A/N: Thank you all for your response after last chapter! Hermione is going through so much but I promise we are getting through the clouds soon. You can follow me on tumblr (nauticalparamour) where I post sneak peeks, story updates and answer questions. Huge thank you to lanamarymack for alpha/beta reading this chapter!

Please let me know what you thought about chapter twenty-two and be on the lookout for chapter twenty-three in a few days!

Although Hermione had skipped school once when her mother had let her sleep in, she would never dream of just walking out of school early. That seemed a step too far — until today that was. Hermione knew that she didn't have it in her to stay another second, not to mention that it was already the final period of the day and study hall at that. No one would notice if she left.

It was peculiar to walk out the front doors and into the chill of the afternoon, when no one else was around. The front courtyard felt desolate, bleak and lonely. But, Hermione knew that she didn't need to linger there. Instead, she started the slow walk back to her home, trying to use the time to gather her thoughts.

While it wasn't an impossible walk from her school, it was a journey she usually made by vehicle. Someone, it seemed, was always willing to pick her up if she wanted. It was only when she was halfway home that she wondered if she shouldn't have just rang her house to see if her dad could swing by and get her rather than walk all that way. But, no, she hadn't wanted to wait at school any longer than she already had. She needed to talk to someone about everything that had been happening lately and for some reason Hermione wanted that person to be her mum.

Maybe later, when she was thinking clearer, she would try to unpack that.

Hermione only felt relief when she finally turned round the corner and saw her house at the end of the block. Belatedly, she would think about what she would have done if her mum hadn't been home. But, she didn't need to worry about that. Her mum was sitting back on the couch in the middle of the living room, with her hand in a bag of crisps, while she cackled at the newest episode of her daytime soap.

Bellatrix looked at her in surprise when she walked in through the front door. "Hermione? What's happened?" she asked, concern on her face.

Immediately, Hermione began to cry — tears rolling down her cheeks in great droplets. The story came tumbling out of her mouth all jumbled round and she was sure that it didn't make any sense to her overwhelmed mum at the moment.

For her part, her mum didn't seem alarmed about the emotional puddle that her daughter had become. She popped up from the couch and ushered Hermione into the kitchen before putting the kettle on for some tea. With the water going on the hob, Bellatrix wrapped her thin arms around her and held her close, petting her hair gently.

"Darling, tell me again," she requested. "I didn't manage to catch a lick of it before."

Hermione took a shuddering breath, before wiping furiously at the tears so she could gather herself. "Mr. Riddle has offered to pay for my University, but he has all sorts of conditions attached," Hermione said honestly.

"But that's a very generous offer, Hermione," her mum said, not sounding surprised about the offer itself. "So what's wrong?"

"I'm afraid to work for him, Mum," she answered, closing her eyes tightly. "I don't want to take his money."

"He would never do anything to hurt you, darling," her mum promised. "Your father and I would never allow that."

Hermione swallowed a lump in her throat, touched by the fierce way that her parents were willing to protect her, even if that would mean going against their boss. "I'm not afraid of him physically," Hermione explained, gently. "More of what the money represents. I would be beholden to him for the rest of my life. And he's corrupt. His money is from stealing or ripping people off. I can't — I can't in good conscience take it."

The kettle whistled and her mum busied herself with pouring their tea, preparing a slice of lemon for Hermione, just how she liked it. When she returned to the table, her mum's mouth was drawn in a thin line.

"Well, ultimately, it's your decision Hermione," she said wistfully. "And we will support whatever you decide."

That was even more touching, knowing that rejecting Tom's offer would not be what her parents would pick for her, but they would support her anyway.

Hermione played with the rim of her teacup, feeling even more distraught. "It's not that easy though," she continued. "He said I could take on any case pro bono, while I am not working for him. I…I can't discount how much good that could do. It feels selfish to throw away an opportunity like that."

"Tom would keep you busy," her mum said, dark eyebrows drawn together while she listened carefully.

"And it's not just that…" Hermione said, trailing off.

"Yes?" she asked.

"Well I talked with Adrian, Pucey that is," Hermione continued, feeling utterly conflicted. "He basically said that if I don't do as Tom says that I should be able to walk away from the neighborhood completely. If you'd asked me six months ago, I would have been able to do that without a second thought, but…"

Her mum sucked in a breath, nervous about her daughter's words. "But now?" she asked, obvious concern in her question.

"But now…I don't want to leave," Hermione revealed, to not only her mum but also to herself as well. "I don't think that I can walk away anymore. I couldn't do that to you and Daddy or even Uncle Rab. And I especially don't think that I could give up Theo."

Bellatrix breathed a sigh of relief. "But if that's what you want, why don't you just accept the offer?"

"I am…I am still considering it. It means that I will have to turn away from a part of myself. And by associating with a criminal like Riddle, well, I will feel like a bit of a criminal myself," she said, nibbling on her lower lip in concern.

Her mum laughed at that. "I promise that Tom will never ask you to do anything criminal," she said. "He has a clear line between him and Slughorn."

"But he might tell me about criminal acts that he's done," Hermione countered.

"Yes, but couldn't any potential client of yours?" her mum asked.

She supposed that this was true and something that Adrian had hinted at before. What made Tom so different from any other person she might interact with? Was it because she knew he had no intention of changing his ways? But she supposed it was only plausible deniability with any other client.

"Anyway," Hermione continued. "Ron and Harry found out that I was considering this opportunity and they freaked out at me. Harry in particular was furious that I would ever even consider working with—"

She cut herself off before mentioning the Potters knowing how furious it usually made her mum.

But her mum couldn't let it go. "With who?" she demanded.

Hermione sighed. "With the man who murdered his parents," she said.

Bellatrix took a deep breath. "Tom didn't murder the Potters," she insisted. "There is a lot more to that story than you probably know about. More than Potter knows about too."

"Well, it doesn't matter because…" Hermione trailed off, biting her lip. "Because Harry basically washed his hands of me, saying that he should have listened to Sirius about me. I don't even want to think about what awful things he has been filling his head with."

That had her mother nearly spitting with rage — the thought that anyone should talk about her child in a way that was anything less than exemplary. "My cousin," she growled out, "is an idiot. He has such a narrow world view that if you don't fall in line the way that he expects you to, he thinks you are garbage. He has absolutely no nuance of any kind. I wish that you wouldn't let what he thinks of you bother you so much."

Hermione met her mother's grey eyes and she tried her best not to let her tears fall. "Yes, I...I wish that it didn't bother me so much either," she agreed. "But, it's just so hard when I spent so many years trying to be good enough for him."

Bellatrix gave her a quick hug. "If I could go back, I would do anything in the world to ensure that you never had to live with him," she promised. "You have no idea how hard we worked to get you back. There hasn't been a single day since you were born that I didn't think of you."

The younger woman was silent for a moment, thinking over her mum's words carefully. She would have really liked that — for her parents to never have gone to jail in the first place. It would have made everything so much simpler. But, in her heart, she knew that Bellatrix and Rodolphus Lestrange would never be able to give up their commitment to Tom Riddle. And, you couldn't change the past.

"Your father and I...we only ever wanted what was best for you," she whispered, unsure of herself. It was odd to see her mum falter, as though she were questioning if what they had done was the right thing - as if she was unsure that they had tried their best. "That's why we arranged for you to go to University. We only wanted you not to have to worry about anything, so you could focus on your studies."

Hermione was surprised to hear that her parents had a hand in Tom Riddle's offer, but she shouldn't have been. It was exactly the sort of thing that they would do to try to show her that they cared, without just asking her of what kind of support that she wanted. Now, she was put in this unwinnable position.

But, it was also a bit surprising that her parents had decided that University was their daughter's chosen path. They didn't expect her to join up in Riddle's mob in the traditional way. They weren't taking her along on robberies or using her to defraud people. They had aspirations for her that were higher than the lives that they led .

"I didn't know that you and Daddy even cared if I went to University," she murmured, eyebrows drawn together while she tried to puzzle it out.

"We wanted to give you the life that we didn't have," her mum explained. "We might have resorted to crime to get ahead, but we know that you don't have to. You have different opportunities than we ever had."

"But you guys didn't have to join up with Riddle," Hermione said, sourly. "You had other options. Dad told me that he was studying to become an electrician."

Bellatrix gave her a small smile. "Why don't you bring your tea up to your room?" she suggested. "I have something to show you."

Intrigued, Hermione did as she was told and made the long walk up the townhouse stairs until she arrived on the third floor where her bedroom was. She set her tea on her bedside table and settled into her bed, propped up against her pillows. It had started to rain in the time since she'd been home and Hermione was glad that she hadn't needed to walk home through the persistent drizzle.

It wasn't much longer before her mum barged into her room carrying a large photo album. Joining her daughter on the bed, her mum propped the book up against her knees and opened the first page.

Hermione gasped, seeing all the photos of her mum and her dad together. "Oh my god," she whispered, reverently tracing the plastic that protected the pictures. There was one that caught her eye, of her mum and dad chatting away at some sort of wedding if she wasn't mistaken. Her mum was wearing a terrible periwinkle colored dress with massive sleeves and her father was wearing a short sleeve button up and tie! "You two look so young."

"This was at Andy's wedding, after she got knocked up by that awful boy," Bellatrix explained. "You couldn't even believe how ashamed Grandmama and Grandpa were, but they still paid for a nice party. I got to bring Rodolphus with. I was sixteen and your father must have just turned eighteen."

"You look very happy together," Hermione said, unable to stop the smile from forming on her face. It was different to see this side of them, but there was no doubt in her mind that her parents had always loved each other.

They turned the page and there was a picture of her mum with a handsome man. "Is that Mr. Riddle?" Hermione asked, squinting her eyes to get a better look at him.

"Yes," her mum explained. "This was after I did my first job with him. Helped set up a betting ring at the pool hall because the barkeep liked pretty girls. I might have been seventeen here."

"He's so handsome," Hermione said, biting her lower lip. While objectively she knew that he was still a good looking man now, it was hard to think of him as anything other than the monster who had taken her parents away from her. But when he was twenty-five years younger, his appeal was even more obvious.

"You say that like he isn't now," her mum countered with a smirk.

She turned the page again and there was a picture of her mum and dad at the courthouse for their wedding. Her mum was dressed in a smart white dress that would be incredibly stylish now. Her dad wore his dirty blond hair short in the picture, like he'd had it cut specifically for the day. Hermione realized she'd never really asked her mum what her wedding had been like.

"This was our wedding day," Bellatrix explained, fondly. "I was so in love that I didn't need a big party. I just wanted to be married so I settled for a civil ceremony. Grandmama was furious that she wouldn't be able to show us off to all her friends, but I told her she'd get a chance when Cissa finally got married."

"How old were you?" Hermione asked, thinking that they still looked incredibly young in the photograph.

"I had just turned eighteen. Basically as soon as I could get married, I wanted to," her mum revealed. "Daddy was nearly twenty-one at the time. That's when he left his electrician program for good. He had a family to support then, and it would have been too long to wait for him to make any real money. It was a...a shortcut to prosperity, if you will."

"But you didn't have to. You could have waited to get married or lived with your parents until you could afford a house," Hermione said, hoping her mum wouldn't take it the wrong way.

"In theory, yes, we could have waited, but at the time I couldn't wait another second more," she said. "And in less than a month of working with Tom, your father and I were able to put a deposit on this place."

Hermione could understand how that sort of trade off would seem appealing to a teenager.

They flipped the page again and Hermione gasped in surprise to see photos cataloging her mother's pregnancy with her. It was odd to see her with such a large belly or the sweet way that her father would press his hand to her bump, obviously in love and excited.

"That's my baby shower," her mum explained, before pointing out a sliver of her Aunt Narcissa. "Your Aunt couldn't wait to announce that she was pregnant, too. Cissy always needed to have all the attention on her, even if it meant that she and Lucius got pregnant basically as soon as they got married."

On the next page were dozens of photographs of her right after she'd been born. Hermione wasn't sure why she'd never sought out her baby pictures before. Maybe a small part of her thought that her parents wouldn't have documented this part of their life, only now she could see that wasn't true. They appeared to be doting parents, all huge smiles at their swaddled newborn daughter.

"We were scared shitless when we had to take you home. Neither one of us had any idea what we were doing," Bellatrix said, fondly. "But we were both so excited to have you that it didn't matter. We would figure it all out together. And you turned out to be beyond our wildest imaginations."

Hermione was touched to hear that. Some small part of her wondered if her parents were disappointed that she hadn't turned out more like them. But, if anything, it seemed as if it was the opposite.

Together, the two of them leafed through the rest of the photo album, looking at pictures capturing her first steps, her first bite of cake on her birthday, soapy bathtimes and play time at the park. At her second birthday she caught her first glimpse of little Theo, cuddled up against his mum's leg because he was so shy. Seeing her again now, Hermione realized just how young Cora really had been.

"She almost looks like a child," Hermione whispered. "I used to think that she was so glamorous when I was little." Now, seeing her with adult eyes, the glamour had faded away.

"She was barely an adult when Alfred found her. I never really got the full story on her, but they seemed happy enough for a while," Bellatrix explained. "I couldn't believe that she would just leave Theo behind, though. That wasn't right. He was always such a good kid."

"Yeah," Hermione agreed, feeling even more badly for her boyfriend than she already had. "He didn't do anything wrong."

And then, the photos abruptly stopped, signifying the period that her parents had been in prison and she had been in Sirius's custody. She wondered if there were any pictures squirreled away at their house, but she knew better than to hold her breath. Even if there were, she doubted that Sirius would share them with her.

"Your father and I had to make big decisions," her mum said, closing the book. "But you have more options, Hermione. You can do anything you want with your life, but I know that you will only aim for the best. I had hoped that...in helping with your University we were helping you get exactly what you wanted, but now I know that it's not what you wanted."

Hermione murmured in agreement, before shaking her head. "I don't know what I want anymore," she revealed. "Nothing is...nothing is like how I expected it to be."

"Just know you'll always have a place in our home and if you don't want to take Tom's offer, we won't be upset," she continued. "But I think that you will see that this is a good option, even if it's not the perfect option."

"I have a lot to think about," Hermione agreed, turning her attention to the rivulets of water sliding down her window pane.