It felt like old times, Hermione staying with Ginny whilst Harry stayed with Ron. It brought her back to their Hogwarts days, and that comfort may have been the only thing allowing her to sleep. Not that her sleep was very restful.
Her mind was in overdrive trying to figure out if Draco's words were true or not. She was trying to remember every detail about her childhood and the home in which she spent it. There were very many pictures of her at a young age, but, how young? She couldn't remember any sort of baby book, but she'd always rationalized it to them having not taken very many pictures when she was a baby, or they just hadn't gotten around to putting one together. In twenty one years. The more she thought about it, the more it unsettled her.
"Ginny?" she whisper-yelled across the room. "Are you still awake? Ginny?"
"Yes, Hermione?" Ginny mumbled, thanking Merlin she was a fairly light sleeper. She did not need Hermione having another freak out session, alone, in her room, in the middle of the night.
"Why wouldn't my parents have told me if I was adopted? There's no reason they wouldn't have, right?" Hermione asked, shifting in bed to be facing her old friend.
"I don't know Hermione. Maybe you should ask them tomorrow," Ginny answered as she started to yawn. "Perhaps you should ask them in the morning. They're the only people who can really answer that question, now aren't they?"
Well, that was true, but that didn't exactly help her now, did it? And besides, her parents were very busy people, so she would have to catch them quite early in the day. Before breakfast, perhaps.
"What if they try to deny it? Or what if it's not true at all? I don't believe it is, but it would explain so much, and then we'd be right back to square one!" Hermione fretted, though as her gaze flicked from the ceiling to Ginny, she noticed the younger witch had fallen asleep again, and was now snoring lightly. Perhaps she was right. There was no use worrying about it tonight. That wouldn't stop Hermione from doing so, but at least with no one to talk to, her thoughts would finally lull her to an uneasy sleep.
The waking was not much better. There was no light outside, at least not the first few times. Eventually there was movement elsewhere in the Burrow, and that was about when she decided to get up. With Ginny still snoring in the bed beside her, Hermione gently pulled the door open and shut behind her and crept down the stairs.
In the kitchen sat a Harry that looked about as disheveled as Hermione felt. He glanced up and attempted a weak smile as he saw the flicker of movement signifying his friend's arrival. "Couldn't sleep?"
"Not very well, no. You?" Hermione asked, taking a seat across from him.
Harry sighed and ran a hand through his messy hair. "I don't know. Seeing Malfoy again reminded me of all the crap that happened right after the war. All those trials and convictions, it still doesn't sit well with me."
Hermione nodded slowly and wrapped her arms around herself. It was a lot of responsibility placed on him at the end of the war. They'd been on the run for a year, fought and lost so much and so many. They were kids. Why had the lives of so many of their peers been in their hands?
"I can't even remember what happened in his trial," he sighed, sending Hermione a pained expression. "The only thing I can remember is … "
"His face?" Hermione guessed, sighing as Harry nodded uncomfortably. Malfoy's expression as he was dragged off to Azkaban was seared into her mind as well. And his wasn't the only one. Harry had pulled a lot of strings after everything calmed down to exonerate many of them, but the damage had already been done by then. "Maybe we should try and talk with him."
"If he'll listen," Harry mused. None of them had been very well known for talking and playing nice back in Hogwarts. Especially not with each other.
Hermione shrugged, slowly rubbing her arms. "I think he will. He seems to have matured quite a bit these past few years. Would he have offered to help me if he hadn't?"
It was Harry's turn to shrug. "It's his job, but I suppose you have a point." He looked towards the window, watching the sun slowly make its appearance above the horizon before turning back to Hermione. "Are you going to go talk to your parents?"
She nodded with a sigh as she stood from the old table. "Yes. I need to get to the bottom of this, quickly." It was a bit early to be showing up on her parents' doorstep, but a nice walk would be welcome in her state. Certainly a nice way to clear her head and ensure she was calm when she arrived at her parents' home.
"Hermione?" It took her mother a moment to recognize her as the older woman looked over her daughter's appearance. "Come in, love, come in. Did you dye your hair?"
Hermione gave her mother a strained smile, stepping into her childhood home and waiting for her mother to shut the door before giving her a tight hug. "No, mum, I didn't dye my hair," she sighed. She nodded towards the kitchen, where her father would inevitably be drinking a cup of coffee and reading the paper, and followed her mother into the room.
Her father looked up from his reading as he noticed a second figure entering the kitchen after his wife and smiled as he recognized his daughter. Though he had the same partial hesitation his wife had experienced, of course. "Hello, Hermione. Enjoy your birthday?" he asked as he eyed her black hair.
"That's actually what I came here to talk about," Hermione said as she said beside her father. "You see, I woke up yesterday morning looking like this with no explanation. I went to Saint Mungo's to see if someone was maybe pulling a prank on me, but according to the healer … well they say that every case like this was from individuals who were adopted." She watched her parents exchange a glance and a pit settled in her stomach.
Her mother sighed and took the seat on her other side before reaching out to take one of Hermione's hands. "We should have told you a long time ago," she sighed..
"Heather," her father sighed, earning him a withering glance from his wife.
"No, Thomas, we should have told her the moment she got her Hogwarts letter. Acrisius would have wanted it that way," Heather insisted.
"I'm right here," Hermione pointed out, looking between her parents. "And who is Acrisius?"
Thomas looked to his wife once more before focusing on his daughter. "Acrisius Prince. He was your birth father. When you were five years old he asked us to take you in and placed a glamour charm on you. Shortly after that he was killed in the wizarding war."
Hermione leaned back in her seat and took a deep breath. "So you know about the wizarding world, about me being a witch, before my letter came?"
Heather nodded slowly. "Acrisius saved us from a stray dragon when we were living further out of the city. It was quite a shock, but we took it in stride. He checked in on us every once in a while to make sure we were alright, and once things got heated in their war he asked us to take you in for a while.
"By the time he dropped you off, things had gotten so bad he realized it may turn into a long term arrangement, so he placed memory and glamour charms on you, and ever since then you've been our daughter."
Silence ticked by until Hermione took a deep breath and nodded with a forced smile. "Well thank you for being honest with me. I can understand why it's not something you would have wanted to share." She reached over to hug her father, and then her mother. "I should probably go talk to my healer about this."
"Alright, dear," Thomas sighed as he watched Hermione leave the house. They definitely should have told her when she got her letter.
Author's Note:
In my defense it only took me a few months to write this chapter rather than a few years! I was originally planning on splitting this in two but they would have been so small I decided to merge them. Hopefully the next chapter will be out quicker than this one was.
For anyone wondering, I got the names for Hermione's parents from their actors in the movies!
