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“We’re sure this was the right flight?”
Jean kept watching the departing passengers, then glanced to her darling husband. Quite tanned after months in the Bahamas, just as she was. “Positive.” Maybe 90% positive. She pulled out the handwritten sheet with the details. “Hermione repeated it over the phone, so–“
“That’s her!” Richard almost shouted.
And it was.
They hadn’t seen her since last July, after winning that ridiculously opulent prize drawing neither could quite remember entering. A year in the Bahamas, all expenses paid. Only for two, however.
Hermione hadn’t complained; she had her final year to get through at her… magic school. Still gives Jean the giggles to think about it, even when each summer their daughter showed her growing proficiency with a sprig of wood.
Jean recalled how Hermione looked when they’d left to cross the Atlantic. Worried, she’d thought. Determined too, oddly.
And now. Happy. Oh so happy. She was smiling, carefree. Hermione dropped her carry-on and ran into their arms. A big Granger family hug. Jean missed these and knew Richard did too.
She pulled back to properly greet her daughter, then nearly gasped. “Honey…”
Her husband saw it too and as always didn’t pull punches. “Hermione, you look awful.”
Her face was thinned out, nearly gaunt. Haggard and utterly too pale, even for Britain. One eyebrow looked… singed? Mended cuts lined her hands, plus with broken fingernails.
And she’d always been on the slim side, but never like this. She’d lost serious weight over the last ten months.
Hermione knew this as well, from her mild shrug of a response. “The nice people at Heathrow thought so too and called for security, assuming I was fleeing child abuse or human trafficking. British Air, ditto while boarding. Good thing I had a valid ID and confirmation my birth parents were waiting in Nassau.” She flashed that cocky grin she’d display whenever outsmarting teachers, or adults in general.
Jean pulled Hermione in for another hug. “Nice dodge attempt, honey. We still want to know why you look like a battlefield refugee.”
Richard, God love him, backed her up. “Exactly what happened at school last year?”
~~~~~~
“A lot” was all Hermione would say as they left the airport. She promised, however, to tell them everything. Privately.
Crookshanks was waiting (impatiently and loudly) in the tiny Civic. Windows cracked and shades deployed; after nearly a year, he and Jean knew how bloody hot it could get here.
Hermione sees her cat, and the cat sees her. Heads turned in the parking lot at the squeals from both. Jean opened the door, and Crookshanks leapt directly into Hermione’s embrace.
They snuggled as Hermione navigated into her seat and Richard stored her bag into the boot. It was about an hour back to the beachside cottage. The conversation stayed light. “That was easily the best experience in forever. Merlin, but…” She stopped. “Goodness, I mean. Divinely comfortable seats. I slept most of the way. And everyone complains about airline food, but that was exquisite. I was very glad they woke me for it.”
Crookshanks gently batted at her contented face, and she batted back. “I spent seven years hating to fly. Not anymore!” Jean joined her laughter. Hermione’d told them of her loathing for ‘uncertain and unsafe aeronautical devices.’ Only part of her school she’d never liked, as said many times.
“I left, but I can still fly,” and that was almost whispered to herself. “And First Class, too.” Richard turned and saw her sit up straighter to announce, “Going forward, I believe I want more First Class in my life.”
Richard thought about how she looked, despite the cheerful tone. “I’m glad you had a good trip, Hermione.” He ruffled her hair a bit, which if anything seemed bushier than before. “But we still need to talk.”
“Agreed,” said the driver.
“Me too, actually.” Richard silently bets neither he nor Jean will like what they’re going to hear from her.
~~~~~~
“After a shower, please?” Hermione amended once they were inside and she was shown around. Out on the porch, Jean thought she was basking in the sun like she’d never seen sunlight before. Or like she’d never see it again.
Jean waited a few minutes after the lengthy shower quieted to tap on the door for admittance. Hermione was pulling on a long-sleeved blouse, and dammit she didn’t look healthy. At all.
Jean nearly missed the opened carry-on resting on the bed. It was next to that small, beaded bag that Hermione’d had for years. It looked worn.
Her gaze was pulled to the empty hangers in the closet. No clothes on them, but underneath were large stacks of books. Old ones, Jean thought. Many had thick metal locking clasps like she’d seen on display at the Bodleian during a field trip.
Together, they must have weighed forty kilos. Impressive. Jean mimed waving a conductor’s baton, her eyes raised in inquiry. They rose further at Hermione’s response. “It’s in the bag and it’s staying there. I did this by hand, the real way.”
That sounded like there would be more topics for lunch.
Richard had sausages grilling on the patio, potatoes already baking in the kitchen oven. The mainstays of the Granger version of Bangers and Mash. Gravy was simmering on the stove, and peas were steaming in an adjacent pot.
Hermione slid into place like she’d never left, stirring and seasoning the gravy with a contented sigh. Jean pointed to the items on a carving board, and soon there were salads ready to serve. Over the years, their daughter had become excellent at precisely chopping vegetables.
Most importantly, Hermione remembered to put out food for Crookshanks. Who will be under their feet begging for more, they all knew. She gave him a hug before he tucked in.
The plates were plated and carried outside. Their daughter’s an adult now, so Jean opened a bottle of red. Then they, too, tucked in.
By silent consent, the family waited until the plates and the bottle were empty.
“First,” Hermione began, “know I love you both more than you can imagine. You as well,” to the meows from below the table.
Then she told them what had really happened through most of her time in school. In a charmed land of witches and wizards, of magic wands and mystical potions.
They knew about magic, of course. A professor had turned into a cat in front of the family, then had levitated the coffee table. They’d gone with Hermione as she entered that society, entirely hidden underneath Britain’s collective nose. Saw their daughter wave a stick and produce a shower of glistening sparks. Magic.
They didn’t know the other aspects of it. What was below this community, was festering for generations. What Hermione was now telling them. And why she’d kept that from them.
She’d glossed over or outright lied about most of her time at school. Mostly the former until after she and her two new friends had defeated a resurrected villain. Or had never actually died; Hermione was still unsure on that front. Oh, and the deadly troll. She hadn’t written about it, either. “Looking back, it barely makes the list,” she said dismissively.
Instead she’d written of golden school days. A few assorted bullying incidents, sports leagues that she rightfully abstained from, and roundly trouncing classmates academically throughout. And those incredible friends. Those hadn’t been fictitious, she assured them.
A prolonged breath, and she went on. It helped that her school never bothered to notify them of her weeks spent petrified (“Sort of like a coma, I guess”), or when she’d nearly died in a clash against murderous escaped convicts. Richard was about to jump in, and his daughter shook her head. “There’s more.”
During the summers, Hermione maintained the façade. “You’d have pulled me out in a heartbeat for the troll alone,” and they vehemently don’t disagree. Jean wished she had a time machine to go back and keep her from attending.
“I needed to stay,” she countered. “Something was happening, something terrible. I needed to stay and fight. Yes, we were children,” to cut off the retort to come. “The adults were hapless or wilfully ignorant at best.” Hermione paused. “There weren’t the worst, though. Those came out when it started getting properly horrifying.”
She explained the horrors. “There was a civil war taking place, there underneath the surface of Britian. A second one, or a resurgence of the last one. If you read about the Thames bridge collapse, or the countrywide spate of mysterious deaths, those were part of it.” Hermione said. “That was their idea of good time, hunting and murdering people like us for sport. That’s who we were fighting.”
Jean looked to Richard, and they both reached out for her hands.
“Which is why I arranged for you leave Britain.”
Richard sputtered. Jean pursed her lips and then pointed her finger. “The contest.”
Hermoine nodded, her husband as well after a beat. “I always thought it was a bit dodgy.”
“It was,” Hermione admitted. “There’s a magic potion that instils a half-day streak of perfect luck, like every hand you’re dealt is a royal flush. I made a variant but works for only one moment. Much easier to brew. It deals you only one winning hand.”
“Or lets you win a drawing for a trip to the Bahamas,” Richard said.
“Exactly. That got you safely away. To help seal it, I spread rumours that I’d sent you to Australia.”
“Hermione,” and Richard wasn’t saying it in a completely loving way. “I’m hearing that you pushed us aside. Didn’t let us make the decision for ourselves.” Jean was about to say the same.
“Yes, I did exactly that,” her daughter said simply. “I won’t apologise and I’d do it again.”
“It’s the parents’ job to fight for their children,” Jean tried.
“Mum. Dad.” She squeezed their hands, and Jean couldn’t help but feel too much skin and not enough strength. “You didn’t have magic to defend yourselves. Which made you barely count as human in their laws. No, you would have been captured, or killed, or captured then killed. Tortured as well. For amusement, or likely to draw me out to save you. That ploy worked years earlier on a friend, and this lot was never big on originality or creative thought.”
She gripped again, harder this time. “But it’s over and you’re alive. The baddies didn’t win. Hell, I’m alive too.” Their daughter looked somewhat amazed at that last, and wasn’t that a comforting thought. “But it’s over. And I’m over it. I’m not going back. No more magic.”
~~~~~~
Jean glanced to Richard; he went off to locate and uncork a second bottle. As always, his wife was a step ahead of him.
“Is this something we should toast?” Jean asked after he’d refilled glasses. By mutual agreement, they’ve moved on from the rigged contest. A bit dodgy, as he’d often said while sunning on the beach.
“Oh yes,” Hermione replied emphatically. “To the real world and being alive in it!” and they clinked glasses. “My wand is staying in my bag. My bag is going far into an attic, or into a shed I’ve rented. Seven years was enough to prove how terrible magic is.”
Richard leaned back, remembering the joyful enthusiasm to dive into her new school and her new heritage. It was gone now. Burnt away, he guessed.
Hermione looked inside, possibly to her room. “It’s insidiously addictive, hard to stop using. Even now, I want to wave my hand and summon the plates to the sink. Or simply scourgify them spotless.” She was rubbing her arm, and he didn’t know if she was aware if it. “It makes you careless, too. It’s so easy to hurt people because it’s so easy to heal them. Injuries that would permanently main anyone else are dismissed like a scraped knee.” Healing, right. Between years, they’d learned that her teeth had been corrected through magic. There was a minor row over that.
“I think… I think it changes people. Once I could do magic, consequences became less important. Like in my first year; I was totally shirty at classmates over their possible expulsions for a trivial infraction. Later that year, I set fire to a teacher as I thought he was threatening a friend. Oh, just his robes. He was fine,” to their shocked faces. “Fourth year, I captured a reporter and kept her locked in a bottle for months. She was a horrible person and an insect at the time, but still.” Richard was very, very happy Hermione didn’t appear at all proud over her actions.
She grew quiet. “That’s who I became” Hermione finally said, slowly. “Then the war began. People were being killed. It’s easy. Say a few magic words, wave your wand, and they die. Easy.” He didn’t want to hear what he knew she was going to say next. “I killed people. There was a final battle at the school, and I killed people to defend it and those within. I’ve no idea how many. That’s who I became.”
Oh Lord. This was a real war, or ‘a low-intensity conflict’ as the euphemism went. Didn’t change what it was, what had happened.
She knew that as well. “I know I can’t blame magic for all of that. Except I do know that the society I’m leaving, the one that’s fully magical and intentionally rejecting the world around it, isn’t healthy. I studied and witnessed much of it while at school. From the top down, it was oppressive. Regressive too. Entrenched in the past, literally, and remind me to tell of our history teacher. All while the real world is progressing.” She took a sip. “Actually, I’m not sure the people I left comprehend the word.” Given their daughter, Richard found it amazing that she’d stayed as long as she had.
It was beyond worse in the last year, she said. “That’s when the opposite side took over the government.” She paused in contemplation. “It was like flipping a switch, the way they bowed to the new regime’s direction. Nothing really changed, but now the cosmetic concealment was stripped away. No play-acting needed anymore, no more hiding. They could be as cruel and vindictive as they’d always wanted to be.”
Richard was processing her earlier admissions, and it took him a moment to follow this. “True colours?”
“Spot on, Dad. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe it will be nothing but puppies and kittens from here on out. I didn’t want to hang around and find out, however; see when the next Dark Lord pops up to kill me, and the noseless git actually called himself that. So did his gormless, cowardly supplicants.” Noseless, and he knew Jean was desperately avoiding that non-killer joke from Monty Python.
Thankfully, their daughter didn’t notice. “It’s a poisoned, poisonous society,” she continued. “I had to leave. For good. I said my farewells, sent everything else worth keeping off to storage. I want to live in the real world again. Get real degrees. Be part of real progress, and in a real government. Maybe run it one day.”
Those words; those were words he was overjoyed to hear. He’d heard similar ones from her before magic had consumed her life. Those, or that she wanted to be a librarian. Turning her back on all that after almost half her life… Richard knew that must have been painful.
“So when do you want to go back?” Jean asked, a nice topic changer. “Back home, I mean.”
“To be honest, we’re ready when you are,” Richard added. “Paradise loses its appeal after a while.” They heard a plaintive meow from below. “Poor Crooks never quite took to the heat.”
“Frankly, I’d love a week in the heat,” Hermione replied wistfully. “We had a bitterly cold winter, and it seemed like I was outdoors for most of it.”
~~~~~~
That could explain a few things that Jean would like to check on, as they cleared the table. She was an MD before branching into dentistry, after all.
Hermione was amenable to a basic exam, and they retired to her room. Their daughter confirmed that magical healers had seen to her injuries, though probably not all of them. “There were hundreds higher in priority after it was over, many struggling to stay alive. Potions ran low and I barely rated attention.”
Jean gasped for the second time today, louder, when Hermione removed her blouse and jeans. Severely underweight. Probable malnutrition. Vitamin deficiencies so obvious that no bloodwork was needed. Assorted minor internal injuries, given how she winced at mild probes.
And the scars.
The ugliest was across her chest. “Hermione. That looks lethal.”
“It nearly was. I was laid up about a week, a dozen foul-tasting potions each day. Yum.” One of the murderous convicts, she added.
And on her forearm; the letters were visible if not their meaning. “Can I do that one later, Mum?” Jean didn’t press. For now.
Jean knew specialists back in London who should be able to treat them. Those could wait; the rest cannot. She was going to set appointments for tomorrow, and Hermione wasn’t allowed to argue. And she didn’t.
She did want to take a nap, however. A few hours before dinner. Understandable; Jean believed this might be the first real food her daughter’s eaten in months.
Hermione smiled and was out like a light in seconds. Within a minute, Crookshanks was curled up at her side.
In the living room, Jean only nodded at Richard’s worried look. Then she made several phone calls.
They didn’t talk. They didn’t need to. They leaned into each other on the sofa. Every now and then, one rose and peered inside, as if she might disappear.
Dinner was a lighter affair, a seafood at a restaurant that they frequented often. The Grangers have been here long enough to have discovered the island’s secrets, such as… “It’s pirate themed?” Hermione asked, singed eyebrow raised sceptically.
“Trust us,” Richard replied.
“Always.” Though the trust clearly took hits when the server launched into pirate lingo to take their orders. And her parents responded in kind without hesitation.
They could see it restored once her heaping plate landed. Fresh fish, fried to golden browns. Corn on the cob. Crunchy conch fritters. All on paper plates at the outdoor wooden benches. And cocktails, devastatingly and sneakily alcoholic cocktails. “Not a trace of pumpkin,” she said while on her second, and they laughed with her even if they’d not clue one as to why.
Soon Hermione was pirating with the best of them, a paper napkin improvised to become an eyepatch. Having genuine fun. Richard didn’t want to think when the last time was that she’d had fun.
“We’ll do fancy tomorrow,” Jean said. She was the designated driver and could catch up on their return. “And clothes shopping. After your appointments.” Hermione just smiled and didn’t bat an eye. They did make excellent cocktails there, even if the names were also piratically themed nonsense.
Later, the Grangers don’t do anything but watch mindless television. Hermione watched, enthralled. “Seven years to catch up,” she muttered. “And movies. Music too.” Jean offered a couple of favourite films; Richard expressed his own thoughts. Hermione started making a list, then gave up to instead question if they were having her on at some of the plots.
It didn’t go for much longer. Crooks was already in her bed before she was.
~~~~~~
“Our daughter fought in a war. An honest, bloody great war. That nobody will ever know about.”
Jean felt his arms tighten around her. “If I know our daughter, she was responsible for winning it, too.”
“Against the magical Hitler Youth, it sounded like. Plus their adorable parents.”
“Can I say I told you so? Ever since seeing two pillars of that community going at it like hooligans in the bookshop.” She’d never been impressed after that, no matter what Hermione insisted in the years to follow. It was the last time they’d accompanied their daughter into that hidden country.
“I think she was embarrassed that day, Jeanie. Mortified. She’d said so much about how wonderful this magical society is, how eager she was to learn about it. To be part of it.”
“She was crushed, I get it. Magic didn’t prevent it from being as rubbish as ours can be.”
“We still need to talk with her, love. After the doctors tomorrow, of course. And she should see a specialist about… all that. What she did, what happened to her.”
“Absolutely, Rich. Hmmm. Sarah? Or Aisha?”
They were interrupted by a knock on their door. Jean felt panic setting in, and Richard sat up higher.
Their daughter entered, a trifle unsteadily and Crookshanks entwining around her feet. “I almost forgot to tell you that I’ll be leaving in September.”
No. No. No.
“Honey, you said you weren’t going to go back there,” Jean got out, softly.
“What?” Hermione's appearance turned puzzled, then cleared. “No, leaving for Cambridge! As in Cambridge, Cambridge. Got the acceptance earlier in the week.” She waved a thick envelope at them.
Time for another Granger family hug. It turned out that she had been accepted, well, everywhere. America too. Cambridge was her top contender, and better yet was pet-friendly. “No more leaving poor Crooksie behind!” and she nuzzled the happy cat.
He gave a loud purr of contentment.
“Cambridge first,” she declared, as if to the world. Jean thought their daughter’s eyes might be gleaming, and not from the drinks. “No more magic. No more looking backwards. Only forwards. I’ll never think about magic again. I’ll be running Britain one day.”
Her parents couldn’t be prouder on both decrees. Even if only one turned out to be accurate.