Disclaimer: If I owned Harry Potter, the characters would run away screaming and tearing their hair out in a frantic attempt to escape the confines of my completely insane mind. Therefore, you see, I do not own Harry Potter…Wow, imagine that….DAMN and I was so looking forward to that castle in England…

Previously: Hermione's parents return from España, Harry and Hermione get whacked around, and they meet at the playground. They decide to visit our favorite people, the Blacks, Kate, and Remus, at Remus's home. (If you're wondering what took so long, see Author's Note at bottom.)

Warnings: Mentions of child abuse (I figured out that a lot of people do this) and possibly swearing, although I can't honestly remember if there is. Self-deprecation and ANGST ABOUNDS! Also a bit of a love scene later in the chapter. Involves kissing.

Chapter Six: Would You Stand Up and Walk Out on Me?, in which Harry and Hermione visit Remus's home, Harry and Hermione tell their greatest secrets, and Kate and Remus come to an understanding. (ON WITH THE STORY!)

A falsely brown-eyed and -haired Sirius sat with a late lunch in front of him, reading some of the Daily Prophet articles from the day after Meghan and Ashley's supposed "death". He was laughing at some of the teary statements made by old school enemies, knowing all they wanted was the publicity afforded by the Prophet, not to really respect Meghan's memory. Suddenly he heard a timid knock on the door.

The man started up for the door, hoping against all hope that at least one of the persons behind the door was the one he most wanted to see right now. He pulled it open just after a second timid knock. The soft, boyish voice that had haunted his thoughts a week ago piped up, "We're looking for Remus Lupin's home, sir?"

It was Harry Potter and Hermione Granger.

"You found it. Come on in," he told them quickly. As soon as they were in, he shut the door. "Meghan! Ashley! Remus! We have visitors!" he called as he pulled down his glamour charms with Meghan's wand.

His eyebrows shot up when four people clattered down the stairs. Kate was red-faced. Meghan was triumphant. Remus looked just as lost as Sirius. Ashley wasn't paying attention.

"Kate?" Sirius said expectantly, folding his arms over his chest. Meghan was still grinning like a Cheshire kneazle, but Kate flushed an even brighter red and said, "Apparated."

"Ah. As you can see, Harry and Hermione have joined us." The other three smiled at the children. "We missed you two," Sirius added. "Come on further in, have a seat."

"How's it been going?" Meghan asked when the adults were all crammed onto Remus's couch. The children sat on the floor—as usual. "Fine," Harry said after a moment of hesitation. Hermione kept her head down and her mouth shut like a clam. "Hermione? How's everything going with you, sweetheart?" The girl, surprised to be addressed personally, started up, her eyes coming to rest on Meghan's.

"Fine, ma'am," she said quietly—for how else could she talk? Any louder and she would hurt her still-tender throat. She was still looking into Meghan's arresting deep blue eyes, the color of sapphires, when Sirius saw it. The fading bruise around her right eye was still stark against her otherwise unblemished skin. "Hermione!" he exclaimed. She scooted away from him and his voice, a fearful look in her eyes. "Sorry. But what did you do to your eye?" She ducked her head again.

"I walked into a door?" she tried tremblingly in her nonetheless clear voice. Sirius felt his heart clench. He remembered saying the same thing. For some reason, everyone had believed him then. But he wouldn't believe her now.

"Come here, Hermione," he said in the gentlest tone his hoarse, tired voice could manage. The girl obediently stood and came over to him. "Look at me." Her shy yet penetrating gaze somehow reminded him of the first time he'd seen Kate, when she was just a young, confused Muggleborn girl looking for a seat on the train. Both girls, past and present, were lost. But one had no hope to be found, the only thing that differentiated her look from Kate's. He raised a hand to her eye, to feel the current severity of the bruise. She backed away. "No, sir, please," she whispered.

"Hermione," he said again to the girl still shrinking away from the adults. "Look at me." She turned her gaze up from the floor and back to him. "I won't hurt you, Hermione," he told her softly. Meghan was watching her husband and the small girl intently, almost nostalgic in her sadness. "I promise you that." Hermione's eyebrows came together, confused. "Hermione, no one should hurt you. Ever." Meghan distantly remembered saying nearly the same thing when talking to Sirius long before in 1974. But the seventeen-year-old Sirius understood and accepted that better and easier than the eight-year-old Hermione. She sent Ashley out of the room. She had no need to hear this.

"It's for my own good," her forlorn voice said. Sirius swore fluently under his breath. "Daddy says so. He says it's because I'm so unnatural. If I wasn't so bad, he'd be nicer to me. It's my fault."

"No," Meghan interrupted forcefully. She couldn't stand it any more. "Hermione, most parents would go crazy over a child as well-behaved and polite as you. It's not right for your parents to hurt you and put you down. You're not unnatural. You are the sweetest girl I've ever met, and that's all there is to it. You are a wonderful person to know. I admire your perseverance and your patience."

Sirius was banging his head against the wall. "No, no, no," he was muttering. "Stupid, stupid, stupid." Meghan pulled him away from the wall. "Sirius," she said, scolding. "Look at me." He complied. "Look, I know you're bound to think every single hurtful thing that happens to a child is bad—and don't get me wrong, you're definitely right. I won't argue with that—but you think it's your fault. It's not your fault. You're not the one who's beating the child. Don't take it so bloody personally. Just fix what's wrong." When he just stared at her, she put a hand on his arm, worried. "What is it?"

"I missed you," he said simply. Ashley was humming to herself in the other room. Meghan ignored the noise for the moment. "Everyone else I know had too much sympathy for the glooms anyway. You never let me mope around for too long. But…but Meg, I knew. Or at least I thought I knew. And I was right."

"Would you have said something at their age?" she challenged. "No. I know you wouldn't have, Sirius, because you didn't say anything about it until you were bloody seventeen, already a teenager, for Christ's sake! Did anyone ever know about what happened to you?" He shook his head. "Don't beat up on yourself. I told you she was just like you. Hermione, come here, love. Let's have a look at that nasty bruise. Maybe I can clear it up for you."

"Thank you, Mrs. Black," she said courteously.

"Call me Meghan," she corrected. "No one calls me Mrs. Black. Of course, no one knows I'm Mrs. Black. Ooh, that looks painful. Let me help. But I'm going to have to touch it to heal it. Can you trust me to do that, love?"

"Umm, sure," she said in an uncertain way. Sirius immediately realized she would lose her composure if his wife were to touch her. He tried to caution her, but she had tried anyway, and Hermione backed away, raising her arms over her head as she dropped to the ground.

"I didn't mean to," she protested, seeing something descending on her, hurting her. "Please!" Kate was next to her, murmuring reassuring words as she pulled Hermione's arms away from her head and face. Remus was humming a lullaby his mother had sung whenever he had awakened from a nightmare. Their combined efforts caused Hermione to relax into a more open position, her knees still relentlessly pulled up to her chest. The adults exchanged saddened looks.

"Harry," Sirius said, determined to tackle objective number two before it was too late, "how about you? What's your home life like?"

"Well, fine, I guess. I spent most of the week in my cupboard," and he promptly shut his mouth, obviously not wanting or intending to say anymore. Sirius was determined to get it out of him somehow.

"Harry, you know you can tell us everything, sport. What's on your mind, Pronglet?" he asked carefully. Harry looked at the ground, pulling his own knees up to his dangerously skinny chest. "Harry, we don't get emotional very often. Make the best of it. Please, Harry, just tell us." Harry stubbornly refused to talk. Sirius sighed, going through every curse word he knew in his head. It took a little while. "Very well. How about I tell you a story first?"

He didn't wait for affirmation. "Well, when I was a kid, my parents were what we wizards call purebloods. Moony—that's Remus, here—explained that to you. They thought that only purebloods should get magical education, et cetera, et cetera. They didn't like people like Kate and Hermione and Harry's mum studying magic. I didn't think the same way. When they figured that out, they decided that they only way that they could 'fix' it was to hit me and push me around. I went with it for about ten years. And then I left. I up and left. I couldn't take it anymore. I went to your grandparents' house, Harry, and Meghan helped me out. Then I realized that I should have told someone about it a long time ago. Child abuse is wrong. No matter who it is, it's always wrong.

"Now, Harry, do you have anything to tell us? We can only help you if we know what's wrong." Harry held out for a moment more before he relented.

"Yes," was all he said, but that word cut Sirius to his very soul. Not his godson, James's son. Why? Meghan dropped to the floor and gathered her nephew in a hug. He stiffened momentarily, then relaxed into his aunt's strong arms. "Oh, Harry," she murmured in his ear. "You never should have gone with them. I should have had you. Sirius and I. You're not going back. Never." She pushed his hair out of his eyes and kissed his forehead, which bore the telltale lightning bolt scar. "You're still my Pronglet. You'll always be my Pronglet."

Hermione was starting to edge away from the family scene, and away from Kate. She had no place here, in this gathering of Harry's loved ones. "I need to go home," she muttered under her breath. She tried to slip away without anyone seeing her, but Remus caught her arm. "Do you want to?" he asked simply. She paused, uncertain. "I—I don't know," she floundered. "Dad would want me to. He told me to be home by four."

"Do you want to go home, though?" Kate repeated. "It's only three-thirty yet." Meghan and Sirius herded Harry out of the room to talk to him. Kate and Remus and Hermione, the "dysfunctional three", Kate thought wryly, were alone in the room.

BREAK

Meghan and Sirius put Harry in a chair at the kitchen table. Sirius sent Ashley to the guest-room. Meghan rooted through the refrigerator, coming up with a plate of food for her nephew. She put it down in front of him. "Eat, Harry, you look dead on your feet."

Harry complied. He was trying not to fall on the food, she could tell. He obviously hadn't seen food in a few days. Meghan was fretting inwardly. If he was this hungry…when did they feed him? How much could his stomach take?

Sirius looked at his godson. "Harry, I know what you're going through. It sucks, doesn't it? And what's more, you really think there's nothing you can do about it." Harry nodded, his eyes fixed on the table. "Your only friend is Hermione, isn't it, Pronglet?" he asked. Harry nodded again. "And she can't do for you what your aunt did for me. She understands your problem, but there's too much similarity. Neither one of you wants to take the initiative and get out of home. You're both too afraid of your relatives." He sighed. "Harry, I want you to answer me honestly. Can you do that?" Harry nodded a third time, looking up in shock. Emerald-green and silver-gray met, Sirius's gaze more solemn than many people had ever seen. Harry jerked his gaze down again. "Any question I ask?" Harry murmured a "Yes."

"Good." Sirius took a deep breath, then asked his question. "Harry, how bad is it?" He realized that the boy wouldn't know what he meant, and rephrased his question. "What do they do to you?"

Harry bravely met Sirius's eyes. "I suppose it's worst when Uncle Vernon—h—has a belt," he said, lifting his chin as if to say, 'and he can't get me here'. Sirius swore inwardly.

"Does he use it often?"

"Yes." Why was it that these kids could break you with one word? Harry's broken-hearted "yes". Hermione's hopeless "please". Each came right from their soul, the only place their relatives couldn't injure. Or, at least, hadn't broken yet, Sirius thought savagely.

"What else, Harry?" he forced himself to ask, even though he didn't want to know.

"Uncle Vernon…and Dudley, too, I guess, they like to…hit me. Punch me. He might have broken a rib…again."

The pauses. The pauses were killing Sirius. He could see Meghan crumbling. Why beat him? Such a kid would have been so welcome in his childhood home. He admitted that he had often talked back to his parents. He had been emboldened by what he saw in his friends. This child's only friend was in the same deep hole that he was in. His parents would have loved such a docile child.

"Aunt Petunia makes me burn myself," he said very quietly. His hand, they could see now, had a burned area on it. "When I iron, or when I'm cooking. I don't even know why. Why do they do this? Am I a freak? Really, am I a freak? Does everyone just not want me, not love me?"

"No, no, Harry. Don't listen to a word they say," Meghan said. "They think they can break you by telling you no one loves you. They're wrong. I love you, Sirius loves you, Remus loves you, Kate loves you. Your parents love you, even though they can't be here to watch you grow up. Harry, you are so loved and so lovable. Don't you ever think you're not."

BREAK

I'm no good with kids, Remus thought desperately. Meghan should have stayed. She's probably the best of us for dealing with this. Maybe Sirius. But even as his traitorous thoughts tried to speak for him, he saw that Kate was comforting the child. She coaxed the girl into her lap and carefully put her arms around her, whispering kind words in her ear, calming the timid, vulnerable girl. The docile child relaxed into the hug. Remus smiled at the picture they made. They could be mother and daughter.

An idea touched down in his head. Sirius, Meghan, Ashley and Harry. With a few glamour charms and possibly some hair dye, they could pass for an unrecognizable family. They were a family. He, Kate, and Hermione—some clever glamour charms and no one would ever recognize him or Kate. No one in the wizarding world knew Hermione for obvious reasons. They could easily pass for a family as well. But he was getting ahead of himself. Kate didn't love him. They wouldn't create anything like a functional family anytime soon.

Kate rocked Hermione back and forth as she thought unknowingly similar thoughts. What she wouldn't give to remove the little girl from her biological parents' care and raise her herself, in a loving environment. And if Remus would be willing to pose as Hermione's father, they could go under an alias as a different family. She shook her head to clear it. Castles in the air, Katherine, she scolded. Don't go counting your chickens before they hatch.

She looked down at the girl in her lap as she stroked her hair carefully, not wanting to startle the girl, who had relaxed into a trancelike stupor. "Hermione?" she called softly. "Mione?" When Hermione jerked up and looked at her oddly, Kate felt obligated to explain. "Sorry. Do you mind, Mione? It works so well." "Mione" shook her head.

"I like Mya," Remus commented. Hermione, or Mya, or Mione, gave an uncertain shrug of her shoulders as a response. "Well, Miss Mya, are you hungry? If you are, we can grab some leftovers from Sirius's lunch."

"'m fine," she said automatically. She didn't, however, move from Kate's lap. As Hermione tentatively laid her head under Kate's chin, the brunette woman looked at Remus, helpless and bewildered. Just be nice, he mouthed. She nodded over Hermione's head. If she startled the child now, they would have to regress to stage one to bring her out of her shell again.

They sat there for a long time, Kate and Remus and Hermione. No longer feeling like a dysfunctional three, the silence that surrounded them like a warm blanket was comfortable. After a while, Hermione began making sleeping noises. Kate looked questioningly at Remus, who nodded. She was asleep. Kate found herself desperately wondering what the poor child's home life was like. She wanted to be there, to see, to know, to kill her parents…okay, maybe that was going a little too far.

"Do you think anyone's every given her a hug?" Kate asked quietly. "I mean, I know we should actually be worried about Harry, since we knew James and Lily—and I'm not saying I'm not worried about him—but Hermione—Mya here, she seems to be in real need of some positive human touch. I don't think anything positive has happened to her in her life, and I hate her parents for doing such a thing to an innocent little girl."

"I agree," Remus said. "I hate hearing about child abuse. It makes me feel so helpless. I really wonder how they can do that, since abused children are usually the most polite. Seeing the result in front of you is far worse, especially when you never guessed." He lapsed into silence. Kate broke it again.

"She's going to be a real beauty when she gets older, this one," she said softly, brushing back defiantly wildly curly dark-brown hair to reveal delicate features and a slightly smiling mouth. "How can she smile after all she's been through?" Kate asked, hoping that she wasn't crying yet. "She's such an optimist, even in being a pessimist. She thinks she has no hope of ever leaving that house, yet she smiles. She's a brave one. Such a kind girl, as well."

"I know. She reminds me of someone I once knew," Remus said, taking a gamble. Kate's eyebrows pulled together.

"Who?"

"You, of course," he said. "You were the quietest thing when we found you on the train that first year. And I think you're lovely." Kate looked to be warring with her emotions. "It takes a lot of courage for someone who knows next to nothing of the wizarding world to ask a train compartment full of wizards for a seat." Remus carefully lifted feather-light Hermione onto the couch and sat next to Kate, who now had her lap empty, but her head and unsuspecting heart full of both thoughts and worries.

"Kate," Remus spoke up again. "Hear me out, even if you feel only friendship. I've had a crush on you for the longest time. It's more than just a crush now. You're kind, and funny, and, and—my God, this would have been so much easier fourteen years ago. I just love the way you look at me—damn, why the hell am I going first? All the emotional rubbish is the woman's job. Oh well, I've started, I have to finish. Hermione brought us together again for a reason, I think. Fate wants us together. She put us side by side to finish this out together. Listen, Kate, I know I love you." He paused. "I hope you know too."

"God, Remus, how am I supposed to match your speeches? I'm going to need a flipping speechwriter." She raked her long hair back from her face with her fingers, thinking about how she could say what she was feeling. "I had a crush on you in sixth and seventh year that I was convinced was unrequited. There's no point in asking Meghan, she didn't know until today. I don't know how many diary entries I wrote about you and how, like they always say; I didn't want it until I couldn't have it. I was convinced you'd never like me. I was convinced you didn't even care who I really was. And so I didn't say anything.

"Well, I'm saying it now. I get it, Remus. I really do. And it's all pointing back at you. Every time I dated before and after that, when I thought that so and so would be the one? He never was, never at all. It was always you, Remus. Even if I didn't know it, it was always you." Now it was a real fight not to cry.

"Speechwriter? Pah. You can write mine for me anytime." Kate smiled and leaned forward to kiss him on the cheek. He had a different idea. He turned, and took her chin in his hand as he instead kissed her on the lips. The kiss was short, sweet, and careful, almost bittersweet. It asked a question. She responded by kissing him back.

"You have no idea how long I've waited and wanted to do that," Remus said when Kate smiled at him.

"Then perhaps we should try again," she suggested, he voice husky with emotion.

They leaned together again, and this kiss was long and loving, fueled by the unconcealed heat of passion. Remus ran his tongue along her lower lip, asking entrance. She allowed it. They explored each other, Remus's hands buried in Kate's hair, while Kate's hands held his shoulders, keeping him close. Remus Lupin and Kate Bassett were finally a couple. And they just happened to be snogging in front of a sleeping eight-year-old. Kate smiled inwardly at the complete irony of the moment. Hermione had probably seen this coming. And strangely enough, both of them had as well. They had long hoped the day would come sooner, and although it hadn't quite come sooner, it was now here, and Kate didn't want to let it go. They separated reluctantly. But after all, human beings needed to breathe.

"Wow," breathed Remus, smiling a little, his green-hazel eyes over-bright with happiness. Kate nodded, unable to articulate her feelings. No words in the world could have expressed the moment. How could she have doubted his love for her? No. All that mattered was that she no longer did, and never would again.

This time it was Kate on Remus's lap. He put his arms around her waist, and she relaxed into his embrace. "I love you, Remus Lupin," she said aloud for the first time, savoring the words.

"Same to you, beautiful," he murmured in her ear. "Same to you." They sat there in silence, enjoying each other's company, until Hermione began to thrash around on the couch. Kate stood up. Remus looked at the child worriedly.

"No, Daddy, please!" she was pleading. "No—I promise, it was an accident—no, Daddy, I didn't!—Mummy, no, please, I won't do it again! It just happened, I couldn't control it!" She began to sob brokenly. She was still caught in the throes of her vicious nightmare. "No," she whispered. "Why me?"

"Hermione!" Kate called, trying to wake her up. "Hermione, wake up, it's just a bad dream! Hermione, wake up, it's Kate. You have to wake up, love. Mya? Come back, Mya!"

"Come on, Hermione, it's not real," Remus murmured reassuringly in her ear—he had come over beside her. "Your parents aren't here. They aren't going to be here. If necessary, I'll stop them at the door. You'll always be safe here. Trust me, Hermione. Trust me." He continued to mutter soothing nonsense in her ear, but the fiendish nightmare was determined to keep its hold on the girl. She thrashed away, like she was trying to avoid something. "But, Daddy, I only do what you tell me! I was just thirsty, Daddy, I haven't had a drink all day! Please, sir. Please, no…" She broke down, no longer trying to defend her innocence. "I did it. Just leave me alone. Please, Dad—please, sir. Mummy, I didn't mean to. I'm sorry."

"Hermione! Hermione, you have to wake up. If you can't wake up, I'll have to wake you up. You don't want to stay there." Hermione didn't show any sign of hearing her. She was still crying. Each pitiful sob tore at Kate's heart. She had to stop this. She put her hand on her surrogate daughter's thin shoulder. Immediately awake she scrambled away from the feather-light touch, her knees up to her chest and her hands over her head. When she saw who it was, she lowered her arms.

"Sorry, Miss Bassett, Mr. Lupin," she apologized. "I was, er, having a bad dream?" Was that a question? Kate nodded. "Oh, I know, though. I remember. Not meaning to be disrespectful, Miss Bassett," she hurried to say.

"It's not disrespectful in the least, and Hermione, we went over this. Call me Kate, and call him Remus," Kate replied.

"Yes, ma'am. Kate. Remus."

"Good-o. Now, let's go grab a snack. I'm hungry," Kate declared. Hermione followed Kate and Remus, who were holding hands. She noticed, and smiled shyly. She had suspected there was something more between them…

Meghan, Sirius, Ashley, and Harry were already clustered around the kitchen table. Harry was looking a little happier, Sirius less grim—no pun intended—and Meghan was animated. Meghan was telling a story. Sirius was looking at the ceiling, clearly resigned.

"What's she talking about now, Sirius?" Remus asked him. "Bragging about something, probably." Kate smiled crookedly and nodded. They were familiar with Meghan and Sirius's difference of opinion on certain stories. Sirius rolled his eyes.

"Quidditch game when we were younger," he explained tiredly. "She caught the Snitch, of course—Whoa! When did you two start holding hands?" he demanded. "People need to keep me updated about this sort of thing! You know I'm not much for gossip."

"Kate!" Meghan squealed, stopping her story to turn and look at them, her eyes bright. "I knew leaving you three there was a good idea!" She was looking very self-satisfied. Sirius and Remus were looking wary.

"Not so stellar, Pearl," Kate disagreed. "Mya here had a nightmare." Meghan looked sympathetically at the girl, who backed away from all the attention. "You're sure you're all right, Hermione?" she asked.

"I'm fine, Mrs. Black," she said automatically. The four adults traded looks, Sirius and Meghan telling about Harry while Remus and Kate responded with the latest on Hermione. Kate hustled Hermione into a chair and handed her a glass of water.

"So, Harry, how are things with you?" Remus and Kate asked in unison. No one laughed, however. Hermione was trying not to gulp the water. Her father had let her out of the room, but had cruelly sent her out of the house before she had a chance to get a drink. She'd had very little liquid in the past week, usually a small glass a day. Harry looked up from the picture Meghan had shown him of his parents. She'd brought it with her when she came over. Ashley was still absent. No one wanted her to hear anything about this.

"'m fine," he mumbled. Hermione tentatively touched his hand. He looked at her, and a current of unspoken understanding ran between the two of them. Kate excused herself, followed by Remus, then Sirius. Meghan looked at them for a moment before excusing herself as well. They all went to go talk to Ashley (in another room) in case she was feeling neglected, as she wouldn't understand. The two were left alone in the room together. Harry and Hermione sat across from each other. Harry was picking at the remnants of what Meghan had given him to eat. Hermione was fiddling with her empty glass.

"Why?" she said suddenly. "Why did they do this? Why don't they take me the way I am? Why such a big fuss over me? Why hit me? Why make every single thing I do wrong? Why treat me this way, like, like dirt? Why?"

"I don't know," Harry said defeatedly. "It's the same either way, choose six or half a dozen," he said cryptically. "I never did anything to the Dursleys. I do everything for the Dursleys. Plus being their punching bag and chosen scapegoat," he said bitterly. "They did what they thought would stamp the abnormality out of me." He looked at his hands. Hermione's sharp eyes noticed the burned spot on his right.

"Same here. They told me it was my fault," Hermione told him, her fruitless emotionless mask crumbling. "That I forced them to do it. What if I did? What if I'm that bad of a person? What if everyone should hit me?"

"I don't think you're bad. I don't think everyone should hit you," Harry said kindly. "I hope you don't think I'm bad and everyone should hit me."

"NO! Of course not, no, you're the nicest person I've ever met. You shouldn't be doing all their work, especially because they have Dudley to help them. None of this is your fault. None of it should have happened to you."

"Ditto for you," Harry said. He pushed his black hair out of emerald-green eyes and looked Hermione in the eye. "I've never seen you angry at or mean to someone. I've never even heard you raise your voice." They sat in silence. Both were feeling better inside. They were working out their frustration and working on their self-esteem. And at the same time, their friendship was growing stronger.

"Are you okay?" Hermione asked concernedly. Harry looked at her. "After last week, I mean. I imagine your uncle wasn't too pleased that he and your aunt had to cook their own dinner. He didn't hurt you too bad, did he? You're okay?"

"I'll just be sleeping on my stomach for a little while," Harry said dismissively. Hermione understood. "It's not like I've never done that before." Hermione nodded, thinking that maybe she ought to be a little fiercer on his behalf but not knowing how.

"Me too." She thought about her week. "I need some sort of water supply in my room if they're going to keep locking me in there. I haven't eaten anything for two days. Mum remembered to bring me some bread three or four days ago. It wasn't much…but I tried to make it last. I was just so hungry."

"Here. Have some of this. Aunt Meghan gave me way too much anyway. If I eat all of that, I'll be sick." Harry pushed his plate of food toward Hermione. She obediently picked up a fork that had been lying on the table and picked at the plate. Then she put it down, thinking she might seem impolite.

"I think I'll be sick if I eat too much. I don't know how much of what my stomach can handle," she confessed. "Besides, I'm sure you're plenty hungry. When was the last time you ate something, Harry?"

"Don't remember," Harry said vaguely. "But if I eat anything more, I won't keep any of it down. I'm not even sure I'm going to be able to keep this down." Hermione looked askance at him, openly skeptical. He was just trying to get her to eat something, wasn't he? He just nodded at her. She shrugged and took a bite of potatoes.

BREAK

Not another word was spoken between them. Harry silently showed Hermione pictures of his parents. She smiled, understanding what the images meant to him.

By the time the contented duo looked at the clock, they could hear the adults coming close to the door. It was quickly approaching five o'clock. Hermione gasped, stricken. How had it gotten so late? She had only just arrived! She stood up.

"I have to leave," she said quietly. Sirius, entering first, shook his head violently. Kate followed, saw what was going on, and reddened with rage. She looked ready to break something. Remus rechecked the clock, hoping that what she'd said wasn't so. Meghan's fists clenched dangerously. Harry, however, nodded sympathetically. He could only hope nothing too horrible would happen to her. She started for the door.

"Don't—bloody hell, Hermione, don't go. This'll be their excuse. You can't leave here…you can't go back there! Will you ever come back?" Kate had picked up a napkin and was reducing it to its molecular state. She'd just found her girl again. She couldn't leave yet! She couldn't go back to the hellish place she lived in. That was sure to kill her!

Hermione's eyes filled, but she disappeared nonetheless. Kate shook her head, her eyebrows knit in concern. Remus tentatively put an arm around her shoulders. "Kate, it's not really her choice." She looked at him, not wanting to accept what he was saying. "As much as you feel like she's yours—and in theory and probably the way she thinks of you, she's more yours than theirs, because they don't love her—she has biological parents that have a hold on her. They've—they've got her fear, Kate. That's a powerful thing, especially when dealing with children. Even though you love her, and she loves you back, she's kept captive by that fear, like a fear of the dark that keeps kids awake all night. She'll come to you only in terrible trouble, but she'll always go back to them because she thinks they'll seek her out and find her anyway. She thinks maybe they'll drag her back home if she doesn't go willingly. She's grown up with them, and even though you know they aren't God, she's grown up seeing them as having absolute power. She can trust them always to be the same, and they won't change who they are to her." He sighed. "Life sucks, doesn't it?"

Kate nodded savagely and picked up the glass the girl had left on the table when she rushed out the door. She threw it as hard as she could at the wall. Remus bit his lip childishly in worry. Kate smiled humorlessly. "Don't worry, love," she said as she pulled out her wand. "I'm going to fix it." She flicked the stick and said. "Reparo." The glass flew back together. Harry was openly staring, his eyes huge.

"Magic," Meghan explained. "It's just a charm." Harry nodded, also standing and walking to the door. "I ought to be getting back home. I, er, I need to help with the garden. It's getting overgrown again." He shrugged. "They overwater."

"Don't go, Pronglet," Sirius said, but Harry was already out the door and down the street. The others chimed in with their useless cautions against returning to home. It was a bittersweet moment to all. They'd found out what was wrong, but the children insisted on returning to their own personal hells on earth.

BREAK

A/N: SORRY it took me so long! All the lovely reviewers and especially Madm05, who were concerned about the story—my muse is on holiday, but I'm happy to say I still have enough of the story left to post some more until it comes back. I'm just lazy. As you can see, I'm updating again and hope to do so more regularly in the future. It's just I've been in school and I've started writing other stories that I'll probably never post and I've been to busy READING to write. And I had to read HBP again to see how I could work out Dray and Sev being good…but anyhoo, I'm back now and I will try to do so more regularly in the future.

JUST a word in my defense: I am young and have never had a boyfriend, so my love scenes are desperately lacking. Forgive them, if you would, since they are gleaned from fanfics and other books I read. Some of my romance scenes are overused…I'm sorry. I just have no experience with such things.

Meghan would like to say she agrees and that I am lazy. I think she speaks with my mother's voice, imagine that LOL! Anyhoo, I better go now and deal with the ants in the kitchen…

Enjoy the chapter, with love from,

LysPotter