Chapter Seven
"My name is Hermione, and I am a witch," she said, ignoring their stares. She knew they all desperately wanted to speak, but something on her face must have convinced them all to stay quiet and allow her to continue.
Before she could continue, however, a voice piped up from the doorway leading further into the house. "You're a witch? Can you show me some magic?"
Hermione looked to find the little girl from earlier standing in the doorway with her large copper shadow behind her. She glanced at the vampires in the room around her and knew she would have to be careful about what magic she cast.
She thought for a while, and then decided on a much more benign variation of the spell she'd sent at Ron in her sixth year when she'd been so angry at him for paying attention to Lavender Brown. Instead of casting "avis oppugno" which would produce birds that, if left to their own devices, would batter a target to death, she cast a completely harmless and utterly delightful "avium cantu."
She was rewarded by the little girl clapping her hands and exclaiming with delight as two or three dozen brilliantly colored birds materialized, lit on whatever perch they could find, and began a chorus of singing. And when one particularly lovely little redbird landed on the little girl's shoulder and seemed to sing its song just for her, Hermione knew she'd won the little girl's allegiance.
After a few moments, the birds ended their song and disappeared out the window, leaving behind a single red feather in the little girl's hand as a parting gift. Then the girl, her eyes shining, came over to Hermione. She ignored the protests of her parents, her attention solely on the magical woman who had just produced all the bright, singing birds.
"What's your name?" the girl asked. Hermione was a little surprised at the maturity in the little girl's voice, despite the innocence of the question.
"My name is Hermione. What's yours, sweetheart?" she replied softly.
"My name is Renesmee. Can I touch your face? I want to show you something," the little girl answered.
"Yes, you may."
Renesmee reached a hand to Hermione's cheek and cupped it with her warm palm. Instantly Hermione gasped but made no move to pull away. The vampires, Sam, and Jake all watched as her eyes took on a faraway cast as she watched whatever Renesmee was showing her.
Hermione was stunned. She knew that there were some vampires that had particular supernatural – well, more supernatural than vampires were already – gifts, and she'd already been made aware that Edward, at least, was one of them. But she never would have imagined that a child produced by a gifted vampire with a human woman might also have such a marvelous gift. And there was no other word for it, Renesmee's gift was simply marvelous.
Dozens of images floated through Hermione's mind, images focused on the little girl as she grew, images from her point of view, and most especially, images that she'd created listening to her family members tell her the stories of how she came to be. She saw two people that she recognized as the girl's parents, though her mother was human at the time, and saw how they met and fell in love, how they married, a clearly censored version of their honeymoon on a magnificent tropical island, how they discovered she was pregnant, and how the pregnancy progressed. Hermione's eyes welled with tears as she realized how mature this little girl was that she felt guilty for all the pain she'd caused her mother as a result of her strength while still in the womb.
She also saw censored images of the gruesome labor and birth, and the only images she saw that weren't censored were Renesmee's first memories, memories of coming into the world and seeing her mother for the first time, and for the last time as a human, bleeding and fading away. She saw how Edward must have turned Renesmee's mother, though those images were hazier, because the baby had not been present for the start of the turning and had only been told by her parents how it had gone.
She saw images of Renesmee's mother lying still as death, but clean, as the color slowly came back to some degree into her body, as her skin smoothed and bruises and dark circles under her eyes faded, as her flesh seemed to fill back out more evenly. She saw how Renesmee and her mother had first met after her mother's changing was complete, when she and Edward had returned from her first hunting trip as a new vampire, and Hermione was impressed by the newest vampire's iron control, obviously unheard-of in a newborn.
She also saw images of a great russet wolf, always closely connected to images of the copper-skinned young man that had taken Hermione's wand, and always accompanied by the name Jake, so lovingly and adoringly thought in the little girl's mind. She worshipped Jake, who seemed to return the sentiment. Hermione was a bit bothered by that, and filed it away to ask the girl's parents about later if she got the chance. The last images were only a few, simply to illustrate the fact that Renesmee grew so much more quickly than a human child.
Then, when Renesmee finished showing her the images, Hermione returned to the present, and met the girl's eyes again. She could not decide whether she wanted to sigh with relief or to laugh with delight or to weep for the pain Luna would soon be going through.
Renesmee could see the awe in the magic-woman's eyes, as well as both relief and worry, and pain. Puzzled by the myriad of emotions, she silently asked the magic-woman what was wrong. Why do you still seem so confused? Was there anything I showed you that you didn't understand?
"No, sweetheart, you explained everything perfectly."
Then why do you still seem afraid and worried? My momma is fine now. I can't hurt her on accident anymore. No one can. We're all happy now.
It was that simple, innocent statement that caused Hermione's tears to finally spill over, though she made no move to stop them. "I was worried because of my friend Luna. A bad vampire who didn't care about hurting people hurt her on purpose, and now she's going to have a baby too, but she doesn't have a husband to take care of her like your mother had your father. Except for me, she is alone. But now, because of everything you've shown me, I know how to help her. So thank you very much, from the bottom of my heart."
Renesmee smiled brilliantly, and, on an impulse that all little girls feel every now and then, even ones as grown-up as her, she threw her arms around the magic-woman's shoulders and hugged her tight before pressing a sweet kiss to her cheek. Then she pulled back.
"Can you show me some more magic?" she asked, her eyes sparkling.
Hermione pulled herself together, forcing herself to banish her concern for Luna to the back of her mind, and thought for a moment, before deciding on her Patronus. She closed her eyes and cast the spell, pouring her concentration into the memory of embracing Harry when they realized they'd defeated Voldemort. The insides of her eyelids lit up and she opened her eyes just in time to see, to her astonishment, a great silver wolf gamboling about the room. She was nearly as stunned as the vampires looked, and the bulky dark-haired male pointed it out.
"It's always an otter," she explained nervously. "The form is always specific to the person who casts it – Harry's is a stag because his father's was a stag and his mother's was a doe, Ron's is a terrier, his sister's is a horse, Luna's is a hare, and mine is always an otter. The only time it ever changes is when there's a life-changing event that occurs in a witch or wizard's life. If my Patronus were to have changed at any point I'd think it would have been when we defeated Voldemort. I don't understand why it would have changed now, and why it would be a wolf instead of anything else."
Sam, still standing beside her armchair, found himself looking down at her at this. He wondered if perhaps it had something to do with the imprint. Most of the other imprints were not as affected by the imprinting as the wolves were other than feeling that they had what they most needed, even if they didn't realize it, but Jacob had actually revealed the case to be different with Renesmee. It seemed she felt nearly as powerful an attachment to him as he did to her, and it seemed that it was a product of not only being half-vampire, but also of having been born to parents who both turned out to be gifted and of being gifted herself. Perhaps the magic that Hermione controlled was a kind of magic that ran in her blood, same as the magic that ran through the wolves' veins, and perhaps her magic recognized the magic of the wolves and the imprinting.
"But how is it you are even able to do this?" Esme asked in wonder. "Witches? Wands, magic? And what is a Patronus? Who is Voldemort?"
Hermione sighed and started at the beginning. "No one really knows how witches and wizards evolved. Perhaps they evolved as a means of protecting other people against magical creatures that had evolved earlier, ones that would harm people. Perhaps something was simply triggered in them, a gene activated by some external factor that no one can figure out. But witches and wizards have existed for centuries if not millennia. And just like with people who can trace their families back to great kings and noble families, like the Tudors or the Bourbons or the Medicis or the Borgias, so can many Wizarding families trace their ancestry to great witches and wizards such as Merlin, Morgan le Fey, Circe, and others. And just as there were those less than a century ago who took pride in having blonde hair and blue eyes and fair skin and felt that people who were of a different ethnicity or religion were inferior and tried to wipe them out, so did some Wizarding families start to feel that those of us who were born to non-magical parents were inferior and needed to be culled in order to keep magic among those with pure blood. And several decades ago a young man became known to the Wizarding World who upheld those values with a greater obsession than had ever been seen before. His name was Tom Riddle, but he would come to call himself Lord Voldemort." And so she told them briefly the tale of her world, and most especially, the story of the Two Wizarding Wars, before turning to her own story.
"Seven years ago I received a letter and a visitor, a tall old lady in a pointed hat and a long cloak, who told me I was a witch and that if I wanted and my parents agreed, I could go to school to learn magic. I did, and on the train there I met two boys named Ron Weasley and Harry Potter. Harry Potter was famous, the most famous boy in our world, because when he was just a year old, he defeated one of the most evil wizards history has ever known." And so she gave them a brief history of her years at Hogwarts as one of Harry Potter's two best friends. She also briefly explained Harry's role in the Second Wizarding War but made no mention of her own part; the war was easier for her to discuss if she spoke about it as something she had only heard about rather than something she had been involved in. But the vampires were perceptive; Esme's strong maternal instincts told her that this girl had been through far more than she would let on, while Jasper recognized the haunted look of a soldier who scarcely believed the fighting was over, and Edward, though he could not read her mind, could see the shadows in her eyes as she spoke of the war. Even Sam, who compared to the vampires or even the witch beside whom he stood had seen relatively little of the world's darkness, could tell that Hermione was hiding a pain he desperately wished he could heal.
Though the vampires were good at concealing their true thoughts, being on the run for a year with a somber young man who carried a burden he fought to keep hidden from her had taken Hermione's ability to understand everything a person's words wouldn't say and honed it until she could read the minutest changes in a person's facial expressions. She had a feeling the vampires knew she'd been more involved in the war than she was letting on, but she was desperate to avoid talking about it, so she plowed on, explaining Voldemort's defeat and summarizing the arduous and ongoing recovery of the Wizarding World. She also explained Luna's rape and their discovery two weeks later that Luna was pregnant.
"And so finally, I remembered that one of my professors was friends with a vampire, and so I asked him to contact him, and Sanguini told me where and how to find Alistair, who told me where to find you." She paused for a moment, before adding, "He also told me that you were allied with a group of shape-shifting youth that turn into giant wolves. I can only assume he meant you." She nodded to Sam with a glance over to Jake, still in the doorway. "Though he failed to mention just how many of you there were. Nearly gave me a heart attack when I came upon the lot of you in the woods. You're quite good at sneaking up on people, you know, even when they're also a wolf with a wolf's sense of hearing and smell."
Sam shrugged. "You were distracted. It wasn't until Brady, one of the newer wolves, stepped on a twig that you finally noticed us," he told her.
She nodded pensively. Then she looked up at him again, a curious look in her eyes. "You know, after all that, and all this," she said, sweeping a hand out to indicate the entire room full of vampires, "I still don't know your name. In fact, I don't know very many of your names at all, and you all know mine."
"Well, then, we'll just have to fix that, won't we?" said the small, pixie-like female vampire brightly. "And then we can tell you our story, since you've told us yours."
Hermione nodded, and then looked once more at the quiet man by her side. She couldn't seem to help it; as hard as she worked to the contrary, she just couldn't stop her eyes from coming back to him. The vampires all noticed, as did Jake, and they all knew what it meant. They were all surprised by the implication, however, given that she wasn't at all Quileute, or even from the same continent.
Sam gave her a small half-smile. "Sam Uley, at your service, ma'am."
She blushed and smiled back at him, but said nothing. "I'm Jake Black," added the copper-skinned young man still in the doorway. "For all intents and purposes, Sam's the Alpha of our pack and I'm the Beta, though mostly we just split the responsibilities."
Sam spoke again. "The Alpha position is actually Jake's by birth, since one of his ancestors was Alpha of the last pack, but I was first to phase. I've offered him the Alpha position, but…" he trailed off.
"But I don't really want it," Jake supplied.
Hermione turned to them with interest, forgetting the vampires for a moment. "That's odd," she said. "In wild wolf packs, the alpha doesn't inherit the position; instead, the alpha is the smartest, strongest, and most dominant member of the pack, whether it's male or female. I suppose the inheritance of the Alpha position in your pack comes from the human tendency of passing titles down the family line." She fell silent for a moment, thinking, before looking back up at the vampires present in the room. "Sorry, I got sidetracked," she said with a smile. "Where were we?"
"Introductions," supplied the bulky, dark-haired male with a grin. "Emmett."
The blonde female by his side looked at Hermione with a gaze that was partly assessing, partly distrustful, but she said nothing. "That's Rosalie," the dark-haired female standing beside Carlisle supplied, looking reproachfully at the blonde before turning back to Hermione with a warm smile. "And my name is Esme. Carlisle is my husband."
"Pleasure to meet you," Hermione said, unable to help responding to the warmth of this eldest female vampire.
"I'm Alice," chirped the pixie-like vampire across the room. "And this is my husband, Jasper," she added, patting the arm of the blonde male with her. He had turned around at the entrance of Carlisle, Edward, Hermione, Renesmee, and the two wolf-men.
Hermione noticed that he was watching her with a perplexed expression on his face, and she wondered why. Before she could turn her attention to anyone else, he spoke.
"You seem confused," he said, his deep voice melodic with its faint hint of the Southern drawl that Hermione had heard in Muggle movies about the American Civil War.
She blinked, wondering how he could possibly know what she was feeling. But she answered smoothly. "Actually, I was wondering why you were looking at me as if you were confused."
He blinked in surprise, but then, to her surprise, he chuckled. "Well, now, don't take this the wrong way, but I was a little confused about your smell. You don't smell the same as most humans. You almost smell like Sam and Jake, who, to us, smell like wet dogs, but your scent is far more pleasant, and at the same time you also smell like flowers."
Hermione stared at him. "So, you're saying I smell like a dog that's had a bath?"
That surprised a full belly-laugh out of Sam and Jake. There was a smattering of chuckles around the room, and she thought wryly to herself, Well, at least they think I'm funny. And apparently I don't smell like food.
"Jasper was, until recently, one of the newest members of our family. He had a different upbringing, where self-control was…less important," Carlisle explained diplomatically.
Hermione darted a glance back at the other blonde male, who gave her a light smile. "I'll tell you about it sometime, if you like, though it's not really a pleasant story."
She nodded. "That's all right. As you know, a lot of the story of my world isn't particularly pleasant, either. I'm sure I can handle it." He nodded.
The last person to introduce herself was the dark-haired female with the crimson eyes. This was the person Hermione was most anxious to meet. The human girl who had fallen in love with and married a vampire before bearing him a child that had nearly killed her, and had survived it all.
"I'm Bella," she said quietly, her voice musical.