As soon as she was able, Hermione took leave from Hogwarts and went to check on the house in north London where she had grown up. She had arranged for her parents to emigrate to Australia to avoid torture from Death Eaters trying to locate her and obliviated them to forget they had ever had a daughter. Now the war was over she would have to seek them out in their new home and try to lift the spell she had put on them so they could return to their old lives.
She had appointed a rental agency to look after the house and tenants had been found. After allowing herself a brief visit to her old street to gaze from across the road at her childhood home, now with new occupants, Hermione went directly to the agency, where she had an appointment. The agent was friendly, courteous, but agitated as she sat down.
'It's good to be in contact with you at last, Miss Granger,' said the agent, a slightly motherly woman. 'Things are running very smoothly with your property now, but we had some real wobbles with the previous tenants, I can tell you!'
Hermione was baffled. 'Previous tenants? There weren't any. My parents lived there until they… left.'
The agent's eyes widened. 'That explains a great deal', she said, exhaling after a long pause to take in what Hermione had said. She reached into a drawer in her desk and pulled out a handbag, which Hermione immediately recognised as her mother's. 'I've been looking after this for you. Mrs Edelstein brought it in. There are one-way aeroplane tickets in here – dated for a week before our new tenants moved in – to Australia! When the Edelsteins got to your house and let themselves in with the keys you had left us, they found that the previous tenants – I mean your parents – were still there. I do wish you could have made proper arrangements for their care before you disappeared. And why you would even consider letting them control their own money is beyond me – they've squandered it on silly things they can't use, like tickets to Australia.'
Hermione questioned her closely, not understanding at all why her obliviated parents wouldn't have left as she had so carefully arranged.
'Your parents were quite deranged when the new tenants arrived,' the agent explained. 'They couldn't even speak. And the house was in a terrible state. It was as if a pair of toddlers had been left to live there by themselves. They'd been scavenging off bread and biscuits – anything they could find in the cupboards. They hadn't washed. I fail to understand why you would leave a pair with obvious premature dementia to make their own way to hospital – it seems nothing had been arranged for their transfer there. Surely you have power of attorney to make these decisions for them?'
Hermione rose, the dread of what she was hearing nearly overwhelming her. 'Where are they now?' she asked frantically. She learned that they had been placed in separate wards of a nearby psychiatric hospital. Hermione wasted no time getting there, signing herself in to bustle first her silent mother and then her father out of their wards under the pretence of a short outing to a nearby teashop. She was desperate to evade questions from the curious nursing staff about why she had never visited before. At the doors of the hospital, after quickly glancing round to ensure no one could see, she grasped their arms firmly and disapparated with them, hoping desperately that the Ministry would never discover this display of magic in front of a Muggle institution. They landed neatly outside the derelict department store on Oxford Street. At St Mungo's hospital she took her parents directly to the Janus Thickey ward for victims of permanent spell damage. Her parents were so addled that they did not protest for a moment at this unusual behaviour.
The kindly healer who examined them took his time over his diagnosis, while Hermione sat impatiently. 'It's hard to be certain,' said Healer Mistry at last, looking up from the Pensieve in which he had analysed some barely mobile strands of memory extracted from her parents. 'Muggles sometimes display different symptoms. But yes, I think you are correct Miss Granger.'
He had confirmed what she most dreaded. That Death Eaters had indeed reached her house almost as soon as she had left it, before her parents could leave for Australia. That they had been tortured into madness under the Cruciatus curse as their attackers tried to establish where she had gone.
Knowing that Neville's parents had never yet recovered from the same curse, but with faith in the care the Longbottoms received, Hermione made arrangements for her parents to live permanently in the same ward at St Mungo's. She visited them every day, but they never recognised her.
She spent most of the summer living with the Weasleys. Molly could see the young witch was heartbroken at the loss of her parents as they had been, on top of the trauma of the recent war, and did her very best to ensure she was well looked after in a surrogate family. Apart from Percy, now living at home again, she was the only young person at the Burrow, which suited her well. Percy and Arthur flooed to the Ministry together every morning, the rift between them fully mended, and Molly left Hermione to read most of the day, understanding that she needed peace and calm, and only interrupting her with a flow of tea and kindly looks. She could never forget that Hermione had given her back her son.
After a brief exchange of owls, Hermione took up the invitation of her old friend Viktor Krum to stay with his family in Bulgaria for a week, in the small wizarding village on the outskirts of Sofia. The Viktor's parents were very kind to her, knowing she had helped defeat a foe who had done as much harm as Grindelwald had done to their family a generation before. His two younger sisters also appeared deeply impressed by her role in the War and her facility with charms. She and Viktor took long walks around the streets of Sofia – the Quidditch champion proudly introducing her to the hidden wizarding enclave there. No trace remained of their former romantic feelings for each other, and at the end of her stay they said their goodbyes affectionately, with vague promises of a further visit in the future. Hermione suspected that the best friend of Viktor's eldest sister, a regular visitor in the Krum household, would soon play a bigger part in his life, if she didn't already.
Fred and George came to dinner regularly after closing the shop for the day, and Hermione soon realised that their visits had become far more frequent since her holiday with Viktor. The three enjoyed each other's company greatly, all seemingly drawn by the visible tie that bound them. Hermione often felt the twins' eyes upon her during their visits, yet none of them knew how to bring up the subject of the resurrection spell. She in turn watched Fred closely, whenever she could, to determine the extent of the effects of the spell on him. He seemed happy, if a little quieter and a little more serious than he had been before, tending now to let George start most of the jokes, but laughing along with everyone else. He was regularly found having a nap on the sofa. Hermione did observe with relief that Fred was the same as he had always been with his twin brother when they thought they were alone.