ccl. what we leave behind

When Hermione was young, her father taught her how to complete jigsaw puzzles.

"You start from the corners," Robert Granger told her, holding a prospective piece up for Hermione to see. Little Hermione studied it with large, serious eyes. "They're the threads. They hold the whole picture together, and if you find them, they'll lead you to find the other pieces."

Hermione had applied her father's philosophy to everything in her life. She considered every problem or issue a puzzle: people, events, attitudes, behaviors. They had their own corner pieces, little threads that could be unraveled to see the whole. When she didn't understand something, Hermione used to envision their coffee table and the boxes of jigsaw puzzles stacked underneath it.

"Look how these colors match," her father said as he threaded two pieces together. "When the colors match, you're on the right path."

"But what if they don't match?" she asked, frustrated by the mismatched confetti in front of her. "What then, dad?"

"Patterns, Hermione. You have to find the patterns."

Hermione had searched for patterns her whole life, and sometimes they made for images she didn't much like.

Her reality was an image that received its first piece in 1991, in the form of a woman sitting on the Grangers' couch saying, "You're a witch, Miss Granger." It was Professor McGonagall reciting magical laws while telling her there was no such thing as being too much of a witch. It was Hermione outlining ten weeks home in five years and finding it acceptable.

What she'd originally thought to be a piece filled with color, the image of a young girl learning her identity and setting off on an adventure, was actually a picture of an eleven-year-old child realizing she'd only have a cumulative two months with her parents for the rest of her childhood and accepting it. Anticipating it.

Every year was another piece. Another day. A Defense professor with scarlet eyes, a dark-haired girl with lightning under her skin, an eight-lettered word thrown at her in school corridors. Mudblood. Mudblood.

In hindsight, Hermione thought she might have always been able to see the thread; how could she not, when it's been tied around her throat this entire time, leading her forward? It was a sharp tug, a missed step. Every day, a new piece.

A Minister lying to his country.

Newspapers on a dining table, limned with faces—.

Standing outside a shop that sold tellies, watching the news report on the mysterious disappearance of yet another ten people, adding to the countless other cases plaguing the nation—.

Maybe the final piece was Elara Black sitting in her own home, pale and sickly from fright, with a blanket over her shoulders. She'd looked at Hermione and said, "Gaunt's going to kill us. He's going to destroy us to get to Harriet."

Maybe it was standing at the parlor door, seeing Lucius Malfoy sit before the fire and stare blankly into its depths.

"They assigned my family another ward. A blond boy, not entirely unlike Draco in appearance. Quite like him, in fact. Barely eleven years old."

"Oh?"

"The house-elves can't get the blood out of the carpet. He forced Narcissa to watch, and I had to bury what was left of the body."

Maybe there was no final piece. "Apophenia," the doctors had said when Hermione told her parents how she envisioned connections between random events. "Seeing patterns in meaningless data."

Terry Boot died at the end of a Death Eater's wand. Harriet Potter came home from being falsely imprisoned with no light in her green eyes. Hermione counted the names of dead and missing Muggles from papers she smuggled under her bed. Elara Black came back from the hospital having nearly been killed for no damn good reason.

"You are naive, Miss Granger. So terribly naive to what He is capable of."

In her bedroom, Hermione closed the book before her and gripped the handle of her wand. Welcoming magic hummed beneath her skin.

"It won't end until she's dead."

Maybe the final piece was yet to come.

xXx

The crickets sang beneath the tidy, trimmed hedges lining the street, and only they bore witness to the sight of a purple bus barreling over the pavement. Two young women dressed in hooded robes stepped off the bus, the latter of the pair weak in the knees, but with help from the other, they both managed to disembark.

"We'll circle back and pick chu up in two hours then, yeah?" Stan Shunpike said, leaning out over the steps. "That's what chu said, innit?"

"Yes," Hermione retorted, more than fed up with Shunpike and the driver's antics. Night lay over the sleepy Muggle neighborhood like a thick pelt, hot and sticky with the heaviness of late August's humidity. "Yes, that's right. You can leave now."

"Right you are, love. Won't be a tic."

The Knight Bus rattled and rolled, nearly slamming into a post box that managed to leap to the side before meeting a grisly fate. A moment later, the towering vehicle vanished with a lurching bang.

"He is unbearable," Elara grumbled as she got her bearings and took a swig from a potion secreted away in her pocket. Hermione didn't answer; she had her eyes fixed on one of the houses, staring up where it sat situated at the end of its pathway.

Elara stood next to her in silence for a time, then said. "We'd best not linger outside overlong. We're in robes, and we will be missed at Grimmauld if we don't hurry. My father's an idiot, but not that big of an idiot."

"Right, of course," Hermione muttered, shaking herself out of her stupor. "Let's go inside."

Though it had grown late, it was not so late that the house was silent. Light from a telly flickered in the bay window, and the front sconce made it cozy for the moths to flutter about its glow. Hermione thought they must have made for a strange pair in that aggressively prim and well-manicured stretch of garden, their cloaks gliding over the level bricks, their heads ducking away from the sconce's glow. What would the neighbors think if they could see them now?

Hermione stood outside her childhood home and took one last fortifying breath. Then, she knocked on the door.

A shadow shifted in the den, then moved against the window, fluttering the curtains as someone rose and crossed the room. Every second that passed resonated in Hermione's chest like a drip of water in an empty cavern, echoing farther and farther into the dark unknown. Her heart was lodged somewhere in her throat, a worthless, pulsating thing, choking her breath. The lock opened, the knob rattled—.

Robert Granger appeared much the same as he did in Hermione's memory, if a tad more gray, and a tad more rounded about the middle. He squinted against the light when the door eased open, and Hermione didn't hesitate to throw off her hood. Her heart almost broke when it took her father more than a moment to recognize his own daughter.

"Hermione?!"

He didn't hesitate to grab her up into an embrace, and Hermione leaned into it, letting her eyes close for just a moment. She didn't let herself have more than that.

"Jean! Jean, come quickly! It's Hermione!"

Her reunion with her mother went much the same—a gasp, a loud exclamation, and a hug, both her parents grasping at their daughter, touching her shoulders, her arms, her hair. They didn't even notice Elara, tall and dark and looming as she was, until she quietly entered the house and shut the door. They fell silent.

"Mum, dad—this is my very good friend, Elara Black."

Hermione recognized their hesitation when they realized Elara was a witch—and not a tame, friendly-looking witch, but rather one with a thousand-meter stare, unsmiling and unmoved by their clear suspicion. Hermione cleared her throat.

"I don't have long to visit," she said, watching their expressions change. "Could we sit down in the den?"

"Hermione, what is this all about?" her mother demanded. "What do you mean you can't visit long? How are you even here? Didn't those—those people say you couldn't come home during the summer holidays?"

Her cheeks ached with the force of her smile, how tight and uncomfortable the muscles were. "I'll explain everything, I promise."

Robert and Jean looked to one another, deciding what they would say without needing to speak. "Darling," her mum said. "You must tell us what is happening. There's no need to hide anything from us. Where have you been? Your father and I have been so worried, and no one we spoke to would look at us as anything but complete nutters when we told them about this magic cult—."

Hermione's stomach nearly dropped out of place when she heard that her parents had spoken about magic to other Muggles. The Ministry would find out. They would know.

"Please," Hermione said, her voice breaking before she cleared her throat again. "I'll tell you more, but can we sit down, please?"

Eventually, they acquiesced, and her mum held Hermione's hand as if afraid she might bolt for the door and disappear. They moved into the den, and her dad turned off the telly so they could talk, the three Grangers sitting together on the main sofa. Elara lingered in the doorway behind them.

"It's all very complicated to explain," Hermione told them, pulling her hand free of her mother's. "I'm not supposed to be here. My guardian doesn't know, certainly—and if people found out that I'd broken the rule against visiting Muggle relatives, there would be consequences."

"Bugger all of their consequences," Robert asserted, his voice rough with emotion. "Bugger all of it. The sheer nonsense—."

"Robert," Jean interjected.

"No, Jean. It is nonsense. Any government that cannot operate above the board is nothing more than a cult, no matter what parlor tricks they pull to convince us otherwise!" He took a forceful breath, the air sounding rough and forced as it entered his chest. "God damn it, Hermione. We tried telling you last you were here—."

"What your father means," Jean interrupted, laying a hand on his thigh. "Is that we planned to spend time out of the country, and we think it'd be good for you to gain…perspective on this issue."

Hermione didn't snarl, but it was a near thing. Her mother always had a particular way of dismissing her problems by belittling them, turning years of systematic bullying by other children into silly misunderstandings, gaslighting Hermione's worries and troubles until she didn't comprehend her own feelings anymore.

"Mum," she said through her teeth. "I'm unsure how much you understand, so let me be plain. Please don't interrupt. This isn't the same as me not wishing to attend my third-form recital or wanting out of a dinner with Nana. I am not making excuses or prevaricating. I'm a witch. Nothing you or I ever do will change that. I could no more remove magic from myself than I could take out my lungs, or my heart. And because I can't do that, I can't abandon the magical world, no matter the danger it presents."

"Danger?" her dad echoed. "What do you mean danger? Hermione—."

"I came here today to convince you to leave." She spoke over him, her voice close to breaking again, her will flagging. "To leave the country. It's dangerous for Muggle-borns and their families now. Especially my family."

Her mum had always been clever, and her eyes narrowed. "Does this have anything to do with the people who've been going missing all over the country?"

"Yes." Hermione clenched her hands together. "There's a wizard who's intent on hurting Muggles—."

"Normal people," Robert said. "Normal people, Hermione. This—this terminology they've been teaching you is another layer of their control—."

Hermione raised her voice again, refusing to be silenced. "And he's intent on killing my best friend! He will not stop until she is dead, and I will not abandon her. He will go after anyone close to her, which includes you. You're in danger. He will—he would torture you. He would make me watch. Please, you need to leave the country."

Jean and Robert exchanged looks again—and Hermione knew she hadn't reached them. Her parents hadn't heard a word she'd said. "I don't know what they've been telling you, darling, but we are not leaving England without you. If you want us to leave, you're coming with us."

"I can't. I can't leave Harriet."

"Then we aren't going, dear. We're staying until we help you see the light."

Hermione stared straight ahead and nodded, her burning eyes settling on the mantel. "I know," she muttered, standing. She passed the coffee table with all the boxes of jigsaw puzzles stacked beneath it, and she remembered sitting on the carpet making pictures with her father. She couldn't see it, but she felt the thread around her throat tighten.

Hermione selected one of the silver frames resting by her mother's favorite keepsake box. She looked at her younger self posing in a frozen picture and didn't know what to feel.

"I created a thousand different scenarios. I considered them all. Even did Arithmancy matrices compositing the most likely outcome, so I knew you wouldn't go." Hermione choked, fingers squeezing the frame, the material creaking under the pressure. She swallowed and tried again. "I won't ask you to forgive me," she whispered to the hearth's bricks. "It wouldn't matter if you did."

From the doorway, Elara stirred. Hermione didn't turn to see her or her parents; she heard her best friend step forward, and then the damning winnow of magic cutting through the air. "Somnus."

Silence filled the den.

When Hermione mustered the courage to face the room again, she found Robert and Jean Granger asleep on the sofa, her mum's head leaning onto her father's shoulder, Elara standing at their backs with her wand still out.

She almost looked like a Death Eater. Hermione wondered if she did as well.

"We don't have to do this," Elara said, speaking softly as if afraid of setting Hermione off—as if Hermione weren't already breaking into pieces. "We can go back to Grimmauld, spend more time considering our options—."

"My options," Hermione told her. "Mine. There's no other way." She pressed her eyes shut. "I've considered it. Over, and over, and over. From every angle, and this is the only way to keep them safe. Gaunt is eminently posed to access my information and find where my parents live. They can't stay here—can't stay under their names anywhere, and they will never leave me behind. He'll have the Guardians hunt them down, and I can't—please, I can't live with that. I can't, I won't. I can't see them die when they've always hated this part of me, the magic, or I will start to hate it too."

Elara's pale eyes shone with sadness, but empathy tinged it, as did determination. Acceptance. "I won't try to dissuade you again," she said. "If this is your decision, let us be done with it. We don't have much time."

Hermione's hand dipped into the pocket of her robe, and she held her wand. After a moment, she reached the other hand in and held the Atlas, clutching to its warmth, squeezing until the brass rim cut into her palm, and Hermione almost wished it would bleed.

"Don't tell Harriet," she managed to say, raising her wand. She pointed it at her mother. "Don't ever tell her. Obliviate."

x X x

The door to the quiet Muggle house swung shut behind the two witches as they departed, neither pausing to consider the tidy path, or the prim hedges or well-kept garden. They did not think about what they had done, or about the two sleeping Muggles who would wake in the morning with different names and the intense desire to move abroad. They did not think about the picture albums and documents found and secreted away in the extended pockets of their robes. They stepped onto the pavement and let the garden gate swing closed.

When the Knight Bus thundered into view a minute later, both young women boarded and paid their fare without speaking a word. Hermione sat next to Elara—and she cried the whole way home.

A/N: I went back and forth a lot on the idea of what Hermione would do with her parents. I always found canon a bit…stupidly idyllic and convenient in that Hermione was able to recover their memories and everything was perfectly happy. I spent quite a bit of time considering what CDT!Hermione would do…or what might be done to her parents. For awhile there, I considered it entirely possible Gaunt would get to them first, but I decided in his narcissism and self-absorption, he would really want to terrify Elara and Hermione first before going in for such a devastating blow. I decided Hermione was clever enough to realize Gaunt would not leave her family alone simply because they're Muggles, and knew she had to do something, especially after what happened with the Malfoys. Make no mistake, I think part of her desire to erase herself from her parents' memories is a symptom of internalized hatred toward her own origins, the kind of internalized hatred Gaunt / Slytherin / Voldemort have been trying to spark and foster in children with their agendas, and I don't believe Hermione realizes it. Another part of it is her desire to forget a very painful chapter of her life: her parents were not cruel, but they were neglectful, in their own way, fostering Hermione's self-doubts and insecurities, belittling her intelligence and making her feel guilty for things she could not control, such as being a witch. Overall, she acted mainly to protect her family, but there is a definite element of teenage selfishness and anger there.

Hermione: "Knock-knock."

Her parents: "Who's there?"

Hermione: "No one."

Her parents: "No one who?"

Hermione: "Exactly."