A/N: Hello everyone! Welcome back to another fic :) As usual, this fic fought me. I was originally going to write a "Hermione discovers she has creature blood in her and is part saltwater mermaid" fic, but tbh, I wasn't feeling it this month. I'm tabling that idea and might get back to it in the future. But this one then came to me as we were driving back from Michigan, and with 6 hours of nothing but highway roads, what else am I gonna do but write?

My plan for this is to flesh it out into a fully fledged multi-chapter story. My first draft of this was 1,500+ words, and that was a problem for this competition's limits XD The end game for this will be Harmony, so that's why I've posted this drabble here. Please expect the next chapter to be a continuation of this, just further down the line, showing off the Harmony pairing. I'm hoping to get the multichapter up and running within the month. I want to get a good backlog of chapters first, before posting however. Thank you for your patience :)

This one is for Round 2 of The Houses Competition, where I'm in Slytherin House and writing for Transfiguration. This competition, we have to write a drabble (500-1000 words) as well as a standard (1000-3000 words). This fic is the drabble of the two. I've chosen the prompt [Action] Discovering a secret.

Thank you kindly to Bailey, Hope, Aya, Dhrish, and Ash Juillet for betaing this.

Word Count: 989

Disclaimers/Warnings:

Summary: Hermione successfully obliviates her parents the summer after 6th year. While tidying up their affairs, she realizes she needs to obliviate her grandparents, too. But when she arrives at their estate, she realizes that her grandparents kept a large secret from her.

"Lineage"

Hermione's hand shook as she lowered her wand. Her parents—formerly Richard and Holly Granger, now Wendell and Monica Wilkins—sat stiffly on the sofa as her spell adjusted their memories and personalities. Hermione felt physically sick as the ramifications of what she had just done hit her. Without their consent, she'd erased her parents and put dolls in their place. For the next few months, they wouldn't be able to make a single decision for themselves as the programmed commands Hermione planted in their brains played out. She had already placed low-powered wards on their home that would last a week, just enough time to get their affairs in order and to let her have her last moments with them. It would take some time, even with magic, for her to pack up the house while they took care of their dental office, but whatever needed to be done in order to keep her parents safe, she would do it.

Several days later, Hermione packed up the refrigerator, storing the food into a shrunken box in her purple beaded bag. Closing the fridge, she took down the invitation from her grandparents and stared at it.

She didn't know much about her paternal grandparents. They never visited, but they always sent the best Christmas cards and presents every year. Whenever she had asked her dad about it, he shrugged her off with, "They're very busy and do the best they can."

It was an invitation to Christmas at their estate, with a handwritten note to "Bring Little Mia so we can all catch up!" Only her Grandma Puckle had called her that, so how did her other set of grandparents know that nickname? That question, however, was just a drop in the bucket compared to the fact that she now had an obligation to protect these grandparents she didn't know.

She had a road trip to plan.

A few days later, after making sure her parents made it onto the taxi safely, Hermione Apparated to the closest area to her grandparents' estate that she knew, which was the next town over and wasn't an unfamiliar place to her.

All too soon, she stood before the mansion that her grandparents lived in, and Hermione felt a little overwhelmed. Her parents were well-off, and they never wanted for anything, but this level of opulence was something that reminded her of Malfoy and his ilk. Summoning all of her Gryffindor courage, she walked up to the door and knocked.

A man, clearly the butler, answered the door.

"My name is Hermione Granger. I'm here to see my grandparents, Hugo and Beatrice Granger," she said. She swallowed thickly as he scanned her up and down.

"I will let the master know you are here. Please follow me to the receiving room," he replied before letting her into the house. Hermione gazed around herself in awe, drinking in all of the casually Baroque details.

A tea tray, along with two people, who could only be her grandparents, entered the room. While they lived in opulence, these two looked like they wouldn't be too out of place in a small country cottage. It made Hermione yearn for a simpler time.

"Oh, my little Mia! It's been far too long!" the woman, who could only be Beatrice Granger, exclaimed as she rushed forward to hug her. While they embraced, Hermione suddenly felt the loss of her parents strongly, and she clutched at the other woman, nearly weeping. She quickly composed herself before pulling away, unprepared for her grandmother's next question. "Where are Richard and Holly?"

Hermione knew that she could be honest with them. She would make them forget both her and her parents in a few short minutes, after all. "I had to send them away. Terrorists are after me and my friends, and if they found my parents, they would torture and kill them for information… and now, I'm afraid that they'll find you, too. I'm really sorry for this, and I wish we could have met under better circumstances. It would have been nice to get to know you." At their confused looks, Hermione took out her wand, ready to obliviate them as well, but faltered at her grandmother's excited gasp.

"Mia, you're a witch? That boarding school that you go to, that's Hogwarts?" she asked as Hugo gazed at her in pride, and Hermione looked at them in shock.

"You know?"

"My dear Hermione, we're Squibs," Hugo declared, and Hermione sank down into the armchair closest to her. Her grandmother held her hands tightly as they spent the next half hour explaining the past two decades.

Her grandfather was the twin of Hector Dagworth-Granger, and Hugo took the Granger last name when he received formal schooling in the Muggle World. Her grandmother was the older sister to Barty Crouch Sr., the ministry official from fourth year who had been controlled by his own son and then murdered later that year.

Since the both of them were Squibs, they were still able to live in a magical household with all of the luxuries of Muggle life. "Since Richard, your father, turned out to be a Squib as well, and your eleventh birthday came and went with no mention of magic, we assumed that you were non-magical, too! We never thought that they just wouldn't mention it to us," Hugo finished. Beatrice pulled Hermione up and into another hug, and she felt herself break down and sob.

She confessed to what she did to her parents, and that they were probably already on a plane to another continent. "How do I fix this?"

Hugo stroked her hair as Beatrice held her tighter. "Hector is still the head of the family, but he owes me a favor. He can help us get our family back," He replied, and he called the butler in to make arrangements.

They could fix this. After all, magic could fix almost anything.