NEW STORY! And this one is a bit more shippy than the Homestuck crossover I'm writing. So, heads up... this will be H/Hr. If that's not your ship, hit that good ol' back button and find a different story. Also, this will include a personal headcanon of mine for a Jewish Hermione. Again, you disagree... there's a button for that and it's not the one where you leave me a review. Hit that close window button and find yourself a different tale to read, because this ain't for you. That being said, I am a gentile and while I've done my best to research traditions and culture, it is no substitute for lived experience. If you are Jewish, please feel free to PM me and send corrections. I'm trying my best, but sometimes your best is not always good enough. That being said, I hope you all enjoy the story. My update schedule, as always, is fucked.

Thanks for your time!

She had always been a little bit in love with him. From the moment they saved her from that troll, she knew she loved them both just a bit, though if she were to admit to anything it was always Harry she'd loved more. Ron had been correct during the Horcrux hunt, she had chosen Harry. Not at that moment, not really. The choice had been made years earlier. She had spent most of her time at Hogwarts saving him and finding five thousand different ways to pretend that all those times she did all those things was because he was just her friend, and not because she loved him.

Because in her heart of hearts, she knew girls like her couldn't fall in love with boys like him. Or more correctly, boys who were like Harry, good-looking and athletic, didn't fall for girls like her.

She didn't have nice smooth, straight hair you could run your fingers through. She had no figure to speak of, no warm curves a man liked to run his hands over. Her boobs weren't anything to write home about either. Too small to even be a handful... as Ron had complained more than once, as if she could do anything about it. And her face... well, she looked better after her teeth had been shrunk, but she knew she wasn't pretty. Sometimes she thought back to that time Harry had said that he didn't think she was ugly, which, at the time, had made her heart flutter. But on thinking about it, she realized it wasn't a compliment at all. Sure, she wasn't ugly, but that didn't translate into her being attractive.

It went beyond just looks though, she knew that. She could be most beautiful girl in the world, but her personality was perhaps the biggest deal breaker for someone like Harry.

She didn't understand Quidditch or even like it very much. She was abrasive. She was smart and that in and of itself wasn't bad. It was the fact that she flaunted it. That she refused to play dumb to make a boy feel better. She was an overly anxious, uptight rule monger; the kind of person that reminded you to floss or chided you like a child when you jaywalked. She was plain and boring. The human equivalent of that awful beige wallpaper found in every waiting room ever.

She was a thousand negative things all rolled into one that meant someone like Harry could never like her the way she liked him.

He liked pretty girls like Cho or Ginny, who didn't resemble waiting room wallpaper. Athletic girls. Girls who didn't argue with him the way she did, in that loud bossy kind of way. Hermione always had all the answers and everything she said was a put down, a way to belittle him. Even though she'd never intended it to be that way, that's how it came across. She was an insistent, strident nag and a relentless worry wart. She wasn't like Ginny, who could yell at him till she was blue in the face - but he'd listen, because the way she said it made him feel validated. She didn't make him feel small like Hermione did. Ginny defended him. Hermione harped at him.

And that was the vast, aching chasm she just could not bridge. No matter how hard she tried. So she kept her feelings deep inside as she told herself again and again to forget the possibility that someone like him could ever like someone like her.

She tried to move on. To settle. That's all that girls like her could ever really do - just find someone who'd take them; that one person in a thousand who could tolerate them for at least ten consecutive minutes. It was terribly depressing when she reflected on it. But she somehow managed to convince herself that it could be worse. As the Rolling Stones once said, you can't always get what you want and if you tried sometimes... you got what you needed.

Besides, Ron was a good man, anyone would be lucky to have him. He really could be someone she wanted, even needed. There were times where he could be a huge jerk but it was balanced out by how much he made her laugh. Yes, they fought all the time but it somehow worked for Hildy and Walter in 'His Girl Friday'. And if she couldn't trust her favorite screwball comedy, what could she trust? Ron was good and kind, and, no, he wasn't perfect but who was? And it wasn't like he didn't try.

So, she settled. But buried deep, deep down, there was a part of her that had never given up on Harry - she never really stopped loving him. How could she? But that part was very quiet now. She'd learned well how to swallow that bitter pill and make it seem like it was something sweet.

There were moments during the Horcrux hunt just after Ron left where she could almost believe she had half a chance. The way his hand would linger on hers when they'd apparate or the way he'd occasionally look at her when he thought she wasn't looking. But those observations were easily tossed aside because more often than not he spent his time staring at the Marauder's Map, watching Ginny's dot as it walked the halls of Hogwarts.

'That is the reality,' she'd tell herself.

When he looked at her, when his touched lingered it was only because he was a boy and she was a girl, and they were both lonely and scared. And when he danced with her one night, he came so very close to bridging the chasm that separated her from him. He was so close to making every wild day dream she'd ever had become a reality. They had only been a hair's breadth apart. There was a wild, almost terrible, pull towards him as she caught the desire lingering in his eyes. All she had to do was lean in... but she pulled away at the very last minute, even though it killed her inside to do so.

She was a warm body that was all. He didn't want her specifically. Who he really wanted was the dot on that map and she'd just be the next best thing to that dot because she was here, the dot was not. It wouldn't really mean anything, to him anyway. Besides, it'd be wrong. A betrayal of the people they had committed themselves to and to the strict moral code she'd always held herself to. She wasn't a fool.

Not then, anyway.

There were more important things to worry about now. Whether or not someone fancied her seemed to be a rather juvenile thing to be concerned about when people were dying. Like always, she pushed those emotions deep inside and concentrated on how to help Harry win the war.

And just like that, the war was won. It was over. The world was safe as it could be. Standing in the ruins of Hogwarts, there was a single moment when she felt what triumph was supposed to feel like. It was soon buried under acres of rubble when the cost of victory became clear. So many people were dead.

Remus, though she could never bring herself to call him that. He'd always be Professor Lupin, who was hands down the best teacher she'd ever had - who had told her that she was the brightest witch of their age. A compliment that had meant so much to an insecure 14 year old girl and that she carried in her heart to this day. Tonks who was as good a friend as she was a mentor, almost like the older sister she wished she'd had growing up. But perhaps worst of all was Fred. He was closer in age to the rest of them. It didn't seem possible the world could go on without him, without any of them.

The Weasleys took the body home to arrange for a funeral days after the end of the battle. Hermione and Harry had briefly joined them, so they could attend. In the end, she didn't stay for long after. There was a feeling like she was an unwanted stranger intruding on a family's grief or like a cat they kept tripping over - like she was just in the way.

She tried to help out, but she was rubbish in the kitchen. Household spells were something she was never going to be all that good at; really she was no better than a muggle when it came down to it. And then she had tried to be there for Ron, but her efforts were rebuffed. Hermione understood, grief did strange things to people, she'd read that somewhere. She couldn't be mad at him, even though it hurt. There was no purpose for her presence there. No reason for her to stay. So she made arrangements less than a week from when she'd arrived at the Burrow to go back to Hogwarts to help with the recovery effort. She didn't mind being an extra pair of hands. It was nice to be needed.

The real surprise was that Harry had followed not that long after. He was more welcome in that house than Hermione had ever been. And he'd been doing a very good job of helping Ginny and the others deal with things. Despite the terrible way he'd been treated growing up, Harry was a surprisingly empathetic person. He had a way about him - a lightness that he brought that made you feel like the center of the universe.

She'd seen how he handled Ginny, the tender way he'd hold her like she was a delicate china teacup. How he'd quietly help Molly with preparing meals during the day or with cleaning, anticipating her needs without her ever having to verbalize it. She'd walked in on him talking to Ron or Fred on different occasions, impressed by how he helped them talk through their emotions. And when talking didn't work, they'd go in the backyard and hit bludgers at each other for a few hours. She didn't understand it, but it somehow worked.

He was good at all that, making people feel comfortable and important. She wasn't. Oh, she could carefully lay out all the reasons one might be glad that they were alive. Reasons for why you shouldn't feel guilty because you survived and someone else didn't. She had a million platitudes she could unload and a billion different inspirational quotes she'd memorized for just such occasions. But that wasn't comforting, not really.

None of the assurances she'd given Harry when he'd lost Sirius had helped much... time hadn't made the truth of it any less clear. Moreover, she didn't feel like she could say much that wasn't shallow and pitifully obvious. What right did she have telling anyone how to mourn - she hadn't really lost anything, not in the way Harry and the Weasleys had.

Harry could understand their grief in a way she never could. He was the one person on this earth that could help them process their loss. He belonged there. She didn't.

So when he showed up she had been very surprised indeed. He never said why he left and she didn't bother to ask. Perhaps he'd felt as out of place as she had or maybe he just wanted to help out. More than likely, he'd come out of a sense of obligation and that he felt he was somehow to blame for all this, that putting the dead to rest would somehow make up for it. Silly, really, but that was Harry.

The work was hard and sometimes downright miserable. Most of the bodies had been removed but every now and then when moving rubble, you'd find one or sometimes only a part of one. For those two weeks when she was by herself, she spent a lot of time crying alone in the makeshift tents set up for all the volunteers. Her sleep was uneasy and she'd taken to casting silencing charms, lest she wake others with her screaming.

When Harry came things were simultaneously harder and easier. Easier in that she had someone to share the pain with and harder because sweet, noble Harry felt as if he had to take on everyone else's burden. She hated the way his shoulders slumped when he thought no one was looking. Or the flat, faraway look he'd get in his eyes when talking to you. She did what she always did in those moments, explain to him clearly why he wasn't to blame (not that he ever listened) and when that failed she'd just hold him. He never cried. Never reciprocated the hugs she'd give him. He'd just go limp and bury his face in her shoulder with a soft sigh. Running her hands through his hair, it almost felt like she was doing more than just spinning her wheels.

And then she made a mistake or more correctly... several mistakes. Or perhaps the same mistake just made over and over again. To this day she wasn't really sure.

It had been a very hard day. They'd found what turned out to be the last of the missing: A fifth year Ravenclaw, or more correctly - parts of that fifth year Ravenclaw. Harry hadn't taken it well. To be frank, he was a mess. She found him back in the tent they now shared. He was hunched over on his bunk, head in hands. It was the first time she'd ever really seen him cry. As always, she held him but this time he held her back, a tight, grasping kind of embrace that bordered on desperation. It felt to her as if he was holding on to her to make sure he was real, that he was human.

When they broke away, they were a hair's breadth apart - just as they had before. She felt that same terrible pull she had so many months ago, her heart thrumming in her chest. But unlike last time, she didn't pull away and neither did he. Closer and closer they came, until their lips were barely brushing. And then they kissed hesitantly - becoming bolder and more heated with every press of their lips. It was everything she had imagined it would be and more. When they finally broke away, disheveled and shaking with desire, her brain finally started working again.

"We... w-we can't. That was..." she stammered as she stood up, her legs trembling so badly she wasn't sure they'd hold her.

He stood as well. She'd never realized how tall he was; shorter than Ron, but definitely taller than her. His eyes burned when he looked at her, his hand coming up to cup her cheek. "Why?" he whispered, his voice hoarse.

She couldn't tear her gaze away as she tried and failed to come up with a reason, any reason, to make him see what a mistake this was. "Well, b-because... we're n-n-not... I mean, you're with..."

"I don't care."

"But... H-Harry, it's not r-right. We have to think about this l-logically-"She was having trouble speaking, his hand had moved from her cheek and down her neck in a slow caress.

He took a step forward, and pulled her to him gently. With great deliberation, his kissed her again, more deeply. His hands kneaded her arms, slipping down to grasp her hips and pull her even closer. She offered no resistance, though on the inside she was screaming at herself. She'd been here before. She didn't want to be just a warm body but it was hard to concentrate on that with his mouth on her neck doing all sorts of wonderful things that felt very good. She could feel him shaking under her hands. No doubt he could feel her trembling too, trying to hold back. And then he delivered the coup de grace.

Two words.

"Hermione, please," he said in a pleading whisper, the rawness of his voice was heartbreaking.

She was undone.

Everything unraveled as he kissed her again, as their hands shakily explored the planes of their bodies. She gasped as he slowly pushed the straps of her tank top off her shoulder, taking her bra strap with it. Her hands trembling, she carefully lifted the edge of his shirt, peeling it off of him. With a perfunctory plop both their shirts were discarded on the floor, soon followed by her bra. They didn't stop touching each other, but there was a moment when they were both bare that they stopped to realize the momentousness of what they were doing. That thought, like their clothes, was discarded as they stumbled onto the mattress, legs tangled as they writhed against each other.

Their exploration was slow but frantic, as if they couldn't get enough. Harry, in particular, took his time even though it was obviously pushing the bounds of his control. He was so tender, so gentle, nearly overwhelming her body with his attention, as if he wasn't satisfied until she was near delirious with pleasure. When he finally took her, she nearly cried in relief. She wanted him inside her more than anything; everything else had been teasing torture. They lay there connected in the most intimate of ways for a number of seconds, breathing tremulously. His forehead pressed against hers. He kissed her cheeks, the corner of her mouth, her neck delicately before asking her quietly if she was okay. And when she gave him confirmation that she was ready, he slowly began to thrust.

There were moans and sighs as they found a rhythm. Her legs locked behind his back to push him deeper inside, arms around his neck as she gasped into his shoulder. He began to shudder; his breathing becoming labored as his thrusts came more quickly, pressing in more deeply. His breath caught as he spasmed jerkily several times, coming inside her with a low moan. Once he recovered, he helped her to completion with his hand. His fingers deep inside her, the other hand gently massaging her clit until her back arched and she let out a silent scream.

Nothing was said, they were both far too tired. They fell asleep together in his bed, naked as the day they were born. Sometime during the night they woke and made love two more times. The next morning was awkward, collecting their clothing from where it was tossed the night before. Neither of them really knew how to address what had happened, both too embarrassed to say anything. Hermione had assumed it was as a result of all the death they'd seen the last few days. They needed something life affirming, something that made them feel like the world wasn't entirely terrible. Harry probably felt the same.

And they could have left it at that, just a small mistake made in the heat of the moment. They were tired and heart sore, and this had been the easiest way to connect in the most profound way possible with another human being.

Except that it happened again. The very next night after their shift, they immediately went to his bed and made love with wild abandon. It happened the night after that and the night after that; ostensibly happening almost every night for nearly three weeks, stopping briefly when the Weasleys rejoined them in mid-June.

The rest of June and July was spent at the Burrow. At first, Harry and Hermione had been true to their unspoken oath when the Weasleys had come to get them. Whatever had happened in those few weeks had been a pleasant diversion and nothing more. It had been what they'd both needed then, but it was over now. Hermione had promised herself it was over. She'd done what she'd promised she wouldn't, became what she hadn't wanted to be. But it had ended. It would never happen again.

It did not help in the least with her feelings. Knowing what she could have was far worse than merely dreaming about it. She loved him. God, she loved him so much and it was almost too hard to hide it now. She was drowning in it.

He didn't help. When he'd pass her in the hall, his hand would lightly graze hers. Sometimes she'd see him gazing at her from across the dining room table, eyes glassy with desire. This all lead to dozens of stolen kisses and the occasional snog in a cupboard or closet, culminating in a number of midnight couplings in the shed on the outskirts of the Burrow. Did he love her or was she just there, like the summit of Mt. Everest? Gods above, she wanted to believe it was love that was causing whatever this was between them.

She had to either put a stop to it or find out why... why after all this time did he show a distinct interest in her - physically, at least? And was there more? Please let there be more.

After a particularly amorous bout of lovemaking one afternoon, she stopped him. She needed an answer, a real answer. "We can't keep doing this, Harry."

"I know," he murmured, looking more confused and lost than she'd ever seen him.

Licking her lips, she inhaled deeply. "I need to k-know... where this is all going... I need to know why."

"I don't understand..."

"Does this even mean anything... to... t-to you? Because it does to m-me or is it just..." she stuttered in an aching whisper. "I just... I want more... than this." She saw the way he stiffened and drew back from her, a horrified look of dawning realization on his face. Like he just worked out what a terrible mistake he'd made. Her face mirrored his. This was a mistake... it's all a mistake. "It's... It's probably best we just stop. Y-you have G-g-ginny and I h-have Ron and stopping is for the best and just... just forget I said anything." And then she fled like an enormous coward into the orchard near the Burrow. She found a good tree to rest underneath as far away as possible and then she cried and cried and cried.

Three hours later, she came back looking disheveled and obviously upset. She didn't talk to anyone and no one dared talk to her. Harry didn't even look at her. There was no need for further discussion, his feelings on the matter were clear.

The day after her disastrous confession he'd proposed to Ginny. It was July 2nd, a date that was burned indelibly into her memory like a ragged scorching scar. Her face was a mask, at first, when he announced it. She'd been swallowing bitter pills long enough that the shock and anguish she felt was easily papered over with something resembling real joy. Hugging Ginny, she whispered her congratulations. She grasped Harry's hand and said much the same, her eyes didn't quite meet his, but that was okay.

It was all for the best.

After so much sorrow, having something to celebrate was welcome to most everyone else. Hermione smiled and laughed and pretended to be happy so well that no one noticed she was dying inside. Someone joked that she and Ron ought to be next and she nearly choked on her butterbeer. She expected much the same reaction from Ron. He only blushed a bit, giving her a hopeful little grin before politely answering, "We'll see."

The guilt was so all encompassing that there was no hole on earth big enough to bury herself in.

That night once everyone was safe in their beds, Hermione had a very quiet emotional breakdown. Her whole life was unraveling before her. She'd had everything planned out before all this. Everything had been meticulously mapped out from how long she and Ron ought to date before marrying to various career milestones she wished to reach, right down to when they'd have kids together and how many. Oh, it was all so simple back then. Before she'd realized she couldn't do it anymore... she couldn't swallow those bitter pills anymore and pretend they were sweet, because they fucking weren't.

And all those grand plans abruptly fell apart like a cheap papier mache sculpture in the rain -she wasn't the same person any more. It was nothing more than pointless bullshit written by a naïve little girl with no idea at all how the real world worked. A girl who thought she was so damned clever that she had it all figured out.

Staring up at plain white washed ceiling in Ginny's bedroom, she remembered a New Year's Eve a few years ago when her mother, Helen Granger - née Hélène Didier, had gotten very drunk and related the facts of life to her at the kitchen counter at two in the morning.

"When I was your age, I faced a very tough choice," she'd slurred, her French accent more prominent than normal due to her inebriation. "I wanted to be an artist, did you know? But n'était pas réaliste. Mon père a dit… he say that he wouldn't pay to send me to art school. It was my dream but he told me that dreams don't pay the bills… that I have to be realistic. That dreams are for des enfants... "

Her father had given her an ultimatum. If she did what was expected of her, he would pay for her education fully or she could do as she pleased and be cut off entirely - effectively disowning her. He had stressed that now that she was an adult it was her choice and whatever choice she made would be final in his eyes. Helen Didier had never been a rebel, no matter how hard she'd dreamt about it.

She decided to go to England and study at Queen Mary College to become a dentist, like her father. A very safe choice her parents were glad to encourage. She met her husband a year after she enrolled. Richard Granger was a quiet, respectable boy that her parents approved of. Helen settled, because she was afraid. It was the path of least resistance. The path that was safer with less worry. They'd have her parents support. They wouldn't have to struggle. But she'd always regretted that choice. She always wondered what might have been if she'd chosen differently - if she'd taken the path less traveled.

Her eyes trailing a small crack in the ceiling, Hermione was reminded of this confession and confronted with this very same choice. The safe path... the easy choice, the stupid plan with all its little bullet points and highlighted bits that were so damned important to her once upon a time - go back to Hogwarts, get your NEWTS, get a job at the ministry, marry your school girl crush (who was your second choice but you can't always get what you want, can you? - it wasn't fair to Ron, but life wasn't fair either), have a passel of happy little children with bright red hair and then what... Is that what she wanted? She didn't know anymore. Or did she choose the hard path... what path would that even be? It couldn't possibly involve Harry, he'd made his choice. If there was a path it wasn't just less traveled, it was one that hadn't even been discovered yet.

Ron deserved better than her. They all did, really.

She wanted to crawl out of her own skin. To close her eyes and just stop existing for a single moment so maybe she could figure out what the hell she wanted. Whatever it was, she knew it wasn't this. All this anguish and guilt and uncertainty - she couldn't take it anymore. She was dimly aware that she might be having some kind of mental breakdown. She was too tired and too numb to care.

Her one and only thought that night as she fell asleep was that she needed to be away - far, far away - like some kind of wounded animal retreating into its burrow. Not the Burrow... her own burrow; a place where she could lick her wounds for a bit and figure out a new plan.

The next morning everyone was still glowing from the good news of Ginny and Harry's impending happy ending. She mentioned casually about going to Australia to get her parents. Ron had begun to open his mouth, and it was the first thing she could think of to close it. The air had been sucked out of the room.

"Are you sure, dear?" Molly asked carefully, scrutinizing her in that way made Hermione feel distinctly guilty.

"Yes, I'm sure. The longer I wait, the harder it'll be to reverse the memory charms," she'd replied briskly, trying to very hard to pretend like she actually had it together like always.

And then Harry, damn him, said, "That's great! We could go with you, right Ron?"

"Yeah, that'd be brilliant! It'd be like a vacation."

"Oh, no, that's all right. This is really something I should do myself-"

"Nonsense," Molly interrupted with a motherly wave of her hand. "It'll be safer if you don't go alone. When were you thinking of leaving?"

"Well, I wasn't really sure... um, as soon as possible, I suppose."

"We could do it at the end of the week," Ginny suggested eagerly. "It'd give us time to plan a quick going away party!"

And it rolled out of her control from that point forward. The date they were to leave was altered from Friday to next week Wednesday, to allow for a party, of course. Then there was a changing list of who was going, finally locked down to just the kids - Harry and Ginny, Ron and Hermione. A cute little couples vacation. And they'd be back before Harry's birthday!

Hermione wanted to throw up, metaphorically and literally. She wanted... no, she needed time to be alone. What was Harry even playing at? They'd all go on this sweet little vacation and pretend nothing happened? Is that what he thought? Or was he clumsily trying to make things up to her? As if playing nice and retrieving her parents was enough to erase the fact that he was repulsed by the idea of being with her as more than a friend for longer than a midnight shag in a shed. And here they all were, planning things for her... just... she couldn't do this.

She wasn't called the Brightest Witch of Her Age for nothing. This was the same girl who'd put together everything for their Horcrux hunt right underneath Molly Weasley's ever watchful eye. She'd made one of the most complicated potions one could make at age 13 in a bathroom. She'd blackmailed a Daily Prophet reporter into silence and then convinced that same reporter to write an article for free the very next year. She'd started an illegal defense club, charmed coins to communicate with that club's members and put a complicated curse on the parchment they'd all signed their names to.

And let's not forget the memory charms she'd performed.

Well, she'd done more than just do simple memory charms on her parents. Not that she'd ever told the boys that much, it was a waste of breath and time as they never listened to her anyway. What she hadn't told them was that she'd manufactured a whole lifetime for her parents out of thin air. Not just memories (which was complicated in of itself), but an entire paper trail - birth certificates and passports, medical records, university diplomas, all the little pieces of paper that made up a person's life, she'd conjured it up whole cloth- and they were all 100% real and un-clockable by even the most diligent of governmental officials.

The spells she'd cast to remove and replace their memories were based on the heavily regulated memory charms used by licensed Oblviators. But those spells used by Ministry officials were extremely limited in her opinion, so she went about taking what she'd learned from her books and applying it in a new way. She'd always fancied creating her own spells anyway. It was supposed to be difficult. Hermione had found it almost insultingly easy.

There was more... she hadn't sent her parents to Australia. She'd sent them to New Zealand instead. And she had lied to Ron and Harry in the event that they got captured. Deatheaters would follow the other trail she'd made that led to Pine Gap, a governmental satellite tracking station in Alice Springs, where they would find that Monica and Wendell Wilkins existed only on paper. Well, that or they'd run afoul of the Australian Ministry.

Meanwhile, her parents were safely in New Zealand living in Christchurch as Bettina and William Robards. They were a childless English couple looking to get away from noisy old London for much quieter pastures. William was a dentist, this gambit was a bit dangerous as it could connect him to his real identity, but her father had loved being a dentist and tying the charm to his real memories made it more stable and harder to crack if someone tried to cast a counter-charm.

William also liked to sail and hike in his free time, and had a priceless collection of demitasse cups, while Bettina owned her own gallery, called the Fleur-de-lis, in the ritzy part of town where she sold her paintings alongside a myriad of other local artists. Hermione had tied these memories to her mother's own experience as an amateur artist and the dreams she spoke of that long ago New Year's night where she'd admitted her regrets. In her spare time, Bettina cultivated orchids and went hiking with her gallant and adventurous husband.

Hermione had done all of that. And if she could do it once, she could do it again easily.

It took her less than a day to manufacture the proper paperwork.

She walked out of the Burrow at three in the morning on July 7th before their little going away party, leaving behind a note on her bed explaining where she was (but not really) and why she'd left (a pack of lies), and then she apparated to London once she was clear of the Burrow's wards. From there she showed up and put in an International Portkey request for Melbourne. She took it, of course, to establish a false trail and then port-keyed to Leeds illegally two hours later. She chose Leeds because people would assume, if they thought about it, that she'd go back to London, being more she was familiar with that city.

Wizards hardly ever thought to check muggle means of travel. So from Leeds, she booked a one way ticket to Australia with a stop in Athens, choosing an airport in Brisbane rather than Melbourne, and then she booked another flight to Christchurch, arriving two days later. The moment she landed in Athens would be the last time Hermione Granger existed on paper or otherwise. By the time she'd gotten to New Zealand, it was as if she'd died and a new person was born from the ashes.

For the first day and a half in Christchurch, she just sort of wandered around, making sure to steer clear of any areas where wizards congregated as it wouldn't do to be spotted so quickly. She booked a small bed and breakfast in a muggle area, using an alias. It gave her time to breathe, time to cry, and time to grieve without anyone policing her.

She didn't have to be Hermione Granger here. She honestly didn't realize how exhausting it was. There were no expectations, no heavy looks or awkward silences. She didn't have to school her face to look like she wasn't bothered by how her life was going. She didn't have to pretend like she had it all together - to stay strong as she always had to hold everyone else up. They had all looked at her like they always did when things got tough; after all, didn't Hermione Granger always have the answer they needed? This time she honestly didn't. There was no bemused exasperation followed by an eye roll as she explained the obvious to them all. She'd failed entirely for the first time in her life. It was as terrifying as she'd always imagined.

Coming here had begun the long, painful process of divesting herself of all those expectations. There was no one but herself to answer to now. She could quietly rifle through her mental baggage without taking on anyone else's, for the first time in almost seven years. But the thing that gave her the most solace was that she was away from Harry - away from that confusing bundle of emotions and all the guilt that entailed, and with enough time to get over the heartbreak.

She still loved him and she wasn't angry with him. But she needed to be away. To remember who she was and what she stood for without him. Besides, she thought she might die having to watch him with Ginny. She didn't for a moment judge him for following his heart, but she had to follow hers right now. You can't choose who you love and because she loved him, she'd give him what would make him happy. She knew Ginny would, but right now she couldn't be a part of it. Not after everything they'd shared. It didn't mean anything to him, but it was the world to her and there was no easy way to get over that.

More than anything, she had wanted to talk to her mother. If there was one person in her life that she could count on to sort out such a confusing situation, it was Helen Granger. So on the third day, she finally sought her out... she was talking to her mother and just about ready to give the trigger phrase that'd break the memory charm. They were talking about Van Gogh. He was always her mother's favorite. She watched her mother becoming effusive as she talked about color choices and the passion of his brushwork, and how it influenced her style.

Staring at a lovely painting of yellow camellias her mother had painted (which she later bought) and... she couldn't do it. The sparkle in her eye, the rosiness of her cheeks, her mother was happy as Bettina Robards. And in that moment, Hermione had an awful epiphany.

What would she have if she became Helen Granger once more?

Mother of Hermione Granger; constantly worried about her daughter's safety and forever left behind because Hermione was just too busy being the Brightest Witch of Her Age. Hermione could selfishly give back the memories she'd taken away, all so she could sort out all her silly little problems. It would be easy.

What wasn't easy was the realization she'd given her mother a real chance to live her dream - to have the kind of life she'd given up to become a mother of an ungrateful child who'd left her behind for a world that hardly appreciated her. For the life of her, Hermione could not take away the chance for her mother to live the life she'd always dreamed of.

Dreams were hard to come by and dreams that came true were even rarer.

Numbly walking out of her mother's gallery, painting under her arm, she left her parents behind. It'd be safer for them. She nodded as if agreeing with a question no one had asked, eyes staring forward blankly as she processed her thoughts. Being her parents was dangerous. It'd be better for them. They could both have the life they'd wanted before their strange and off-putting daughter had been born. The daughter who'd lied to them. The daughter who'd used magic on them without even asking them beforehand - who'd stolen their memories and placated her guilt by telling herself over and over again that it was all to keep them safe.

'It was better this way', she told herself as she wept, putting one foot firmly in front of the other and not looking back. Once that was decided, she thought long and hard about what she'd do next. She didn't want to go back, not yet.

Maybe not ever.

Quand on se quitte

On n'oublie tout

Mais revenir est si doux

Si ma tristesse

Peut t'émouvoir

Avec tendresse

Reviens un soir

Et dans tes bras

Tout renaîtra

J'attrendrai