Chapter 18: Time for a new experience
Hermione sat in the living room, pretending to exercise the pronunciation of a few charms, while she thought about how to get to Rosalie's understanding. Esme entered the house at some point. Hermione had no clue where the woman was all day but going by the coat and scarf she was wearing Hermione guessed she was in town, among humans.
She got out of the unrequired warm clothing and walked over to her. "What are you doing dear?" a warm smile spread over her face and she was nearly lightning the entire room up with the happiness she radiated. It made Hermione smile similar wide.
"I try to exercise Charms….." she said and knew she wasn't really trying. It felt bad to lie to the woman. Unexpected to Hermione since she developed a habit of lying to adults in Hogwarts.
Esme saw through the little pause as well "What is it?" she asked softly. There was no pressure behind the question, just worry and care.
But the witch understood by now that there were no secrets in this house. Edward could read minds, Alice saw every decision pulling it's consequences in the future and everyone could hear every talk in and around the house. She didn't want to talk about it and let Rosalie hear about her issue second hand. She needed to talk to her directly, face to face, so she just shook her head. "it's nothing I just can't focus so much on my study'" she lied again and again didn't feel good doing so.
"Well I think you try hard enough if you want to do something-" Esme got interrupted by Emmett's excited yelling. It also didn't go missing for everyone else in the house. Carlisle, Alice and Rosalie were at the front door before Emmett could finish his "Woahhhh that's fucking amazing!". Esme and Hermione went to see what was going on as well but in a human pace. When they came to stand next to the rest Emmet was pointing at a little flying something that desperately kept flying against the front door from outside. It looked as if it tried to break the glass. First Hermione thought it was a bird but then she took a closer look. "Oh!" she let out, knowing exactly what it was.
"That's a flying piece of paper! Emmett yelled the obvious and watched it excited.
While Hermione found it somewhat amusing that he was that excited about a simple letter, it reminded her a lot of her first reaction to the wizarding way of communication. "Let it in please!" Hermione begged and everyone's eyes turned to her. Some questioning some skeptical. Emmett opened the door more than happily and watched as the hyperactive piece of paper made its confused way inside and flapped its wings to move towards her. She opened her hands and as it hovered over them it unfolded it's wings to return into the shape of a normal letter, then it sunk into her palms.
"So cool!" Emmett let out again and was next to her in no time to look at the wicked piece of parchment.
"What is this?" Alice asked in a fairy like sweet voice, that Hermione hadn't a real opportunity to hear yet, aside of their first meeting.
Hermione looked at the wax seal. It was from Hogwarts but it didn't show the schools weapon, but the Slytherin one. She stared confused and answered without thinking about it "It's a Hogwarts-letter…."
"That's how you guys write each other letters? So amazing!" Emmett was still amazed but couldn't pull Hermione out of her confusion.
"What are you waiting for? Open it." Alice pushed a little curious as well.
But Esme shushed them all out of the entrance Hall. "Now let her read the letter in peace you curious beasts!" she laughed and everyone walked into the living room in human pace. The gave her some space, but that didn't mean they didn't want to know what was written in it. Carlisle and Hermione walked in last. "What's wrong?" he asked worried, the confusion that was clearly written on Hermione's face didn't go amiss to him.
She frowned puzzled "This is the wrong seal to be an official Hogwarts letter" she said a little frustrated. "It's the symbol of house Slytherin…..which isn't…or rather wasn't my house." She let herself fall on the floor and sat on the soft rag she was studying on before. Carlisle took a seat in the armchair behind her. "In fact that's like the enemy house." She broke the seal and opened the letter.
"Carlisle was writing about the houses when he was at St. Mungo's" Alice said or rather sang, to give the little witch a hint, that they knew what she was talking about.
Her eyes flew over the written lines. It was a neat, old-fashioned handwriting and she recognized it before she even finished the first word. The signature only confirmed it. Severus Snape, Head of house Slytherin, Potion Master of Hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry.
Once Hermione finished reading the letter once she decided to read out loud for everyone to hear. Since the whole 'no secret is safe here' thing going on in the house she didn't want to keep anything from them and there was a line in there, that gave Hermione an idea bout how to deal with Rosalie.
She took a deep breath and started reading:
"Miss Hermione Jean Granger,
I feel obligated to send you a few documents on behalf of Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, required for the adoption process with the Cullen Family and trust in your ability to hand them over to Doctor Carlisle Cullen. "
A giggle from across the room interrupted her reading "You second name is Jean? I will only call you Jean from now- ouch!" Rosalie slapped Emmett's shoulder.
"This would have been the task of your head of house, as I am sure you are aware of, however since I also feel the need to word a few of my concerns as Defense against the dark arts teacher, I took over this task.
It is not my place to interfere with the decisions of the headmaster. Especially those made in his position as your current, legal Guardian, although I can not come to understand how he came to let a student live with a house full of vampires, this far away from Hogwarts. Up until the current date we are still responsible for your well-being and I will not accept any potential harm to the fulfilling of this task.
So I advise you to read the pages 316 to 334 in the DADA Textbook, year 3 of Hogwarts. I am aware of you don't have yet…."
Hermione stopped reading here for a second to word her own thoughts "As if I didn't read that already…..or didn't buy it already" she said with a proud, evil smile and waited for some response at least from Emmett, but as none came she looked up and saw a sour mood on everyone's face. What Snape had to say about her living with them clearly hurt their feelings. She continued reading out loud
"I am aware that you do not obtain this book yet and are currently lacking any connection to the wizarding world. To your own safety I made sure to contact a fellow teacher of Ilvermorny to get into contact with you soon. Until then I went through the ordeal to organize a time limited license for you, that allows you to do magic outside of school for the next week. I am sure that someone, who fought a troll in first year is able to defend themselves with those tools given. But I warn you miss Granger, to not let any slips of behavior happen with this opportunity. It will be my name being ashamed at the ministry and I will make sure to make you pay for it should something happen! You might as well use it to practice your first year charms and potions.
Severus Snape,
Head of house Slytherin,
Potion Master of Hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry"
She finished and looked up again. Everyone still wore a somewhat hurt expression except Rosalie, she looked infuriated. "Troll? What dies he mean Troll?" she snapped her anger not directed at anyone specific.
Not exactly the reaction Hermione hoped for, but at least her plan worked in some way. She wanted to trigger Rosalie with this part, to show her that she wasn't as fragile as she thought. So she took the opportunity to tell the whole story. Well she skipped the part about her crying in the girl's bathroom and also didn't explain the fight against the Troll too detailed, since she was hiding under a sink for the most part. But it was the end result that mattered, which was an unconscienced Troll on the bathroom floor. When she finished her story, she was happy about two things. First: Rosalie didn't actually freak out but looked at her thoughtful. Second: Everyone forgot their bad mood about Professor Snape's bad opinion on them, for now.
"So you are allowed to do some magic now?" Emmett asked with an evil grin and no one had a doubt about what he was up to. As soon as Hermione gave a nod he jumped to his feet "Show some! Show some!"
"The letter said only for self-defense and practice" Esme reminded her overly excited son and before he could protest Carlisle took the word
"It is good that they made sure you have some extra safety. We aren't the only vampires out there anyway" He threw a meaningful look at Esme who gave a barely visible nod. Hermione was sure they had something or someone specific in mind there, but she didn't know enough about their world to get an idea.
"ohhh come on" Emmet whined but no one paid him any attention. As Alice and Rosalie stood up to leave the room again Hermione felt like acting on an impulse was right. She stumbled to her feet and jumped after Rosalie. "Rosalie? " the blond woman turned around and her features softened as she looked down at the girl. "Can you help me with my study and question me on a few topic out of my books?" she asked innocently. Good thing the mind reading guy wasn't around. The witch wasn't exactly excited about confronting the topic straight forward, but maybe if Rosalie got an idea of the things Hermione could do, she would be less worried about her wellbeing. Also Hermione got a feeling that the blond vampire was really nice and wanted to get to know her better.
Alice watched the girl talk to Rosalie and smiled. She wanted to have some time with her today, but it was rare that someone took the opportunity to spend time with Rosalie, so she decided to give her Plans for the day up.
…..
Rosalie was a little confused that the girl picked her of all People to help her study, but nothing in the world would have stopped her from taking over this task. She watched as Hermione quoted lines from her Textbook. Either she already did read the book several times or she really memorized it all from classes. It was amazing, she never answered anything wrong so far.
Rosalie scanned through the pages to find something interesting she could question the girl on. "Tell me something about Flipendo." They sat still in the living room and Hermione made a point of not only telling her what she knew about the Charms Rosalie asked for, but also show her the right wand movements, using the TV-Remote instead of her wand. She insisted to not do any magic if it wasn't necessary because she didn't want to have any trouble with this professor of hers.
"It's a charm used to knock an opponent, in a duel or example, or a potential attacker off their feet. It doesn't matter how tall or strong the person in question is, the charm will knock anyone…..even Emmett" She joked and Rosalie felt a little proud that Hermione had no fear using their names already. She saw this behavior often at school, that the kids would not use their names or pretend to not know their names, because they didn't feel comfortable addressing them at all.
She demonstrated the wand movement. And Rosalie thought it looked close enough to the illustrations in the book. "And you are really able to cast all those magic spells?" Rosalie couldn't help but feel a little impressed as they went further through the topics. This was not what she imagined by the word charms. Half of those spells were meant for fighting rather than doing some magic tricks, as she imagined. When she heard Carlisle talk about real witches first, she imagined dishes that washed itself or something like that but not a little girl shooting fire balls at Trolls.
"Why do you learn so man….aggressive spells?" She tried to dive into the topic slowly and Hermione didn't hesitate to answer. She put the remote back on the table and sat on the couch.
"It's not aggressive its defensive!" Hermione corrected. "At least for me. I am sure some other students would agree with you." She wrapped her feet in a blanket and thought for a moment. "The wizarding world isn't as safe as the human world. It's more similar to yours. Vampires are a part of our world even though it's only a few of you that live in our society. But there are also werewolves, animagi, giants, trolls a lot of other partly humanoid creatures, entirely magic creatures with ill intends and evil wizards as well. You have to be able to protect yourself and your family, so they give us the tools to do so during school-time." Hermione explained happily away it nearly seemed to Rosalie as if she waited for an opportunity to tell those things.
"That doesn't sound like a nice place to live in." She frowned. "Why didn't you parents keep you away from such a dangerous world?" This seemed just wrong to her. If it would be her child wanting to get involved in such a world she would do anything to prevent it in order to keep it safe.
Hermione shook her head with a little too much effort. "No no for my parents it always was a great chance for me to be more, to able to achieve more than they ever could, because the wizarding world gave me more possibilities. And what else could parents want than to have some magic in their children's life. In the end it weren't the dangers of the wizarding world that killed them anyway, but a human"
Rosalie watched how the little witch turned more and more sad as the words left her mouth. Until finally Tears prickled in her eyes.
…..
Jasper was just getting near their home as a wave of sadness, grief and loss washed over him. The sign of those emotion were unfamiliar to him, which meant it only could be Hermione. He would have recognized everyone else of their family. What had happened? Worry filled him next to the feelings that weren't his own. He didn't bother to search for anyone else mood all he had in mind was to get home as fast as possible in case something had happened.
He rushed towards the back-door that led into the living room, but came to an abrupt stop when he catch a glance through the window. What he saw let his dead heart melt away. Hermione was crying bitter tears. He could hear her sobs and heavy breath through the window. Her head laid on Rosalie's shoulder and her arms were wrapped around her torso. She had the girl pulled onto her lap, held her close and rocked slowly back and forth with her. "It will be alright." She stroke the child's messy hair, "No one will take us away from you". His fake-twin placed a kiss on the witch's hair. "You will never have to feel that way again. We will be your home as long as you live.". The sobs turned into soft sniffles.
Jasper felt like doing something wrong, watching this scene, with neither of them being aware of his presence. But it was so good to see Rosalie getting so close to someone other than Emmett. It was rare to see her opening up to others. And the feeling of healing that radiated from Hermione now just made him wish to feel more of this warmth.
Next to him, Alice dropped to the ground from the Tree that was closest to the house. "It turned out even better than I saw it happening" she said with a sweet under-tone in her voice and took his hand to pull him away.
He followed her with little hesitation to turn his eyes off of his sisters. "You knew this would happen…." It was a fact no question.
"I knew it has to happen." She corrected him.
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AN: Hello friends. As you noticed I took some time for this chapter, which I gonna blame on the fact that it was my birthday and I just didn't spend time writing :p excuse me for that.
I hope you enjoy this Rose-Chapter, even though I didn't check read it yet. I upload it anyway so you don't have to wait any longer and spell check tomorrow 😉 Enjoy.