Work Text:
In the summer of 1996, Javier Granger had trouble recognizing his daughter.
The bright young girl with golden brown eyes and a head full of facts and stories wasn’t the same person that sat across from him at the breakfast table every morning. Instead, a surly teenager with black eyes and a book that he knew was charmed to hide its contents from him refused to meet his own eyes. She took sips out of vials on a schedule, she read the same book over and over again, and she seemed to grow smaller with every second the clock ticked away.
He always had trouble letting her go, maybe because of his own whirlwind childhood. Living in poverty in Cuba under a dictator, watching his mother marry a cruel man and move them across the ocean to Spain, finally leaving it all to find himself in a strange country with no knowledge of the language.
His Hermione, his darling little girl that looked like her mother and spoke like him was everything to him. She was smart and funny, sweet and caring, she was the first to answer any question and the first to know any answer.
But this teenager, with her wild unkempt hair and dark soulless eyes wasn’t his daughter. This girl was small in everything, fragile and tiny, not bold and bright and beautiful like he knew her to be. This small girl lied to him and read the same book over and over again, she cried to herself when she thought no one was home and just became smaller and smaller and smaller.
He didn’t like it, didn’t like to see his only daughter, his only baby girl, his Mija become nothing.
“Basta de silencio, Hermione,” said Javier, as they sat at the kitchen table, a pair of cold tea cups in front of them. Hermione didn’t look up from her full cup, her dark eyes so unfamiliar to him that it scared him a little.
And that was the worst of it all, his daughter, his baby girl, his Mija, she scared him. She had scared him for a long time and he didn’t want to admit it, he and Jane had always known that Hermione was special, she was their daughter. But ever since…ever since she went off to her magic, to her school, to her experiences he could never know…ever since they had known that magic was in her, he had been scared.
She was so young, so incredibly young, and already she carried around the weight of a thousand lifetimes. He saw the trauma in her the same way he saw it in himself.
“Javier?” called Jane, sweeping into the room as if she was just floating along. His wife was graceful and beautiful, she moved as if she was made of water, fluid and quick. Their Hermione was like Jane, beautiful and kind and brave, but where Jane kept the light in world, Hermione seemed to be falling into the darkness.
“Mi amor,” answered Javier, smiling at her as she put her hands on the back of Hermione’s chair, making her shrink into herself even more.
“Hermione, me ayudarás con la cena,” said Jane, her Spanish was still a little shaky even after years of them only speaking the language at home. For all of Hermione’s childhood, they had spoken in Spanish at home, knowing that she would hear enough English out in the world.
They had tried so hard to keep her safe, keep her close, and then the one thing that they were most proud of for her, had betrayed her. She was going to be smaller than her cat in another moment.
“Do I have to?”
Javier watched her carefully close her book, her fingers lingering on the worn down cover. He wanted to take the book from her, he wanted to force her to talk to him, she wanted the silence and fear and her shrinking form to disappear.
He wanted his Mija again.
“Si,” said Javier, getting to his feet and quickly coming around the table, he held his hand out to her, she was a darker shade of brown than him, but that never once mattered. He could remember the first time he ever felt her hand, her little fingers gripping his one, her tiny body fitting perfectly in the crook of his arm. More than anything he wished he could trade his current daughter for that one. “You will help your mama.”
“No,” said Hermione, her voice like a force, like a curse.
Javier didn’t move his hand and Jane didn’t move her hands off of her chair. This standstill was new and not like their Hermione, it was sad and angry and unforgiving.
“Hermione Jean,” said Jane, and she put her hands on her shoulders, “ayudarás, hablarás, y nos dejarás entrar a tu papá y a mí.”
Hermione huffed and pulled herself away from Jane and Javier, escaping away from them and storming upstairs to her bedroom.
“Javi,” said Jane, and he just shook his head. “I’m worried about her.”
He didn’t know what to say, Jane always took the lead when it came to their daughter, she understood being a teenage girl, she was once one herself. Javier had just been excited to marry the woman he loved, and then Hermine came so quickly for them, and he never imagined that he could be happier than when he first held her.
They made dinner together in silence, no music or jokes or laughter, no stories or nothing to share other than their worries. They ate their dinner in silence too, just the pair of them because Hermione never came down.
Javier made a plate for Hermione and carried it upstairs, pausing to look at the photos on the walls, of the lifetime he and Jane had lived together and apart and with Hermione.
“Mija?”
Javier put down the plate on her desk before crossing the small space to her bed, where she laid with her face in her pillow. He sat down at the edge of her bed and ran a hand through her thick wild curls, wild like his but soft like Jane’s.
He remembered long nights early in his and Jane’s marriage, Hermione still unknown to the pair of them then. He remembered pacing quietly in the living room downstairs, thinking about his childhood, about his mother, about his father before he passed when he was little still. He remembered doing the same months later, Hermione just a newborn, quietly cooing up at him in the scare moonlight.
She was never really a loud baby, or child, she always kept to herself. Javier had worried about her when she was little, and now that worry didn’t disappear as she grew older.
“Papa,” mumbled Hermione, rolling over in her bed and Javier moved his hand from her hair to her cheek, cupping her face softly in his hand. She was so beautiful, just like his Jane, and he loved her so dearly. “I’m sorry.”
“When I was your age Hermione,” whispered Javier, softly stroking her cheek with his thumb, “I was on the tail end of a war in my own home. My mama and my step-padre were divorcing because I finally told her about how he treated me for the six years they were married. I was afraid to be in that house if she wasn’t there, knowing that she was my only protector. I vowed to myself that would never happen to any baby of mine, and yet….”
He didn’t know if he could continue on if he could keep having this conversation with her. He didn’t want to hurt her, nor did he want to see her hurt, he just wanted her to feel safe in the home that he and Jane made for themselves and for her.
“Papa,” mumbled Hermione, and he leaned down and kissed her forehead.
“Mi mariposa,” said Javier, cutting her off before she could say another thing, it was a nickname that he had called her since she born, his little butterfly. “Your mama and I, we love you…your safe home with us. Your home is here, mama and I are here to protect you, and you will always be protected in these walls. I know we could never ask you to not…to not go back to school, but if-“
“I can’t-“
“If you want to stay and go to the local secondary you can,” finished Javier, knowing that it would light a fire in her, make her come back to him. “No one will think less of you.”
“Papa, I’ll think less of me,” said Hermione, shooting right up, her face inches from his. “I belong at Hogwarts, I’m a witch!”
It was the most noise she had made since coming home, and Javier felt his lips twitch, betraying himself. He leaned forward and kissed the top of her head, before standing up and grabbing the plate he made for her.
“When you’re ready, I’ll be all ears,” said Javier, walking over to the door, knowing that she needed a little time to just herself.
He went back downstairs to the kitchen, where Jane had pulled out one of her recipe cards, the ones she wrote down the moment she found out that she was pregnant. He could still remember her promise of their baby always having a home cooked meal, or, at least the way to have a home cooked meal.
“Chocolate mint cake, her favorite,” said Jane, and Javier nodded before kissing her cheek.
Later, after the cake had long come out of the oven and cooled down, Hermione finally walked downstairs, her empty plate in her hands. Javier watched her from his spot by the counter, a fresh cup of tea in his hands as she carefully washed her plate and then made room for her beside him on the counter. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders, handed her his half-finished cup of tea, knowing that they took it the same way.
That they would always take their tea the same way.