On Teenagers & Love
a story by anamatics
part three - the fog
Chapter Two - On Reunions
Hermione writes her first letter to Harry while on the train as she returns to her parents' house the third week in July. Hermione desperately doesn't want to leave. This is the first time that she's felt content during the summer since she first started at Hogwarts. Hermione hates that she's grown so accustomed magic that the thought of returning to her parents' house makes her want to cling even more tenaciously to her magical identity. Fleur doesn't understand it when Hermione tries to explain it to her; she's always been fully magical. She understands muggle culture to an extent, but it is not the same.
Sometimes, when Hermione closes her eyes and tries to fall asleep to the sound of Fleur's steady breathing beside her, all she can feel is Bellatrix LeStrange's knife pressed up against her throat. She can hear Harry's screaming and Neville's panicked breathing beside her. All she can remember is how afraid she was in that moment, and how terrible the press of Bellatrix's Azkaban-thin body against her back felt.
Even when she's awake, Hermione can feel Bellatrix's breath on her neck. She buries herself in school work and it's scarcely a week of being on her own while Fleur works before her summer school work is completed. She's left alone with her thoughts, with the memories of Fleur's wide, terrified eyes as she, Bill and Sirius appeared in the middle of the Department of Mysteries, Professor Lupin and Tonks hot on their heels. She cannot shake them and she knows that she must. She must be strong and brave and she certainly cannot tell anyone that she can't forget the press of that knife and how she had been powerless, so completely and utterly powerless to stop her death in that one moment.
Later, when she'd found herself sitting in the hospital wing at school, her neck still bleeding from where Madame Pomphrey had had to reopen the wound to repair the damage of the cursed blade, Hermione had been struck by how impossibly young Fleur had looked during the duels. She was good, her skills had improved since the First Task of the Triwizard Tournament, but she was nowhere near good enough. One of the LeStrange men – Rabastian, Hermione had thought at the time – had cornered her and it was only through sheer luck that Fleur was not as dead as Sirius right now.
Hermione had been trying not to think about that realization ever since. She tries even now, lying curled up next to Fleur, but she can see the terror and the panic behind Fleur's sleepy smile. She hates it, hates that she cannot shake how deeply it has scarred her.
It is the night before Hermione is due to return to her parents, and Hermione's trying to talk about anything but what she truly wants to talk about. The mantra repeats over and over in her head, begging God and Merlin both to keep them both safe and help them to weather this storm. Don't die, her mind races to the staccato rhythm of Fleur's breathing, Please don't die.
"Once, when I was eight," Hermione says, settling herself more comfortably into the crook of Fleur's neck. She can't have this conversation now; she doesn't even know where to start on the subject. She needs more time to put her thoughts in order. Maybe when she's back at her parents' house she'll be able to actually put her thoughts together into something resembling a coherent series of sentences. She shifts, closing her eyes and hating herself for avoiding the topic on hand. "I wanted to be a princess."
"You would make a lovely princess," Fleur murmurs, her fingers tangling in Hermione's hair, pulling at the curls, watching as the bounce back into place each time they're uncurled. It's easier to not think about things that upset her when Fleur is close by, her arms protectively wrapped around Hermione's body. "Mais... I do not zink zat we could be togezer, you know? Ze French, we do not 'ave ze best track record wiz our nobility."
Hermione huffs, a little annoyed at the insinuation that she would be the sort of French noble Fleur's thinking of. "I wouldn't be like your nobility – all 'let them eat cake' and what have you," she explains, before shaking her head. "No, I'd be the sort that helps people; I'd spend all my time doing good work for people who can't help themselves."
And she's sure that she will too. Even if the idea of working for Gringotts doesn't work out, there's always the civil service. Hermione knows that she would do well in in the Ministry, even if she didn't want to mention it with that vile woman sitting right across McGonagall's desk from her during her career counseling session.
And before that there is the war. She pushes the thoughts from her mind, trying not to dwell on them. They're on her mind constantly, and the fear only grows with every passing day.
She will not let it ruin this moment too.
"Je pense que vous être bon à cela," Fleur says sleepily and Hermione finds that she understands what Fleur's saying just fine. "Probably better zan most. You 'ave a good 'eart. Zat is what makes you a Gryffindor, non?"
Before she came to Hogwarts, Hermione never thought of herself as particularly brave. She remembers first year, being so utterly terrified at every passing second, thinking that they'd send her away. She remembers how it had pushed her to simply be better than everyone else, and how she'd nearly lost both Harry and Ron trying to be the best she could be in second year. That had been Hermione's version of being brave.
Now though, Hermione knows that she isn't brave. She's fool-hardy and perhaps a little bit stupid – a true Gryffindor in that sense. They'd gone off half-cocked into a dire situation and someone had died. Someone close to Harry - to all of them - had died because of their stupidity.
"There's a fine line between bravery and bravado," Sirius had said to her the night Harry had cast his patronus in the middle of Little Winging. Hermione hadn't realized that he was talking about himself as much as he'd been taking about them. She wonders if it had been a warning to watch Harry far more closely than she had last year.
"I suppose so," she replies.
They fall asleep as the moon is obscured by clouds and wake to weak sunlight and a far cooler day than Hermione could ever remember in the middle of July. Fleur is silent, her blue eyes dark and full of repressed emotion. She's already said that she doesn't want Hermione to go, that it isn't safe. Hermione knows that she must go, however. She has to have this conversation with her parents now, before it gets to be too late.
She doesn't know what she'll do if she can't convince them to go back to America.
"I will write when zey are going to collect 'arry," Fleur says quietly as Hermione hands over muggle money to the station attendant and collects her ticket home. Fleur's dressed for the office today, not the vaults; she's got on heels and a pencil skirt that leaves very little to Hermione's imagination. She looks alluring, but conservatively professional. Hermione tries not to stare at Fleur as she walks. "And before zat, aussi."
Hermione kisses her in the middle of King's Cross and doesn't much care that she seems to have scandalized half of London.
Dear Harry, Hermione writes once she's settled into her seat on the train. She has to temper her writing, somewhat, knowing that Harry is still grieving for Sirius. I am returning home to see my parents, and I expect we'll be able to see each other again around your birthday. Fleur and Bill both have mentioned that there is a plan to collect you so you can have a proper birthday.
I know that I mentioned to you last year that Fleur's got a flat in London now. Apparently living in headquarters got to be too much. She and Bill have both moved into a lovely wizarding neighborhood near Diagon Alley. Bill's got a live-in girlfriend now too. Her name is Marietta and she works for the Ministry. She's nice enough, I suppose, rather dreadful really though. If you haven't heard about her from Ron or Ginny yet, prepare yourself. Fleur seems to like her, though, as she speaks French and knows some of Fleur's classmates.
Harry, I know that you're going through a rough time right now, and I don't know what I can say to you. I've never experienced a loss like that, and I won't pretend to know what it is like to feel such pain. All I want you to know is that I'm here, if you want to talk. You know that. You know that I'd never judge you.
I'll be at my parents' house until I tell you otherwise. She signs her name and tucks the letter into her sleeve. There's a wizarding post office in nearly every train station in England, if you know where to look. Hermione's been using the one at her local station since second year when she realized that she would have no way of writing Harry or Ron and had asked Professor McGonagall if the school owls were available for summer loan. Professor McGonagall had actually smiled at her - and Hermione somehow has always fixated on that fact as, at twelve, the idea of her severe professor smiling at her was enough to make her swoon - and had explained how to find a post office in the wizarding world.
Hermione drops the letter into the "outgoing" box and inserts the six knuts into the slot beside it to cover the owl's care and upkeep before she turns to see her parents slowly making their way down the platform outside. "You be careful out there dearie," says the clerk from behind the counter and Hermione nods her thanks and heads out to greet her parents.
They are very tan, and look as though America agreed with them. Hermione smiles as she waves at them, but she's already dreading the inevitable conversation about the new scar on her neck that will never quite fade. Madame Pomphrey had taken one look at Fleur's handiwork and had promptly undone it, muttering about French healing spells the whole time.
"'lo Hermione," her father says, pulling her forward into a tight, one-armed hug. Hermione feels herself relax into the embrace and breathes in the smell of him. Clean and minty, like any dentist, with just a touch of the bleach they used to clean the instruments.
"Dad," she replies. Hermione gets all of one half step back before she ends up being hugged far-too-tightly by her mother. Hermione lets out a tiny little 'oof' and pats her mom on the back gently until she's freed. "Mum."
They both look older than she remembers, but happy. This is good; Hermione's never wanted them to not be happy and she knows that her magic and that she's been drawn into a world that is so antithetical to their own must weigh on them.
"You've gone and hurt your neck..." Her mother is tilting her chin up and pushing her hair aside. Hermione winces, because she doesn't want to have this conversation here, but it seems like it's going to happen regardless of her wishes. "What happened, dear?"
Hermione sighs. "That depends who you ask," she bats her mother's hand away from her neck and tugs at her collar, fingers lingering on the chain around her neck for a moment before adding. "I got cut with an enchanted knife - I think, the wound wouldn't heal properly. Fleur used a spell she'd learned in school on it, but Madame Pomphrey - she's the school's heal-doctor-" Hermione corrects herself because she's found that it's best to explain things with labels that her parents will understand. "She had to redo it because it was still bleeding."
Her parents stare at her a moment before her father jerks his thumb towards the door, "I've got the car in the carpark across the street, it's free for the first fifteen minutes." He grins at Hermione, "Sounds like you had quite the year."
"On top of O.W.L.s," Hermione groans. "Don't remind me."
"It can't have all been bad," her mother chimes in with a bright smile and her hair blowing slightly in the breeze. She winks almost conspiratorially at Hermione's father and adds, "You got to spend some time with Fleur over the hols, and just now."
No, Hermione supposes as her cheeks burn bright red with embarrassment, it was actually one of the better years I've had at Hogwarts.
AN: Going to try and put this out slowly so as to finish it off before I'm done posting. Yeah right, but hey, I can dream!
