Epilogue: Reunited

There are some things no child ever forgets how to do, no matter how old he or she gets, or how long it has been. Muggle children never forget how to ride a bike, or so it is said. Wizard children never forget how to fly a broom, even if their abilities on that broom are less than decent. And Hermione never forgot how to dial the number to her parents' dental practice on the Muggle telephone, or how to ask to speak to one of them when the harried and often irritated secretary answered. "Hullo, I'd like to speak with Dr. Granger—either one of them—if they're not with a patient at the moment."

"Well, both are busy. He's doing a crown, and she's making a bite guard for a football player. I'll take a message."

"Um... it's a bit important, I'll hold if that's alright."

"Like I said, I'll take a message."

"Tell them their daughter's on the line," Hermione blurted out, feeling her face flush, and meeting with smiles of approval from Harry and Ron. Harry seemed at perfect ease around the Muggle telephone booth, while Ron didn't quite know what to think. He stared at the receiver with wonder in his eyes. "D'you think that was too much?" she whispered, covering the mouthpiece with one hand.

"Perfect," Harry said.

"Sure. Brilliant," Ron added.

Hermione tapped her foot nervously and pushed her hair out of her face and wished she'd brought a hair elastic or headband along. In the early autumn heat her hair often frizzed out and became nearly unbearable to deal with. She sighed and glanced around the intersection of Charing Cross Road and Shaftsbury Avenue. It was a sunny day, about noon, and people were walking the sidewalks on their lunch hours.

"Hermione?" asked a voice on the other line. "Hermione! Is it really you? Where are you? Is everything fine? I thought you'd be in school by now, it's the third already!"

Hermione laughed. "Hi Mum," she said. "There's something I'd like to tell you and Da, but... can I come home and see you? My friends are with me, too, it's just a quick stop, if we can't it's okay, I know it's short notice, but really we won't be long—"

"Hermione, you're rambling again," Her mother said, and Hermione could almost see the caring smile on her mother's face. "You're our daughter, you don't need to ask to come home. Look, Archie—Da—is finishing up with a crown on a patient, taking a bit longer than he expected. Bit of decay under the old one, you know, but we'll reschedule our afternoon patients."

Hermione twisted the phone cord around her fingers. "Oh, you don't have to do that, really, the last thing I want to do is interrupt the schedule, I know how important it is and all."

"There are more important things in life sometimes, baby," her mother said. "It's settled, whether you like it or not. Just go straight on home, there's a spare key under the back door mat, where it always is, let yourself and your friends in. Da and I will be home soon as we can be."

"Thanks, Mum," Hermione said, sounding a tad bit choked. "I appreciate it." She methodically replaced the receiver into the cradle and leaned against a wall of the booth. "It's alright, we can head home. They'll meet us."

"See, was that so difficult?" Ron asked, grinning and grabbing her hand, tugging her out of the booth.

"No," she lied, but she smiled anyway. "Come on, I exchanged some Sickles at Gringotts for Muggle pounds. Want to take the Tube?" She grinned mischievously at Ron, who looked a bit uncertain. She and Harry both laughed. "We can reverse-reenact my solo trip into London back when I was eleven."

"Well, if you're going to put it that way..."

Nearly forty-five minutes later they disembarked from the Metropolitan line, Ron looking positively thrilled by the excursion. Harry himself seemed a bit taken by the novelty of the Tube as well, having not taken it much, if at all, during his time with the Dursleys. "Normally I'd walk from here, but since there's no one around and we're all of Apparating age, I think that'll be the easiest."

"We kind of need to know where we're Apparating to," Harry pointed out. "Don't want to wind up splinched."

She winced. "You're right. Can't believe I didn't think about that," she said, rolling her eyes. "I live in a little neighbourhood, probably similar to Privet Drive. Townhouses. It's called Mourning Dove Crescent. All the houses are grey, like the birds," she said, surprised at the nostalgia in her voice. "If we can just get to the entrance, it'll be a few meters to my place, number eleven." She closed her eyes and visualized the dove-grey townhouses with their black shutters and windows, like eyes, that liked to look out at one another. There was a popping noise and a rushing sensation she'd become quite accustomed to, and when she opened her eyes again she was facing her own house. She looked about for Harry and Ron, and when she did not see them, jogged lightly to the yew hedges surrounding the sign proclaiming 'Mourning Dove Crescent'.

Within moments they both appeared, looking a bit less confident from the Apparation. Ron stumbled a bit, and Harry rubbed his head. "This it, then?" he asked, adjusting his glasses on the bridge of his nose. "You're right, it does look a lot like Privet Drive."

Only a few minutes later they were standing in Hermione's front hallway. "This is nice," Harry said. He peered around a corner into the sitting room. "Hey, there's the piano. Wanna play something for us?" he said teasingly as he entered and looked around. He paused at a framed picture on the mantle of the electric fireplace. "This is you with your parents. When you were a lot younger," he observed.

Hermione approached and looked at the picture with him. "I think I was about nine or ten when that was taken. We'd gone to Ireland for a holiday. That's at the Blarney Stone. We had to come home right after that, because I insisted on telling everyone we met there what sorts of bacteria and viruses were being passed on from all the kissing. The inn-keeper there said I was, if I remember, too smart for my own good, not to mention bad for business," she finished.

"Sounds about right," Ron said with a grin, ducking to avoid her badly aimed smack. "Shame the pictures don't move at all."

"I offered to charm it the Christmas I came home, but... they weren't interested," she said simply, turning her back and sitting down at the piano. Instinct took over, and without warning she her hands were roaming over the keys, playing a mournful Schubert sonata.

"Let me guess, Chopin!" called a hearty male voice, and Hermione stopped suddenly.

"Beethoven, by my guess," a female voice followed, and Hermione jumped up.

"You're both wrong. Schubert," she said sheepishly. "Hullo Mum. Da."

There was a moment where everyone appeared frozen; the only sound in the room was the final, fading reverberations of piano strings. Finally Ron cleared his throat. "These must be your parents."

That broke the tension, and everyone found themselves giggling nervously. Hermione clasped her hands behind her back and looked down shyly, demurely tracing a circle in the carpet with her toe. "It's good to see you," her father finally said.

"We were reading about the horrible things happening in that strange wizarding paper. I can't make heads or tails of it most of the time, but I do try to read what's going on in your world," her mother said. Suddenly she took a few strides and threw her arms around her daughter. "I'm so glad you came home!" she exclaimed, and burst into tears. "Why aren't you at school though?"

"Skiving off school again," her father teased, tears in his own eyes. "Didn't you ever learn?"

"No," Hermione said, laughing and wiping tears out of her eyes. "Harry and Ron," she pointed each boy out respectively, "thought I should come visit. Things aren't going well," she confessed. "There's a lot happening. And a lot I have to tell you and should have told you long before now, but it never seemed like the right time for it."

"We have time now," her father said. "As much time as you need. We'll order take away for tonight, maybe Indian, what do you think, Addie?"

"Yes, that place down the street has the most wonderful curry!" She exclaimed, smoothing her daughter's hair down. "We'll make up the pull-out and the bed in the spare room for your friends tonight."

"Oh, I don't know..." Hermione said nervously, pulling away and looking at Harry to see what he thought. They really were on his schedule, after all.

"Thank you, Mrs. Granger," he said. "That sounds good. Ron?" Ron nodded, and Hermione smiled gratefully. "We don't have a lot of time, but we have time enough for something like this," he said. "And besides, curry sounds pretty good right now."

"What is curry?" Ron wondered aloud, and everyone laughed.

Hours later, bellies full, they sat around the sitting room, Archie and Addie entertained by a green-faced Ron, who didn't seem too thrilled with the finer points of dentistry. Harry kept glancing at the photo on the mantle, and Hermione sat on the arm of the settee that both of her parents sat on, laughing as well. As the evening wore on and the sky faded from light blue, to indigo, to navy, and finally to black, Hermione felt herself growing more and more sleepy and relaxed. Her eyelids drooped a bit and as she listened to Harry telling her parents about the Dursleys, and about Dudley, she wondered why she hadn't done anything like this sooner.

As her father launched into a tirade about all Dudley's candy eating, and what it would do to his teeth, her mother leaned over to her. "I'm glad you decided to come home, darling," she whispered.

"I am too," Hermione whispered back.

"I wondered sometimes if we did the right thing letting you go. I didn't regret it by any means, just wondered."

"You did, Mum."

"Do you... do you have any regrets?" Addie asked uncertainly.

Hermione thought. "No, not really. I think it was the right thing to do and the right time to do it."

"Can I ask why you decided to come back so suddenly?"

"I told Harry and Ron about me. About me pre-Hogwarts."

"And they weren't scared off, I presume?" Addie teased.

"No," she said, laughing quietly.

"What are you two being so secretive about, over there?" Archie asked suddenly. "We outnumber you, so don't make us force you to tell!" he mock-threatened.

"Oh, I was telling Mum how I told Harry and Ron about why you were so glad to send me off to Hogwarts," she explained.

"Well, just so the record's clear, we weren't ever trying to get rid of you," he said earnestly. "And you could have come back at any point. But you needed to be yourself, and if being magic was that self... well, we'd have been selfish to stand in the way of that. We realized that two summers ago when you wanted to go off to London with your friends rather than stay here. And we were fine with it."

Hermione felt herself tearing up yet again. "I thought you just didn't understand."

"Well, we didn't, not really," Addie said. "But we tried to. I think effort counts in this case, don't you?" Harry and Ron nodded emphatically, and Hermione smiled. "No matter what happens, or what you decide to do you're our daughter."

Hermione smiled. So she was, so she was. She was Hermione Granger, Indigo Child prodigy, witch, Hogwarts dropout. But she was also friend of Harry Potter and Ron Weasley, and daughter of Archibald and Adeline Granger. She was part of a family. She belonged.

She stood up. "I think I'd like to get some rest now."

"Before you do," her father began, almost embarrassed, "could you play that piece in C minor? The one you played the first time you sat down at the piano."

Taken aback, Hermione could answer nothing other than, "Of course."

"Some Chopin would be nice," Addie said, with a smile.

Hermione smiled as well. "Yes. Yes, he would."

It was a warm night, and the windows were open. Even as a breeze ruffled the window sheers open, the sounds of Chopin flooded out, into Mourning Dove Crescent, somewhere into the indigo darkness of the September night.

Fin.


Thank you to all readers and reviewers for making this writing experience truly memorable. While this is the official end of Indigo Autumn: A Novella, it certainly doesn't have to be the end of "Indigo Hermione" fanfiction. I'm in the process of drafting ideas for a series of stories chronicling events of the HP series through Indigo Hermione's eyes. Check out my forums for suggestions and discussions and to give your input. Thanks again!