Fic: Hermione's Betrayal (Beta Request)
Now with 315 new words, mostly inspired by madderbrad's thoughtful comment/review last time I posted this (the first two paragraphs are all new). Would you lovely folks give it a once-over? *puppy dog eyes*
In the subject line: Hermione's Betrayals, Hermione Granger, Teen
Title: Hermione's Betrayals
Author: marie_j_granger
Fandom: Harry Potter
Rating: PG-13 for themes and mentions of violence
Warnings: Full of angst and woe; not my normal stuff at all. Also, I usually write Harry/Hermione fluff, so I have done my best to keep this gen, but that is my bias.
Prompt: 84) We are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends. We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. -- Joan Didion (born December 5, 1934), American novelist, essayist, screenwriter and playwright.
Summary: Hermione Granger reflects on her life and her relationship with her parents.
Author's Notes: I'm generally one for fluff, so writing this has been a challenge. At one point I gave up on succeeding in femgen and tried to use it for something else. That also fell through, and I decided to finish it - however late - if I could. Getting the word count to the minimum has been like pulling teeth, which is also unusual for me.
The British Wizarding World had the odds stacked against the parents of any Muggleborn witch or wizard, not that the average wizard would ever think of things that way, or care much if he did. If anyone had cared to make a study of it, the vast majority of Muggleborns who finished Hogwarts immersed themselves in Wizarding Culture, loosing touch with their Muggle roots almost entirely. Some even disowned their parents (or were disowned by them). Most simply maintained perfunctory-at-best get-togethers a few times a year, growing more and more awkward as the gulf between their lives inevitably widened.
If she had ever thought to do such research, Hermione would have realized she never really had a chance to maintain a close or even healthy relationship with her parents. She was focused on embracing her new world and being the best witch she could possibly be. Soon, certainly after Halloween of her first year, she devoted herself to Harry's health and their mutual goal of Voldemort's defeat. Eventually the disconnect between her two worlds became impossible to reconcile. The existence of a secret and insular community that welcomed - or at least tolerated - their child but had no use at all for them was bound to drive a wedge between the parents and their child(ren), making it nearly impossible for a Muggleborn to keep a foot in both worlds. In her secret soul, part of Hermione found the extreme act of wiping all traces of herself from her parents' memories a relief.
Hermione Granger had always wanted to make her parents proud. In primary school, grades had come easily to her, and that pleased them. They were both dentists: college educated and fairly no-nonsense, but they loved her very much and valued academic achievement. Of course, the random accidents that frequently happened around her concerned them, but she had still been good enough at school and in her extra-curricular activities like French lessons and piano lessons that they had been fairly content.
Her Hogwarts letter changed many things for her and for them. The accidents suddenly made sense. They had an explanation for all the oddities, but the invitation to a magical boarding school raised many new questions, decisions, and problems. Suddenly, she was not necessarily on the Oxford-or-Cambridge track that William and Charlotte Granger had always planned for their own and only daughter. That was what they had always wanted for her and what she thought she had wanted for herself. However, she was faced with a new option; a completely new world was opening to her. She thought she needed to explore it to understand the part of herself that had never really fit in at primary school.
Her parents had let her go, but part of her always worried that she had disappointed them in not following their original plans for her. Suddenly they couldn't brag to her friends about her accomplishments at school. They couldn't even understand most of what she wrote to them about her classes. She was not even allowed to show them what she had learned when she came home, which always seemed vastly unfair.
Of course, part of the reason they did not fully understand her letters may have been because she sanitized things for their protection. She did not want them to realize how dangerous her new world really was. She did not want them to know she could have been killed by a mountain troll or a Basilisk or even the occasional exploding cauldron. Her rationalization had always been that there was nothing they could do to help and she was terrified that they would pull her out of Hogwarts. Then she would have to try to make a go of it in the Muggle World. Her few friends were precious enough and truly needed her enough for her to feel justified - mostly.
As she got older, school and living in the Magical World only became more dangerous. She lived through isolation when she fought with either of “her” boys, worst of all when they both sided against her. Her new familiar, Crookshanks the part-kneazle, was accused of eating her best friend's familiar, Scabbers the rat. She wore her own nerves to the breaking point taking an unreasonable class load and safeguarding a priceless magical artifact, the time turner. Keeping that secret from the boys, her roommates, and everyone else except Professors McGonagall and Dumbledore had been too much for even her considerable resources in the end. She agonized over going to Professor McGonagall with her concerns about Harry's mysterious Christmas gift of a Firebolt Broomstick. Her tattling made her even more of an outcast in Gryffindor; she became a pariah, especially to and because of her supposed friend, Ron. At the end of the year, she faced hundreds of Dementors and was saved only by the exceptional spell-work of her fellow time traveling best friend. Harry cast Expecto Patronum, a spell that flummoxed many adult wizards, to save himself, his godfather, her, and the unjustly condemned hippogryff, Buckbeak. Then there were the shocks of discovering truths about Harry's parents and their friends and foes, two of whom were professors whom she should have been able to trust.
Fourth year, Harry's life was threatened more than her own by dragons, various aquatic beasts in the lake, a labyrinth full of danger, and finally Voldemort himself. But then, she could have drowned during the second task and there was always the possibility of one of the other monsters being poorly contained. Really, the whole contest had been mad, and insanely dangerous. She had worried about Harry constantly and she had worried about running interference between him and a jealous Ron. She had also experienced her first real date that year. Her mother had helped her shop for dress robes - relishing the chance to share something like that with her rarely-girly girl. Her father had been concerned about her dating someone so much older, and both parents were relieved when they ended up as penfriends.
Fifth year the main threat was from Delores Umbridge, ministry toady. Umbridge goaded generally respectful, dutiful Hermione to incite rebellion and encourage Harry to form an illegal student study group for Defense Against the Dark Arts. That had many consequences, both good and bad. She'd made more friends among her fellow students (and won the secret admiration of more than a few professors when they found out about it), but she also made a powerful enemy in Madame Umbridge. Then there was their end of the year misadventure at the Department of Mysteries. There she suffered an injury she could not completely conceal from her parents. Still, she brushed it off as best as she could as the result of an in-class accident.
Sixth year saw her and her friends fighting off a squadron of Death Eaters, thankfully assisted by members of the Order of the Phoenix and their fellow members of Dumbledore's Army. It also saw the death of Albus Dumbledore, apparently murdered by Professor Severus Snape. She was deeply conflicted, since she'd always tried to respect the man for his position as a teacher, even though he could be and generally was a heartless bully.
Still, for all of her lies, omissions, and half-truths, she did not really feel that she betrayed her parents fully until after Dumbledore's funeral at the end of sixth year. She and Ron had promised Harry that they would help him find and destroy Voldemort's remaining Horcruxes (even though they had no idea how to do that). Fearing that her parents would become targets for their hateful foes, she wiped herself from their memories, gave them new identities, and sent them to Australia. She only hoped she would be able to undo her sins against them and beg for their forgiveness one day. Barring that, if she died on this quest, she hoped they would live out their lives, safe and content away from the madness of the British Wizarding World.