15 July 1997
"You don't have to do this," Fred said for the millionth time, seated across from her in the attic as they dug through their respective boxes of holiday knick-knacks and Granger family memorabilia.
"I know," Hermione replied without looking up, just as rehearsed. She paused, having nearly flipped past a photo of her in front of the Christmas tree. Perhaps two or three, she was sitting on her mother's lap with an obnoxiously large velvet bow that was trying, and failing, to contain her hair. Taciturn, she plucked it from the album and set it aside with the rest before proceeding.
"I'm just saying – there are other, less permanent, options. With what you're removing… you most likely won't be able to undo it."
She sighed as she finished the book she was looking through and turned to face him. It was rather warm in the attic of her parents' home that afternoon and, though they were supposed to be at the dental practice all day, she and Fred had been diligent about keeping the silencing charms up just in case.
"Go on, let's get it over with. Would you like me to dismiss them alphabetically or at random this time?"
Fred offered her glib attitude a flat look before taking a deep breath and proceeding. "Placing more wards and security charms on the house."
"Not good enough. All the death eaters would have to do is camp in the garden until one of them went to work. Then, presto change-o, I'm an orphan."
"Asking the Order to organise security."
"The Order is going to be stretched thin enough between the ministry, the school and their own families. I'm not going to ask that of them."
"Tell your parents what's going on and convince them to leave on their own."
"I might as well just obliviate them if I do that; they'll still never speak to me again, but they'll also have the burden of knowledge and hating-slash-fearing their only child."
"What about —"
"Okay, that's enough." She got up and paced across the cramped space, ducking below the rafters to look out a dusty window at the back garden. The very same back garden where she'd built castles with blocks and blown bubbles with dish soap and read Walt Whitman with her father for the first time.
"Hermione, I just want you to be sure –"
"Do you really think that I'm not sure?" She rounded on him, the heat of the attic suddenly stifling. "I'm sorting through Christmas photos in July, for fuck's sake. Do you think that I don't pray every single time that we have this conversation that one of us will have some bright, previously unrealized epiphany that makes everybody happy? If you haven't noticed, I'm not happy about this, Fred. I'm pretty bloody far from it, in fact. But this is it. This is how it needs to be."
"And you really think that if you told them some version of the truth that they wouldn't go?"
"There's no middle ground! Either I tell them the whole truth and terrify them, which will likely result in them pretending I don't exist anyway, or I cushion it so much that they don't take it seriously enough to go. There's no fucking middle-ground. I dug this pit the moment I started lying to them when I was twelve years old, and now I need to shut up, lie down in it, and accept reality."
"Maybe if you just alter their memories without taking everything –"
"They didn't want this!" Hermione finally shouted, a lump rising in her throat and her breath becoming sharp and uneven. She pulled her wand out of her pocket and threw it across the room where it hit an old trunk and landed on the floor with a quiet, anticlimactic clatter. "They didn't ask for this to be their lives. They didn't ask for me to be what I am, or for my world to be what it is, or for my friends to be who they are, and I will be God-damned if I let them die because of me and my choices. So please, please let this be the end of it this time. Because I'm trying really hard to keep it together here and, as much as I love a good debate, I need your support or I am going to fall apart."
Her arms were crossed tight and her nails were digging so hard into her biceps that it felt like they might break the skin. She refused to cry until this was all over and done with, and in that moment the unshed tears were trying their absolute darndest to choke her. Fred finally unfolded his legs and got to his feet, stopping to stand in front of her with an unreadable expression. Then slowly, gently, he reached out and pulled her forward into an embrace.
She was stiff at first, but slowly, in the gradual easing of tense muscles and tenser emotions, she gave in. The soft cotton of his t-shirt pressed against her cheek and she closed her eyes, not caring anymore that it was sweltering.
"I was never not supporting you," he murmured after a few beats of silence, chin resting on top of her head. One hand was on her waist and the other cupped the back of her damp, feverish neck – although he didn't seem to notice.
"I know," she said hoarsely, the sound a little muffled.
"I just don't like seeing you in pain. It's fucking killing me, actually."
She sniffled and leaned back to look up at him. He hadn't meant to push, deep down she knew that. It was clear on his face and in the way that he held her, like she was the most precious thing in the universe.
He just wanted there to be a solution when there wasn't one, and that was a difficult thing for someone like him to accept.
Someone that would do anything for the people they loved.
Someone that bent the world to their will every day with sheer ingenuity and charisma.
Someone truly magical.
"It's a lot less pain than I'll be in if we don't do anything and they're murdered in their beds or… or worse, they end up like Neville's parents, tortured to the point that they're not aware of who or where they are. I would never be able to live with myself if that happened, but I can live with this. I can learn to live with this if it keeps them safe."
Fred nodded and ducked down to place a kiss on her brow, once again disregarding her general grubbiness.
"They're going to be alright," he said softly. "You're going to be alright; I'won't let you fall apart."
She nuzzled back into his chest before replying with a simple, yet all-encompassing, "Thanks."
Fred snorted softly, continuing to hold her for as long as she needed him to. "Any time."
oOoOoOo
"Is that the last of it?" George asked, stepping through her parents' back door with an assortment of shrunken boxes stacked in his arms.
"Yeah, that should be everything," Hermione confirmed with a truly pathetic attempt at cheerfulness. He offered a weak smile and bumped her affectionately with his shoulder as he passed by.
Fred suddenly apparated in on her right with a quiet pop, having just delivered her trunk to the flat, and Angie was already waiting in the garden with Crookshanks' carrier hooked over her arm.
Had someone told Hermione a few years ago that popular, athletic, quidditch-captain Angelina Johnson would not only be present for one of the most difficult days of her life, but that she'd offer to take care of her cat while she coped with the ensuing emotional turmoil, she'd have call them crazy. But, as they say, life makes fools of us all.
The four of them swayed in an awkward circle for a second before George smacked his lips loudly and bobbed his head once.
"Alright, then. We'll see you at home."
Angelina, whose arms were full, gave Hermione a peck on the cheek and the two of them apparated out before what George had said truly sank in.
Home.
A noun – where one resides permanently.
The place you hang your hat.
Where the heart is.
No place like it.
She looked to Fred, sudden, mind-numbing hysteria bubbling in her throat before she forced it back down. Whatever the expression on her face in that moment, likely somewhere between dread and sheer panic, he didn't give in and coddle her, and he didn't bring up any of the stricken-down alternatives again.
He did exactly what she'd asked of him, what she needed him to do in that moment, steadfast and steady like a lighthouse in a storm.
"My offer stands," he said gently, reaching out to push a curl behind her ear. Her eyes were burning and her vision was starting to blur, but she shook her head and blinked until it cleared.
"No. No, I have to do it. It has to be me."
He nodded once and then stepped aside, opening the path between her and the door. "I'll be right here after."
Hermione couldn't move for a moment, frozen in place, but eventually her limbs obeyed until, one foot in front of the other, she was inside and climbing the stairs. Her bedroom, now a barren guest room, was to the right, but when she got to the top landing, she turned left.
While she'd insisted that she be the one to alter her parents' minds, Fred had placed a sleeping charm for her while they moved everything out, assuring that they'd remain unconscious for the duration. When she pushed the bedroom door open with a soft creak and saw them there, resting peacefully side by side, she almost lost it.
But it would only take a few minutes - the most devastating things in life often happened quickly, after all. Just a few more minutes and, for both better and for worse, it would be done.
She crossed the room, pale grey in the morning light, and stopped beside her father first. His glasses were resting on the bedside table beside his wristwatch and, with a deep breath, she raised her wand.
"Do you know why it's so important to learn how to read, Hermione?"
She was on the floor of her father's study beside his desk, meticulously tracing letters on a pad of paper while he watched. She looked up at him through dust-motes, dancing and sparkling in the late afternoon sun.
"No daddy, why?"
"Because once you can read you can learn to do anything. Anything in the whole wide world."
"Mmm... can I learn to fly?"
"Uh-huh, you can learn to fly planes and helicopters and zeppelins. If you work very hard, you can even learn how to fly all the way to the moon."
"Can I learn… how to play the piano? Like Nan used to do?"
"Of course – although I suppose you'll have to learn how to read music, as well."
"Mmm… what about how to be a princess? Can I learn that?"
He laughed and reached down, pulling her up into his lap. "You're already a princess, sweetheart."
"Obliviate."
With her wand at his temple, she watched as that memory, along with millions of others, left his head forever. Richard Granger – now Wendell Wilkens – didn't even stir.
With her jaw gritted so tightly it felt like all of her teeth were going to shatter, Hermione rounded the foot of the bed to her mother.
"Mummy," Hermione asked, plopping on the small stone bench beside the peonies while her mother pulled weeds, "Do you think that I can get braces this year?"
"No, darling, you're still too young. You have a few more baby teeth that need to fall out, first."
"Oh." She'd kicked the toe of her trainer in the dirt thoughtfully. "Can't you just – can't you pull those out?"
"Why do you want braces so badly? They're dreadfully inconvenient, you know."
"I know, it's just... the other kids tease me. Today Mandy Willoughby asked me if there isn't a dam somewhere that I should be helping build. She meant – she meant that I look like a beaver."
Her mother's lips had pressed into a tight line as she sat back on her heels and ran a dirt-speckled forearm over her sweaty forehead.
"Mandy Willoughby is a vapid, vain little girl and you shouldn't pay any mind to her."
"But the other kids –"
"No buts, Hermione. You are strong and you're smart and someday you're going to be somebody important, and the opinions of the Mandy Willoughbys of the world won't be anything but distant memories."
"Do you promise?"
"I pr—"
"Obliviate."
As soon as the spell was finished she backed out of the room and shut the door behind her with a quiet click.
She didn't look back.
She couldn't look back.
Though she didn't recall going downstairs, she shut the back door of the house a moment later.
House.
Not home.
"Is it finished?" Fred asked when she stopped in front of him, looking her up and down as if there might be some physical indication, a scarlet A for children magically disowning themselves. There wasn't. But Hermione couldn't speak, physically couldn't form words, so she just nodded.
He nodded back and, in slow, deliberate movements, he reached out and pulled her wand carefully from her lax grip and stored it in his pocket beside his own. Then, in one swift motion, he crouched and scooped her into his arms so her head was resting on his shoulder and her legs were slung over his elbow. She instinctively angled her body and wrapped an arm around him, tucking her face into his neck and, blessedly, out of sight from the world.
As he turned on the spot, she watched her childhood memories swirl and blur one last time in the small space above his shoulder until they were gone and she was at the apparition point behind the shop, looking at a brick wall. It was a testament to how awful she was already feeling that she barely registered it.
They hadn't opened yet for the day, so Fred took her straight inside, past the register and up the stairs. He unlocked the door at the top of the landing with a little maneuvering, and then they were stepping over the threshold.
George and Angelina weren't anywhere in sight, so when they got inside, Fred kicked the door shut behind him, locked it, and then proceeded to carry Hermione through the living room and past the kitchen, all the way back to his bedroom.
When they got there, he gingerly set her down on the edge of the mattress and then knelt in front of her. She'd just started to wonder what he was doing when he reached out and began to untie her trainers, slipping them off one at a time. If it were anybody else undressing her, seeing her weak and fragmented like this, she'd be embarrassed, mortified even, but not with Fred. No, in that moment all she felt was a sort of overwhelming gratitude.
Getting up, he walked around the other side of the bed and, after the twin thumps of his own shoes being kicked off, crawled on behind her. He gently tugged her down and rolled her toward him so that she was laying with her head cushioned on his bicep and her eyes level with his collarbone.
Then, with his hand making slow circles on her back, up and down her spine, Fred held her tight to him and whispered over and over again that it was going to be okay. He told her that her parents would be safe, and that she was strong, and he reminded her that, even if they didn't anymore, she would always have the memories of them.
Hermione wanted to say something back, assure him that she knew that she would be fine, that she wasn't a total nutter and she just needed a little time. She opened her mouth to say as much, but the words still wouldn't come, dying like ash on her tongue.
However, in the shelter of his arms, of this new home that he'd offered her without reservation or hesitation, the tears finally did.