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Hermione startled awake to her dad setting a sunhat on her head. She looked up blearily from beneath its brim, having dozed off again on the patio. The hedge of Japanese privets was encroaching on the seats, and it took careful manoeuvring not to stab herself on their branches. One scraped her cheek anyway. Something clinked, and her hand shot to her pocket, feeling one slimy open vial and another stoppered one.
Acting quickly, Richard Granger prised her fingers off the humongous tome she had been using as a pillow. He brushed off the leaves and flowers on the book, paying no mind that they fell on his lap instead.
Minus the remnants of the privets, everything about him was sharp and neat. His white collar was tucked cleanly into the jumper, and his black, curly hair (once upon a time just as untameable as his daughter’s) was arranged in graceful curls. The scent of spices wafted off him - cardamom and ginger especially. He came from the kitchen, Hermione thought.
The cover of Potions for the Cursed peeked from under his fingers. It was an unpleasant yet fascinating reading, its acquisition inspired by her unfortunate encounter at the Department of Mysteries merely a week ago. He of course saw only the dry cover of an aged chemistry book. She spotted the telltale glaze of his eyes as the muggle-repelling charm she casted did its work.
She met his gaze, and her skin crawled at its dullness.
Guilt surged into her chest like acid, eating away at the linings of her stomach and burning her lungs. In the face of the glassy sheen of his eyes, she felt less than a blistered, diseased piece of meat. It’s for the best – she repeated stubbornly – It’s for their own good. The books she brought home were no longer about fun, practical spells after all.
The page she fell asleep on detailed a curse that rotted the organs from inside out - painless, almost unnoticeable but for the smell of rotting corpses that followed the afflicted until they keeled over, dead.
A familiar red-hot pulse crawled up her side. Dolohov made the curse hurt.
The pain was merely a sharp enough memory, Madam Pomfrey had said. Her insides were whole, heart strong and healthy as if the rot never existed. The maggots were completely gone was the healer's offhanded comment before sending her off to the leaving feast.
Hermione's grimace and wince were real enough however. It was a fight not to shift around, and she was grateful to the overgrown hedge for the ready excuse. She kept her sunhat low and face shaded anyway. She was unsure if the pain or guilt would show more strongly in her expression, and her dad could not be allowed to see either.
His brows were furrowed in worry already, however. He and her mum have been hovering like mad since she came home, and for the dozenth time that week, she wondered what it was she wrote. The letters she sent during her hospital stay were memories shrouded in fog, taking a similar quality to the half-lucid haze that dogged her those days.
She remembered transfiguring a piece of parchment into a table that wobbled, and that someone shoved a book under the shorter leg (perhaps Ron given the echo of laughter that lingered). She remembered the act of writing but only as if it was a half-faded dream, vanishing a little more each time she tried to grasp it. The contents of her letters were merely blurry chicken scratch in her mind's eye. Worse still, she found that she kept none of her usual notes - the ones she used to review the stories she had marked as "safe".
What haunted her most however was the suffocating fear and pain that leached through the tiniest nooks of what little she remembered. The tears, the shakes, the vomit - the blotted ink and broken quill. These she retained in picture-perfect quality, so much that it was as if the pain never left, only turned into the spectre that followed her home.
She feared she stank of that ghost, that her parents could smell the last of the rot on her - that her teeth were stained from all the potions forced down her throat. Potions she had not stopped taking as the clinks in her pocket love to remind her.
They sighed at the same time, the air crackling at the weight of the silence. The smell of the summer blooms mixed with the last of his ginger scent. The fragrance wrapped around her, and for the life of her, she could not tell if it was comforting or suffocating.
Multiple lies had already come to mind, but she couldn’t be sure which of them fit those missing letters best. How much did she have to explain away? Only illness? Perhaps the desperation and pain that leaked in her weakness? Just a bit of spilled ink or blood and bile?
Errant branches from the privets poked her in the back, and she leaned into the sharpness to keep herself still. Too many thorns in their conversations and she didn't even know enough to pick which one she'd rather prick her. So much she didn't know. Too much. It made her skin prickle. Made her want to claw at the itch until she bled.
She waited with a bated breath and hoped to hell her dad would crack before she did.
“Would you tell us honestly if something had gone wrong - especially if they were important things?” he asked, words as guarded as she felt. She jerked up to stare at him, sunhat falling askew and heart pounding in her chest.
Thinking quickly, she chose the easiest lie - the one she has been using versions of since second year.
“Of course, dad! But there’s not much to say. All there is is really the pile of summer homework I have to be getting on with.” She almost gestured at the book he clutched before remembering the title he would have read. “And it is now NEWT years of course - if I passed my OWLs that is - so everything would be much more difficult now. I would have to study much harder. The day just happened to be quite nice and warm, and it made me doze a little.”
Instead of soothing him, his expression only grew stormier.
“We both know that if you’re falling asleep in the middle of the day, you’ve pushed yourself past exhaustion.” His mellow words were forced out of gritted teeth.
For a moment, it was Madam Pomfrey who sat opposite her, gloved hands holding her book hostage instead of her dad’s long, steady fingers. The pungent smell of potions nearly overwhelmed the sweetness of the flowers around her. She corrected the hat while taking deep breaths, her heart pounding even more at the intrusive scents.
“And you’re reading a chemistry book.” he continued pointedly. Her face heated at her mistake. “Something is going on with you. Your letters - ”
A sharp exhale.
Glazed eyes squinted as if looking at her hurt, and he tried to speak over and over but could not find the words. She held her breath, desperate for him to continue and wishing with all her might for even the littlest hint of what got him so shaken. Curse her and those stupid letters. What she was sure of was that while she did write concerning things, they were probably non-specific, and he was fishing for information as much as she was.
Time for lie number two then.
“It was just the aftermath of the exams dad,” she said quickly, making sure to school her expression before facing him again. Her side pulsed with a vengeance. “The OWLs were awfully difficult as I said, and I had to do well because it would certainly affect the classes I could take for the next year!”
Shivers overcame Hermione once more despite the heat. Her breaths were coming out shallow. It was true - the fact that she almost got killed the past year did not mean the future stopped coming. She turned around and forced herself to take a deep breath, pretending to smell the privets (fearing - perhaps hoping - that she would get a whiff of potions instead). She picked a few stems to give herself time away from his gentle, cloudy gaze. The flowers were in full bloom, the hedge already overgrown when they didn’t even exist the last time she left home.
“Besides, it’s a beautiful day, and - er -” her eyes flickered to the cover of her book - “the applications of chemistry in potions-making are criminally underexplored!”
She started prattling before he could reply, meticulously describing the different techniques of specimen preparation in the two fields. No two paradigms could be more different, muggle science near irrelevant to the function of magic. It was a struggle to find suitable analogues that her dad could understand, but it was calming almost, going back to the certainty knowledge offered her. Her shoulders relaxed as she sunk into the familiar motions of discussion.
By the time she got to the more magical processes, her excitement was uncontainable, the feeling of magic almost tangible on her skin. Her arm flew through the air, tracing the wand movements in quick but graceful strokes. She could imagine the splashes of colour and sound dancing around the privets in her hands. Spells to dessicate, ferment, pickle - all so clear in her mind she could see them happen before her eyes.
Yet the blooms stayed white and the air was empty of sparks. The wand strapped on her arm burned.
Sometime in the middle of her explanation, a strange soft look came over her dad’s face, one quite different from the haze of the muggle-repelling charm. “You love magic very much,” he said, voice so quiet she struggled to hear him.
There was a heaviness to his tone that stayed her indignant response. He said the words like they were a revelation. She waited for him to say more, wondering if his strange expression had anything to do with her letters. She could not imagine herself ever asking to leave magic or her friends behind, but pain and fear did wonders to one’s priorities.
“It sounds wonderful…” He hesitated as if weighing his words carefully - “ If you need help, will you come to us? I know we’re…”
Muggles.
“... we don’t have magic. But that does not make it less our job to take care of you - especially if you’re – you’re struggling. Or ill.”
He lifted the sunhat off her face, forcing her to look him in the eye. Her stomach churned. “Count on us to take care of you, Hermione? While I understand that we’ve… raised you to be independent, doing everything alone can be dangerous too.”
She could only stare at him. Once more, it was Madam Pomfrey’s advice in her dad’s mouth.
“You need to tell your parents of your condition and ensure that they are equipped to help. Curses as dark as the one that hit you need to be watched carefully,” she had said before giving Hermione a roll of parchment full of instructions and the accompanying set of bottles and vials.
It took too long a moment to shake away the image, and the momentary superimposition shook something within her. After the Matron gave her the kit and the warning, she diligently memorised all the notes and took out the bottles she needed for the day every morning. She ducked into hidden rooms for the first potion and learned to watch the sun for the second. She noted the state of her body with clinical efficiency learned from the long weeks at the hospital wing.
At no point did it occur to her to follow Madam Pomfrey’s advice. The healer’s kit was buried deep in her trunk, protected by even more muggle-repelling charms.
Faced with the offer from her dad himself, a strange feeling blossomed within her - warm, dangerous, desperate. Glass shattered beneath her ribcage. For a moment it was as if she was collapsing into herself. Yearning, she recognized absently. Loneliness so deep, she feared to look more closely in case it drowned her instead.
He continued to speak but it was as if she was under water. She focused instead on his fingers, weaving the flowers into a delicate little wreath. They were wilting, she noted. “It won’t hurt for us to help… or for you to rest.”
BUT IT WOULD! she wanted to scream. If she didn’t think opening her mouth would kill her, she would have.
Her dreams were haunted by long dark corridors and menacing men twice her size, their shadows dancing in a near-constant backdrop of purple fire. She thought of Voldemort out in the open, of all the missing and the dead she meticulously kept track of from the snatched copies of the Prophet - copies she made sure her parents never saw.
She thought of the way Harry left the room every time Sirius was so much as mentioned, and she looked into her dad’s eyes, all pained concern and something darker she couldn’t decipher. The letters she couldn’t remember haunt them both.
“It really is light reading,” she insisted, hoping very much her voice did not hitch. “And I really am fine, dad.” Lie number 3, as weak as she felt her knees to be.
She made a show of fanning herself and adjusting the sunhat over her bushy hair. She wished she could transfigure something into a vase for the rest of the privets. They were wilting much too fast even if her father’s wreaths made them look beautiful still. With a jolt, she remembered the opened vial in her pocket… the sliminess of it on her fingers. Harmless to her but to little plants… She looked up and the stems she touched were wilting too.
Something like grief settled under her ribs.
Her dad chuckled - a deep, pained sound. “I’m not going to mention the fact that you were napping when I got here, but I will say that even reading would be more comfortable in your room.”
“More vitamin E would be good for me. Goodness knows sunny days are rare at school,” she responded lightly.
“I’m pretty sure you magic types have a spell for that, darling.”
“Wizards and witches.” She refrained from using her hat for cover, fearing that any movement too sharp would shatter them both. “Besides, the healing arts function on an entirely different paradigm from muggle medicine.”
Every now and again, his eyes flickered to her book, and though he was careful to keep his tone light, a note of bitterness escaped him regardless. “Of course they would.”
His forefinger traced over the glossed lettering on the spine, and she wondered if he could feel the disparity between that and what he knew the title to be. None of the books ever described how the muggles experienced the repulsion - the state of confusion, the unknowing repetition. Judging by her dad’s lack of questions the magic took care of everything.
“There is none to replace vitamins,” she answered softly. “None that are as widely used or as easily accessible at least.”
Silence yawned between them, neither knowing how to proceed. “What difference does it make then?” he asked just as gently. “Magic and a few hundred years?”
She opened her mouth as if reciting in class.
Then she snapped it close.
The founding father of the field loved feeding his remedies to guileless muggles first. He found them funny.
Unbidden, the halls of St. Mungo's suddenly sharpened. The hair at the back of her neck stood on end as she recalled the hungry way the portraits looked at her the moment they realised she was muggle-born. Kindly, well-meant suggestions morphed into more calculating ones. Greedy eyes roamed her body as if dissecting her in their minds and weighing the worth of her insides. Nine sickles for her liver. Two knuts for her heart.
Mouth dry and voice crackling, she made sure to stick to the simpler, more technological differences instead. She chose each detail with great care, painstakingly painting for him her odd but delightful world without any of the danger and bigotry she had come to know so intimately. She lovingly papered over the less savory parts, and once she hit her stride, wished he sat beside her - the rhythm of her telling reminding her so much of when she was five and curled at his side, book on her lap and telling him her favourite bedtime story that she had long since committed to heart.
As if hearing her, he grabbed her wrist and wrapped one of the wreaths around it with painfully gentle fingers. She kept her fist closed and took care not to move too much, fearing her very touch would leave it dead.
Tears pricked at the corner of her eyes. They talked for a bit longer, Hermione keeping a close watch on the sun. She couldn’t help but recall similar summer days from before Hogwarts, the two of them sitting on this very patio surrounded by towers of books just as esoteric, her insisting over and over for a flower crown until he gave in. Her dad would have loved potions, she thought, hands so gentle and assured, they don’t even break dying flowers.
As the afternoon waned, the smell of curry started wafting out from the kitchen. She paused and took a deep breath, relishing just how at home she felt. Hogwarts never did manage to capture her dad’s blend of spices, tweaked over the course of years just for her. Somewhere inside, her mother was likely chopping vegetables, keeping an eye out until he returned.
And then her dad sat up.
“I can help!” she blurted suddenly. Her heart was racing again. The sun was setting, and it was as if the garden was holding its breath. She wanted to run to him, to have him hold her close, and cling and cling and cling until she smelled like flowers and spices all over again.
A bemused smile graced his lips. “We both know you would be perfectly content never to step foot in the kitchen again, dear.”
Another pang of guilt. Another memory. Her dad slaving over a pot for hours and hours. Chuckling entreaties over vegetables and fish. And her hiding away always - claiming she had way too many other things to do.
“I can cook,” she said, willing and failing to keep her voice from choking. “It could even be delicious. Potions need quite similar skills to cooking I would have you know.” She brewed a NEWTs level potion at thirteen. Curry could not possibly be more complicated. She could do it. She could help. They still had time. They must still have time.
“Of course.” He hesitated. Then a look so soft came over his eyes, as if she had revealed something precious to him. He smiled at her fondly. “I’m also quite certain you would rather be getting on with your book.”
It was true. Even worse, the sun was inching closer and closer to the perfect position in the sky. She needed to take her potion, and to do so, her dad had to be as far away as she could get him to be. The potion in her pocket was an unpleasant little thing, and she’d rather he never witness her that way.
Without another word, he gave her book back. The glazed look left his eyes, and her stomach settled but settled as if turned into stone. Before she could say another word, he moved to where she sat and removed her sunhat, kissing the top of her head. The brim prevented her from seeing his face, and before she knew it, his back was turned and he was walking away with a faint I love you trailing behind him. He squeezed her wrist once, careful of the flowers, and then he disappeared into the doorway.
The tome on curses sat innocently on the tabletop. The garden was quiet.
With mechanical movements, she propped open the book. There was a woman writhing on the page, hands clawing at her stomach until she bled. Hermione could count her teeth and she could hear her scream even (perhaps moreso) in the silence.
She opened the vial and gulped the potion. The sunhat fell low over her eyes. Little coals settled in her stomach, and she envied the woman. She wished she could scream.
“It helps when you have help. The curse may be gone and you may be safe, but it does not always feel that way,” Madame Pomfrey once said.
There was a rustle of leaves and stupidly she wished that it was her dad coming back. Maybe a scream did escape her. Maybe he would demand the truth, and she would not lie. Maybe he would carry her up the stairs and tuck her into bed as if she were five and with a fever.
As the pulse in her side turned into a full-blown blaze, she wondered if she could smell her own corpse again. She hoped her dad would not have to. In the pain, her hand spasmed. The wreath broke, her wilted privets scattered in the wind.
The pain eased. There was no one.
She closed her eyes in exhaustion and reclined in her seat, letting her air cool the beads of sweat on her forehead. Her mind turned to those half-remembered letters, knowing now that she revealed nothing that truly mattered. The conversation with her dad was quite insightful, she thought bitterly. Worrisome but non-specific. Quite possibly an existential crisis about magic.
Jutting branches from the overgrown hedges tickled her cheeks. The privets were beautiful, she thought. High up in the air and far away. She wanted to touch them, but there were already too many wilting stems she would have to cut. As they swayed in the warm gust, she inhaled deeply despite the protest of her chest and willed their scent to fill the hollowness of her chest.
The world had never been quite as huge. Nor her quite as small.