Disclaimer: I'm too young to be Rowling so there is sadly no way Harry Potter is mine…

MINI CHALLENGE

Team: NORTHERN LIGHTS

Standard - two prompts required (prompts cannot be repeated in a team) 1000-3500 words

Prompts:

[Dialogue] "We're running out of time!" (Alt, we're/you're/I'm/she's/they're/he's)

[Theme] Being/feeling lost

Word Count: 3495

Warning: Pre-Hogwarts AU! Granger Family AU! Fantastic Beasts canon implied but slightly AU!

Beta: Claude Amelia Song

... ... ... ... ...

GOOD FATHERS

... ... ...

...

Hermione was lost, hopelessly lost.

Hesitatingly, she peered around the corner into the next street. The houses there looked exactly the same as the ones in her street. Hermione frowned. She hurried over the street and then peered around another corner. The street there also looked exactly like the one she was in.

Around her, people were hurrying up and down the street, but they all ignored her.

Hermione bit her lip.

Her hands shook, though out of fear or because of the cold, she couldn't tell.

"I'm a big girl," she reminded herself, biting her lip harder in an attempt not to cry. "I'm going to be five in seven months."

Seven months was very soon, Hermione was sure about that. "And when I'm five, I'm going to start school. I will be really big then." But she was still several months away from the start of school and being all alone in a big street was very scary.

Tears gathered in her eyes, but she refused to let them fall. "It's only scary because I don't see anything fa-mi-liar," Hermione reminded herself. "Percival always says that if you think something is fa-mi-liar then it's not scary anymore."

Sadly, no matter how hard she looked, she couldn't see anything that looked even half-way like something she knew. She shivered and her bottom lip wobbled. Her hands felt cold in the early spring wind and she really wanted to bury her face in her brother Percival's neck right now. When Percival or Daddy carried her, nothing seemed to be scary. As it was, everything was scary.

She turned around and hurried the street back up until she reached the next side road. Again, she peered around the corner to look into that street.

It looked just the same as the other ones.

Hermione sniffed.

"Daddy is g-going to be s-so dis-a-ppointed," she sobbed. With one hand, she reached up and rubbed her eyes. Hot tears ran down her cheeks and felt as if they were freezing on them before she could wipe them away. Dis-a-ppoin-ting Daddy was a horrible thought, but another thought was worse. "It's all for nothing." All her plans were over, now that she was lost. "I'm running out of time."

She sobbed harder.

She knew that she should do something. Just half an hour ago, she had freed herself from her father's hand to get away from him. She had been so sure of her plan ever since she had heard about good fathers from her neighbour.

...

Until three days ago, Hermione had never heard about good fathers before. It had been the mean neighbour's girl who had told Hermione about them when Hermione's mummy had forced her to play with the girl.

'A good father looks after you when your mummy and daddy don't have time for you,' the neighbour's girl had said. 'They say special words when you're young and swear to help you. But only good kids have good fathers, so I'm not surprised you have none.'

Hermione hadn't dared to ask her parents if they thought she wasn't a good kid, so in the end, she had gone to the one person she trusted above all – her brother Percival.

Percival was already big. Hermione's Daddy had told her that Percival would be an adult in a bit more than a year and Percival always joked that he had been an adult long before Daddy had even been born – so of course, Percival already knew everything.

'You have one,' Percival had assured her. 'Mum and Dad chose your Uncle Percy for you when you were born.'

Percival always said 'your Uncle Percy' when he talked about Grandpa Percy's dead son.

'That's because I was not always Dad's son,' Percival used to remind her. Hermione knew that meant that Percival had called Uncle Percy 'Daddy' first. It was only after Uncle Percy died that Percival had been a-dop-ted by Hermione's mummy and daddy.

Hermione always thought it weird that her brother hadn't always been her brother, so she usually didn't think about Uncle Percy all that much. She knew that Uncle Percy had raised her daddy after her Grandpa Percy had died when Daddy had been ten and Uncle Percy eighteen. She also knew that Percival would be eighteen, all grown up and old enough to raise children, soon.

Nevertheless, after hearing that her Uncle Percy had been her good father, Hermione couldn't help but ask her brother concerned, 'but what about you? Who is your good father if Daddy is your Daddy and Uncle Percy is also your Daddy?'

Percival had only shrugged. 'No one,' he had told her. 'I think Dad once joked that he would simply go out and ask the next best person on the street to be my godfather, but honestly? I'm sixteen now, I will be seventeen soon. Godfathers look after you until you're an adult. I never needed one. And if you ever need one, then I'll be yours the moment I am eighteen.'

...

"But Percival is a good kid," Hermione tried to remind herself while she kept standing at the corner of the street, sobbing, lost and freezing. "He should have a good father, too!"

And if her parents didn't go and look for one for her brother, then Hermione would.

In her mind, the plan had sounded easy. She just would have to get away from her parents and then look around until she found the perfect father for her brother. Then, she just had to grab the good father and take him back to her family so that he could say the special words that would make him her brother's good father.

It hadn't been that easy. While looking around alone for the right father, Hermione had come across a man who had been big and strong and very mean. He had glared at her after she had bumped into him and then yelled at her really loudly. Hermione, frightened, had jumped away, turned on her heels and ran. She had run down the street, turned a corner, turned another and… she didn't remember further. When she had stopped running, she was in the street she was now and couldn't remember where she had come from at all.

"I need to find a good father for Percival before he turns into an adult and isn't allowed to have one anymore," Hermione tried to remind herself of her goal. "He's going to be seventeen soon and then it's only a year until he's eighteen." That wasn't long at all, so Hermione was sure that she had to hurry and find a good father for her brother as soon as possible.

"I'm running out of time!" She sniffed. Her nose was made out of ice and her fingers tingled in the cold. She had lost her gloves and her hat somewhere when she ran away from the scary man. "And now I'm also lost!"

Again, she rubbed her eyes, trying to dry them off her tears before they froze on her cheeks. She sneezed. "I need to go back to searching."

Hermione wasn't sure if she could look for a good father for her brother anymore. She had run down the street and looked around corners before she had bumped into the mean man, but no matter who she had been looking at, they had all seemed intimidating and not at all like a good father.

She sniffed again, then glanced up and down the street. She really wanted to go home, now. She wanted to go back to Daddy and Percival.

But she had no idea where she had come from and every street looked exactly the same.

She cried harder.

"Are you alright, girl?" The voice sounded stiff and when Hermione looked up, her gaze met a pair of eyes as black as the starless night.

The man in front of her was clothed all in black. He had a crooked nose, oily black hair, sallow skin and looked stern.

But he had also been the only one who had stopped and spoken to her.

"I'm lost," Hermione admitted with a sob and wrapped her scarf closer around her neck. She was pretty sure she couldn't feel her left pinkie anymore.

The man's brow furrowed.

"I can see that," he finally said. "A girl as young as you shouldn't be walking around unaccompanied."

Hermione had no idea what 'un-accom-panied' meant, but it sounded like a fancy way of saying 'alone'. Percival liked talking fancy like that, so Hermione had learned a lot of im-por-tant and long words from him.

"I lost–" Hermione swallowed the word 'Daddy'. She really didn't want her daddy to be dis-a-ppointed with her, so she settled for another truth. "My brother."

"Your brother was watching over you?" She could hear the disbelief in the man's voice. She glared at him and nodded viciously.

"He's sixteen and soon an adult," she told the man. "He's old enough to look after me."

"He lost you," the man immediately countered, clearly not impressed with her argument.

Hermione's bottom lip wobbled. "I was looking for something and then there was that scary man and then I ran and now…" Fresh tears started to leave frozen tracks on her cheeks. "Now I don't know where I am!"

"Near Charrington Cross Road," the man offered up. It sounded like the name for a fancy place. Hermione wasn't sure if she had ever heard it before.

Some of her thoughts must have shown on her face, because the man sighed and then pinched his nose. "And of course, you have no idea where that is. You're what? Three?"

"I'm nearly five!" Hermione squawked indignantly.

The man's eyebrow raised. "And how long will it take for you to turn five?" he inquired with a kind of scepticism in his voice that made Hermione pout. Then she sneezed.

"I'll be five in seven months," she told him and sniffed. "That's very soon!"

The man pinched the bridge of his nose. "That means you've only been four for five months," he corrected her. "That's still nearly three."

"It's not!" Hermione immediately objected. "Daddy always says that Percival is wrong when he says that to me."

"Percival? Your brother?" the man immediately inquired. Hermione crossed her arms and looked away. The man was rude. She didn't want to talk to him anymore.

At least, she thought that until she remembered that she was still hopelessly lost and running out of time because her brother would be an adult soon.

She bit her lip to keep it from wobbling at that thought.

The man in front of her sighed.

"Do you know where you and your brother were going when you… lost him?" Hermione was sure that he had wanted to say something else, but had corrected himself before he could be mean.

She liked that he cared enough not to be mean. The neighbour's girl never cared.

"To the bookstore?" she offered up. She wasn't sure if her Daddy had wanted to go to the bookstore with her, but she knew that Percival had planned to go. Percival always went to the bookstore when he could.

The man pressed his eyes together and massaged his temples. "Considering that Charrington Cross Road is known for its bookstores, that's not really helping, girl."

Hermione pouted, before she rearranged her face to glare at him.

"There's that really old one he likes," she said. "It has very big windows and looks very fancy from the outside."

"Fancy?"

She nodded. "There's… a-dorn-ments all over it."

The man's face turned thoughtful and a little bit shrewd. Hermione had seen that look before on her brother's face whenever he told her not to tell Daddy that he went to that bookstore.

'Maybe,' Hermione mused. 'That's the face you have to make when you talk about that bookstore? Like a secret code, or something…'

She tried to emulate the mien to show the man in front of her that she knew what bookstore he was thinking about.

The man just raised an eyebrow at her.

"Are you sure you're well?" he inquired. Hermione guessed that she would have to work on the secret look a bit more to be understood. She sneezed and then shivered.

"I'm fine," she said petulantly.

For a moment, the man looked at her sceptically, then he sighed and held out his hand. "Alright," he said. "Come with me, I'll bring you to that bookstore."

Hermione just glared at the man's hand.

"Daddy says I'm not allowed to go with strangers," she told the man matter-of-factly.

The man just pinched the bridge of his nose again. "Of course you aren't," he said exasperated. For a moment, he looked absolutely put-out, then he sighed.

"Alright," he said. "We'll do it differently."

With that, he looked around nervously before he pulled out a thin, black stick from his robes.

Hermione's breath caught.

Her eyes searched the man's black ones. "You're…"

"A wizard like your brother," the man agreed. "My name is Severus." That wasn't what Hermione meant. She had no idea what a wizard was, but she knew that Grandpa Percy had had a stick just like that. After he died, the stick had belonged to Uncle Percy. Now, it belonged to Hermione's brother.

She knew that the stick was a secret. Percival had told her that she wasn't allowed to say anything about that stick to anyone who didn't have one, too. He had also told her something else.

"Are you going to give me your vow that you won't harm me?" Hermione asked, emulating Percival.

"I intend to, if you tell me your name," the man replied, looking a bit taken aback by her inquiry.

"Her-mi-o-nee," Hermione said slowly, trying to pronounce her first name as correctly as she could before she added the name Percival had insisted she'd add in cases like that. "Her-mi-o-nee Graves."

She had no idea why Percival wanted her to add that she was buried instead of using 'Granger', but she trusted her brother. If he said that she should say that, then she would say that.

The man sucked in a breath of air. Then, he suddenly knelt down in front of her and reached for her gently.

"Listen, Hermione," he said, and there was a graveness in his voice that hadn't been there before. "If you ever get a letter to Hogwarts and decide to go, don't use that name."

She frowned at him.

"Why?" she asked. "What's wrong with my name? I think Her-mi-o-nee sounds pretty."

"It does," the man immediately agreed. "But I was talking about your last name. Don't use Graves. It will paint a target on your back. The Dark Lord would hunt you relentlessly, if he heard that there was a Graves still alive. Your ancestors were famous for being powerful dark wizard hunters. There were stories that some of them were immortal. He would fear you just for what you could become."

Hermione had no idea what he was talking about, but she nodded anyway. It seemed to be important to the man, after all, and Hermione saw no reason to deny him the request.

The man relaxed.

Then, he raised his stick and said, "Hermione Graves, I, Severus Tobias Snape, vow that I won't do you any harm and that I will deliver you safely into the hands of your brother." The stick flashed, just like Hermione's brother had shown her it would.

Hermione was safe. Tension, she hadn't felt, suddenly left her. She might still be lost and running out of time, but at least she was safe.

Hermione threw her hands around the man – Severus – in front of her and buried her cold nose in the crook of his neck with a relieved sob.

He froze beneath her touch.

For a moment, Hermione felt like she was clinging to a statue, then, slowly, Severus closed his arms around her before hesitatingly lifting her off the ground and settling her on his hip.

He stood up.

One of his hands awkwardly patted her back. "There, there," he said. "You'll be back with your brother soon."

Hermione just sobbed harder. She really wanted to go back to her brother and daddy, but she also thought about the fact that she hadn't managed to find her brother a good father. She had wanted her brother to have a good father.

She had failed.

"Hush, you're safe," Severus shushed her. "I'm going to look after you until we find your brother."

"But I haven't done what I need to do, yet!" she cried and clung to him harder.

"What you need to do?" the man repeated, thrown. Hermione shivered and Severus immediately started to rub her back as if trying to rub her warm.

"I need to find a good father for Percival," she cried. "My brother is kind. He deserves to have a good father!"

"A good… father," Severus repeated slowly, and uncomprehendingly. Then, he seemed to catch on. "You're searching for a godfather for your brother? Why?"

"Because he has none," Hermione said sadly. "And every good child gets a good father!" She shivered again, and this time around, Severus sighed and then freed his jacket from under her just to pull it around her, too.

"I think he'd prefer his sister back to a godfather, today," he said. "If you really… want to find him one, maybe you should search for one another day."

That wasn't ideal, because Percival was soon too old and Hermione was running out of time, but she had to admit that returning to her brother sounded better than trying to find a good father for him right now. "Alright," she agreed and buried her head deeper in the crook of his neck. She barely noticed when he started walking.

Hermione didn't know how long she clung to the man, until she heard a very familiar voice.

"What are you doing with my little sister, Death Eater?" Hermione had never heard her brother sound as cold and harsh as he did in that moment. It sounded like an unspoken threat of violence yet to be delivered.

"You're Percival, I guess?" Severus asked slowly. "Percival… Graves…" He trailed off at that, his back stiffening under Hermione's hands.

"How do you know my name?" Her brother's voice seemed to have cooled even further.

"I swore a vow to your sister to deliver her to you safely," Severus replied. His grip on her had changed. It now felt as if he tried to remove her from his body instead of holding her close. "She told me her first and last name for the vow – and she told me your first name while we talked. I mean you no harm. The war is over."

Hermione lifted her head and turned to look at her brother without letting go of Severus.

Her brother held his stick in his hand. It was pointed at the ground, but the way he was holding himself reminded Hermione of a snake in the zoo just before it struck.

"Percival!" she cried and let go of Severus with one arm to reach for her brother. For a second, her brother eyed Severus warily, then he stepped closer and reached out to Hermione. He pulled her from the other man's arms and she went willingly, happily burying her face in the crook of his neck for a moment before sneezing. Her brother immediately reached for his open jacket and tried to close it around her.

Severus, on the other hand, had lifted his hands.

"I meant her no harm," he tried to assure her brother. It was then that Hermione noticed something she had overlooked in her misery until now.

She had gone out to find a good father for her brother. And she had found a stern looking man who was really kind. He sounded like he would be a good father for her brother.

"You have to say the vows!" she interrupted whatever her brother had about to say.

"My… vows?" Severus repeated slowly, clearly unsure what she was talking about. Hermione nodded. "The vows that will make you my brother's good father."

"Hermione…" Her brother tried to interrupt her, but Hermione was sure of it.

"He's kind," she said. "And he likes books just like you and he's huggable." Which were all important things for a good father for her brother.

"I'm also barely eight years older than your brother," Severus tried to object.

"Uncle Percy was also just eight years older than Daddy and he raised him," Hermione countered stubbornly.

"We only met today," Severus said.

"So? You can get to know us now." Severus' mouth snapped shut.

"I'm pretty sure Dad is going to laugh himself silly when he hears that," Percival murmured into her hair. "An immortal dark wizard hunter and a former Death Eater, both bested by a four-year-old."

Of course, in the end, said four-year-old won.

I hope you liked it.

Over and Out.

Ebenbild