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“Obliviate,” Hermione said solemnly, holding her wand up to the two people she loved the most.
Her parents had their backs to her, sitting on the sofa, watching the telly. The golden light of the charm flickered faintly as it left her wand. She watched, eyes burning, as the images of her disappeared from the mantel. From the frames. From their minds. She was no longer anything to her parents. To her mum. To her dad.
Her knees shook. She held her breath. She couldn't afford to fall apart now.
She turned from her spot behind the sofa, gathered her items, and left the place she once called home. She left with nothing but her enchanted purse and a simple rucksack. No goodbye. No time for one.
She walked out of her neighborhood, past the woman she always saw gardening, who gave her a smile and a small wave, one she didn’t return. Past the children playing in their yard, where she used to babysit. The wind felt colder than usual.
Once she had gotten far away enough, she cast a Disillusionment Charm and ducked behind a tree. Her hands trembled as she raised her wand again. She reinforced the memory charms. Layer upon layer. She made sure no one on the street would remember her name. Her face. Her existence.
It’s for their own good. For their safety, she told herself, over and over, as the last spell was cast.
But the ache in her chest didn't ease.
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Weeks later, Harry, Ron, and Hermione sat huddled around a small table in a run-down coffee shop, speaking in hushed voices. They barely had time to sip their drinks before two cloaked figures burst through the front doors. Wands raised. Red sparks flying through the air, breaking and ripping things apart. Momentarily, Hermione worried about the Muggle authorities.
The three of them acted on instinct. The fight was quick and chaotic. It ended as quickly as it started, with the Death Eaters lying unconscious on the floor.
"Hermione," Harry said, "you're up."
"Why do I have to?" she whined.
"You're best at it," Ron confirmed.
Hermione huffed. She hated doing this spell, it felt like she was removing parts of a person.
Hermione stood over them, heart racing, blood pounding in her ears. She held her wand steady. “Obliviate,” she whispered, her voice steady but laced with sorrow.
She could feel the magic leave her wand, reaching into the men’s minds, erasing every memory of who they were chasing, what they had seen.
It’s for our safety, she thought to herself, giving herself some comfort.
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She saw her parents in everything.
In the smiles of strangers, in the flicker of a Muggle news broadcast in the Ministry of Magic, in the woman being interrogated by Umbridge, trembling and terrified.
In the forest. The one they'd landed in after a rough Apparition. The trees here were quiet. Still. Hermione wrapped her scarf tighter around her neck, but the cold wasn’t just from the air.
She thought of her father’s laugh. Her mother’s soft singing on Sunday mornings. She was hyper-aware of the void they left.
After Ron left, her heart broke all over again.
She sat by the fire, silent tears streaming down her cheeks as Harry kept watch. She didn’t cry for Ron. Not really. Not then. She cried for what she had lost long before him.
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They landed in Godric’s Hollow. Snow dusted the gravestones. The night was quiet, the kind of stillness that pressed against your ears.
“Harry, I think it’s Christmas Eve,” she said, pointing toward the church. The sound of carols floated gently from inside.
They paused in front of the glowing building, its windows illuminated with warmth.
“Do you think they’d be in there?” Harry asked quietly. “My parents?”
Hermione nodded. “I think so.”
She thought of her own parents again—of the empty chairs that would sit at their table this year. Of the stockings they'd hang for her, even if they didn’t remember why. A pit settled in her stomach.
“Merry Christmas, Hermione,” Harry whispered.
She forced a smile. “Merry Christmas, Harry.”
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They reappeared in a forest Hermione knew. She had been here once, as a little girl, camping with her parents. No magic. Just tents and cold air and laughter by the fire.
Now the trees were haunted by memory.
Inside their magically enhanced tent, she curled into her cot, Rita Skeeter’s book in her lap. The warmth of the enchantments did little to ease her homesickness. Her parents' faces flickered in her mind, blurry now. She was terrified she was starting to forget what they looked like.
She fell asleep with the book still open, and her dreams were filled with screams and flashes of green light.
“Hermione!” Harry's voice jolted her awake. “Hermione!”
She shot up, heart pounding, expecting danger.
But instead, she saw Ron. Standing awkwardly behind Harry.
For a brief, delicious moment, she forgot everything else.
Then rage consumed her.
——------
There were moments Hermione didn’t think she would survive.
Moments when she could barely breathe. Moments where the only thing keeping her standing was the image of her parents ' faces, they no longer knew. Love, they no longer remembered.
In Malfoy Manor, as Bellatrix pressed her into the floor, carving mudblood into Hermione’s skin. Hermione let out a scream, out of fear and pain. Screamed for her mum. For her dad.
The pain wasn’t just physical. It was the pain of knowing that no one in the world, no...one alive....was thinking of her. Because she had made sure of that.
But it was for the best. This way… only she got hurt.
—------—
They buried Dobby by the sea. Hands in the cold sand. Hearts in pieces.
This...this loss was what Hermione had been running from.
This was why she had erased herself from the people who loved her.
She thought of the day her grandfather died. The sobs that shook her mother. The way her father had held them both.
She didn't want them to feel that again.
But the longer she ran, the more she realized: there was no way to protect people from heartbreak. There was only love. And love always came with pain.
——------
The war ended.
Voldemort was gone. Hogwarts stood wounded but strong. The world would take time to heal.
But so would she.
It took months after the war to track them down. She followed them slowly, attempting to regain the courage to approach them
To carefully undo the layers of memory charm she had woven.
She stood outside the small dental clinic in Australia. Her knees trembled just like the day she left. The sun was warm here. But Hermione was freezing, the sweat cold down her back.
Inside, a man sat behind the desk. His face is familiar. But blank as she approached. A woman, standing in the behind the man, hands on his shoulders.
The look they used to give her, replaced by the normal service representative smile.
“Mum. Dad,” she whispered as she stepped through the door, she held her wand in her hand. Slowly tilting it as she spoke.
They looked up at her, confusion spreading across their face.
She raised her wand, hands shaking. “I'm Hermione Granger. I'm your daughter. I know you don't remember me, but I had to do this. For your own protection. Its been months, camping outside. Living in tents and apparating from spot to spot. But I've finally found you.”
The two looked at her in confusion, following with concern. Before they could say anything, Hermione began to chant her spell. She had been working to reverse the spell since the war was over.
The spell was complex; she had written it herself. A reversal tailored to their minds. A spell carefully crafted, more than anything she had ever done.
Light glowed at her wand’s tip. It shimmered around them.
Then she waited.
Silence.
Her mother blinked first, the glaze over their eyes returning to normal. Her mother blinked repeatedly, as if she were seeing the sight in front of her for the first time. She let out a gasp.
Tears flooded her eyes.
“Hermione?”
Hermione smiled, her eyes watering as she quickly put away her wand. "Mum. Dad."
Her parents rushed forward, wrapping her in the hug she had dreamed of a hundred times.
“You came back to us,” her father whispered, voice cracking.
“Always,” she cried.
"I never stopped loving you," Her mom sobbed, “Not for a second.”
After a long year of separation, the Grangers reunited. This time, not even an evil wizard would keep them apart.