CHAPTER 16:
Andromeda had reached Forks safely, all thanks to Alice and Jasper who had used the portkey given to them by Hermione the day after she moved and flown back with her to England.
Carlisle had quickly had her admitted and tested and her first set of chemo sessions were to start the following week, though Carlisle had insisted on having her closely monitored and kept her admitted at the hospital.
A hop, skip and a jump later, the day of Hermione's first day at her new muggle school had dawned. She had shadowed Rosalie the past few days, and knew that she was now capable to care for Teddy. Teddy in turn had taken an immediate liking to all the vampires and even Bella, in general and Rosalie, Emmett and Esme in particular, lessening Hermione's guilt of abandoning him for the long hours of the school she did not want to attend in the first place!
On Monday morning, she bathed and dressed and then cleaned, changed, fed Teddy too. Her school was at eight and she wanted to have enough time to find her classes since it was her first day. So she had asked Rose if she could drop Teddy at half past seven and Rose had happily agreed.
So at two minutes to half past, Hermione gathered Teddy's bag that she'd packed the night before and held the babe securely in her arms and twisted on the spot after checking her safety wards one last time and popped at the Cullen's house.
Rose was pacing the porch and looked up at the sound of the soft crack near the house. In a flash, she was beside Hermione, picking Teddy up and whispering soothingly to him to quieten his disgruntled wails at side-long apparition.
Before she could smile at the loving way in which Rosalie held Teddy, Alice was by Hermione's side. "Come on, Hermione, get into the Volvo. We'll all leave now, pick Bella up and then go to school."
"I'm sorry," Hermione looked on confusedly at the pixie vampire.
"How are you planning on going to school, Mione?" Alice spelled out like speaking to a little child.
"I'll apparate?" Hermione questioned. "Saves a lot time, you know."
"And raise a thousand questions about yourself?" Alice quirked a perfect brow in rebuke.
"And you don't have to worry about saving time when I'm driving," Edward smirked from beside his car. "Hop in, let's leave."
Walking up to Teddy, Hermione kissed his forehead. "Be good, love," she whispered to the small baby and then looked at Rosalie. "Rose, anything, absolutely anything you want, need or just have doubts about, call me. I'll be here even before you place your phone down, I promise."
"Come on, now. Rose is brilliant with kids, you've seen it already," Alice pulled Hermione to the car and almost pushed her in and shut the door before moving to the other side and getting in herself, Jasper following her in. Edward took his seat at the steering wheel, the seat beside him left vacant for Bella.
Hermione kept looking out the window until the house was left far behind, feeling like a piece of her heart was left back there. So this is how mothers feel, she smiled to herself.
"What are you smiling about?" Edward asked, looking at her from the rear-view mirror.
"Just.. it's a good thing my parents were strong. I can barely leave Teddy behind for a few hours. Even now, I just want to turn tail and run back to him. I don't know how my parents managed to let me go into a world they had no idea about and then supported me all through it. I would've probably burned the letter and asked Teddy to stay put. I just don't want him to grow up. I keep wishing he forever stays my little boy. I don't know how mothers have been doing this for so long, it's near impossible."
They pulled up at Bella's house by the time Hermione finished and Bella hopped into her regular seat, turning in her seat to drop a quick kiss on Edward's lips and a greeting for the passengers behind.
"Speaking of which, have you brought your parents back yet?" Alice asked after Bella was settled and Edward had resumed driving.
"No," Hermione shook her head sadly. "There are still some rogue death eaters around, so I haven't lifted their spell yet. Once everything settles.."
"Oh, Hermione," Bella turned in her seat, "I am sorry," she whispered, squeezing her hand in support.
Hermione gave her a small smile in return. "Thank you," she whispered, knowing the air between them had finally started to clear as she squeezed Bella's hand right back.
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Once Edward had parked his car, Hermione gave herself a pep talk before getting down and then seeing everyone staring at her, she almost turned around to get back in the car and banged right into Edward who'd gotten off from the car, too.
"You can do this, Hermione," he laid his arm around her shoulder and rubbed her back in a gesture of comfort but when it started to prickle, he wasn't so sure if he was doing it for her benefit or his own. Hermione turned her face up to look at Edward, a sudden tingle that had nothing to do with Edward's body temperature but everything to do with his touch, spread through her body, starting at her shoulders and moving along in sync with his light rubbing of her back.
They watched each other, the taller one with narrowed eyes, the shorter one with eyes big and wide, both trying to figure out the what and why of their reactions.
Before they could find any answers though, Alice came up behind Hermione and laid her hand on her arm. "We'll all be with you, don't worry. You're starting out with a nice group of friends right on day one," she smiled encouragingly at the witch and then glared at her brother when the witch had turned away from him. "What the fuck Edward?" she growled in her mind and his quick grimace was evidence that he'd heard it.
"You've been through worse remember?" Jasper clasped Hermione's hand and pulled her out of the tiny space between the two parked cars where the entire debacle was unfolding, thankfully shielded from prying eyes. "Thank your lucky stars the episode was hidden from everyone's view. You better make up your mind, Eddie or you'll end up hurting one or both these girls," he whispered softly and quickly enough for only the other two vampires to hear.
"I'll go with Hermione to get her schedule. We'll see you when we see you," the pixie vampire said chirpily and left the trio, hooking her arms with Hermione's and dragging her along.
"You know, you should consider calling me Mione, with the number of times you call my name, I think it's time we shorten it a bit for convenience."
Alice flashed Hermione a big, bright smile, "Mione it is then."
Meanwhile Bella quickly moved beside Edward but sensed the sudden tension between his brother and him and wisely kept away. Honestly enough, she liked Hermione just fine. The fact that she could yield a wand was interesting to say the least, but there were times, like now, when doubts set in and she ended up taking her frustration out on the only other female that Edward spoke to apart from her, who wasn't his family. She didn't know what had conspired between the two adopted siblings but she felt it had something to do with the witch and that set her teeth on edge, though she walked beside them quietly enough till her locker.
Both the brothers were however so lost in glaring and avoiding eyes, as the case may be, that neither realized the human wasn't walking with them anymore. No matter, she'd see them in the shared classes she thought and started shuffling the books around in her locker.
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"Oh, this is great! You'll have at least one of us in all your classes except Advanced Physics. You've got English Literature with Bella, Latin with Edward, Biology with them both, Art with Jasper and me, Math with Edward and me , Chemistry with Jasper and we've all got Gym together. This is gonna be so much fun Mione."
"I'm sure it will be," Hermione refrained from rolling her eyes at Alice's exuberance and eyed her timetable that was clutched tightly in her hands. "To English Lit, then!" she said and walked with Alice till her first class.
Bella smiled at Alice and her and indicated the seat next to hers for Hermione to take and unsure of what to do, Hermione sat down beside her. Her first class in a muggle school went well enough, Hermione smiled to herself at the end of it.
"So, you're really smart, aren't you?" Bella smiled at her.
"A little," Hermione blushed, getting uncomfortable with the praise. "It's just Othello. I'm sure everyone's read it a dozen times already."
Bella shook her head, "I highly doubt it."
"So, could you please guide me to my next class? I've got Math now."
Following the directions Bella had given, Hermione found her next class without any event and happily took the empty seat beside Alice. It was only when Edward walked in that she realized she must have broken in on their seating pattern. She quickly got up to leave but Edward shook his head and took the seat behind them. "I'll keep, you stay where you are," he said while passing her.
When the entire class worked on the problem their teacher had put up on the board, Hermione rubbed her head repeatedly then nibbled at the back of her pencil, wincing immediately at its bitter taste. How she missed her sugar quills! She then started tapping the back of her pencil on her book, waiting for everyone to finish their work.
"You know, even with my speed, I'm still working on this and you're done and bored already," Alice smirked, still looking down at her book and they heard a soft chuckle from behind them.
"That's because you, unlike me, aren't using all of your strengths," Hermione deadpanned, making Edward and Alice both cough to cover up their laughter.
Next was Art and Hermione walked with Alice after bidding a quick goodbye to Edward. Art was the most enjoyable for Hermione by far. It was the only place she felt that she was doing anything new and different at all. Their Art teacher had made them pick one colour and then dull and darken it with white and black, respectively, and then colour the entire page with its hues and associate an emotion with the colour and a feeling with every shade.
Hermione found this activity quite enjoyable and immersed herself in her art, happy in her decision to let the couple sit together, she would not be making the same mistake of breaking their partnerships like she had in Math. So, the minute she had stepped in, she'd taken the seat behind Jasper and bullied Alice into taking the seat beside him, something which Alice had happily done.
And now Hermione was happy about it, since she had the entire desk to herself while she painted. She had chosen blue as her primary colour and the emotion she associated with it was tranquility. With the palest of sky blues, she had associated joy – for the heralding of a new day, but the major part of her page was her favorite color, the deepest shade of midnight blue – for the peace and calm of every night. Happy with her job, she had left the Art class with an unintended skip in her step and followed Jasper and Alice to the cafeteria for their break.
"Let's grab our lunches and then we can go sit," Alice said and Hermione smirked, a twinkle in her eyes. It was the first time she'd be seeing the vampires playing with their food after all.
"What are you so happy about?" Edward asked from behind her, Bella by his side.
"Just had a very good class."
"Art?"
"Yes. I forgotten how good it felt to just.. let your emotions flow through and not keep everything bottled up. I'm pretty sure it's gonna be my favorite subject here. We didn't have anything like that at Hogwarts." Her bright smile had Edward completely mesmerized.
If only I'd known she'd be so happy with Art, I would've taken it up just to look at her. Just then though, Alice turned, swearing colourfully in her head at Edward and dropped a big Lindt 70% dark chocolate bar with a twist of orange onto Hermione's tray.
"A treat for you since you're having such a great first day," Alice smiled, eyes still warning Edward, flashing from Bella to Hermione to him.
Hermione froze at the sight of the chocolate and walked sedately over to the table she was led, with just a salad and a chocolate bar on her tray.
"That's way too many emotions for a simple bar of chocolate," Jasper frowned at Hermione. He was soon realizing that the little witch was quite expressive and wore her heart on her sleeve, living her life with a lot of passion. A simple school day with her was turning into a joy ride on an Emotional Express for him.
"I've.." she blushed embarrassed.
"What?" Bella asked intrigued. "Naughty memories?" she quirked her eyebrow.
"NO!" Hermione flushed scarlet. "Absolutely not that! It's just that.." she looked around to make sure no was close enough to listen on. She did not want to raise suspicions by casting a silencing charm around them, even though she could do it wandless and non-verbally, she was sure simply seeing their lips move while no sound emitted from them would raise hackles of all the teenagers around them. She continued after making sure no one could hear her when she said this, "I've never eaten muggle chocolate," she confessed, colour staining high on her cheeks.
"What!" she heard cried from all the four occupants of the table, loud enough to draw everyone's attention.
So much for not wanting to be heard! "My parents are dentists. I wasn't allowed sweets growing up. I tasted my first sweet in the train to Hogwarts and as you can imagine the candies were all from the other place, so…" she shrugged her shoulders.
"Are those different in any way?" Bella asked curiously.
"Way too much. We have Bertie Botts every flavor beans that really do come in every flavor – earwax, earthworm, dirt, rotten eggs and such along with strawberry ice-cream, melons, marshmallows. They mean every flavor when they advertise it. Then there's chocolate frog.."
"Not really frogs, are they?" Jasper asked disgusted.
"No, just chocolate that looks like frogs and is charmed to leap similarly. Ron collects the cards that come with them, needless to say I've had my fair share of those to help him collect all those damned cards."
"Then there's liquorish wands, acid pops and my favorite – sugar quills. I'm so used to them I've been nibbling my pens and pencils since the morning!" Hermione chuckled, "But this.. it's my first."
"Wow! I had never thought I'd meet someone who never had Lindt!"
"Go on, try it."
Hermione nodded and opened up the chocolate, first offering to share with Bella. Bella broke off a piece and then Hermione bit into the chocolate. She rolled her tongue around it for truly tasting it and then closed her eyes and moaned, her neck arching back involuntarily. "Oh.. this is so good.." she whispered and then opened her eyes, slowly rolling her tongue over her chocolate coated lips.
Never in his entire vampire life had Edward ever wanted to try some human food so bad. He wanted to just pin Hermione down and lick the chocolate off those sinful lips and then taste its flavor in her mouth. He groaned in his mind and then turned in his seat to snarl at the other occupants of the cafeteria, whose equally dirty thoughts about his mate were bombarding his mind. Jasper stopped him just in the nick of time by placing a hand discreetly on his shoulder and Edward blinked in confusion. Had he just thought of Hermione as his mate?!
"You're creating a scene again!" Jasper screamed in his mind.
"You're girlfriend's right here!" Alice growled in his head.
Just then the bell rang. Hermione had polished off the chocolate, it being a complete novelty for her and ignored the salad she'd bought. "Can someone just point me to the Advanced Physics class?" she asked after she'd thoroughly licked her fingers and lips, too.
Brilliant! First the show, now she has a class by herself! Edward was ready to murder someone as he escorted Bella to her class and earned a hard kick on his shin from Jasper when no one was looking their way. Edward's only solace was that not many were smart enough to take up that class with her. At least Mike Newton and the likes wouldn't be there to hit on her!
Her day after the break was decent-ish. The only noteworthy time was their gym class where Bella and Hermione had giggled seeing the three vampires downplay their very nature.
Hermione was sure if this was before her year of run, she would have either failed the class or passed it barely, almost like her flying class back in the first year. But, she now could do almost any obstacle, jumping, running course thrown her way, thanks to all the times she had to run for her life. So the gym class now felt almost like a stress-reliever to her.
Having Bella fall constantly just added to her exercise as she tried to catch her before her head hit the ground. Alice was right beside the two girls doing the same and Hermione almost felt an affinity with the two vastly different girls.
And now, the day was over and they were going back to the Cullen home. Hermione had never been happier to see the last of a school before.
"I've missed Teddy like a real physical ache, I just need to hug him, like right now," Hermione breathed out shortly and Edward took that as an encouragement enough and flew through the town and brought her to Teddy within three minutes flat.
Bella stumbled out of the car and almost brought her lunch out, heaving drily and scolding Edward for good measure. "Don't you ever do that again."
Edward nodded solemnly, not wanting to sicken his friend, while Hermione flew out the car right as he stopped and into their house. She was happily peppering the little boy with kisses by the time the three vampires and the human made their way to the house.