Author's note: Hi! Thank you so much for opening my story!
I just wanted to say that I don't own the world of Harry Potter. That goes to J.K. Rowling.
Enjoy! Constructive criticism is welcome!
Hermione walked through the corridor of the Hogwarts Express, a deflated Neville Longbottom trailing behind her. The boy had come into her compartment, where she was peacefully reading after having failed to make conversation with the only other person in the small space, a girl Hermione deduced to be allergic to social interaction. He had looked so frazzled, asking if anyone had seen his toad, and Hermione, taking pity on him, decided to help.
Hermione looked into the window of a random compartment. She saw a boy about her age, maybe a little younger, with startling green eyes and round glasses. She watched as he absent-mindedly brushed his jet-black bangs to hide the scar she caught a glimpse of at his forehead.
This boy, however, wasn't the one that caught her attention. It was the one across from him that really made her pause.
He had a mop of flaming red hair that hung just above electric blue eyes. There were freckles covering almost every inch of his face. They weren't small flecks that almost blended into his skin, either. They were bold brown blots dotting his face and receding down his neck into his shirt. Those freckles are what pushed her to open the compartment door.
Hermione loved her younger sister Harlow. She was always laughing and seemed to be physically incapable of wiping the smile off her face. Which was why it was slightly disturbing to see her staring at the mirror in the living room with a somberly-contemplative expression.
"Am I a freckle-face?" Harlow asked Hermione.
"Why do you ask?" Hermione stood next to her in the mirror.
"Henry from school called me that today," Harlow said and prodded at her cheek. "Took a long look at me and giggled that it looked like a bunch of black zits on my face. And then he called me that."
They stood and stared at the mirror for a while. Hermione studied the contrasting features between them. Harlow's rich brown skin, inherited from their mother, and Hermione's skin like brown sugar, a mix of their mother and father. Harlow's gray eyes, just a little bit paler than their father's, and Hermione's deep brown, from their mother. She looked at Harlow's well concealed freckles, and her own unmarred skin that she already knew would be invaded by pimples as soon as she started puberty.
"I read this book," Hermione said. "It calls freckles all the spots where the sun kissed you. Another book said that freckles were like constellations on your skin."
Hermione watched Harlow's familiar grin stretch across her face.
Harlow looked at Hermione before pinching her elbow and saying, "You read too much. Smarty-pants."
Hermione found she didn't mind the name calling at all. Not as long as her younger sister was happy again.
Hermione wasn't even sure what she'd said before her eyes zeroed in on the wand in the redhead's hand. She started babbling, a habit of hers.
On a bright summer's day, just a couple months before Hermione turned eleven and Harlow nine, the two were chasing each other around outside in their backyard. They were supposed to be playing tag, but it was really more Hermione trying to run after Harlow, and Harlow being a lot faster because she was freakishly tall for an eight year old, and then falling over because she never quite got the hang of her longer-than-average limbs. And then she'd laugh and bound to her feet, and the cycle would start all over again. Their parents sat on the back porch, calling for Harlow to be more careful and giving Hermione disapproving looks because she was supposed to be the one that ensured Harlow wouldn't give her extreme clumsiness a chance to get her hurt.
At one point, Hermione got tired and slumped to the ground. When she realized she wasn't being chased anymore, Harlow ran back to her older sister, grinning and showing off the speck of dirt lodged between her two front teeth, from when she had toppled face-first into the ground mid-laugh.
"Come on, Hermes." Harlow's grin went even wider. "Keep up."
Hermione had gone through a phase where she was deeply interested in Greek mythology. The phase quickly ended when she realized just how truly messed up it all was. On one of her rants, Harlow caught on to the name Hermes, realized it shared the first four letters of Hermione's name, and hadn't stopped calling her it since. Every time, Hermione had to resist the urge to share all the ways her and Hermes were complete opposites.
"You have dirt in your teeth," Hermione said as Harlow crouched next to her.
Harlow grinned again before rubbing her hand in the dirt and wiping in across Hermione's face. Hermione didn't try to stop her. She rarely tried to stop Harlow from doing anything. Harlow was Harlow and Hermione decided that was perfect, messy actions and all.
"And you have dirt on your nose," Harlow sniggered.
Hermione was staring at the redheaded boy's nose the entire time she talked to him and the one with the glasses. Looking at the brown smudge streaked down the bridge.
She wondered if he had any younger siblings that had put it there.
—
Hermione would quickly learn that Ron was nothing like Harlow.
When Ron got angry, which was albeit a rare occurrence, he'd insult you with meaning. Harlow never got angry.
It astonished Hermione sometimes just how joyful Harlow was able to constantly be. It astonished her even more how Harlow was never angry. She never even got irritated. She was all smiles and grins.
When Harlow did insult you, it was always playful and vague, obviously not meant to hurt. But when Ron insulted you, it hurt more than a physical assault, because he'd make sure it was personal.
This insult, however, wasn't personal at all. But it still hurt Hermione.
She knew Ron wasn't the most fond of her. But hearing the boy that reminded her, however subtly, of her younger sister Harlow, talking about Hermione behind her back— that hurt deep.
"Stop that, you skyscraper of a child!" Hermione's mother, Jean, called as Harlow shrieked gleefully and ran off with her wallet.
Hermione knew Harlow had every intention to return it, so she made no move to stop her.
Jean had put her wallet on top of the fridge after Harlow had been caught trying to sneak off with it. However, she'd underestimated the newly nine-year-old's height, and Harlow had been able to swipe it by getting on the very tips of her toes.
Harlow didn't like to steal to take stuff. She just liked to be chased by people that could actually give her a challenge. One of those people was not Hermione because, while she had inherited their father's average height instead of their mother's shortness, Harlow seemed to have called on some otherworldly force at birth to make her grow like a weed, making their legs have that much of a length difference.
Harlow was tall. It was one of her telling characteristics. Combined with her giant, curly Afro, it was almost impossible to not spot her in a crowd.
Eventually, Jean caught Harlow, but couldn't stay angry at her for long. Harlow's laugh was contagious, and it only amplified when Jean tickled her into relinquishing her hold on the wallet.
Harlow herself is contagious, Hermione thought. She seemed to carry about a sort of energy everywhere she went. One that made you smile and feel more happiness than you thought you were capable of.
Ron was tall. Almost as tall as Harlow was.
Hermione had, of course, noticed his height the first time he saw him standing and tucked it into her mental file of All the Ways Ronald Weasley Reminded Her of Harlow Granger, but she was really noticing it now.
Ron, standing tall in that bathroom, the wand in his hand being the same one he just used to save her and Harry from a mountain troll. Using the spell she had taught him to cast correctly.
The way she saw him changed that day. After they got out of trouble with the teachers, she'd unofficially become their friend. And now she was seeing Ron in a way she didn't recognize.
It wasn't better than the way she saw Harlow, and Hermione knew it never would be. She didn't think anyone would ever even come close to being as important to Hermione as Harlow was. Harlow was Harlow, and Hermione had long since decided that that was perfect.
Hermione just started seeing Ron differently.
Harlow loved the rain.
Jean hated how much she loved it, and Marcus, Hermione and Harlow's father, thought Jean's reaction to Harlow's love of the rain was hilarious.
Jean hated the rain because it was always a hassle drying Harlow's hair after she ran around in it. Harlow loved it because she just did.
That time around, it was raining hard. Harlow had begged Jean and Marcus to take her and Hermione to the park, and Hermione had supported her because she knew it would make her happy. Finally, their parents relented, and they bundled up the two, making sure to put extra layers around their heads, before they walked there. When they made it, there was already a family there. The family had a dog.
At one point, Harlow started running, and the dog followed her. When she realized she was being chased, Harlow laughed and broke into a sprint.
One of the family's kids fell off the monkey bars, somehow landing on his head. The adults all rushed to make sure he was okay.
Harlow continued to run.
Hermione watched. She didn't want to intrude on Harlow's fun, because it was making her happy.
Until she saw Harlow about to run into the street. And a car speeding forward.
Hermione sprung to her feet and screamed Harlow's name. The dog, startled, stopped to stare at her. Harlow was wearing a pair of earmuffs and two hoodies. Hermione started to run toward Harlow, screeching her name repeatedly, but she was a lot slower, because Harlow was a lot taller.
She was halfway across the street. The driver must've seen her and tried to hit the brakes, but it was raining hard, and the car continued to skid. The adults noticed what was going on and ran toward Harlow, screaming her name.
Harlow saw the car and tried to run faster, her shrieks of delight gone. But Harlow is clumsy. She slipped and fell.
The car rushed forward still. Harlow slipped again as she tried to get to her feet.
"HARLOW!" Hermione screamed. It was the last coherent thing said before the car plowed into Harlow Martha Granger.
"Why is everything so gray?" Ron asked as Hermione dumped out the contents of her bag in search of a bottle of ink.
Hermione tried to make as many things as she owned the color gray.
"It's my favorite color," Hermione said as she found it.
"It's not a color," Ron said back, the anticipation of a friendly spat building in his voice.
But Hermione wasn't having it. "Don't ever say that to me again," she snapped. "It is a color, and it's the best one ever created."
Ron's eyebrows raised. "Are you okay? Why do you like gray so much?"
"Harlow's eye color," Hermione said.
Hermione wanted to take those words back. She hadn't told anyone about Harlow. She didn't want to. She didn't think anyone would understand the true happiness that came with Harlow's existence unless they were in her presence.
"Who's Harlow?" Ron asked.
"The best person to ever live."
And she walked away.
Harlow Martha Granger died at the age of nine years old. She died from a car accident, three days before Hermione's eleventh birthday.
When McGonagall showed up at her house, Hermione had to hold back from screaming where she and her magic had been during the accident. Couldn't she have teleported herself just before the car struck, magicked Harlow to safety. But no. She had to show up three days later. The three worst days of Hermione's life.
Hermione studied her new textbooks. It was her only distraction from the grief trying to eat away at her every moment of the day. Sometimes, as she read, she'd imagine Harlow was just down the hall, running toward Hermione's bedroom door to hassle her with requests to play tag outside.
Her parents couldn't muster any tears when it was time to send her off to Hogwarts. They'd been wrung dry for the past almost-year. They managed to hug her and wish her good luck, but that was it.
Hermione was determined to be happy, or at least not sad. She wanted to at least have that. Because that emotion, happiness, was her one connection to Harlow. And the last thing she wanted to do was lose every part of the younger sister she'd loved so much.
On the second to last night of school, Ron asked Hermione if she wanted to go outside.
She looked at him skeptically. Ron held his hands up and said, "Come on, 'Mione, it's eight o'clock. Way before curfew."
That was new. Mione. Not as good as Hermes, but Hermione had found that nothing could compare to anything that had to do with Harlow. Not Ron's freckles. Not his height and not any dirt that may be on his nose. Though she supposed that last one really had to do with Hermione herself.
Hermione followed Ron as he led them out of the common room, all the way outside to the Courtyard. Completely unprompted, Ron ran forward and did a cartwheel. He grinned when Hermione let out a surprise laugh.
"Ginny made me learn," Ron said when he made his way back to Hermione.
Ron plopped down on the grass, legs splayed out in front of him. He patted the space next to him, so Hermione sat down.
When Ron didn't say anything, Hermione asked, "Why'd you bring me out here?"
Ron chewed on his bottom lip before he said hesitantly. "I didn't forget what you said." He made eye contact. "About Harlow."
"I said all that I needed to," Hermione said, surprised by the sudden steel in her own voice.
"Who is Harlow, Hermione?"
Ron reached for Hermione's hand in her lap and, before she knew it, Ron had Hermione's average-sized hand in his large one.
Hermione swallowed thickly as she felt her heart nearly beat out of her chest. There were too many emotions coursing through her. Confusion because of how she was reacting to Ron's touch, grief for her younger sister, and happiness because, even gone, Harlow's memory still managed to bring her a distant sense of joy.
"Harlow was my younger sister," Hermione said.
Ron noticed the past tense.
"I don't know what to say to make you feel better," Ron said.
Hermione looked at him, and saw his eyes glistening.
Ron reached forward and enveloped Hermione in his arms. Because even though Ron couldn't always say what he meant with his words, he could always communicate with his touch.
"She was so amazing, Ron," Hermione said, voice cracking. "You have no idea. She could make everyone in a room smile just by laughing. She was always so happy."
"I wish I could meet her," Ron said. "If she had any hand in making you as great as you are, I'm sure that she's brilliant."
"She was perfect," Hermione said.
"I don't think anyone is perfect," Ron said and broke away from Hermione so he could look her in the eye again. "I think Harlow was more than that."
Hermione paused. She'd spent so long referring to her younger sister as perfect. What other word is there for someone who could make the grumpiest person on the planet roar with laughter?
"You're right," Hermione said eventually. "Harlow was more than perfect."
Author's Note: Thank you so much for reading! Again, constructive criticism is welcome!
I know that this doesn't really fit in with canon, but I didn't mean it to. It was just an idea I had, because Hermione's character doesn't really have much of a backstory in the first book.
Have a good day!