Hermione put her black biro back down on the surface of her desk and stretched her fingers; she felt like she had been writing for an age and cramp had set her hand into a claw. This summer, she'd had far more correspondence than was typical. Ron and Harry were great friends, while they were all in the castle, but neither were particularly dependable letter writers. Hermione felt a pang of guilt following her minor chastisement, lack of communication that year wasn't Harry's fault. She still wondered at Dumbledore's instruction to them not to write. Wondered even more why their Headmaster had chosen to address it in a letter rather than calling them for a meeting before the end of term, he must have known he was going to suggest it before they boarded The Express. Hermione supposed the medium didn't really matter; Dumbledore would have waved off their protests with a twinkle in person as effectively as he had done so in his note, with a reiterative message about Harry's safety.
While Hermione readily agreed that her friend's wellbeing was paramount, she felt Dumbledore was focusing too much on Harry's material prosperity and not enough on his emotional one. There was no doubt in her mind that not hearing from Ron and herself would cause him pain, especially as they had been prevented from offering him an explanation. Something else Hermione did not understand. What harm could it have possibly done to let Harry know they were not able to contact him over the summer? The last thing Harry needed after the events of the previous year was to be alone, shut away with his thoughts, that were no doubt getting darker by the minute, and relatives that could barely call themselves such.
Hermione sighed aloud, there was nothing to be done about it. She had seriously debated just sending a letter anyway, but she was certain Dumbledore would have built in a contingency for that. She could admit that when it came to people she loved, she had something of a reputation for flouting the rules. After all, it wouldn't be difficult for a wizard of Dumbledore's capability to intercept a letter magically. Reluctantly, Hermione admitted defeat and was left to hope that Harry would accept their apologies when he saw them, whenever that would be.
Before Hermione could go back to her drafted letter, Dragon, who had come back home with her for the holidays, walked across her parchment, preventing her from working once again. Once he completed his path, the tiny Fireball looked back in the direction he had come from, appearing vaguely disappointed that he hadn't left a trail of smudged ink in his wake. Hermione grinned. He had started the practice while she was still at school, no doubt trying to get her attention, unfortunately for her little friend, it was not so easy for him to create a suitable distraction while she was at home in the Muggle world.
While Hermione tolerated quills while at Hogwarts it seemed silly to keep up the practice at home, especially as whenever she pulled one out of her bag her parents would adopt mock old English speak to tease her. It only ever took one round of 'doth the fair young lady want a cup of tea, Mrs Granger?' 'Marry, it would appear she would, Mr Granger' before Hermione gave up the practice entirely, putting the quills back into her trunk and going back to trusty biros.
Dragon, like Hermione, was thrilled to be home, lack of smudgeable ink notwithstanding. The Fireball's summer experience was a world away from being cramped up in Hermione's area of the fourth year dorm. Here he had the run of her room and all its assorted bric-à-brac. Dragon had initially been allowed to roam the whole house after her parents had been charmed by his incredible magic, but after a week of him continually making his bedding out of new editions of The Guardian - now matter how many old ones were left at his disposal - her father insisted he stay upstairs.
Dragon had dealt with his limited confinement well and had taken to perching himself up on the windowsill and blowing on the glass until it steamed up, before attacking the condensation with his claws. From there Dragon had a perfect vantage spot to watch for the Postman, who he seemed to believe was a threat and not just to himself, but to the entire Granger family. He made his feelings known by hissing and flapping his wings whenever the man was near their property. Hermione was thankful for double glazing and the general unobservant nature of the world around her, which allowed his antics to go on unnoticed.
Hermione looked back down at the page she had been working on for some time and bit her lip. Writing letters to Viktor always made her happy, but today she was finding it a little troublesome. While Hermione talked about what had happened since her last letter, a small voice in the back of her mind nagged that she was ignoring Viktor's repeated remarks about her visiting him in Bulgaria. Well, not ignoring as such, but she hadn't yet committed herself to anything.
Viktor raised it in his typical upfront and polite way, never pushing Hermione for anything but reiterating how much he was looking forward to it, as well as detailing some rough ideas of things they could do. Hermione knew she needed to fix a date at the very least, but she was dragging her feet, and she knew why. Firstly, because she was nervous to see him in person again, as silly as that sounded. In the few weeks that they had been apart, letters between them had exchanged frequently. While not seeing Viktor had his drawbacks (she definitely missed his cuddles), Hermione was infinitely more comfortable with this form of communication. She felt like she had been able to talk to Viktor more confidently than ever before, and she was scared of the potential awkwardness in going back to face to face. What if it wasn't the same? What if he suddenly realised this was all too much effort? What if, outside of the confines of the competition and the shared school year, Viktor had met someone else that he was far too polite to tell her about? Her list of fears and hesitations went on and on.
The second issue holding Hermione back was a more immediate concern; in order to actually see Viktor, she needed to talk to her parent's about it and get their approval to leave the country, to visit a boy. It was a discussion she hadn't ever imagined having with her parents in the near future and while she told herself she could always lie about it, tell them she was going to the Weasleys, and they would never know, Hermione would never do that.
She had mentioned it to her mother when she had first come home, and Jean Granger had seemed happy enough with the plan, waving off Sofiya Krum's offer of sending a letter as unnecessary, but had confirmed that they would need to speak to her father. Hermione hadn't brought it up again.
As a disgruntled Dragon flew off to hide amongst her bedding, Hermione looked around her desk to pull out Viktor's last letter, to check for any questions he may have asked or topics raised that she hadn't responded too or acknowledged as she skimmed through the last page of her response.
Hermione kept all of her letters from Viktor in a box her Grandma had given her for her 'treasures' when she was a little girl. It had once housed her report cards and various bits and pieces she had collected during schooling, now all of that had been cleared away and replaced by a neatly bound stack of parchment. Hermione was sure she'd never had any notion of letters from a boy being classified as treasures before, but somehow it seemed fitting. Sitting on top of the box, and protecting its contents, Hermione had placed the picture the twins had given her from the Yule Ball, her and Viktor walking into the Great Hall together, him holding her arm tightly as she looked up and smiled shyly at him, her dress sparkling. Her mum had helped her pick out a frame and place a few of the dried flowers from her corsage under the clear glass in place of a border. As much as Hermione liked the result she was glad Fred and George couldn't see it, no doubt they would rib her for weeks! No, in the safety of her own home she was free to revel in her crush and glance at the picture as much as she wanted, only disturbed by Dragon's pointed looks and knowing snorts.
Hermione finally finished her letter and placed it inside an envelope, ready to be sent off with the others she had, apart from the one at the bottom of the stack, which was for Luna and was going by Muggle post.
As well as receiving frequent letters from Viktor, Hermione had also had a fair few from Ginny and Luna also. Luna had so far spent most of her holiday travelling with her father and was due to be home any day. During the course of their correspondence Luna had asked about Muggle letters and Hermione had explained about the Royal Mail, her younger friend had been utterly fascinated, and Hermione had promised to send her next message to the post office nearest to the Lovegood's home, to justify the inquisitive witch and her father making a trip.
Once her letters were finished, Hermione looked at the other items on her desk that needed attention; she had organised her school work into neat piles and was getting through the additional reading she had planned at a good pace. There was however a subject that she was trying to put off. On the far side of her workspace was a stack of worn books that Hermione had acquired from a London library, her own local one was too small to stock what she needed. The titles were ones she was infinitely familiar with, the language they were written in was not. Hermione traced her fingers along the gilt-laden spines of the leather-bound tomes in silent apology for her lack of progress.
Hermione hadn't tried to learn a language since she had done rudimentary French at Muggle primary school, and while luckily that had stuck, she hadn't been old enough at the time to remember how the education had been broken down. Thus, she didn't have much to go on in terms of how to begin her instruction. She had settled on trying to translate familiar books from the Bulgarian language into her own. A practice that had worked for women in the Victorian era and something that had seemed quite romantic to Hermione at the beginning. She was unhappy to discover that she was not finding it easy at all, but she was persevering. Viktor had made such improvements in his English while he was at Hogwarts, not to mention how he had practised her name after their first meeting until he could pronounce it perfectly. Hermione felt she owed it to him to learn some of his native tongue, however poor her beginning. Especially if she would visit soon.
Trying not to sigh, Hermione reached forward and pulled the top book off the stack, shaking her shoulders to focus her mind.
"Hermione! Can you come down here please?"
Her mother's slightly panicked voice drifted up the stairs, and Hermione felt a rush of relief swiftly followed by guilt as she pushed the book to the back of her desk.
"Coming Mum!" Hermione called back and shut the door to her room behind her to prevent Dragon escaping.
Given her mother's tone, it didn't take much for Hermione to deduce that an owl must have arrived. While her parents had tried their best to adjust to the magical world Hermione was part of, the wizarding method of post left her Mum on edge. She had never been especially keen on owls, and magical ones that seemed more intelligent than the typical kinds, were even more concerning. Hermione could concede that a foot tall bird of prey entering into your pristine suburban kitchen without warning was quite a lot for any person to take. She wondered if other Muggle-borns had this issue.
Hermione clattered down the stairs and was able to confirm her suspicions as she moved to stand between the intruding owl and her mother, who was stationed behind the kitchen table, before collecting the offered letters from out of its beak.
Once the owl had taken one of the treats Hermione had held out and flew back out of the window, her mother moved back around the room, cautiously at first, and Hermione turned the parchment over in her fingers.
The letter was clearly from Ron, Hermione had proofed enough of his essays over the last four years to recognise his open scrawl anywhere. She opened it quickly and was incredibly surprised when another, smaller envelope fell out without warning. Her first thought was that Ron had found some way to communicate with Harry, but Hermione knew the writing on the front of this envelope too, and it did not belong to her friend.
Hermione opened the second envelope much more quietly than the first before she sat at the table, her eyes scanning the short message, entirely engrossed.
"What is it darling?"
Hermione started, having forgotten she had an audience. "Its a note from Ron," she explained, "he's asked if I can come and stay with them for a while."
Her mother joined her on the table and straightened the papers she must have knocked out of place when the owl flew in. "For a while meaning the rest of the holiday?"
Her mum's voice was neutral but Hermione could detect a small amount of sadness in her knowing words, and she felt torn. She loved her parent's more than anything and time with them was the time when she could truly be herself, but she couldn't help but feel cut off while she was in the Muggle world. As the years went on the call of magic grew within her, while she could still not legally perform magic out of Hogwarts being away from it entirely felt… wrong.
"Yes," Hermione answered softly. "If that is okay with you?"
Jean Granger smiled, "That sounds lovely dear, it will do you good to be around your school friends, will Ginny be there?"
"Of course Mum, where else would she be?"
Her mother shrugged and went back to the washing up that had been left after lunch while Hermione fiddled with the hem of her jumper. Not for the first time she hadn't been strictly truthful with her parents. Ron's short note had invited her to stay with the Weasleys, but it had also mentioned that it would not be at the Burrow this summer and that Professor McGonagall, of all people, had included a note that would explain the rest.
Unfortunately, explanations were short in supply from her Head of House, amazingly, Professor McGonagall' note was even shorter than Ron's. After a brief, polite inquiry about her summer studies, her professor had announced that she would meet her outside Hermione's own front door in a weeks time and take her to meet up with her surrogate wizarding family, 'at their current location'.
Hermione stood up and folded both the notes into her hand to consider later. She was determined to go back to her room and organise some of her packing, only she paused in the doorway, shuffling indecisively and the movement must have caught the attention of her mother who turned back around and eyed her admittedly strange behaviour for a moment before carefully removing her marigolds.
"Is everything okay, Hermione?"
"Yes," Hermione affirmed quickly, she had no intention of mentioning the note. It wasn't that she wanted to be dishonest, but she was sure this would have to do with the end of term, with the war… even saying the word in her mind was difficult. Hermione had no idea how to explain such things to her parents, so she just hadn't thus far.
Jean Granger, however, was unconvinced, she remained regarding her expectantly, and Hermione was almost amused to discover that her earlier dire straits over broaching the subject of visiting Bulgaria had become the lesser of two evils. Slowly she walked into the centre of the kitchen and pulled out a chair to sit again at the battered wooden table.
"I've just been writing to Viktor," she admitted, as her fingers clenched absentmindedly. It wasn't a secret, her mother and father knew they were keeping up a correspondence, but Hermione couldn't slow the blush forming on her cheeks.
Her mum simply smiled and joined her at the table. "Is that right?"
Hermione nodded. She was unsure where to start, and a quick look at the clock showed she didn't have much time, her father would be home from the surgery soon and she didn't want him coming back in the middle of the conversation and halting it midway, or worse, joining it.
"Mum, how was it… you know… when you first met Dad?" she blurted and immediately lost the fight with the colour in her cheeks.
Jean's head tilted as she cleared her throat. "Hermione, darling, is this about sex?"
Hermione nearly jumped from her seat "Mum! How could you think… no, NO! It's nothing to do with… " Hermione couldn't even say it, "That," she finished weakly.
Her mum shrugged in the face of her outburst. "I had to ask. I'm sorry love, but you've been twitching about the place for weeks, I assumed it was a big issue, something you were worried about. You know you can always talk to me about anything that you..."
"It's not… its never been like that," Hermione spluttered out, interjecting before her mother could go on any further and wishing that the ground would open up and swallow her whole. She was nervous enough trying to second guess what Viktor's reactions might be without thinking about… that.
Hermione's fingers bit into the spindly leg of the chair she was perched on as she tried to push past her mortification. If she didn't do this now, she might never brave raising it again. Maybe she had miscalculated, perhaps it would have been easier to sit her mother down and explain that there was a reincarnated madman, a dictator of sorts, who had come out of an honest to goodness cauldron in a graveyard, and was now running around calling himself Lord Voldemort, and getting grown men to follow after him calling themselves Death Eaters, and they had all sworn to kill her and anyone like her.
Maybe not.
"It's not that," Hermione protested, finally finding her voice again.
"Then what is it that's bothering you? Come on Hermione, you know you can talk to me, I won't be mad."
"Viktor he… he wants me to visit him, like I said to you before. I want to go, I miss talking to him face to face, and I want to hear more about his new job than you can pick up in a letter, but I'm scared at the same time."
"What are you scared of? You've never let yourself be intimidated into not doing anything before."
Hermione avoided her mothers glance as she sunk into her chair. "What if it's not the same as it was? What if he thinks I'm boring now that he's out living life in the real world."
Jean eyed her daughter kindly before reaching forward and placing one of Hermione's small hands between her own. "I think you should go," she replied simply, Hermione made to protest, believing, in the way of all teenagers, that her mother had merely misunderstood her predicament, but Jean interrupted her. "He is still writing you letters, Hermione, long ones if the weight of the envelopes is anything to go by. I don't have a huge amount more experience than you do, I met your father when I was still quite young. But as I understand, if people begin to lose interest they do not keep in contact, and they do not keep pressing for you to meet. He lives in another country Hermione if he wanted to disappear from your life Viktor had ample opportunity to do so, and yet he hasn't."
"But it could all change."
"It could, but not necessarily for the worse and you'll never know if you don't go. Even if nothing else ever comes of it, you will be able to look back without regrets, when you become as old as me I'm sure you will think of a trip like this as a Great Adventure you once had, I'm sure of it."
Hermione allowed herself a small smile, but she wasn't ready to accept fully yet. "But what about Dad?"
Jean sighed and got up from the table to put the kettle on. "We will just have to think of a way to sell it to him, as you know dear, your father is far from unreasonable. The problem is he associates 'internationally successful sporting star' with our Muggle footballers, and you have to admit they leave a lot to be desired on the commitment and morality front, and while I know from what you have told me that Viktor is nothing like that, I believe your father was expecting, or rather hoping, for someone a little different to walk through the door for you one day?"
"Like who?"
"Oh I don't know," her mother replied dismissively. "In any case, I believe he had thought he had many more years before he had to worry about anything like this. But don't worry about it, we will get him on board."
Hermione looked sceptical. Her mother had mentioned Viktor to her dad after they had met in London for Yule Ball dresses and he was apparently far less enthusiastic about an ongoing relationship. He didn't make disparaging comments as such, but it had been clear he wanted to. Unfortunately for David Granger, a professional sportsman, who was undergoing voluntary additional education, and was incredibly respectful to their daughter was a difficult person to criticise.
Jean placed a sizeable steaming cup in front of Hermione as she glanced at the clock herself and bit her lip. "What about if Luna and Ginny go along with you? It would give you someone to travel with. Viktor is still proposing you stay at his parent's house?"
"Yes," Hermione responded mulling the suggestion over. She had her doubts over whether Ginny would be allowed to go, Molly only allowed the apron strings to stretch so far, but Luna could work. More than that, the thought of her blonde friend accompanying her calmed Hermione's nerves significantly.
"We could travel from the Weasley's, that way we could go magically which is a great deal safer. We will only be there for a few days, and then I am sure the Krums will make sure we get back."
"And you will write to me while you are there? There is a great deal more I will be concerning myself with than your safe arrival."
"I will Mum," Hermione replied.
"I trust you, Hermione, your actions and your judgement. But I'm your mum, and it's my job to worry. Let's sit down with your Dad after dinner and talk it through."
"Okay," Hermione agreed softly. She thought her mum was being more optimistic than the situation warranted and she would hold off on sending Viktor's note for now. Hopefully, she would be able to redraft it later that night with a suggested date.
She hoped the news would be well received.
A/N: thank you for all of the reviews and adds to lists. It's lovely to be back. Happy New Year!