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*
“Ready to go?”
Hermione looked up from her Transfiguration essay, strands of hair sticking to her neck. The common room was all too warm for revising; spring had come on strongly in the last few days, and the air everywhere inside the castle felt stale and hard to breathe.
Ron stood over her chair by the window, skin glowing in the firelight. “Is it time?” she asked.
He nodded, Prefect badge reflecting the light. She set her quill aside and gathered her books and parchment. “Lovely. I’ll just run these upstairs.”
“I’ll meet you outside the portrait,” he said, jerking his head towards the portrait hole.
Smiling slightly, she hurried off to the girls’ dormitory, taking the stairs two at a time. Harry was off in another mysterious meeting with Dumbledore, or serving another one of his detentions with Snape, or distracting Ginny from her revisions; she wasn’t completely sure, but she knew if he was in the castle, he would be safe. Besides, her time with Ron wasn’t Harry’s to define.
Moments later, after ducking through the common room (and still feeling Lavender’s gaze on her the entire time), she stepped through the portrait hole. Ron stood at the wall with his back to her, hands stuffed into his robes pockets. He has grown tall and broad-shouldered and has always been continuously loyal, even if sometimes a prat.
Words sputtered to the tip of her tongue, the fragments of a plan brewing deep in the back of her mind. He would understand, whereas Harry might not.
Then, the Fat Lady cleared her throat delicately, catching her off-guard. “You two best be off.”
Ron turned then, catching Hermione’s look. “Oi, didn’t hear you. You can be bloody quiet when you want to be,” he said, grinning faintly.
Hermione walked towards him. “I just arrived. Where should we start tonight?” she asked. She liked to leave it up to him most nights.
“Up near the Hospital Wing?”
“Lovely,” she said, and they fell into step down the long cool corridors.
“Any idea where Harry is?” Ron asked after a moment.
She glanced at him, slightly exasperated. They’d had this same conversation two nights ago, and a week before that. “For heavens’ sake, Ginny’s old enough to take care of herself.”
“I’m aware,” he muttered. Torchlight passed over his face, catching his ruddy cheeks before the shadows fell back across the lines of his face.
“Besides, it’s not as if Harry could truly do anything all that bad,” she said practically.
He visibly shuddered. “Thanks for that.”
Smiling, she smoothed her hair back from her shoulders. “After the displays you used to treat us to, I imagine it’s all rather tame, for those two,” she said tartly.
Ron huffed, glancing at her as they turned a corner. “All right, then.”
She curled her fingers into her palms, wetting her lips. “Harry knows what he’s doing,” she said quietly. “And Ginny’s smart. They know—it’s temporary,” she said after a halting moment.
“Do they?” he asked all too casually.
Nodding, she scanned the corridor. Ginny had said so herself just a few nights ago; they just wanted to enjoy the time they had. Hermione admired that about the two of them; she was also a bit jealous.
For a brief moment, his hand grazed her elbow. “Has he said anything to you about not coming back?”
Shaking her head, she swallowed against the lump in her throat. “No. You?”
“No. But he won’t be, will he?” he said, voice low. The air in the corridor thickened around them.
“No, I don’t believe so,” she said after a long moment.
“And neither will we.”
They passed close to a row of windows as they approached the stairs. She could hear the wind whistling softly against the panes. “We can’t let him go off alone.”
“Of course not,” he said, taking the stairs two at a time. He did that everywhere, at the Burrow, at Grimmauld Place; she reckoned he’d done it all his life, trying to keep up with brothers always two steps ahead of him.
“Of course not,” she repeated, stomach knotting. Her hand faltered on the banister, the stone cool under her fingertips.
“Hermione?”
She looked up towards the top of the stairs. He waited for her at the landing, his face cast in shadow. A sliver of torchlight lit the crown of his hair scarlet. Something hot and trembling started in her middle and shuddered up through her chest.
“What is it?” he asked once she reached the landing, his hand just breaths away from hers.
Words lay thick and unspoken on her tongue. She pursed her lips, teeth clenching together.
Finally, his hand caught her forearm. She was abruptly reminded of third year, clutching at his arm when Hagrid introduced Buckbeak to their class. “Reckon we’ll have to just take off one day,” he said quietly. “Can’t tell our families, or it’ll be trouble.”
Tears burned horribly behind her eyes. “I reckon it’s going to be trouble for my parents no matter what,” she said, grinding out the words.
He met his gaze, eyes very blue and very serious. “So we’ll talk to Dumbledore, and have him find them a safe house—“
“They won’t agree to that. They barely know what’s going on,” she said flatly.
He stepped closer to her; she could smell the grassy soapy scent of his hair, his skin. The back of her neck flushed. “You haven’t told them?”
She passed a hand through her hair. “It’s not as if they have the background that you and your family does to understand it, Ron,” she said, just a bit impatiently. “And they’d never let me set foot near the magical world again if they did. They’re dentists, not soldiers.”
“So what, then?” he asked. “What’s your plan?”
Her teeth clacked together, jaw working as she tried to form the words. “Could we walk, please?” she pleaded.
Ron looked at her for a long hard moment before he turned and tugged her along down the corridor. The castle was silent around them, deceptive in its calm. He still hadn’t released her wrist; she found it comforting, heartening.
She took a deep, solid breath, and shut her eyes. “I think I have to send them away,” she said finally. Her voice sounded small and cracked in the high-ceilinged corridor.
Halting, he stared at her. “Send them away?”
“And erase their memories.”
There; the plan, in all its dreadful rightness, lay spoken and out in the open air. Mouth dry, she looked at the flickering torches lined up along their path. The flames blurred through the tears edging her eyes.
“Erase their memories of… of you?” he asked finally, voice pitching up at the end.
She nodded, throat so thick she couldn’t speak.
He was deathly silent for a long moment. Her toes curled in her trainers. She so desperately wanted to walk once more, so she slipped from his grasp and continued along the corridor slowly. Shudders traveled through her chest and shoulders, tears she refused to shed. Below them, she heard Peeves giggling, armor clanking. Home, it breathed out to her.
After a moment, she heard him behind her. His large hand closed around her elbow as he fell in step with her. “You’re certain you don’t want to talk to Dumbledore first?” he asked gently.
Vigorously, she shook her head no, her hair flying around her. Speaking the words out loud had solidified her course of action. It was the only way.
She wasn’t sure what she had expected him to say. For a moment, she reckoned he might question her ability to do such a strong memory charm, or he would press the safe house option. But as they walked along the corridor, her elbow still in his grasp, he said none of those things.
Instead, he squeezed her for a moment, and then let her go. “It’ll be okay,” he said roughly.
Her hands nearly trembled with relief. “Do you reckon?” she asked faintly, looking at him at last.
He nodded, his face shadowed. She was grateful for the coverage of darkness. “Yeah, I do. It’ll be okay.”
It felt as if her heart were breaking and reshaping, all in the same heartbeat. She passed a hand over her traitorously damp eyes, glancing ahead of them in the dark corridor. “Thank you,” she said softly.
She could see his Adam’s apple move as he swallowed, the lines of his throat taut. “We’ll have to figure out what to do for me, too,” he said after a moment of walking.
“For you?”
Now, she couldn’t see his face at all, but for a sliver across his mouth. “If I don’t come back to school, I reckon Malfoy’ll run to Daddy and say I’m with Harry, and then my family’ll be targeted again. Even more so,” he said gruffly.
Breathing in deeply, she touched his arm. “We’ll think of something good.”
Together, they turned the corner and headed back downstairs. They filled the rest of the time with brittle conversation and more speculation on Harry and Ginny, much to Ron’s dismay and Hermione’s amusement.
They didn’t speak again of their plans for weeks.
*
Dumbledore died, and everything settled into absolute certainty.
Hermione was only home for a week before she carried out her plans. Any longer under her own roof, her parents cooking dinner every night and her father asking about what books she’d been reading and her mother showing her the garden out back, and she knew she’d lose her nerve.
Everything was organized; the house in Brisbane, the money, new positions at a dental office. Hermione managed a lovely impression of her mother in all her overseas calls and negotiations. Her parents wouldn’t know until she put the idea in their heads, once she had erased herself.
I’ll be coming tomorrow directly after lunch. Please let your mum know, was all she wrote to Ron the day before.
That night, the response, carried by Pig, arrived at her bedroom window.
She was in the midst of packing the belonging s she wouldn’t be bringing along. The boxes would be shrunk down and put into storage at the Burrow, thanks to Mr. Weasley’s generosity. He was the only one she had told, other than Ron; he seemed to understand the direction his youngest son and his two best friends were headed, and had been happy to provide help.
The absolute bareness of her room startled her. It was the picture-perfect guest room, she thought as she stood near her bed, glancing from wall to wall and corner to corner, looking for any speck of hers that she had forgotten. It was cold and unassuming and belonged to no one, just as she had wanted it to be.
With the tap on her window, she turned, smiling at Pig and his furious fluttering. She opened the window and with it came a warm summer breeze, the scent of her mother’s roses filling her nose. The sunset outside was blood-red, as if a warning.
As soon as she plucked the parchment from Pig’s leg, he swooped down to her empty desk and cooed. She had revised for O.W.L.s at that desk; her Hogwarts letter had been put in a picture frame and set there, right near the few photos she had of her and Harry and Ron together. Now, they were packed away, along with every other memento of the life Hermione Granger used to live.
With a wave of her wand, she set up a dish of water for Pig. Then, she sat on the end of the bed and unrolled the note.
Mum’s always happy to have you. Don’t forget to bring your boxes, Dad’s already made room.
Come to the back of the house, all right? A bunch of people might be home, what with all the wedding nuttiness going down, and it’ll be quieter there.
It’ll be okay, Hermione.
The sound of the telly and her mother’s laughter curled up through the floorboards. If tears dripped down Hermione’s nose, smudging Ron’s words, she didn’t notice.
She kept Pig with her through the night, for company. In the morning, the sunrise orange-blue, she sent him on his way.
*
In the end, it was as easy as she reckoned it would be, and even harder, too.
The spell itself was nothing; she had already put away all the physical items that she had anything to do with in her parents’ home. All that had been left was to pull her out of their memories and their photographs. She had done it before lunch, before her mum had set the table for three; her parents liked to cook together, so she knew she’d have them in the same room.
She’d hugged them tightly over breakfast, kissed them too. The outpouring of emotion had startled them, she knew; but she didn’t care. They wouldn’t know her from anyone, soon enough.
Her boxes, reduced in size and safely tucked in her satchel, sat just outside the front door. She’d placed them there moments before, for a swift exit. Quietly, she watched her parents from the kitchen doorframe, waiting for the right moment. Their backs were to her, at the stove. She could smell tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches, one of their favorites.
If her wand trembled, if her Obliviate started out just slightly tremulous, it didn’t make a difference.
There was a reason why she was called the brightest witch of her age.
After, she padded away on bare feet, slipped on her trainers at the front door and put her satchel around her. She opened the door, and walked out of the home that wasn’t hers any longer.
“Did you hear something?” she heard her mum ask from the kitchen before she shut the door.
There was nothing and no one to hear.
*
For long moments in the wooded park near her not-home-any-longer, she couldn’t collect herself enough to Apparate.
When she finally did, the sensation of it doing nothing for the horrible jumbling in her stomach, she was later than she’d expected. She appeared in the middle of Mrs. Weasley’s garden in the back of the house. By the scuttling around her ankles, she disrupted some garden gnomes.
The Burrow was the same as always, tilted and welcoming. Everything was green and smelled of grass and Mrs. Weasley’s cooking. It could be any other summer that she’d come to visit, any other year.
Except now, she couldn’t stop crying.
Her fingers dug into the thick sturdy strap of her satchel, the weight of it hard on her shoulders. Her boxes were in there, she thought distantly.
She made it two steps out of the garden and into the lawn before she sat down, breathing jagged. Her lungs pressed roughly against her ribs. Putting her hands to her face, she laid her cheek against her knees. The sun hit her warmly at the crown of her head as her shoulders shook.
Suddenly, Ron sat down at her side. She could tell by the smell of his hair and clothes. His arm, sure and steady, curled around her shoulders.
“You did the right thing,” he said. He sounded older than he had just weeks ago, voice low and wrecked.
Gulping in air, she turned and pressed her face to his shoulder. He was warm and solid and there; he knew who she was. “I’m just gone,” she whispered, voice cracked. “I was never there.”
His other arm circled her, and he pulled her close together despite the warmth of the day. Beyond the lawn, birds chirped in the trees. She curled her fingers into his shirt, gasping through her tears.
“You are here, though. You’re here,” he said quietly near her hair.
She didn’t know how much time passed, with the two of them sitting there in the warm June sun. Her tears ran out, and she sat there in the circle of his arms, rough around the edges and bleary-eyed. Inside she felt empty, scrubbed out.
“I don’t know if I can reverse it,” she said for the first time out loud, breaking the silence. Her voice scratched the clean sweet air.
Ron’s grip tightened on her. “It’ll be okay.”
He didn’t know that for sure. But it helped.
*
They made it inside eventually. He helped her carry her boxes up to the attic, set her things in Ginny’s room. For the rest of the afternoon, they retreated into his bedroom and sat at his window, the worn velvet cushion of the seat soft under her fingertips.
“Thank you,” she said, as the bustle and hustle of dinner preparation below crept into their quiet world.
Ron looked at her, gaze set and serious even as he shrugged. “Of course,” he said. His face flushed, some of the freckles disappearing from his cheeks.
She hesitated, just for a moment. “Did—did you tell Harry?”
“No. Reckoned you’d want to, when he gets here,” he said.
Looking out over the lawn, she sighed silently. She did, and she didn’t. He would have to know the bare bones, of course, but Harry—he might not understand it.
“We don’t have to tell him everything,” Ron said after a pause. “Just—y’know, that they’re safe. And away.”
Heart near to bursting, she reached out and grabbed his hand in hers. “All right,” she said. Her eyes still burned from her earlier tears.
He squeezed her hand for a moment, flushing red. For a moment, she wanted to lean in—
And then Molly’s voice floated up, calling them down for dinner.
He didn’t let go of her hand until they hit the bottom of the stairs.
*