Gwen was standing outside of the 'rest home' with Harry and Ron. They'd shown her a picture of Hermione, one of the last ones they'd taken of her at the school at a party they apparently threw every year since the war. She entered the building, the front hall was cheerily decorated with flowers and paintings of all sorts of things from fantastical scenes with flying, skeletal horses to paintings of a beautiful castle surrounded by a lake. Gwen stood by the desk alone, Harry and Ron decided to stay outside deciding to join them after Gwen was already inside, and waited for the woman behind the desk to notice her. After saying goodbye to the person on the phone, the woman named Anna, looked up and smiled at her.
"Hi" Gwen greeted a little breathlessly "My name is Gwen Johnson, I am here to meet with a patient you have here, I believe they have her name down simply as Jane Doe"
"You'll have to be a little more specific than that, my dear" Anna said with a kind smile "Unfortunately, there's more than one 'Jane Doe' in this place"
"She's been here for a few years" Gwen said "Had been living in an abandoned house that caught fire..."
"Oh!" Anna smiled "You're talking about Molly, yes, she's here and we were informed by April Carter, that you'd be stopping by, but I had to make sure"
"Thank you" Gwen said with a sigh of relief.
"She's in the library right now" Anna said "I'll bring you there. Interestingly enough, all this art" She indicated the pictures on the walls "Were painted by Molly, she has quite the imagination, always telling stories that are behind the pictures"
"Stories?" Gwen asked, looking at painting of a grotesque image of a mermaid, though it looked like it was slimy, gray and had sharp pointy teeth.
"Yes" She answered with a small laugh "This is apparently a mermaid, a "real" one and they aren't as nice as they are in the movies and they speak their own language called Mermish" Gwen took a quick picture with her phone of the painting and moved on to another that she took a picture of, the skeletal horses.
"And these?" She asked.
"Thestrals" Anna said with another laugh "Apparently, only those who have seen death can actually see them. You see the carriages? Well, if you've never seen death before they are pulled by something invisible but are actually pulled by those Thestrals" She stopped at another picture "And this is a..."
"House-elf" Gwen said, gasping, when Anna nodded and looked at her in surprise she quickly added "I've seen a picture of those things on a gaming site online, they're servants or something"
"Exactly" She laughed "Come on, the library's right here"
Anna left Gwen at the door of the library and assured her that Molly was harmless. She pushed the door open and looked around the large room, there was a fireplace on one wall with books around it and even more stacked throughout the room and on the walls. There was no one else in the room except for her and a lone figure sitting in a chair before the fireplace, a book opened in her lap, though she was staring into the flames. Gwen took small, quiet steps, she was eager to meet this woman and terrified as well, a part of her almost didn't want to meet her. She finally felt like she had some friends, people who understood what it was like to be alone and different, what if she lost that? The floor creaked under her foot when she was only about five feet away, the woman lifted her head and turned it to look at her. Gwen stopped, her green eyes met the light whiskey-colored eyes surrounded by black lashes, this woman had the same freckles across her nose and cheekbones that Gwen did and a heart shaped face. Her hair was very long and thick with curls, Gwen couldn't speak as she stared into her eyes.
"Hermione Granger?" She whispered, the woman's eyes widened slightly.
"Do I know you?" She asked.
"My name is Gwen Granger" Gwen introduced herself "Johnson is my married name...if you're Hermione Granger, you're my cousin"
"How did you find me?" Hermione asked, she stood suddenly "I thought the world forgot me!"
"Why haven't you tried to get out?" Gwen asked "You surely could have"
"Do you know hard it is to prove that you are who you are when no one knows you even existed?" Hermione asked "I tried for the first couple years, tried to explain it to the lawyer and the doctors, but the more I talked...the more insane they found me, so I stopped" She looked at her hands "I started to paint and tell people about the creatures that I knew to be real even if they didn't it made me feel close to my world...are you a witch, is that how you found me?"
"No" Gwen shook her head "I'm a muggle, but I found your diary and I read it and started investigating then I found your friends and we found you"
"We?" She repeated "Who's with you and where are they?"
"Harry and Ron" Gwen answered "They're outside, in case you didn't want to see them, they should be checking into visit you right now, I texted your name in here for Harry before I got in here"
"Why didn't they look for me?" Hermione asked, in tears "I've been alone for so long!"
"Hermione?" Ron called from the door "Is it...oh my God!" He ran into the room, each he and Harry took turns hugging her.
"Stop!" She snapped, she pulled away from them, closer to Gwen "Why didn't you look for me?!"
"We tried" Harry said "We looked everywhere, in the magical and the muggle worlds, there was no trace of you anywhere no matter where we looked"
"Hermione" Ron said again, he seemed to say her name like it was a prayer "We wanted to find you, we spent three years looking for you, but we had to get back to our lives, we thought that you didn't want to be found so we...stopped looking"
"Am I getting out now?" Hermione asked "Do I get to leave?"
"It's not that easy" A man said from the doorway "Molly, you can't just up and leave, you need help"
"I do not" Hermione snapped "I am Hermione Granger, they can vouch for me, they're my friends from when I was growing up"
"We will look into everything" The man said, he turned with a big, fake smile on his face "I am Doctor Trevor Learner. I have been working with Molly since she got here, I can't divulge any information about her medical conditions and to be perfectly honest, I am not comfortable with you guys visiting and agitating her this much"
"I am her family member" Gwen said, stepping up to the man "My name is Gwendolyn Johnson, maiden name was Granger, I am her cousin and I would like to be told about her condition and then would like her released into my care!"
"Unless you can provide DNA" Dr. Learner said condescendingly "I don't believe that you are related and therefor will not allow you to know anything about her and you are now not allowed to visit either"
"NO!" Hermione screamed "Please, Dr. Learner, please, they're my friends, please!"
"Sedate her, please" Dr. Learner said, lifting an eyebrow at the three guests "You may leave now, and don't come back"
"You will be hearing from my lawyer" Gwen snapped at him as she walked to the door, she could hear Hermione fighting the two men giving her a shot "I'm sorry, Hermione. But I will be back, you can count on that"
"I know the Granger's lawyer" Dr. Learner said "She won't be coming up against me, not now and not ever"
Harry, Ron and Gwen sat at the kitchen table with Ginny at Number 12 Grimmauld Place. They'd told her everything about what had happened, Ginny was now white-faced and staring unseeingly at the table top. They were at a loss, Gwen didn't have enough money to hire a lawyer and while Harry did, even he could appreciate the case that the asylum would have. It would be unwinnable. There was a noise from the front of the house and a minute later two older red-haired people came in. A short, chubby red-haired woman who looked a bit like Ginny and a tall, red-haired man that strongly resembled Ronald stood next to her.
"What's going on here?" Molly asked "And who is this?"
"Hey mum" Ron said "This is Gwen Granger"
"Granger?" Molly asked "Like Hermione?" Gwen nodded "Do you have her or know where she is?"
"We know where she is" Harry mumbled, he then launched into the entire story again from how Gwen found the diary to finding them and then them finding Hermione and all the problems that followed that.
"Oh, Arthur" Molly said, one hand over her heart and the other on her husbands arm "Surely there is something the ministry can do...she's not of the muggle world anymore and hasn't been since she was seventeen"
"I don't think we can" Arthur sighed "She's been in the muggle world for so long, I don't even know if they would help her, not without a serious conversation with the doctor"
"Can't we just obliviate them?" Ginny asked, everyone looked at her in shocked horror for a moment "Come on, take everything that would mark that she'd been there and just disappear from the muggle world, their memories aren't that good anyway"
"Ginny" Molly breathed "That is not how we do things around here"
"We need a lawyer" Gwen said "Someone who can take control of the situation and legally take her away"
"We need..." Ginny started.
"Malfoy" Harry finished, they all looked at him with almost as much horror as they'd had on their faces when Ginny suggested taking their memories.
"No, mate" Ron said "That git..."
"Is a magical lawyer" Harry said "Someone who owes me a life debt for keeping him and his mother out of Azkaban after the war and making sure that his father didn't receive the Dementors kiss, if anyone can talk circles around a muggle doctor and/or lawyer its him"
"But can we trust him?" Arthur asked "He hated Hermione"
"We can" Harry said "You know that a life debt is a magical bond, not finished until I say it is and he hates owing me anything"
"He's still grieving the loss of his wife, Harry" Molly said gently, Astoria's death, that happened two years ago, had hit the Slytherin hard and he was only just getting back to work now.
"Then he's going to need something to help him getting back in touch with the world" Harry said almost callously "Astoria changed something in him, he was a better person because of her and he may see helping Hermione as a way of honoring Astoria's memory"
"Fine" Ron sighed "Contact him"
A/N: Second chapter today, YAY look at me go haha. Hope you like this. Please Review!