Disclaimer: I do not own it, nor am I making a profit for it. The celebrity goes to JKR and her fabulous quill.
A/N: In the summary I wrote that she discovered this secret after her 19th birthday; I meant to say before as she is born in Sept of 1979. Because her birthday is in Sept, but after the start of the Hogwarts year, I'm assuming that she did not start at Hogwarts until right before her 12th birthday. As per JKR, she is born before Harry and Ron who were born in 1980. So for the sake of this fic, she will be turning 19 in the Sept after she starts school, for her 7th year, which the Ministry of Magic has required all students who were present at Hogwarts during Professor Snape's tenure as Headmaster and the Battle of Hogwarts to complete. Now, on with the story.
Chapter 2: A Starting Point
Sitting in the living room at Number 12, Hermione took yet another gulp from the ever present bottle at her side. Harry sat across from her, waiting patiently and quietly from her to speak. She looked up into his emerald green eyes, and it was as if a damn had burst.
"Those fuckers, they spend 19 years of their lives raising a fucking kid that wasn't even theirs... Harry, 19 BLOODY years! They just kept it hidden, for 19 years, they loved me, and even though we are so different, they insisted that I was theirs. Despite the fact that I was the only magical being in the entire family, ever! Can you imagine following blindly down a path, and then one day out of nowhere- 'Guess what Herms, your name is actually Gabrielle, and you're adopted'. Can you believe that?"
"Well-" he was cut off.
"I can't believe I spent the better part of my life with strangers, and you'll never guess, the most ironic part about all of it"
"What's tha-"
She cut him off yet again,
"I'm Pureblood... yeah- that's right. After how many years of Draco Bloody Malfoy calling me that disgusting word, I'm equal to him, if not better. I can't believe this" she raged.
Harry's eyebrows lifted while she fumed, throwing her arms about and spilling her Firewhisky. He stared at his best friend, bewildered as to what to say. While he himself grew up in a household in which there was no love, he hadn't grown up with parents only to discover they weren't in fact your parents, only with his Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon, the dullest Muggles in existence. Hermione continued to storm around the sitting room, leaving a trail of tiny spillages on Harry's antique carpets. As she began to tire, he continued to nod and add in the appropriate noises when needed. The conversation drifted from her adoptive parents, to her birth parents; why they had given her up, her true birth, her life, as she knew it, and what she was going to do now.
"What am I going to do Harry, I have no idea who I am, what I'm doing now... I'm lost, completely lost"
"Herms, everything will work out, it always does" he stood and took her into his arms. He kissed her hair and held her as she swayed.
"School doesn't start for another 6 weeks, why not go exploring, find out who you are, come back at the end of August and we can finish off our final term?" He suggested.
She nodded into his shoulder but said nothing. Soon she drifted off, and Harry laid her gently on the settee, and left the room.
It was bright outside when she awoke, finding herself on the floor in a strange room. It all came swimming back as she looked around. She'd come here after… after her parents had told her that her life would change drastically after her upcoming birthday. Gabrielle Dracontos, that is what her mother had said her name was. No- not her mother, the woman who had raised her; it would take some time to come to terms with that. She needed to make a plan, what was she going to do, what was her next step; she had to work this out- and soon.
She left the living room and went in search of Harry. He wasn't in the kitchen, his study or the library. She looked throughout the entirety of the ground floor, but didn't find him. She took the stairs 2 at a time, and soon came to the door to the room that had once belonged to Sirius Black. She silently opened the door and peered inside; her gaze fell immediately on the four-poster bed situated in the middle of the room. Harry was there all right, lying stark naked on top of the sheets, his arms around a short red head. Hermione quickly shut the door and scurried down the stairs. She made her way to the kitchen, and made herself a quick breakfast, and decided to explore. It had been several months since she'd been in the house, and wanted to discover the secrets the Blacks had kept within their dark and mysterious home; it was the only thing she could think to do to keep her mind off of her discovery.
Hours went by with Hermione shuffling through the basement of the Manor, in which she'd discovered a hidden storage cupboard of potions ingredients, a potions lab and a passage that led to the top floor of the house. She was about to continue her adventure when she heard two things, the first was the steps of two people walking above her head, and the second the sound of an owl flapping into the house and squawking for attention. She looked around, wishing that her solo adventure could continue, but began to mount the stairs anyway.
When she entered the kitchen she saw the two people she'd inadvertently found wrapped nakedly around each other earlier that day sitting at the kitchen table smiling stupidly at one another.
"Harry, Ginny" she said simply.
"Hermione- there you are, we looked everywhere for you. Where have you been?" Ginny said, looking away from her lover.
Hermione shrugged and looked around at Harry.
"Harry, do you mind if I stay for awhile longer? I need to get my head on straight"
"Hermione- you can stay as long as you'd like, but I think that you should do what I suggested to you last night; go exploring. Go find out who you are" he said taking her hand.
Yet again she shrugged and the nodded, and turning left the kitchen and began climbing the stairs to the second floor. She entered the room she and Ginny had stayed in during the time they had spent with the Order of the Phoenix in the house, and collapsed onto her bed. She paid no attention to the voices beneath her and stared at the ceiling.
A knock could be heard at the door, Hermione ignored it, rolling onto her side to inspect the stain she had spied earlier in her self-induced seclusion.
"Hermione?" a voice floated through the door.
Again, she said nothing.
The door cracked open and a red haired person poked their head through.
"Hermione- please answer me"
"What do you want Ronald?" she spoke to the wall.
"There is post for you, an owl just delivered it" he said, entering the room.
She rolled over and stuck her hand out. He placed the thick envelope on her hand and began to say something, but was cut off by Hermione dropping the package on the bed and once again rolling over.
Ron shook his head and left her to her misery, he knew from experience that in a mood such as this, there was no reasoning with her. He began his descent into the living room where his sister and Harry could be found cuddling in front of the blazing fire.
"She's just laying there, staring at the wall. We really should do something" Ron said when Harry looked up at him as he entered the room.
"We just have to give her time, she'll work it out. You know her, unless it's done in the tried and true Hermione way, there is no way to convince her otherwise.
Ron threw himself onto the couch opposite Harry and Ginny and nodded. Ginny looked at both boys and began to speak,
"Perhaps I should go up, see if she wants to talk?"
"There is no point love," Harry said, "there is no way to bring her out of the funk she's in. Give her a couple of days and she'll come down and be ready to talk"
Ginny nodded and cuddled further into the Boy-Who-Lived shoulder.
Hermione lay on the bed listening to the voices beneath her, but not truly hearing the individual words. The package leaning against her thigh ignited her curiosity, despite her awful mood. She sat up, and took it into her hands, turning it around and around trying to decide if she should open it or not. It didn't look harmful, quite ordinary actually. She tore it open and dumped the contents on the bed. Out came several stacks of paper, one of which has a yellow Post-It© note attached.
~*~Hermione; we're sorry but we thought you should know; John and Jean Granger~*~
She scowled but opened the folder nonetheless. The first thing she saw was a picture of a lovely couple holding a precious baby. She picked it up and turned it around and saw several names scrawled there "Gabrielle, Mama et Papa". She turned it over and examined the woman holding the baby- her. She was tall, with long deep brown hair and light brown green eyes. Her smile was wide and engaging. The man stood beside her, stoic, he was wearing what couldn't be considered a smile, but neither could it be considered a scowl. He too had dark hair, but had a Eastern European look to him. She put the photo down, and picked up the next piece of documentation. Her birth certificate:
Принцесса1 Gabrielle Raine Dracontos, born September 19th, 1979 to Принцесса 1 Nadine Michelle Dracontos (nee Pierre) and Принц 2 Pasha Fadey Dracontos.
She was a Princess… impossible. She ruffled through the paperwork sent to her by her adoptive parents. Nowhere did it tell her the one thing she wanted the most, the one thing that she needed to know. Finally she reached the last piece of paper. It simply said:
Gabriel Chekov, Адвокат3
Город Санкт-Петербург, Россия4
Hermione read the name over and over, a lawyer. That is who she had to see, and soon. She needed to find out the answers to the questions rolling around in her head.
She jumped from the bed, flew from the room and stormed down to the living room. She walked into the room, and looked around at the occupants therein.
"I am going to Russia," she said simply before turning around and marching to the front door.
Harry, Ron and Ginny stared after her.
"You're going where?" Ron found his voice just as Hermione touched the doorknob.
"Russia, Saint Petersburg" and with that she opened the door, and taking one-step disapparated from the front step.
A/N: word count: 1717. I hope that you enjoyed it. I appreciate all comments and reviews, and if you think I should be going in a different direction, or have an idea, or constructive criticism, please feel free.
1 Принцесса = Russian for Princess
2 Принц = Russian for Prince
3 Адвокат = Russian for Lawyer
4 Город Санкт-Петербург, Saint Petersburg, Russia