Peering over her shoulder at Harry's retreating back, Hermione pursed her lips slightly– after all, hadn't she asked him to be here specifically for moral support?! Collecting herself, she turned back to the group who were collectively either gawping at her or grinning idiotically – with the exception of Uncle Terry who had gone straight back to his newspaper, which she noticed had a scowling picture of Harry on the front with yet another disparaging slogan implying he was in cahoots with You-Know-Who.
"So, why didn't any of you at least try and find out if it was me? And don't believe anything that Rita Skeeter wrote," she began, before Terry scoffed loudly and lowered the paper so quickly that she found it hard to believe he was actually reading it.
"You're joking, I read this drivel just so I can correct it," he told her, and she noticed the quill hovering over the open page, obscured with red scribbles and – was that a cartoon of Fudge in a mouse costume? "She hasn't been writing for a while anyway, thank Merlin!"
"No…" Hermione said tentatively, "I don't imagine she has." Terry's eyebrows lowered and he squinted at her, but before he could follow up on this, Hermione was relieved to feel a tug on her arm and turned to find Bernard looming over her, looking decidedly mischievous, cuing her relief crashing like a dropped Quaffle.
"So, how about that whole single and ready to mingle thing?" he asked her, jigging up and down slightly. "Even more interested now I know a love charm will be harder to get away with!"
"Oh, you… you – "
"Bernard, stop being such a toad!" interjected Lucy, pulling Hermione away from him and leaning in close. "Hermione, Dumbledore – is he really as… " she trailed off, blushing slightly, "impressive as he seems?"
"Well, I suppose – "
"Never mind that!" Cousin Bethany squealed, having given up on keeping hold of Lucy, "who's a better kisser, Krum or Harry?"
"Wait – " Hermione started again, but before she could continue the rest of them began shooting questions at her, getting progressively louder and louder until, despite the charm that Terry had cast – and what was it, anyway, she must remember to get him to teach it to her – the Muggles that had now more or less filled the garden began to look over at the increasingly rowdy group.
"Look!" came a little voice from around Hermione's knees and a series of sparks shot out of a twig before Bethany scooped up a small boy who Hermione didn't think she'd met and admonished him – it must be her little brother, Hermione realised, racking her brains to remember his name. He'd been born around the time she'd got her acceptance letter and, understandably she felt, she hadn't paid a huge amount of attention to the new arrival in the midst of all the excitement and the inevitable need to keep a little more distance from the extended family so they didn't realise something was up. If only they'd known!
The display seemed to have brought everyone back to earth slightly, and within a few seconds the group returned to being as uninteresting to the Muggle contingency as they had been when Hermione and Harry had first been pulled into the fold. Harry! Hermione turned again and spotted him next to her father, who had somehow managed to plate up the vast majority of the food that normally wouldn't have been burnt on the outside and raw on the inside for a good half hour yet. Her lips twitched in amusement as she realised why Harry had absconded, how typical!
"Looks like there might be something edible without having to nick a packet of the sausages before they get burnt to a crisp and end up having to sort it ourselves," observed Terry, who Hermione was now sure was just using the Daily Prophet as a prop.
"Wait – never mind how you somehow didn't bother to try and work out if this other Hermione Granger was me or not, how didn't I know all of you were… well – "
"Had to keep it quiet, much for the same reason you thought you had to, didn't we?" interrupted Bernard. Hermione was getting sick and tired of being interrupted, and raised her voice slightly in response.
"Well, that's all well and good, but it doesn't seem much of a secret over here! Couldn't you have put two and two together given magic clearly runs in the family, or were you just too… rude to think I could possibly be a witch?!"
There was a moment of silence as Bernard for one clearly wanted to come back with a snappy retort, but from the expression on everyone's face, they saw her point. Another feeble spark, pink this time, came from knee height a few relatives away from Hermione and she heard Bethany curse before a tiny face under a mop of frizzy blond hair – Alfie, that was his name! – popped up at more or less face level behind Bernard's shoulder.
"Well," Terry drawled, yet again hiding behind Harry's moving black and white face, which was now grinning at Hermione – all the more annoying given the real Harry seemed more interested in impressing her father than coming back to help, but Hermione was still glad it had escaped being defaced with red ink – "you didn't show any signs that I noticed, and to be fair, when you were at the age you should have been giving hints, most of them - " he jerked his chin at her older cousins " – were having a spate of getting their acceptance letters. I got distracted. Bethany was in France and the rest of them had decided to move overseas as they figured it would seem suspicious if everyone suddenly went off to boarding school. Easier to hide from a distance. Hence Beauxbatons, Durmstrang, Mahoutokoro. Though Bernard actually did a day course in Wales – " at this, Bernard hissed at him " – but we aren't meant to talk about that," he finished, rolling his eyes.
"Someone went to Mahoutokoro?"
"Yeah, I was in a club learning Japanese at junior school and got really into it so Dumbledore recommended writing to the headmistress over there when Mum thought we ought to think about overseas schools instead of staying in the UK," Beth interjected. "Plus, our robes were really cool!" she finished, grinning.
Full of questions but still offended, Hermione fought for a moment with her indignation and decided to put it aside for the moment. What Terry had said made some sense and, to be fair, she knew that she hadn't seen much of him over her childhood after he'd got into rugby and – hold on.
"Still playing rugby, are you?" she asked him.
His face split into a grin, "nah, got too much of a beating and stopped chasing my dreams! Seriously, just lost interest in playing Quidditch after most of the mates I'd played with died during… well." He sighed, his eyes flicking behind Hermione for a second, and gave up the pretence of reading the paper, folding it up and slipping it into a pocket that should have been far too small to accommodate it. "Lost my taste for it after all that. Anyway, Hermione, seriously – I am sorry, must be a shock."
"What must be a shock?" Harry asked as he came up behind her, his voice slightly muffled, which Hermione assumed was due to the sausages he began passing around. Everyone began taking one, first with trepidation then with more enthusiasm and appreciative nods in his direction.
"Nice not having to sneak the raw ones to magic up and try and convince Grandma we're not going to get food poisoning if she catches us," commented Lucy, her voice as muffled as Harry's.
Hermione laughed, and turning to Harry said "the fact they're all like us, obviously!" As she grinned at him, she remembered something, and pivoted towards Bethany to say "and, for your information, Harry and I are just friends!"
"What about Krum, though?" Bethany instantly shot back, raising her eyebrows and smirking as Hermione blushed and spluttered that they were pen pals, trying not to think about the long afternoons by the lake. Which, naturally, didn't help the blushes. Tossing her hair, she bit into a perfectly cooked sausage and murmured her approval, as everyone began to eye the table her father was sitting besides, looking slightly nervously on while Mrs Granger examined a patty mistrustfully.
"How on earth did you get them so perfect?" her voice carried across the garden, and Hermione elbowed Harry in the ribs.
"Ouch! What was that for?" Harry exclaimed, jumping away from her.
"She'll never believe he managed all that on his own, Harry!" she whispered, giggling slightly. Looking over at her parents, Harry laughed.
"To be honest, I'm not sure how I managed it! I was nervous I'd set them all on fire!"
"Maybe you should have, would have been par for the course for Dad, at any rate," she replied as her family laughed and began to make their way over the lawn towards the laden table, other relatives glancing over as they passed and looking slightly confused at their emergence from the back of the garden.
"Did you see them there?" Hermione heard, then "is that Hermione?" before she was almost knocked over by a diminutive woman with spectacles swinging over her bosom. "Let me look at you, child, haven't you done something about that hair yet? How's school? Your mother tells me you're in the chess club!"
"Good luck," Harry muttered, grinning, nudging her as he pretended to follow Terry before circling back and standing next to her. "Don't worry, I've got your back."
"You'd better," Hermione replied under her breath and over the shoulder of Aunt Sharon, "or I'll tell my mum about the sausages!"
She took great pleasure in how Harry tugged at the bow tie in response.