[fic] If you were happy every day of your life you wouldn't be a human being.
fic: If you were happy every day of your life you wouldn't be a human being. You'd be a game-show host.
fandom: Harry Potter
characters: Hermione, OMC
word count: ~3,100
recipient: for upupa_epops who prompted on tumblr "Hermione telling her children about the Muggle world" ... lol that isn't at all what this is - this is more a character study of what Hermione may have been like as a Muggle and what she gave up to be a witch. Setting is primarily year one and year seven.
This is not a perfect Hermione.
[the things we throw away]She used to play hopscotch.
On the night that Ron leaves and they are she is all alone in the forest she pulls a memory out of her mind like a silver necklace in the moonlight. She can see herself playing hopscotch like a normal girl in the reflection of the puddle that she discards her memory in.
She thinks later she’ll regret letting go of that Muggle girl who played hopscotch with her friends outside her little house. She thinks maybe she can’t win this war if that girl isn’t inside of her, reminding her what to fight for.
But she needs to lose something that will hurt more.
So she tears a piece of herself away and calls it war.
She never played hopscotch. At least not in any memory she can find to comfort herself with.
She read Hogwarts, A History curled up in bed the same way she had read Pippi Longstockings and The Secret Garden during the winter holiday that same year. Before Professor McGonagall arrived in her austere black dress and sensible heels talking about ‘talent’ and ‘magic’ and a world Hermione had always imagined were just the fanciful dreams of a child. She was a child. Children know - in ways that adults have a difficulty comprehending - that the stuff of fairy tales are just for them.
And because of that, they cannot be true.
The world isn’t made for children. Anything in the world that seems to be too good to be true is just that: a childish wish.
Hermione has never been more proud of her parents than on that day, sitting in their own living room and being told by a stranger that the world does not belong to them. It will take her quite a few more years before she realized just how heroic it was to sit still and quietly while your world falls apart and offer tea with milk and honey to the woman who wants to drag your daughter out into something you can’t understand.
They took her to a bookstore first thing. There were three months before the school year started and they wanted their daughter to have every moment she needed to prepare.
Books were one thing that the three of them shared. They all had their own copy. Her mother also picked up a couple of romance novels with grinning witches on the covers and her father plucked up Merlin, the Man and Legend and spent the next month or so shouting out “By Jove!” and reading passages out loud to them in delighted wonder.
It was with great surprise that Hermione found herself unliked and ill-suited to life at Hogwarts. She had read Hogwarts, A History backwards and forwards more times that summer than she cared to admit (though she had a sneaking suspicion that her mother knew).
It hadn’t prepared her for anything.
She could answer every question in every class without fault. The professors alternatively sighed at her raised hand or beamed down at her. It was always touch and go with professors - but even more so in a school that had a natural prejudice against people built into its very nature. She tried to ask the Hat to put her in the House that would guarantee her success with the most people, but didn’t really know how to put into words a secret she had never even know about herself.
Hermione Granger very desperately wanted to be liked.
Hermione Granger was the very best at hopscotch. It was all math and her six year old mind knew better than to tell her classmates this on the first day of year one. Nevertheless, she won the correct amount of times and made the correct amount of mistakes. She wasn’t a queen - she didn’t have the hair or the style for it and cared far more about jumping into puddles than keeping her jumper pristine - but she was well liked. In fifth year she was the treasurer through a unanimous vote. That’s not president, mind you, but much better than secretary and everyone knew it. In sixth year her status as Patrick O’Dell’s best girl ensured that in the years that followed, she’d be nominated for things and be invited to the right parties.
Hermione Granger was the very best at magic. It was all logic and precision and books. But there was nothing in books that could explain why she was struggling to come up with anything to say to anyone.
Hermione Granger had never eaten lunch alone a day in her life. (Alright, there was a brief period in year five when she had gotten into an argument with Peggy Stewart and it had caused a pretty strong division between her and the rest of the girls in year five. But even then … Anyway it had only lasted a week at most and then things went back to normal with Peggy ruling the world and Hermione at her right hand.) It was an uncommonly uncomfortable thing to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner alone in a large room full of laughing and chattering teens.
(A more noble person would have taken the time to reflect on any slights she had bestowed upon other girls when she was living in the lap of society’s good favor. But being eleven is a bit like being a supervillain in a comic book, you are equally aware of every injustice given to you and unaware that you are capable of ever doing anyone wrong.)
She very angrily blames a great deal of people for her unpopularity - but specifically points her hardened heart at Ron Weasley and Harry Potter. The boy who has a dozen relations to show him how to function in this (slightly) terrifying world she is only playacting at understanding and the Boy Who Lived - a truly ridiculous Muggle boy that the old Muggle Hermione would have made such short work of but whom has the entire world groveling at his feet without trying.
Which is why she’s genuinely surprised when they save her from a giant troll.
They remind her a bit…
She throws herself into research because here, that’s what she’s good at. And she may not be right hand to a queen anymore, but she might be something and that’s quite a bit different.
Hey nerd, what are you reading?
None of your business.
I can’t believe you’re not going to sit next to me in math anymore. Who am I going to cheat off of?
Jessica does alright in math.
Dougbert? She would have failed last year if she hadn’t---
No, Jessica Lyle.
I’ll take my chances on my own. Maybe just email you my homework.
I told you, I won’t have email. School rules.
Snail mail? We can write each other poetry like those dead writers you like so much.
Your poetry is horrific.
Your face is horrific.
Get out of here if you’re going to be rude.
Fine, your mum saw me coming up the walk and started making cookies. I’ll be treated better down in the kitchen with her than up here with you anyway.
Hey butthead?
Yeah Twigs?
Don’t ever change, okay?
That’s the plan.
That first summer she comes home and is totally different in ways she can’t explain. She feels like if she was any other girl she’d paint her fingernails black and wear a lot of eyeliner and listen to obscure punk music no one in her old gang had never heard of.
So she does.
It’s an easy part to play and it will be easier for them to forget her if she’s different in a way they can understand.
She doesn’t tell her parents the part about nearly dying in pursuit of an Evil Wizard. She doesn’t tell the parts about being so lonely and frightened that she nearly gave up. She tells them about Ron’s brothers and Harry’s skills on a broomstick and her perfect grades and the feasts. She gives her father a wizard’s chess set and doesn’t cry when he sets it on the table with a sort of childish glee that does not remind her of anyone, nope.
She sees him in the record store that is currently helping her fuel an obsession with obscure punk bands no one has ever heard of. She saw Peggy earlier that week. They said hello in stilted awkward tones and Hermione hid behind her ripped jeans and eyeliner and didn’t let her heart beat faster when her best friend turned away. She saw Patrick in the grocer’s with his parents and popped her gum in their face with a smirk that she probably learned at her private school she hears them say as they drag him away.
She isn’t expecting him to be there, but her mother is not the most trustworthy person and has always sent him after her in the exact moments when she needed him the most. Those moments when you desperately don’t want anyone near, but that singular person who knows you best.
You’re bad at hiding, nerd.
She shrugs and it is a thing of beauty.
You never wrote me back.
She closes her eyes because her back is to him and he can’t see.
He’s never been this forthright with anyone about anything, never been vulnerable in his entire life and he could be choking on his words, I missed you, Hermione.
She flips her hair and rolls her eyes, Yeah well, like I was super busy.
He’s hurt and it is enough to break her, so she snaps her gum instead.
You haven’t changed a bit, she says in a condescending tone that would have made Malfoy proud.
I always knew it would be you who’d change, anyway.
She gets better at hiding after that. Loses herself in red hair and fights over morning sausage and pretends to be a witch first and a girl second.
He sent her exactly 52 letters her first year at Hogwarts.
He sent her exactly 52 letters her second year at Hogwarts.
He sent her exactly 47 letters her third year at Hogwarts.
He sent her exactly 31 letters her fourth year at Hogwarts.
He sent her exactly 15 letters her fifth year at Hogwarts.
He sent her exactly 23 letters her sixth year at Hogwarts.
She wrote him exactly 57 letters every year she was at Hogwarts.
She keeps them in a box under her bed.
She stares down at the girl playing hopscotch in a puddle on the ground in a forest where she is hiding with her best friend and watches the girl get tackled by a skinny boy with dark skin and dark hair and bright eyes and the world’s biggest smile.
She pulls the boy out of the puddle and puts him back inside.
She walks away from the girl who played hopscotch better than anyone else in year one, but she keeps the boy that always knew she was the greatest person he knew.
(She never read them, if that’s what you are wondering.)
There is a lull in the battle, there is always a lull; a moment when the pain comes up full throttle and threatens to win before you can even pull out your wand and make a grand speech.
She walks up the flights of stairs and through the common room, intent on collapsing onto her bed and sleeping until someone tells her what to do. She’s tired of deciding. She wants to rest.
On her bed is a perfect pile of letters.
One for every day since the school year started.
(Funny how she could erase herself from the minds of her own parents, but the idea of walking next door and taking that girl she used to be out of the heart of a boy that doesn’t know her anymore anyway filled her with the deepest dread.)
She reaches for the one on top and the scar on her arm mocks her.
She’ll never get used to that.
Hey nerd,
The weather here is shite. Neil says I need to start wearing a scarf and has it in his head to knit me one. It will probably be a disaster. I’ll send pictures.
Butthead
ps - laugh today if you haven’t yet
Hermione Granger, 17 years and too old to count, sits on her bed in the dark and laughs.
Hey nerd, what are you reading?
None of your business.
Surprised to see you home.
What are you doing in my house, anyway?
Your parents get lonely so I come over once in a while to make a mess for them. Seems to perk your mum right up when I leave mud in the entryway.
Well you’ve done your civic duty, you can leave now.
You know what I wish sometimes?
That Neil’s jaw would detach itself so he could swallow you whole.
I wish that when we were kids I had begged you to stay. Ran after your car screaming and crying until you made your dad stop and came running out to hug me. We pretended like nothing would change, you going to that fancy school. Only everything changed.
…
My parents think I’ll probably marry Neil and work at gramp’s store until I’m old and grey just like dad. Can you imagine?
It sounds like a really lovely life, actually.
And where will you be?
Somewhere far away.
Do you ever wish you could’ve… Is there ever going to be a day when I can come with you?
No.
Why not?
Because I don’t want you to be anywhere but here.
In the midst of a war, Hermione Granger sat on her bed and read one letter from her best friend for every day that she had been scared and lost and alone and running for her life. They were mostly short and silly, little anecdotes from his life about his boyfriend and family and their small town.
She sat at her desk and wrote him one last letter before walking back down the stairs and throwing herself back into a battle she no longer thought they could win.
Butthead,
Sorry I haven’t sent a letter before now. This school is hell. I’ll tell you all about it when I come home during summer holiday. Tell Neil I said hey.
Nerd
ps - play hopscotch if you haven’t today
On the day before first grade Hermione Granger sat on her front porch and chewed on her lower lip decidedly. She was nervous, of course. School was a pretty big deal in her life and she wasn’t sure if she was fully prepared for it.
She wasn’t very good at people. (She heard her mother say this to an aunt or family friend once at a party and it was something that stuck in her childish mind very strongly.)
The boy next door was playing hopscotch with his little sister. He was wearing a pink feather boa around his neck. Her mother had told her he would be in her class at school, but a fit of shyness had prevented her from saying hello to him yet.
Practice makes perfect, Hermione baby, her father always told her when he sat her down in front of the piano or before he challenged her to a game of chess after dinner.
Okay. Practice.
Hermione Granger, age 6, stood up and squared her shoulders and walked up to the boy in the feather boa playing hopscotch on the sidewalk with his sister and stuck out her hand, Hello. I’m Hermione Granger.
The boy smiled. It was a beautiful smile, started slow in the corners of his lips and then transformed his whole face into a wrinkly mess.
Hi! I’m Seth. This is my sister Charlie. She’s three.
Hermione smiled stiffly, Hello. She felt rather worn out and was wondering how on earth to extricate herself from this situation and get back inside to her parents and their silences and her books.
Seth looked at her quizzically, Miss Hermione Granger have you laughed today? Mum says everyone should laugh at least once a day to stop the grey ghosts from eating up all the happiness.
Charlie looked up at her, Mum is dead.
Seth nodded, Yup. But that doesn’t mean she wasn’t a smart old girl just like dad says. Charlie seemed rather skeptical about the wisdom of an invisible mother and Hermione couldn’t help but agree. There was no such thing as ghosts.
My mum says an apple a day keeps the doctor away. Apples are much more scientific than laughter, Hermione pointed out rather logically, hoping that the strange boy didn’t notice the way her missing teeth up front made her slur ‘scientific’ into something more akin to shyanthiphics.
Yup. You’re awful smart Miss Granger. He grabbed her hands in his and started to spin her around in a circle. But even smart people need to laugh sometimes.
He spun her around and around and around on the sidewalk until she felt as though she might be sick. Unfathomably, she laughed instead. Giggled and chortled and laughed so loud and so hard she thought her sides might split in half. Laughed until they collapsed in a heap next to Charlie on the ground, a tangle of pink feathers and limbs.
Seth propped himself up on his elbows and looked at Hermione, gasping for breath and giggling as they half-heartedly kicked at each other. Miss Hermione Granger you have a truly marvelous laugh. I think it will be my job to make you laugh every day until we are old and grey.
Or dead, Charlie said placidly as she drew a flower on the ground with her chalk.
Hermione closed her eyes and felt the setting sun warm her cheeks. Dying doesn’t happen to six year olds so she ignored the sentiment and thought only of bright happy things like friends and hopscotch and laughter.
After the war, Hermione sent Harry a letter from her exile into Muggle society (as Ron moodily called her three-month vacation in her home town) with pictures of her at a graduation, a party, walking in a rose garden. There was never anyone else in the photos and that never struck them as odd (even though Seth several times tried to shove pictures of him and Neil into the envelope before she slapped his hand away).
Harry~
Life just kept going for them. And it was high time I reminded myself of it. Tell Ron I’ll be back soon. Got a wedding to plan!
Hermione
ps - do me a favor? Laugh if you haven’t yet today. Just trust me.
and my habit of writing angsty fic returns! woohoo!
fandom: Harry Potter
characters: Hermione, OMC
word count: ~3,100
recipient: for upupa_epops who prompted on tumblr "Hermione telling her children about the Muggle world" ... lol that isn't at all what this is - this is more a character study of what Hermione may have been like as a Muggle and what she gave up to be a witch. Setting is primarily year one and year seven.
This is not a perfect Hermione.
[the things we throw away]She used to play hopscotch.
On the night that Ron leaves and they are she is all alone in the forest she pulls a memory out of her mind like a silver necklace in the moonlight. She can see herself playing hopscotch like a normal girl in the reflection of the puddle that she discards her memory in.
She thinks later she’ll regret letting go of that Muggle girl who played hopscotch with her friends outside her little house. She thinks maybe she can’t win this war if that girl isn’t inside of her, reminding her what to fight for.
But she needs to lose something that will hurt more.
So she tears a piece of herself away and calls it war.
She never played hopscotch. At least not in any memory she can find to comfort herself with.
She read Hogwarts, A History curled up in bed the same way she had read Pippi Longstockings and The Secret Garden during the winter holiday that same year. Before Professor McGonagall arrived in her austere black dress and sensible heels talking about ‘talent’ and ‘magic’ and a world Hermione had always imagined were just the fanciful dreams of a child. She was a child. Children know - in ways that adults have a difficulty comprehending - that the stuff of fairy tales are just for them.
And because of that, they cannot be true.
The world isn’t made for children. Anything in the world that seems to be too good to be true is just that: a childish wish.
Hermione has never been more proud of her parents than on that day, sitting in their own living room and being told by a stranger that the world does not belong to them. It will take her quite a few more years before she realized just how heroic it was to sit still and quietly while your world falls apart and offer tea with milk and honey to the woman who wants to drag your daughter out into something you can’t understand.
They took her to a bookstore first thing. There were three months before the school year started and they wanted their daughter to have every moment she needed to prepare.
Books were one thing that the three of them shared. They all had their own copy. Her mother also picked up a couple of romance novels with grinning witches on the covers and her father plucked up Merlin, the Man and Legend and spent the next month or so shouting out “By Jove!” and reading passages out loud to them in delighted wonder.
It was with great surprise that Hermione found herself unliked and ill-suited to life at Hogwarts. She had read Hogwarts, A History backwards and forwards more times that summer than she cared to admit (though she had a sneaking suspicion that her mother knew).
It hadn’t prepared her for anything.
She could answer every question in every class without fault. The professors alternatively sighed at her raised hand or beamed down at her. It was always touch and go with professors - but even more so in a school that had a natural prejudice against people built into its very nature. She tried to ask the Hat to put her in the House that would guarantee her success with the most people, but didn’t really know how to put into words a secret she had never even know about herself.
Hermione Granger very desperately wanted to be liked.
Hermione Granger was the very best at hopscotch. It was all math and her six year old mind knew better than to tell her classmates this on the first day of year one. Nevertheless, she won the correct amount of times and made the correct amount of mistakes. She wasn’t a queen - she didn’t have the hair or the style for it and cared far more about jumping into puddles than keeping her jumper pristine - but she was well liked. In fifth year she was the treasurer through a unanimous vote. That’s not president, mind you, but much better than secretary and everyone knew it. In sixth year her status as Patrick O’Dell’s best girl ensured that in the years that followed, she’d be nominated for things and be invited to the right parties.
Hermione Granger was the very best at magic. It was all logic and precision and books. But there was nothing in books that could explain why she was struggling to come up with anything to say to anyone.
Hermione Granger had never eaten lunch alone a day in her life. (Alright, there was a brief period in year five when she had gotten into an argument with Peggy Stewart and it had caused a pretty strong division between her and the rest of the girls in year five. But even then … Anyway it had only lasted a week at most and then things went back to normal with Peggy ruling the world and Hermione at her right hand.) It was an uncommonly uncomfortable thing to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner alone in a large room full of laughing and chattering teens.
(A more noble person would have taken the time to reflect on any slights she had bestowed upon other girls when she was living in the lap of society’s good favor. But being eleven is a bit like being a supervillain in a comic book, you are equally aware of every injustice given to you and unaware that you are capable of ever doing anyone wrong.)
She very angrily blames a great deal of people for her unpopularity - but specifically points her hardened heart at Ron Weasley and Harry Potter. The boy who has a dozen relations to show him how to function in this (slightly) terrifying world she is only playacting at understanding and the Boy Who Lived - a truly ridiculous Muggle boy that the old Muggle Hermione would have made such short work of but whom has the entire world groveling at his feet without trying.
Which is why she’s genuinely surprised when they save her from a giant troll.
They remind her a bit…
She throws herself into research because here, that’s what she’s good at. And she may not be right hand to a queen anymore, but she might be something and that’s quite a bit different.
Hey nerd, what are you reading?
None of your business.
I can’t believe you’re not going to sit next to me in math anymore. Who am I going to cheat off of?
Jessica does alright in math.
Dougbert? She would have failed last year if she hadn’t---
No, Jessica Lyle.
I’ll take my chances on my own. Maybe just email you my homework.
I told you, I won’t have email. School rules.
Snail mail? We can write each other poetry like those dead writers you like so much.
Your poetry is horrific.
Your face is horrific.
Get out of here if you’re going to be rude.
Fine, your mum saw me coming up the walk and started making cookies. I’ll be treated better down in the kitchen with her than up here with you anyway.
Hey butthead?
Yeah Twigs?
Don’t ever change, okay?
That’s the plan.
That first summer she comes home and is totally different in ways she can’t explain. She feels like if she was any other girl she’d paint her fingernails black and wear a lot of eyeliner and listen to obscure punk music no one in her old gang had never heard of.
So she does.
It’s an easy part to play and it will be easier for them to forget her if she’s different in a way they can understand.
She doesn’t tell her parents the part about nearly dying in pursuit of an Evil Wizard. She doesn’t tell the parts about being so lonely and frightened that she nearly gave up. She tells them about Ron’s brothers and Harry’s skills on a broomstick and her perfect grades and the feasts. She gives her father a wizard’s chess set and doesn’t cry when he sets it on the table with a sort of childish glee that does not remind her of anyone, nope.
She sees him in the record store that is currently helping her fuel an obsession with obscure punk bands no one has ever heard of. She saw Peggy earlier that week. They said hello in stilted awkward tones and Hermione hid behind her ripped jeans and eyeliner and didn’t let her heart beat faster when her best friend turned away. She saw Patrick in the grocer’s with his parents and popped her gum in their face with a smirk that she probably learned at her private school she hears them say as they drag him away.
She isn’t expecting him to be there, but her mother is not the most trustworthy person and has always sent him after her in the exact moments when she needed him the most. Those moments when you desperately don’t want anyone near, but that singular person who knows you best.
You’re bad at hiding, nerd.
She shrugs and it is a thing of beauty.
You never wrote me back.
She closes her eyes because her back is to him and he can’t see.
He’s never been this forthright with anyone about anything, never been vulnerable in his entire life and he could be choking on his words, I missed you, Hermione.
She flips her hair and rolls her eyes, Yeah well, like I was super busy.
He’s hurt and it is enough to break her, so she snaps her gum instead.
You haven’t changed a bit, she says in a condescending tone that would have made Malfoy proud.
I always knew it would be you who’d change, anyway.
She gets better at hiding after that. Loses herself in red hair and fights over morning sausage and pretends to be a witch first and a girl second.
He sent her exactly 52 letters her first year at Hogwarts.
He sent her exactly 52 letters her second year at Hogwarts.
He sent her exactly 47 letters her third year at Hogwarts.
He sent her exactly 31 letters her fourth year at Hogwarts.
He sent her exactly 15 letters her fifth year at Hogwarts.
He sent her exactly 23 letters her sixth year at Hogwarts.
She wrote him exactly 57 letters every year she was at Hogwarts.
She keeps them in a box under her bed.
She stares down at the girl playing hopscotch in a puddle on the ground in a forest where she is hiding with her best friend and watches the girl get tackled by a skinny boy with dark skin and dark hair and bright eyes and the world’s biggest smile.
She pulls the boy out of the puddle and puts him back inside.
She walks away from the girl who played hopscotch better than anyone else in year one, but she keeps the boy that always knew she was the greatest person he knew.
(She never read them, if that’s what you are wondering.)
There is a lull in the battle, there is always a lull; a moment when the pain comes up full throttle and threatens to win before you can even pull out your wand and make a grand speech.
She walks up the flights of stairs and through the common room, intent on collapsing onto her bed and sleeping until someone tells her what to do. She’s tired of deciding. She wants to rest.
On her bed is a perfect pile of letters.
One for every day since the school year started.
(Funny how she could erase herself from the minds of her own parents, but the idea of walking next door and taking that girl she used to be out of the heart of a boy that doesn’t know her anymore anyway filled her with the deepest dread.)
She reaches for the one on top and the scar on her arm mocks her.
She’ll never get used to that.
Hey nerd,
The weather here is shite. Neil says I need to start wearing a scarf and has it in his head to knit me one. It will probably be a disaster. I’ll send pictures.
Butthead
ps - laugh today if you haven’t yet
Hermione Granger, 17 years and too old to count, sits on her bed in the dark and laughs.
Hey nerd, what are you reading?
None of your business.
Surprised to see you home.
What are you doing in my house, anyway?
Your parents get lonely so I come over once in a while to make a mess for them. Seems to perk your mum right up when I leave mud in the entryway.
Well you’ve done your civic duty, you can leave now.
You know what I wish sometimes?
That Neil’s jaw would detach itself so he could swallow you whole.
I wish that when we were kids I had begged you to stay. Ran after your car screaming and crying until you made your dad stop and came running out to hug me. We pretended like nothing would change, you going to that fancy school. Only everything changed.
…
My parents think I’ll probably marry Neil and work at gramp’s store until I’m old and grey just like dad. Can you imagine?
It sounds like a really lovely life, actually.
And where will you be?
Somewhere far away.
Do you ever wish you could’ve… Is there ever going to be a day when I can come with you?
No.
Why not?
Because I don’t want you to be anywhere but here.
In the midst of a war, Hermione Granger sat on her bed and read one letter from her best friend for every day that she had been scared and lost and alone and running for her life. They were mostly short and silly, little anecdotes from his life about his boyfriend and family and their small town.
She sat at her desk and wrote him one last letter before walking back down the stairs and throwing herself back into a battle she no longer thought they could win.
Butthead,
Sorry I haven’t sent a letter before now. This school is hell. I’ll tell you all about it when I come home during summer holiday. Tell Neil I said hey.
Nerd
ps - play hopscotch if you haven’t today
On the day before first grade Hermione Granger sat on her front porch and chewed on her lower lip decidedly. She was nervous, of course. School was a pretty big deal in her life and she wasn’t sure if she was fully prepared for it.
She wasn’t very good at people. (She heard her mother say this to an aunt or family friend once at a party and it was something that stuck in her childish mind very strongly.)
The boy next door was playing hopscotch with his little sister. He was wearing a pink feather boa around his neck. Her mother had told her he would be in her class at school, but a fit of shyness had prevented her from saying hello to him yet.
Practice makes perfect, Hermione baby, her father always told her when he sat her down in front of the piano or before he challenged her to a game of chess after dinner.
Okay. Practice.
Hermione Granger, age 6, stood up and squared her shoulders and walked up to the boy in the feather boa playing hopscotch on the sidewalk with his sister and stuck out her hand, Hello. I’m Hermione Granger.
The boy smiled. It was a beautiful smile, started slow in the corners of his lips and then transformed his whole face into a wrinkly mess.
Hi! I’m Seth. This is my sister Charlie. She’s three.
Hermione smiled stiffly, Hello. She felt rather worn out and was wondering how on earth to extricate herself from this situation and get back inside to her parents and their silences and her books.
Seth looked at her quizzically, Miss Hermione Granger have you laughed today? Mum says everyone should laugh at least once a day to stop the grey ghosts from eating up all the happiness.
Charlie looked up at her, Mum is dead.
Seth nodded, Yup. But that doesn’t mean she wasn’t a smart old girl just like dad says. Charlie seemed rather skeptical about the wisdom of an invisible mother and Hermione couldn’t help but agree. There was no such thing as ghosts.
My mum says an apple a day keeps the doctor away. Apples are much more scientific than laughter, Hermione pointed out rather logically, hoping that the strange boy didn’t notice the way her missing teeth up front made her slur ‘scientific’ into something more akin to shyanthiphics.
Yup. You’re awful smart Miss Granger. He grabbed her hands in his and started to spin her around in a circle. But even smart people need to laugh sometimes.
He spun her around and around and around on the sidewalk until she felt as though she might be sick. Unfathomably, she laughed instead. Giggled and chortled and laughed so loud and so hard she thought her sides might split in half. Laughed until they collapsed in a heap next to Charlie on the ground, a tangle of pink feathers and limbs.
Seth propped himself up on his elbows and looked at Hermione, gasping for breath and giggling as they half-heartedly kicked at each other. Miss Hermione Granger you have a truly marvelous laugh. I think it will be my job to make you laugh every day until we are old and grey.
Or dead, Charlie said placidly as she drew a flower on the ground with her chalk.
Hermione closed her eyes and felt the setting sun warm her cheeks. Dying doesn’t happen to six year olds so she ignored the sentiment and thought only of bright happy things like friends and hopscotch and laughter.
After the war, Hermione sent Harry a letter from her exile into Muggle society (as Ron moodily called her three-month vacation in her home town) with pictures of her at a graduation, a party, walking in a rose garden. There was never anyone else in the photos and that never struck them as odd (even though Seth several times tried to shove pictures of him and Neil into the envelope before she slapped his hand away).
Harry~
Life just kept going for them. And it was high time I reminded myself of it. Tell Ron I’ll be back soon. Got a wedding to plan!
Hermione
ps - do me a favor? Laugh if you haven’t yet today. Just trust me.
and my habit of writing angsty fic returns! woohoo!