station and we can put you in contact with grief counselling services. It's a tough thing, when parents pass, especially when it happens so unexpectedly," Inspector Lanning said. Then he slowly raised himself from the sofa and headed to the door.
Hermione followed them to the entryway to see them out.
"That's a nice wreath miss," the coroner said, pausing at the front door. Hermione looked behind her in confusion—her parents never put up outdoor decorations—but then she noticed a holly wreath decorating her door. The berries were unusually large and red.
"Thank you," she said. "Thank you both for coming over."
"No problem. You take care of yourself," the inspector said, tipping his hat.
Hermione watched as the two of them walked away, suddenly finding it hard to breathe. It was still hard to believe that she had done it. Sent her parents away and convinced the authorities. She took a deep shuddering breath, and wrapped her arms around herself tightly.
Turning, Hermione examined the wreath closely. She ran a few revealing spells over the wreath, and discovered it was a cleverly disguised ward of some sort.
It must've been Snape then. Was this a Christmas gift? In any case, it was quite fitting, as hollies stood for foresight. They also stood for domestic bliss, but the idea of Snape wishing anybody "domestic bliss" was a laughable one.
Credit to Snape's secret memory room goes to Ms-Figg, who used it in her story where Snape gets de-aged, and credit to the head canon that Snape learns how to drive due to Tobias' job at the cotton mill goes to Jaxon I believe.
Sorry I couldn't get to the lovely reviews in the last two weeks, it's been quite hectic lately. I am moving my update dates to try a new schedule, and will probably stick to one chapter every two weeks until I finish drafting the entire fic. Next chapter should be up in the first week or two of January. I've got an update on the state of my fic on my tumblr, which can be found at "viridiantly" on tumblr dot com.
Thanks all for coming on this journey with me so far and I hope the rest of the story is just as enjoyable for everyone! Happy winter holidays to all of you, and wish you all the best for the new year! :)