August 1998—

If Walburga Black knew what became of her dank and fetid, ancestral home, every person down Grimmauld Place would have heard about it. After weeks of hard work and toil, Number Twelve looked nothing like Hermione Granger remembered it. Gone were the worn steps and battered, peeling door. Gone were the musty hangings, the dark corners, and the lingering stench of death. Instead, windows were thrown open, and light and fresh air flooded in. Houseplants and flowers returned life to the rooms and hallways. Even the front steps were sanded, painted, and topped with a bright red, paneled door. Hermione tucked a stray curl from her bushy, brown mane behind her ear and smiled at the narrow façade basking in the sunlight. It, like they, had changed so much in the past few months.

As she climbed the front steps, her thoughts flickered to her parents (as they always did) and the home that she could not return to. They were presumably a happy and childless couple living in Australia. She tried not to fixate on their complete ignorance of the young woman she had grown to be. After the pain and shock of modifying their memories wore off, Hermione could admit to herself that her drastic actions were the right ones. Especially after the past year she endured. Traumatic as it was, this choice had kept her parents alive and well, safely hidden from Lord Voldemort.

Two months ago, she had arranged a private meeting with Professor McGonagall to discuss her parents, and even though the two witches had come to a mutual agreement, Hermione still spent a lot of time pretending not to obsessively worry about them. Though she had secured their livelihood by casting that fateful spell onthe couple in their quaint, suburban home last year, and though the war was over, her mind still somersaulted over the lack of resolution. How would they return to their old lives? Would they even want to? What would they think of Hermione when they learned what she, their only daughter, had done to them? Could the memory charm even be properly undone? Would she ever truly see her parents, the loving and supportive people who raised her, again?

Hermione pushed these questions from her mind as she opened the golden lion's head door handle, another new upgrade that replaced the serpentine handle, which had adorned the house for generations under the Black family name. She and Professor McGonagall had agreed that it would be best for Hermione to finish her last year at Hogwarts, ensure the worst tumult of the war had died down, and then focus on rehabilitating her parents. She had to remain confident that this was the right choice, regardless of how it weighed on her.

Like lead.

Thus it was that Hermione entered her unlikely home, which she shared with her best friend in the world. Harry Potter was sitting in the kitchen chatting with George Weasley, who was visiting for a few days while the final touches of his apartment in Hogsmeade were being made. After losing his twin brother, and nearly his sanity, George had abandoned the flat they shared above their shop in Diagon Alley in favor of a newly-built flat above an equally newly-renovated shop in Hogsmeade, the charming village adjacent to the famous Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. George was now sole owner of the joke shop Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes, and after the war, he had continued with their plans of opening the strategically-placed second location. The Weasley joke shop was one of few businesses that survived, and actually thrived, through the war.

As Hermione entered, both young men turned and smiled in her direction.

"Hey, Hermione, come look at this," George said with a twinkle in his eye. "Our Hogwarts letters have arrived, and McGonagall even sent one to me. The old witch just can't accept that she never got us to complete our N.E.W.T.'s." George's smile immediately turned stale, which happened every time he slipped and said "we" or "us."

Hermione quickly redirected the conversation. "Harry, did you open yours?" she asked with only a slight tremor in her voice.

"Are you daft? I know you'd hex me into next week if I opened mine without you!" snorted Harry.

The three laughed (something they had finally begun to do again), and Hermione reached for her letter. She felt its weight and grinned in spite of herself, knowing it held a prefect's badge at the very least.

There was still time before Hogwarts resumed, and Hermione was faced with a decision that would shape the course of the rest of her life. She needed to choose between returning to finish her last year of studies and moving on to join the wizarding workforce at the Ministry of Magic. She was already offered a job by Kingsley Shacklebolt. In a very un-Hermione-like fashion, she had been completely ignoring this decision for weeks. Instead, she focused on face-lifting the darkest and dreariest of abodes in which she now stood, which Harry had the relative misfortune of calling his home. Seeing as he had spent the majority of his life living with his neglectful and borderline abusive Muggle relations, the Dursleys, who trapped him in the cupboard under the stairs and treated him worse than a Malfoy house elf, this was a step up.

"What do you think, Hermione? Will you go back?" George asked.

Hermione's eyes traced the emerald green ink and swirling script, and she felt something stirring in her chest. She looked up from her letter and caught George and Harry exchanging a heavy glance. In that moment, She lost all doubts for the choice she had to make. As anyone may have predicted, Hermione Granger was going back to Hogwarts. She locked eyes with Harry and immediately recognized the nostalgia that bubbled to the surface. Without him saying a word, she also knew beyond doubt that classes and studying and exams were things Harry could never return to. For the first time in seven years, their paths were truly about to part.