Disclaimer: la la la not JKR, la la la no profit, la la la does anyone actually read this part?
Notes: I love how torn the comments on my last chapter were! Some of you found Severus' reaction hilarious and some of you felt honestly bad for the guy. Loving such diverse reactions. Hope you enjoy this, please continue to review!
Sorrow makes us all children again - destroys all differences of intellect. The wisest know nothing.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Reparo".
The scattered ashes refused to move.
"R-Reparo!"
The tiny fragments defied the distraught witch's efforts just as they might a light breeze. The table sat uncaring, and the stillness of the room bore down on the young girl, mocking her efforts
"Reparo!"
Hermione was all too aware of the tears tracking their way across her pale cheeks and the hoarse tremor of her voice as she cried the basic spell over and over again. She felt like an eleven year old once more. The night she'd received her letter from Professor McGonagall, stolen away into her room and sat brandishing a stick over her favourite sunhat, waiting for a rabbit to appear. Just a little girl, waving around a stick and believing utter foolishness once more.
And foolish though it was, Hermione refused to believe the sodden black fragments were impervious to magic.
No. She had fixed worse than this; she'd pieced plates and bowls back together, she'd set Harry's glasses to rights at least a hundred times. She'd personally seen a wand beyond all means of help defy the impossible and succumb to the simple spell. Admittedly, she didn't own the elder wand, but Hermione refused to believe the concept was any different.
This had to work.
She just wasn't trying hard enough.
She was not going to let her parents down.
"Reparo!" She forcefully screeched, using both hands to impulsively thrust the magic along. The force of the spell caused an actual whooshing sensation to spread throughout the room. The tiniest of cracks in the window righted themselves while the left hand corner of Percy's bed emitted a groan as the dodgy spring shot back into place.
The tiny fragments still seemed to struggle against the tremendous wave of magic, but even they eventually lost their charred black coats and drifted once more into a haphazard pile of parchment.
Hermione could physically feel the drain on her magical energy, as though she had tapped some secret reserve and let the very core of her being run dry.
But it was worth it.
Even as an overwhelming sob wracked through her body, even as she collapsed boneless, into the no longer creaky chair, Hermione felt as though for once, for one small, small moment, the great weight of everything had been lifted from her shoulders.
Everything: The Ministry, St Mungo's, Ron, Mrs Weasley. Everything seemed lighter. Everything was okay.
I can finally get my parents back.
Brushing the tears out of her eyes with a breath of laughter, Hermione leaned forward to order her newly won notes. Only to find they were blank.
Completely and utterly blank.
Hermione felt nothing but the beat of her pulse in her fingers as she traced the smooth blank parchment.
"No."
"No. Reparo. Reparo. Reparo!"
The papers didn't so much as flutter.
"No."
George couldn't take the hospital any longer. He didn't know whether it was the smell or the lighting or the monotony of the waiting room, but death had coated the walls.
Even as he walked hurriedly through the bustling muggle street to the apparition point, the sensation seemed to linger, crawling over his skin, creeping it's way under his eyelids, burrowing into his brain.
His hands were still clammy from the sight that had greeted him that morning. Ron, his baby brother, lying still and nearly life-less beneath the hospital sheets. He felt as though he couldn't get enough air into his lungs.
He knew that rationally the hospital itself shouldn't bother him. It hadn't in his sixth year when Dad had been brought after Naigini's attack. He knew the healer's had explained that Ron's injuries weren't life threatening in the least. He knew Fred would've taken the mickey.
Whatcha' fraid of Georgie? Reckon they'll commit you at last? Get you a nice bed next to Lockheart if you're lucky mate.
Then again, if Fred had been around to take the mickey, the stench of death wouldn't have lingered so. Ron lying in a hospital bed would've been bloody hilarious. He'd have offered him a sponge bath. Shouted him a playwizard then pointed out just which arm he'd incapacitated - away from mum of course.
But Fred wasn't around and George wasn't by his little brother's bedside cracking jokes. He was running with his tail between his legs from invisible voices and the prickling of Goosebumps.
He was worse than bloody Trelawny.
Shaking his head, George reached the apparition point and rolled into the spinning darkness before stepping out on the lawns of The Burrow. With his hands in his pockets and his head hunched over he was impervious to the great white clouds rolling in over the fields of long grass. Shouldering the door open George faced the familiar surroundings, for once stripped of his usual fake grin. There was no one to reassure. The empty kitchen took no notice of his heavy eyes or worn face; it didn't note his silent traipse up the stairs. It still felt odd, being left alone, but he supposed he'd get used to it. Not like he had much choice.
It was only as he plodded along the second story landing that he realised he wasn't in fact alone.
"R-reparo, rep-aro, reparo!"
Quietly pushing Percy's door open, George came face to face with a sobbing Hermione Granger.
Hermione didn't quite know when she'd sunk to the floor, spreading the infuriatingly blank pages in front of her. She wasn't quite sure how long she'd been curled up with the cold metal bedframe pressed into her spine. Some part of her knew, by the light pouring in the through the patterns of the lace curtains, that it was probably around three o'clock. That she should have been long gone by now. That she should have at least packed by now. Or made a list of all the books she'd need to take, or all the details of her research she remembered. But Hermione couldn't stop the shaky sobs still breaking through her stupor. She knew the incantation was pointless and her pronunciation was utterly flawed and that she'd probably squandered her magical reserves long ago.
But there was a stubborn, bushy haired eleven-year-old deep within her, stood in front of a hat with a stick that refused to give up. What was the point of magic if it couldn't fix things? What was the point of all the fighting and pain and anguish to be a witch? What was the point of sacrificing her parents, to belong to the magical world?
No. She was not giving up.
"R-reparo, rep-aro, reparo!"
At this stage, Hermione wasn't even waving her wand properly.
"What in Merlin's bloody name are you doing, you lunatic."
Hermione looked up startled at the stocky red-haired wizard stood in front of her, his mouth open and his face a picture of complete confusion.
What the hell are you doing Hermione?
"I… I was trying to fix my notes… I…" She stuttered, still shocked at Ron's elder brother's tone.
"Reparo's not going to fix that." He stated somewhat stupidly, still gaping down.
"Yes, well I know that!" Hermione cried from the floor, irritated by this statement of the obvious.
Well you have been here for an hour, idiot.
"Why are you still doing it then."
Hermione all but seethed with rage.
"It may have escaped your attention, but ALL my work, everything I'd figured out on how to help my parents, to restore their memories and get my family back, is now DESTROYED." She fumed, rising from the floor and turning to face the errant redhead.
George still gawked at her, obviously dumbfounded.
"Well, didn't you have copies?"
Is George Weasley actually lecturing me on coherent note-taking systems and organisational practices?
"Actually, believe it or not, I wasn't expecting my notes to face the perils of incineration. Silly me, not to have considered that factor at the beginning of my research."
George finally wiped the confused look of his face, if only to replace it with a grimace.
"Fair enough." He offered, somewhat apologetically, perhaps regretting his thoughtless tone.
Hermione deflated slightly as her ire died away. Both she and George stood staring down at the blank pages of parchment spread between them.
"Although…" George began hesitantly. "That is something Fred and I took into consideration. Pretty much all our early production notes went up in smoke trying to make an everlasting firework… and well."
He stopped here, noting Hermione's entirely unimpressed expression.
"Memory reversal isn't quite so volatile" she quipped faintly.
"Yes, well, no, of course not. Still, come on, I've got something that'll cheer our little know-it-all right up." He beamed at her, clearly undaunted by her emotional state.
Hermione followed George out of the room, leaving the still blank parchment littering the floor. It was no use to her now anyway. George was right. Nothing would ever set that right. Walking down the stairs, Hermione wiped the wet residue from around her eyes and set her jaw. She was done crying. She would simply have to start over again. Logically there was no reason she couldn't reach the exact same solutions, if anything she could probably complete it in half the original time. There was so much else to worry about.
George jumped the last three steps to land in the middle of the kitchen, before ambling to the door and holding it open to her.
"Come on, come on, get a move on Granger. I'm a busy man you know, I'm not wasting hours for your lack of organisational foresight."
Hermione was going to hit him.
He only grinned at the glare she shot him, before turning around once more and leading her through the backyard and around the chicken pens into Mr Weasley's shed.
While the seemingly innocuous shed was magically expanded on the inside, it was still incredibly cramped and every available surface seemed overflowing with the most bizarre collection of muggle artefacts imaginable. Spark plugs sat littered among what looked like a semi-dissembled washing machine. Along the left wall, two slightly rusted kitchen sinks sat upon a heavily dented, upturned go-kart. George navigated through the clutter with practiced ease, hoisting himself up onto a counter and pulling what looked like a box of muggle magic tricks from the upper shelf. Hermione picked her way across the narrow pathways, careful not to upturn the piles of model aeroplane boxes or send loose Lego sets flying everywhere.
With his legs swinging listlessly over the side of the bench, George lightly blew the dust of a black and red box, roughly the size of a shoebox, that read '101 Unbelievable Majicks! Impress your friends, enthral your enemies!' It looked like the kind of cheap gimmick you'd find in a dilapidated toyshop. As Hermione crowded over, George pulled the lid off to reveal a stack of neat ordered papers.
Hermione was dumbstruck.
Who is this and what has he done with George Weasley.
"You've got to be joking." Hermione levelled out. Even the small print on the parchment was perfect, each line was exactly horizontal and the margins were straight to the very last millimetre.
Maybe I really am magically drained. What if I'm passed out upstairs?
"I'm offended! What ever lead you to believe I was anything other than anal and diligent my dear sister?" George proclaimed in a mock-offended tone.
"So help me George, I have had a long day. Explain. Now."
George only laughed, reaching into the box and rustling through the sheaves of paper.
"Hang on, it's in here somewhere…"
Hermione stood silent, arms crossed while George searched through the box, still muttering to himself.
"Oh wait… no it's not… must be the other one then." He frowned.
"The other what?" Hermione asked, confused.
"Haaang on." He waved her off, reaching up to the top shelf again, this time pulling down, to Hermione's utter bemusement, a dusty scrabble box.
What the actual hell?
"Ahh, yep here we go. Didn't want mum getting her hands on it and having kittens." He grinned at her once more. Lifting the lid once more, George pulled from the box not a scrabble board as she had somewhat expected, but a plain black binder.
Flipping it open, he flicked through the pages before loudly exclaiming.
"Ah Ha! Got ya. There you go Hermione, feel better?" He asked her, handing the binder over.
Hermione skimmed through the pages, not quite sure what she was meant to be looking for. This was not George's handwriting at all, it almost resembled typed text, but it was obviously written out in ink. Flipping the page back to where George had had it open, Hermione let out a gasp.
This was all of George's research on the development of memories in the Excito Animatum solution. Down to the very last sentence. Actually, it was all of George's research on every single Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes' product, but Hermione couldn't give a damn about extendible ears or undetectable Antidiarrheals. With this at least, some portion of her working formula wasn't forever lost.
"But your notes, they were so messy and disorganised. Bits were written on napkins and old WWW fliers. Are you actually telling me you write out duplicates of every bit of brainstorming on every bit of research?" Hermione couldn't help but consider how illogical this was. He'd end up spending more time note taking than inventing.
"In a way." George laughed, obviously enjoying her ignorance. "I'm guessing Hermione, you never explored much in the way of cheating quills?"
"I most certainly did not!" Hermione automatically piped.
"Thought not. Well most of them are rubbish see. Either they're completely useless or the exam spells manage to catch them out. Fred and I were looking into them right before our O.W.L's…" George trailed off here at an affronted look from Hermione.
"No, no, no; not to cheat or anything. Well, yes to cheat, but not so we'd do well. We never gave a stuff about the marks or anything. It just would've been the best test environment for 'em."
Hermione's affronted look didn't change at all.
"They were a bit of a flop actually. But we did come up with this; oh shit hang on where'd I put it."
George hopped off the counter, rustling around in what looked like an empty, tipped over mailbox.
"Ah. Here."
George handed Hermione what looked like a perfectly ordinary brown quill. She looked at him pointedly, waiting for him to explain.
"Oh, uhm. One more second." Patting around the desk, George produced a scrap of an old daily prophet. "Here you go. Give it a try."
Looked down at the pen, bemused, but humoured the redhead nonetheless.
George Weasley is a colossal arse, who could have explained this without dragging me into the back shed and keeping me in suspense.
"Tsk, that's not very nice at all, Hermione." George intoned, adopting his pseudo affronted tone once more. Hermione only raised an eyebrow at him, still waiting for him to explain.
"Now open the folder."
Hermione did as she was told, flipping to the last page of the folder and starting at the words that were slowly appearing, as though written by an invisible hand.
George Weasley is a colossal arse, who could have explained this without dragging me into the back shed and keeping me in suspense.
"That's brilliant!" She cried, examining the innocuous quill once more.
"The idea was that Fred or I could take turns writing notes, while the other worked on joke-shop stuff, but then we'd both have copies when a teacher asked."
Hermione's smile dimmed a little and her eyebrow's creased at this piece of information. George carried on unflinchingly.
"Then after the fireworks incident we set all of this up. We both kept a quill on us at all times so that no matter where we were or what we ended up scribbling on, everything was safe and sound in the shed. Plus dad fire-proofed this shed when we were like 7."
"Do I want to ask why?"
"Just don't talk to mum about the vacuum cleaner incident. Ever."
Hermione would have laughed had she not vividly remembered her last conversation with Mrs Weasley.
"Can I take these notes George? And a copy of the quill spell might come in handy too."
"Sure thing sis." He said, before looking down at the quill still in her hands. His face paled and smile faltered. "In fact. Take that one. It's not doing any good here."
"No, George I couldn't, as we've said your notes are at a far greater risk than mine would be."
"It's not mine. My quill's upstairs." He mumbled, duplicating his notes before shuffling the original papers back into their box and fixing on the lid once more.
Oh.
"Besides" He continued, placing the red box up on the shelf once more, "Fred would've gotten a huge kick out of it; Perfect prefect Hermione Granger using his cheating quill. Who'd have thought?"
As Hermione and George entered the burrow once more, it was no longer an empty kitchen that greeted them. Both Mr Weasley and Kingsley were seated at the kitchen table, cradling cups of tea.
"There you are Hermione, we were just about to check Grimauld Place for you."
"I'm sorry Mr Weasley, I just got side-tracked. I'll go finish packing now."
"What?" Arthur looked across the room at her, thoroughly befuddled. "No, no, don't worry about any of that now, Kingsley and I've got off work early. We were going to go through your plans."
Plans?
Kingsley apparently noted her perplexity.
"Plans for you to go into hiding Hermione. We only have four days."
Hermione cottoned on at last.
Of course.
Note: I know a lot of you are averse to an over-weepy Hermione, I myself hate seeing her fall to pieces as the victim. But I think after having all her research torn away, a bit of a cry is the best thing for her. Don't worry though, she'll find her feet soon enough. Hope you liked it, please leave a review, I love hearing what you guys think.
After Note: Only edited to make everything a tad clearer.
