Hermione Granger and Rodolphus Lestrange
Since the Hampstead date Hermione felt really good about her Ministry match. Before seriously thinking of committing to marriage however she felt that she had to tell Rodolphus about her family. She would have to come clean about changing her parents' memory irreversibly.
After putting away her groceries for their dinner she went into her spare room where shrunken boxes with personal things from the house she'd grown up in were stored. It took her three tries to find the right box to enlarge. Hermione had only a few pictures from her parents before they had her. She put them aside and dusted the three albums that held her family's history from her birth to her start at Hogwarts.
Rodolphus arrived on time with a wonderful wildflower bouquet and a bottle of elf-made wine.
"Rabastan sent these with his and Luna's best wishes. He told me to make sure you will come to the manor soon as the weather forcast is favourable as during the next two weeks the gardens will look their best for the autumn season. I never managed to understand the importance of composing borders and beds but it does look good and it gives Rab joy."
After a dinner of chicken curry and a salad they watched "Sabrina" together. Rod's views fascinated Hermione. When for instance he commented on the snobbery of the Larrabees or how intrigued he was by the plastic hammock Linus made for his brother.
"Very ingenious! If you can't have an unbreakable charm that's a fine thing."
When he carded his fingers through her's she withdrew however and put some distance between them.
"Rod, I like you very much and I can easily see a future for us but I feel I have to tell you something about me first."
Rodolphus startled.
"Hermione, I joined a fascist madman willingly and I am an ex-convict. Even with Bellatrix' Imperius some things I have done will haunt me forever. I cannot imagine anything you might have done that compares to my deeds."
"Maybe what I've done is not on the same level legally but I fear it is something you would never even contemplated doing. Family is very important to you. It is for me as well. Near the end of the war I feared for my parents' safety, families of Order members were targeted. I hadn't told them everything that happened to me at Hogwarts or in the wizarding world generally. To be honest I told them nearly nothing, not of the blatant prejudice against Muggleborns nor of the poor quality of some parts of the Hogwarts education. They raised me to stand up for my rights and to always strife for the best. They would not have tolerated someone like Binns or the string of incompetent DADA-teachers and of course they would not have liked the constant child endangerment that is Hogwarts. So I kept mum because I feared that they would withdraw me from the school completely. Now I understand their reasoning. We would of course decide together but if our children got into the scrapes I got I'd like to withdraw them. Hindsight tells me that there were other solutions but I was a terrified teen then. And overly confident to know what is right and necessary. And confident in my wielding of magic." Here she had to pause. Rod looked curious but not yet angry or disgusted. Hermione decided to rip the plaster off, "I put memory charms on them and a compulsion to move to Australia. I erased their memory of me from the completely."
Rod gasped and Hermione forced herself to continue.
"I always planned to reverse the charms when the danger had passed but after the war, when I travelled to Perth, I found that the memory modification was irreversible."
Rod had stood up and was pacing in the living room. Hermione dreaded his reaction.
Finally he turned to face her.
"What appalls me in your story is that you took away their free will. It strikes a chord with me. However, you were very young and under a terrible strain. You were in this situation because of the Dark Lord and because of Dumbledore's machinations. Bill Weasley is a talented wizard, he could have easily warded your parents' home if Dumbledore could not find the time. And your parents were definitely targets, I remember a report from Yaxley that they couldn't be found. You saved their lives."
The witch wrung her hands.
"Now I can think of several different solutions but then this course of action seemed like the only way! If I only-"
He had drawn her into an embrace.
"Please, do not waste your energy on what-ifs. They are safe and that is what matters."
They talked a while about her struggle with her deed and also about Rod's difficulty to trust himself and others again after being Imperiused by his own wife for such a long time. Over coffee they looked through the albums, Hermione explaining things like kindergarden, dentistry or science projects in school. As the Grangers often spent holidays in France they found some places to compare as well, with a tentative plan to re-visit some of them as the witch then had not known the wizarding side of sights like Mont Saint Michel or elf wineries in the Bordeaux region. Rod finally remarked on something that had him bothered for a while.
"You look nothing like your parents, I can't find one single trait that you might have inherited from either your mother or your father. I do not want to be presumptuous but part of a Pureblood upbringing is being able to spot Malfoy-hair or Black-eyes from a mile. Did you ever ask them about this?"
Hermione startled.
"I always thought my hair colour comes from my father. And my nose from my mother."
"Well, yes, superficially there is a likeness. But your father's hair has none of your chestnut tone, it is just brown and very straight, as well as your mother's. And while she has a small nose like you the form is quite different."
Her parents had always called her their miracle-baby, yet it had never occurred to her that they might have meant something entirely different from finally conceiving. Her mind shied away from the thought but Rodolphus had a point. He continued his argument.
"Please do not misunderstand me, but most Muggleborns are far less powerful than you are. An explanation might be that you are in fact not a true Muggleborn."
She bristled automatically at this.
"Are you saying because I am a strong witch I cannot be Muggleborn? Is that not elitist learnings speaking? What about Harry's mother? She was supposed to be a true Charms prodigy."
"You are right insofar as I have not personally verified everything that is known about how magic and magical power comes about. But what I said before – that Muggleborns rarely are as powerful as Halfbloods or Purebloods – is in agreement with what I observed in others. And it is logical from a biological or genetic point of view: if Muggleborns are the product of repressive genes from Squib-lines the repressed trait – magic – is rarely as strong as others. There are exceptions, of course, but if we are to have children together we should test the possibility of you being adopted. You could be my second cousin with how the last generations of wizards in England tended to intermarry."
Hermione thought about this. While the possibilty rocked her whole view of herself Rod's argument had some weight. And it might explain why the reversal of the memory charm had failed when it shouldn't. If her parents were in fact not her biological parents then the part of the spell which made it impossible for parents to truly forget their child would not work. Magic worked on a very archaic level, her parents might feel like her true mother and father but that would not be enough for a spell component.
"How could we find out?"
"There are spells and rituals to determine the grade of relationship but I guess they are included in the Ministry's Arithmancy formulas for matching anyway. We would not have been matched if we were, say, uncle and niece or first cousins. And there is an inheritance test that one can take at Gringotts, for a hefty fee. It shows the family tree and also blood-adoptions."
"I think I'd rather go to Gringotts, then we will know once and for all." With a shaky voice she continued, trying to lighten the mood, "I have been wanting to do more than kissing, I would like to know sooner rather than later if you are indeed my cousin."
"A compelling argument. Would you like for me to ask my account manager for an inheritance test? It might speed things up. We could progress to snogging before the next week is over."
"Yes, please."