Censorship

It's always the second hour back home that's the most awkward. Seeing her parents at King's Cross station causes a deep surge of happiness, and dissolving into their embrace brings back the feelings of being a little girl; after her first pony ride, or winning the spelling contest in first grade, or playing her Mozart piece faultlessly at her primary school Leaving Concert.

The car ride back to Southampton is filled with happy chatter about nothing in particular, with Hermione perched on the edge of the back seat, precariously leaning forward to catch up with nine months of minor events - her grandparents' health, funny stories from the dental practice, the neighbours' antics. Her mother's hand sneaks over from time to time to curl around hers, as if to make sure she is really there. It feels nice.

At home, they leave Hermione's trunk in the corridor and have afternoon tea, with sandwiches, scones and one of Hermione's beloved cream meringues. Though her parents are extremely busy with their joint dental practice, they always make a point of being home the day she comes back from school. And there always is a meringue, like on her birthday, although they profess to frown over what the sugar does to her teeth.

Hermione chatters about Hogwarts, keeping things light and not allowing for longer pauses. She tells them about the horrid new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher who temporarily substituted as headmistress; that there is a real centaur as Divination professor now and that the girls in her dormitory are all swooning over him; that Ron has made it onto the Quidditch team; that Harry has been hit hard by puberty, and that Ginny has discovered dating.

She talks about the OWLs, and how she hopes for an 'Outstanding' in at least Transfiguration, Charms and Arithmancy, and how she fears a 'Passing' in Defence. Dumbledore's Army has given them plenty of practical experience, but they certainly haven't covered the fifth year syllabus properly...

They finish tea and the last crumbs of meringue, and Hermione announces that she'll go upstairs to unpack her trunk. Her mother strokes her hair and tells her to rest a little - it has been a long journey from Scotland, and she's been ill recently. So she collects her trunk and in passing pulls Crookshanks off the lace curtain he's been pawing, and drags the trunk and her book bags upstairs.

She breathes hard and leans against the doorframe when she reaches her room. Her chest still aches, and there are nights when she wakes struggling for breath and remembers the terror of feeling her ribs shatter under the almost gentle whisper of Antonin Dolohov's spell, still feeling the lethal force behind it that would have pulverised her bones on impact had that spell been uttered aloud.

Three potion phials Madam Pomfrey gave her to take over the next two months are tucked away in a safe corner of her trunk. A vast improvement over the twenty or so draughts daily she's had to down during the previous weeks. Madam Pomfrey hadn't wanted to let her out of the Infirmary so soon - it had taken Hermione a lot of playing down of symptoms and promises to behave responsibly before she was discharged in time to go home. It still hurts when she walks too quickly, or cradles Crookshanks in her arms for too long. But she had to go home - her parents would have been frantic otherwise.

It had been bad enough when Professor McGonagall had told her that her parents would have to be notified about the battle in the Department of Mysteries, and of the extent of her injuries. Hermione's insides had frozen, but she'd nodded earnestly and asked to be permitted to write them herself because it would terrify them less. Hours later, her letter had been owled off, detailing a minor accident resulting in a short stay in the Infirmary. She has learned that lesson after second year, when her Petrification had almost resulted in her not being permitted to return to Hogwarts. Hermione is an accomplished liar - she's not proud of it, but it's a necessity. If she wants to remain a witch, she has to be a liar.

Her room is still the same as it was five years ago when she first left for Hogwarts - white furnishing with a scattering of dark-red inlays. She remembers being giddy with excitement when she picked out the furniture as a ten-year-old, practically dancing at her father's hand. It would make her feel like the princess in a fairy tale, she'd thought then, not knowing that a year later someone would actually come and make her the witch.

Hermione quickly unpacks her things and taps her wand to the Extendable Shelf she picked out in Diagon Alley for her last birthday. The plain white board shudders and creaks, and then rapidly sprouts side boards and more boards until she has a ceiling-high bookshelf that offers room for all her spellbooks and a lot more besides. She stacks her homework scrolls on the desk and suppresses the compulsion to start on her Potions essay right away. She won't have too much time before supper, and it's a tricky comparison between Serenitas Serum and Cheering Charms, a difficult piece of work that will need her uninterrupted attention. Trust Snape to set an essay question that requires the one class she's ever played truant from.

She sits down on the bed with its violet quilt, an heirloom from Grandma Granger, and pulls her old stuffed lion half onto her lap. She plays with its scruffy tail and thinks about her parents. They love her unconditionally, she knows that, and yet talking to them becomes harder every time. It's difficult to talk about Umbridge without mentioning how that... person... has set Dementors on her best friend and later threatened to use the Cruciatus Curse on him. When they don't even know what Dementors are, much less about the Unforgivables. What would they think about a world where such things exist and threaten people's children? Threaten their child?

It's hard to talk about Harry without telling them that he's spent the past year peering into You-Know-Who's mind, when her parents don't even know about the return of the Dark Lord and the dangers that entails. It was hard enough to explain why they had to cancel the trip to Bulgaria last year without mentioning the Order or what it was about, after Hermione had wheedled and schemed so hard to go.

She pets the ears of the lion absently.

The previous summer, Professor McGonagall had come to tell her parents about the 'special course' Hermione was invited to attend, which turned out to be cleaning duty at Twelve Grimmauld Place. Of course, that could have been accomplished by owl, but discreetly setting up wards around the Grangers' home could not. Hermione had watched, and afterwards exchanged a wordless look with the Deputy Headmistress. As Harry's friend, and a Muggleborn, Hermione and her parents will be prime targets for the minions of the newly-risen Dark Lord. Especially after that bitch Skeeter plastered her name all over the wizarding press in connection with Harry's.

Even now, when she casts a harmless vision spell - taught wizarding children to correct their eyesight, and therefore undetectable by the Ministry - Hermione sees the wards' iridescent shimmer outside the window. Well-meaning, but she's seen the Death Eaters in action, and knows it won't be enough. They got Mr Weasley easily, and he's a wizard, and a member of the Order of the Phoenix. Her normal, pacifist parents wouldn't stand a chance. She shudders, and sobs once against the lion's scuffed head. Thinking like that is a sure way to drive herself crazy. They will all be safe once Voldemort is defeated. And Harry and Professor Dumbledore will defeat him, and she will help!

A soft knock on the door makes her look up. Her mother steps in, a stuffed parchment envelope in her hand.

"The owl came round this morning," she smiles. "He's a sharp one, your beau."

Hermione flushes to the roots of her hair, and her mother chuckles and closes the door behind her.

She tears open the envelope with a secretive smile and a small flutter in her stomach, and pulls out the thick wad of parchment. She scans over the first half page eagerly, then lets it drop into her lap with a frown.

He will be in France over the summer, at the Quiberon Quafflepunchers' International Summer Training Camp. He would like to see her. She uncurls her legs and gets up to put the letter on her writing desk before lying down again, hugging her pillow tightly.

She wants to go. She's been feeling terrible about cancelling her visit to Sofia last year on such short notice, even if they did continue to correspond by owl over the year. He never blamed her, or even hinted that he was annoyed, but he had to be - if their roles were reversed, she would be.

It would be so perfect. Her parents have a little summer bungalow on the Brittany coast, and she could have it connected to the Network and travel from there by Floo. Her parents, she knows, are dying to meet the young man their daughter has spoken so very little about, compared to Ron, or Harry, or the twins, whose quirks she enjoys regaling them with at the dinner table.

Viktor... Viktor she likes to keep to herself. The first person to ever view her as a girl, not a mate or a bookbag or a brain to pick about homework. She still feels the glow, thinking about the Yule Ball, where not even that bloody fascist git Malfoy - the younger one - had managed to sneer at her.

It's easy to drift off for a while, cuddled against a stuffed animal, thinking about the first boy to kiss her. It's special, Parvati's and Lavender's Witch Weekly articles say, but it would have been special even if it weren't her fist time, that Hermione knows.

~ ~ ~

For supper, they have minestrone and pasta primavera, because Hermione and her mother both love continental food and it's such a change from the traditional Hogwarts fare. Hermione skilfully deflects questions about her 'Charms accident', and explains about her adventures in knitting and how she considered continuing SPEW when she leaves school. Her parents smile at that, having had Dobby described to them, but Hermione knows they are secretly proud of her crusading spirit. All those Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament marches they took her to as a toddler must have rubbed off on her, and they're glad to have raised her to stand up against injustice, even in the most alien of worlds.

They have seen enough of the prejudices that rule much of wizarding society, from strange looks in Diagon Alley to Mr Weasley's memorable run-in with that fascist git Malfoy - the older one - in Flourish and Blotts three years ago, to know it's not a fairy tale world, but they have not seen it turn into a nightmare. Hermione has, in the Department of Mysteries.

Hermione agrees to take over a few mornings of receptionist duty at the practice, a task she enjoys for its sheer ordinariness, and because spending time among ordinary people - even ailing ordinary people - has its very own charm after nine months at Hogwarts.

During the cheese and grapes, her mother mentions, casually,

"Mrs Markham told me yesterday that Celia is already home from school."

"Oh." Hermione purposefully chews and swallows her seedless grape. "That's nice."

Hermione Granger and Celia Markham have been best friends since their first year of primary school. Living only two streets apart, and being the two brightest pupils in class, they'd been rivals, study partners - inseparable for four years. They'd been accepted together into the Wollstonecraft Institute, a prestigious girls' grammar school. They'd made plans, giggling through late-night sleepovers, and sworn they'd take their new school by storm just as they had their primary.

And then Hermione had received her Hogwarts Letter.

They'd never repaired their friendship after that. Hermione's closemouthedness, her refusal to say even where in Scotland she was going, thereby robbing her best friend of a chance to apply there as well, had been too much. During her terrible first months at Hogwarts, before making friends with Harry and Ron, she'd written Celia dozens of letters, and sent none. There was the International Code of Wizarding Secrecy to consider, and though Hermione is a good liar, she can't make up a whole fictional school without getting tangled up in her lies.

Meeting Celia during the holidays after first and second year had been awkward, and painful, and she'd been grateful when her parents had taken her to France the next year, and then Hermione had gone to 'special school' last summer. She will have to try and avoid Celia again, though it hurts her mother, who wants her to have a 'normal life' with 'normal friends' during the holidays and doesn't quite understand why she can't.

So Hermione promises to phone, and mentions very casually that she's been offered another 'work experience placement' this summer, and tries to ignore the disappointment on her parents' faces. She smiles and emphasises how good it will be for her career in the wizarding world after Hogwarts. Of course spraying Doxied curtains may give her hands-on Care of Magical Creatures practice, but nothing to impress a potential employer. But well, she will ace her NEWTs and make sure she gets her chance in the face of her lack of useful experience and all that 'Muggleborns are inferior' tripe so many wizards seem to believe in.

~ ~ ~

Back in her room after helping with the washing-up - look, Mum, no magic! - she reads Viktor's letter again, slowly, and thinks about Harry. Thinking about him makes her shiver every time, because she's seen him in a grip of despair so deep that she's unable to empathise, only to mourn. She'd liked Sirius Black, irresponsible and depressed as he was last summer, as one likes an honorary uncle, or a fascinating, much-older brother. But to Harry, he was everything - father, brother, best friend, sole link to his dead parents, all in one. His relatives not remotely deserving the term 'family' on a good day, he's completely alone now.

Hermione has always wished she could invite Harry to stay over the summer holidays, and her parents have even offered it several times when she's mentioned his disastrous home life. But of course it's impossible. Unlike Hermione, Harry is a terrible liar, and the mere thought that he might let slip anything about the dangers of the wizarding world... no, the risk is just too great. Although it always hurts her to see him walk off the train and into the hands of those disgusting caricatures of bourgeois self-congratulation, looking like the juvenile delinquent they tell the neighbours he is. Ron finds that funny. Hermione doesn't. Harry just takes it with the seemingly endless patience he has reserved for his guardians, which hurts to watch.

Hermione and Ron owe him support, now more than ever. They left Harry to struggle on his own after Cedric's death last year, and having a rage-filled, bitter creature on their hands in return was no less than they deserved. Harry was damaged then, and he's close to broken now. And she won't leave him again, Hermione swears angrily to herself, and Professor Dumbledore and the whole of the Order be damned if they try to hush them up this time.

Hermione carefully rolls up the letter and puts it on the desk with two blank sheets of parchment and her favourite hawk feather quill.

So there will be no trip to France, of course, and Viktor will have to know. She can't expect him to wait any longer - he's a famous young man, with women after him in droves, and it just wouldn't be right to put him off again. And then a war is coming, and who knows... it will be better for him not to be linked to a friend of Harry Potter's. And Hermione is too young anyway. Maybe if they had met a few years later, if there was no Voldemort... but it's not the time. And Harry... Harry needs her.

Hermione is a rational girl, and she won't pine over what she can't have. Besides, Ron would throw a fit. And there's always Ron, who's been spectacularly blatant about his feelings with everyone but himself, ever since that Yule Ball. Of course that would never work, but at least he'll always be there, like the brother she's never had. Like Harry.

So tomorrow morning a letter will go to Viktor, and another to Ron to plan how they will meet up with Harry in a week or so. She has to spend a few days, at least, with her parents. But afterwards, they'll be together again, and Hermione will console Harry, and push Ron, and mastermind their DA plans, most likely. And sooner or later, no matter how much the prospect frightens her, they'll go to war against the Death Eaters again.

But it will be bearable, because they'll go together.

~~~ finis ~~~