As Mothers Always Do

You always knew

Didn't you mother?

You always knew

As mothers always do.

You always knew

Didn't you mother?

That I was a stranger

In this world.

--Boy George, "Stranger in this World" from the musical Taboo

Everybody in my family had laughed when I announced that my daughter would be called Hermione.

"Think of how the other children will make fun of her! Children are cruel enough without giving them ammunition," my sister had said. "Nobody will know how to spell it!" My husband Stephen had almost divorced me over it, but I was dead set on Hermione.

But then, this was a recommendation from the woman who named her child Eowyn. I don't think she has any room to talk about cursing a child with an unusual name.

Absolutely nothing about me is out of the ordinary--least of all my name.

I am a dentist named Jane.

Jane is so plain and ordinary, laughably so. The only other name more ordinary than Jane is Ann, sans 'e', which of course, is my sister's name. I love my mother dearly, but she wasn't the most creative person in the world.

My daughter was not going to be ordinary. I was going to make sure of that. So, I christened her with an inordinate name--Hermione. She was the queen in one of my favorite Shakespeare plays, A Winter's Tale.

"You could've named her Beatrice," Stephen had groused. "Or Kate. Literary, yet normal."

Stephen just didn't understand. No daughter of mine would ever be a Beatrice or a Kate--no offense to the Kates and Beatrices of the world, naturally. But Beatrice is a stupid girl who 'spends her life in sensible shoes, pushing burgers and beer-nuts and missing the clues.' And Kate is always a troublemaker who never pays any mind to the rules.

I was determined that my daughter would be neither of those things.

And she isn't.

She is the only part of my life that is rather extraordinary.

My sister is ten years older than me, so my experience with children was limited to my own. Since I didn't know anything, I consulted the published experts who had ascribed their professional opinions on the subject of child-care.

The fact that my daughter is so wonderfully extraordinary is a complete fluke, because goodness knows the ratio of questions to answers isn't quite balanced.

Especially if your child just happens to be a witch.

History mandates that witches are to be burnt at the stake, and fairy tales don't offer a future that is any more promising. I didn't realize until my daughter received her Hogwarts' letter just how prejudiced the world is against witches. She was terrified to go to Hogwarts at first because she'd heard all the fairy tales I had filled her bed-time with, and knew what happened to witches as well as I did.

Of course, before she was accepted into Hogwarts, witches were the stuff of make-believe. Double, double, toil and trouble, you know.

"Mother," she'd asked me once at dinner. "It's supposed to rain tomorrow. I think I should stay home. I'm going to melt if I get caught in a downpour. Water melts witches, you know."

I'd thought it over for a bit, having never even considered that possibility. I knew it was ridiculous. But then, I hadn't even thought witches were real.

Stephen put her at ease, though. "Magical ability is a gift," he had told her. "And nothing to be neither afraid of nor ashamed of. It's just like any other tool. A hammer sitting alone on a workbench is just a hammer. Whether or not it's used for good or bad is up to you. You can either build something with it or use it to break a windowpane."

"Good," Hermione answered. "Although I think I might fancy turning people into stone; just the mean ones."

I wish I understood it like Stephen did, but I couldn't quite fathom it. I grasped the concept, sure--the same way you grasp the concept of a higher power who is omnipotent and omnipresent.

Stephen is really wonderful about the whole thing, actually. He persuaded his cousin Joanne (who went to one of their schools in America) to come all the way across the pond just to join us as we took Hermione shopping for her school supplies. She had even showed her some simple spells.

But the fact that I don't understand it doesn't make me love my daughter any less, and I can't help but feel a little pride in the knowledge that my daughter can pick the locks when I've forgotten my keys with just a flick of her wand and I never again have to pay for my glasses to be repaired. Once she gets out of school, of course.

But at least her professors all send me letters gushing about how my Hermione's the smartest witch of her age and how they all love having her as a pupil. I'm quite sure that Gryffindor is the house where all the smart witches go, because that's my Hermione through-and-through.

I'm not as smart as she is. At least, I wasn't knowledgeable about anything related to parenting.

If it weren't for the books I read on the subject of parenting, I don't think I could've coped.

Which proves my point quite nicely: if you only you know which page to turn to, answers could be found to all the questions of the universe.

Copious volumes of text dealt with the subject of teenagers and teenage hormones and theories of how best to deal with them. Since my only experience of teenage existence was my own, I had to rely on books.

In years past when questions arose about dealing with my daughter, I consulted the published authorities. I knew exactly what the expert opinion was on what to say when my daughter asked about the difference between boys and girls and where babies came from and when she showed the first signs of puberty.

Of course, I couldn't help her very much when she got detention for turning a classmate stiff. There was no textbook solution for that problem. I still say the child my daughter supposedly stiffened had an epileptic seizure.

But there were other things, too. Books would come off top-shelves by themselves and come crashing to the floor. Dolls would suddenly have a teddy bear's arm. Once a sitter went home with orange hair. Suffice it to say when Hermione got her Hogwarts' letter, it explained quite a bit.

Hermione was delighted, and what kind of parents would we be if my husband and I begrudged her of the experience?

Every year when Hermione returned for the summer, I knew my husband and I had made the right choice. She had always come back so happy, so eager for another year to start again.

The year was over, and I was thrilled to have Hermione back.

But this year was different. This year, the Hermione I left at King's Cross station late last August wasn't the same girl who put her trunk in the boot and got into my car.

All of the books and experience I had come to rely upon became as effective as a snowball in hell.

I barely knew the girl--no, young woman--in the passenger seat next to me.

It was that school she went to, I decided. It had to be. If Hermione had gone to the school I had chosen for her, then perhaps my little girl wouldn't look so...far away right now.

For the first time in my life, I regretted sending my child there. My grandmother, Hermione's great-grandmother, had been magically inclined. And then of course there was Stephen's cousin. It was Hermione's heritage.

At least, that's what I convinced myself of when Hermione's letter came in the mail five years ago.

Hermione had been so proud! My husband and I had been proud for her. Everything made sense again. There were answers.

At first, I was hesitant to let her go to school so far away, but we had both agreed that denying her identity is the worst thing we could do for her as parents, and exposing her to new places was for the best. I knew very little about witches and wizards beyond what you read in fairy tales. But I encouraged her studies the best I could. At the end of every school year, I'd been positive that I'd done the right thing. Until now. Hermione always came home quite elated. Before, there was always some kind of award presented to her and she always earned all highest marks on her exams. She never stopped all summer with her tales of her friends, her professors and her lessons.

This year, though, she was distant.

With all of my education, I had no idea a child could age so much in the space of an academic year.

Oh, Hermione may have talked continuously as she always did on the way home from the station. She rambled on about her friends (and I couldn't help but notice the lilt in her voice when she said that Ron-fellow's name, and made a mental note to have THE talk with her before the week was out).

But I couldn't miss the fact that something was different about my daughter's discussion this year.

I knew that parents and children always had secrets from each other. Goodness knows how much I censored myself from my parents. But this year, it was almost as if too much was left out.

Not that she was completely silent. On the contrary, she was even more talkative than usual.

She went on about her marks, and discussed something called the O.W.L.'s. She talked about her duties as Prefect. She gushed about that Ron-fellow again and how he won some championship for her team (meanwhile, I prayed that the sports field--what was it called? Quid Itch or something?--was the only area he scored). She ranted about the horrible professor that had taken over the school. I never thought I'd hear my Hermione complain about reading during an entire class period! She told me about some club she helped organize. It sounded rather like a self-defense class to me.

Although I was glad Hermione could take care of herself in the event of trouble, I couldn't help but wonder why my daughter thought she would need to learn something like that.

There were other things, too. She discussed how someone had made a swamp in her dormitory. She explained about how her friend's brothers had made an apparently legendary escape. I had wanted to ask why they needed to escape.

The little Elves she raged about were missing from the discussion altogether.

Her second year, she was so angry about how they were treated. Last year, the problem came to the forefront of her attention again. She explained that clothes were the only way to set them free, so I suggested that she organize and taught her how to knit little hats for them. This year, though, the unjust house-elf treatment was not even broached.

Of course, it could've been just because her passion for the cause had died. But Hermione isn't one to flippantly invest her time and energy into something. Even if the cause is a lost one, she still fights for whatever she believes in.

It wasn't so much what she was saying, but what she wasn't telling me.

There was nothing of the previous summer's end.

That other friend of hers was almost completely absent from her discussion. All four years before, it was nothing but those two boys she met at the train every year. How one of them plays that sport. Now, it was just that Ron-fellow (really, what do those people do for safe sex, anyway?), and I wondered what had happened. It's a shame, really. He seemed like such a nice boy. A little sullen, perhaps, but nice.

I just wanted my daughter to let me in.

I decided to try another tactic once my daughter let me get a word in edge-wise.

"How's that other friend of yours?" I tried to sound casually curious. "Harry, was it?"

"Good," she answered shortly. By the way she fidgeted and concentrated on the highway scenery, I knew he was anything but.

Something had happened.

I wanted to know what it was.

More than anything, I wanted my little girl back.

I didn't press the matter. I wasn't going to pry.

We rode the rest of the way home in an uncomfortable silence, and I decided then and there that I'd have to try a less direct approach. Like I said, I didn't want to pry.

But I wasn't above a little snooping around.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*

My opportunity came sooner than expected.

Hermione announced that since we were planning to spend the majority of the summer in Germany, she wanted to catch up with Eowyn while she had the chance. I hoped I didn't agree too quickly.

I waited until Stephen was ensconced in his book of the evening, and I crept up to Hermione's room where her trunk was kept.

I could've sworn that Crookshanks, her ginger cat, eyed me dubiously when I entered the room. He let out a low, disapproving noise that was closer to a growl than I've ever heard a cat make. Then, he circled round on the bed several times, turned his back to me and twitched his tail, but that seemed to be the extent to which he made his grievance known. I am normally a cat-person, but this one gave me the willies.

The trunk was in plain sight at the foot of the bed right where she'd left it when we first brought it in from the car.

It was locked, naturally. I might not know how to use a wand, but there are other ways to pick locks.

There was a paper-clip container on her desk, fished out a paperclip, and straightened it. With a little maneuvering, it opened easily enough.

I examined its contents.

Her wand lay on top of everything. It was nothing more than a mere stick of wood to my mind. The old man in the wand-shop had said it was made of holly and something called Kneazle-hair. I picked it up gingerly as though it were very fragile. Stephen's reassurance five years ago hit me like a thunderbolt, and I couldn't help but think that knives and guns are merely tools as well.

There was a layer of a few outfits and several remarkably unwrinkled dress-robes.

Next, there were, not surprisingly, books.

Books took up the majority of the space. They included obvious textbooks, with titles like: Intermediate Transfiguration; Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, The Monster Book of Monsters (that one growled at me, and would've bitten me if it hadn't been strapped down), Advanced Arithmancy; Charms: An Advanced Tutorial, Mastering Potions: A Complete Guide to the Art and Science of Brewing Potions; A Comprehensive History of Magic; Hogwarts, A History; Astronomy: A Guide to Guides; Interpreting Ancient Runes, and Understanding Muggles: An In-Depth Study of the Non-Magical.

I thumbed through one of them. If the subject hadn't been about how to wave a wand and make something appear to be what it was not (complete with animated visual aids), I think it would have been rather dry.

There were other, lighter books with equally strange titles like Harry Snout, Human Heart; The Veela Effect: Daily Strategies For Empowering Witches; and Beauxbatons and the European Mystique.

It was quite awhile before I reached the bottom of the trunk, and I was beginning to think that it had a bottomless pit. I wouldn't be surprised if they could use Magic to extend the space of a trunk.

After this, I decided that there wasn't all that much that could surprise me.

That is, until I found the newspaper. The issue date was today's, and it hadn't been read yet.

I knew about The Daily Prophet. Ever since her first year at Hogwarts, she'd received the Wizarding publication. On the first page, there was a photograph of a rather large woman with small black eyes. She was smiling, but that did not make her appear friendly in the slightest. The word for her, I believe, was unpleasant. The caption read "Dolores Umbridge, former Defense Against the Dark Arts professor."

Dolores Umbridge Makes No Apologies

Ministry employee Dolores Umbridge is the fifth Dark Arts professor to teach at Hogwarts in the last five years. Seeing as Headmaster Albus Dumbledore has relieved her from her duties, it appears that the superstition of a jinxed teaching position isn't entirely without justification.

Of course, this is mere speculation based on coincidence, and her dismissal had absolutely nothing to do with the position she held at Hogwarts. Headmaster Dumbledore confirmed that her dismissal was directly related to her involvement in the events that transpired nearly a week ago at the Department of Mysteries. Ms. Umbridge's actions almost prevented him from coming to the aid of several students, including Harry Potter.

Deputy Headmistress Minerva McGonagall has gone on record to say that her disciplinary methods were "extreme bordering maniacal," and her teaching methods "lacked both relevancy and effectiveness."

According to one Ravenclaw Fourth Year, Luna Lovegood, the students were instructed to read aloud from a text the entire period for the duration of the year. "Honestly," says Ms. Lovegood, "how are we supposed to learn anything from books?"

Despite these claims, Ms. Umbridge makes no apologies for her disciplinary methods. She maintains that her former colleagues should embrace her philosophy. "Handing out detentions that involve menial chores and deducting a few measly house points do not motivate students to behave who simply disregard the rules. The only way to impress upon children the importance of keeping in line is to find ways to ensure that they will never forget what happens when they misbehave. The sooner they learn that disobedience will not be tolerated by their superiors, the better off they'll be."

As for the allegations that her teaching methods were ineffective, she defends it by saying: "My colleagues at the ministry and I are doing our parts to ensure that children need not learn to defend themselves against Dark Magic. Hopefully, in due time, Headmaster Dumbledore will see fit to eliminate the position."

Ms. Umbridge has said that she will not seek an appeal with the Hogwarts' Board of Governors. Says Umbridge: "With You-Know-Who back, I feel my skills will be better utilized at the Ministry."

While it is true that You-Know-Who has not yet chosen Hogwarts' grounds as a site of attack, escaped convict Sirius Black had reportedly broken past the school's Protection Spells. In light of the vendetta Voldemort seems to have against two of its occupants (namely Headmaster Dumbledore and Harry Potter), a battle within Hogwarts' walls is a prediction even a Muggle could make.

To anyone seeking employment, the school is still seeking an occupant to fill the Defense Against the Dark Arts position. Although, it must be advised that previous professors in this position have neither enjoyed good luck nor prosperous teaching careers.

I wondered if that Potter boy is the same as Hermione's friend. After all, Harry is a fairly common name. If he was the same person, though, the pieces were finally starting to fit a little. Regardless, from that article, it was clear that my little girl was going to be on the front lines of a war just for being in school, that the school did not seem to acknowledge the value of neither books nor discipline, and that Hermione did not belong there.

"Stephen," I demanded, running downstairs with the article in hand. "Look at this."

"Where did you--" he trailed off. His eyes widened when he glanced it over. "Is this Hermione's?"

Just then, I felt like I was five years old again and had nicked a private love-letter from an old boyfriend of my mother's. Not that I would have any experience with that. "Just read the article," I finally managed.

"What are you getting at?" he said with a completely bewildered expression on her face.

"What am I getting at?! Stephen, Hermione is on the front lines of a war just for going to classes and you wonder what I am getting at!?" I know that I sounded like a raving lunatic. But, really, I'm a mother. I'm entitled to be insane.

"Front lines...?" he balked. "Jane, I think you need a drink. Or Barry Manilow music. Anything to get your panties out of the wad that they're apparently twisted into would do nicely, really."

I hated it when he patronized me like that. "I can't just sit idly by and let her be subjected to..." I floundered around for the right words, and finally decided on slamming my hand down on the newspaper article that was now sitting on the table. "That."

"Jane," he asked. "She returns for her sixth year at Hogwarts on September first. What do you propose to do about it?"

"Pull her out of that school, naturally!"

"You and I both know that the news is only about forty percent truth, especially if they want their readers to be scared. I imagine witches and wizards are people with agendas, too. I think you're over-reacting. Slightly." By the incredulous expression on his face, I was sure he thought that 'slight overreaction' was the understatement of the year, but he just doesn't understand.

"I'm NOT over-reacting," I insisted. "Stephen, you haven't really seen her since she's come home. She's...different."

"She's fifteen," Stephen reminded me. "Fifteen year olds are not human."

"Fifteen or not, I can't let her be in the middle of a war."

"She hasn't been learning the same things other kids have learnt over the last five years." I opened my mouth to say something about how she's been reading her cousin Eowyn's schoolbooks over the previous summers, but shut my mouth. "She's an exceptionally bright girl, but she's going to have an extremely difficult time catching up on her lessons since she hasn't been taught the same lessons as her peers."

"I don't care. She can't go back there."

"Can't go back where?" Hermione's voice startled both of us. I supposed Stephen and I were so wrapped up in our conversation that we hadn't heard her come in. My heart leapt into my throat. She eyed the newspaper. "What's that doing out of my trunk?"

"You're home early," Stephen said curtly. He gave me his best 'I-told-you-so' look and was patently not making eye contact with Hermione.

I wanted to justify myself. I had my reasons for doing what I did. I only wanted to look out for her. But Hermione had already fled upstairs and I heard a door slam shut before clicking open again. She was at the top of the stairs again by the time I could catch up to her. "Why is my trunk opened? Why are my things all over the floor?"

"Is your friend Harry," I couldn't keep my voice from trembling now. "And Harry Potter, the one that Mr. Voldemort's after, the same person?"

Her jaw was set in anger and her eyes narrowed dangerously. "You were going through my things." It was not an accusation the way she said it. It was a fact.

I made an intense study of the carpet at my feet. "I think you'd better write Harry and tell him you're not returning to Hogwarts for your sixth year."

"Yes," Hermione said shrilly. "Yes, my friend is Harry Potter and Voldemort wants him dead. I still don't understand why that means I can't return next year."

"Because I want to keep you safe," I almost-whispered.

"You think that just because I'm friends with Harry Potter that I'm marked for death?" she demanded. "Is that it?"

"According to that article," I fired back. "If it weren't for your Headmaster, Harry and his comrades, which I can only assume includes you, would've been killed."

"Don't think a day goes by when Harry doesn't agree with you, because it doesn't. He thinks it's all up to him. He thinks that harm's way is anywhere near him."

"He's right," I answered.

"I can't believe..."

"Perhaps if you and Harry can just not be friends anymore," I offered. "We can work out a compromise and you can return to Hogwarts as usual."

"I can't do that," she said dangerously.

"Then you can't return to Hogwarts," I replied, determined to stay my ground.

"You can't do that," she informed me.

"I think I can. You're not going back to that school. Not as long as you're friends with people who put themselves in harm's way."

"It's not that simple," she began. "I'm a Muggle-born witch. There are certain witches and wizards who don't want me at Hogwarts just because of that fact. Voldemort doesn't think I even have the right to live."

"This is not persuading me to allow you to return."

"If Voldemort wants me dead, it doesn't matter where I am or who is in the way, he'll have me eliminated anyway. I'm in the battle whether or not I'm by Harry and Ron's side."

"Does he?" I asked timidly. "Want you dead?"

"You don't get it, do you?" she asked me. "Voldemort isn't going to stop with just the Muggle-born witches and wizards like me. Once he's through with me and the other Muggle-borns, then he'll graduate to Muggles. When we go see the Jewish Concentration camps in Germany next week, you'll get a good idea of what it will be like if he isn't stopped."

"Honey, you can't stop a monster like that. No one can."

"Harry's done it with the help of Ron and I for the past five years. He's stopped him, Mother."

"That doesn't mean..."

"What it means is that I can't just sit by and let him come. If I'm stuck away in a Muggle school, then I'm deadweight." Did Hermione have to use that word? "I have to be at Hogwarts. I don't belong anywhere else. It's my home just as much as Harry's or anyone else there."

"This is your home!"

"No it's not. It's yours. I can't just sit by and let Harry face Voldemort by himself. I can't leave Ron to help Harry all by himself. It has to be the three of us. It's always been the three of us."

"But there are so many other..."

"No," she insisted. "No, there aren't. If it's got to be Harry, then it's got to be Ron and I, too."

"I don't understand why it has to be you and your friend helping him. Why can't you enlist the help of the adults?"

"The Professors are all doing what they can. I tell Harry the same thing myself hundreds of times, but does he listen?" she paused as if to collect her thoughts in a deep breath and then released a snort of indignation. "Harry's...complicated. He's got this hero-complex. He thinks it's all up to him. The minute he thinks someone he cares about is in trouble, he goes to any length to help him or her."

"So what's this got to do with why you have to help?"

"He thought that the closest person he ever had to a father was in trouble. I tried to talk him out of it, and told him to explore all logical possibilities first. I wanted him to find a professor to tell them what happened, but he was hell-bent on saving him, and wouldn't listen."

"So you and his friends had to tag along and walk right into the hands of... what were they called?"

"Death Eaters," she supplied. "Voldemort's followers."

"It sounds like the name of a heavy metal band if you ask me."

"Mother, it's not a joke," she said. "They're like the Nazi soldiers. They're awful, horrible people who do Voldemort's bidding. They made it so that my friend Neville's parents are locked away in the wizarding hospital for the rest of their lives. Twice, two different ones almost killed Harry. A Death Eater named Lucius Malfoy had a quarrel with Ron's father and because of that incident, put a diary possessed by his master in with his youngest daughter's schoolbooks. One..." she seemed to struggle with the words. "Killed the man we were trying to save that night in the Department of Mysteries."

"If they're that brutal, then you're smarter than to walk right into their clutches like that, Hermione," I scolded her shrilly. I was truly terrified for her now. That boy was draining every bit of sense I instilled in her, and I hated it.

"We had to go," she said softly. "He's...Harry. You can't just abandon him."

I understood. At least, I understood it the way you understand things you don't quite comprehend.

My brain was starting to hurt from too many questions, the answers to which were not to be found in the usual places.

There was so much that was out of my grasp. Not the least of which was still Hermione herself.

I hated Harry Potter for putting my daughter into such a position.

I didn't understand why my daughter sticks by him the way she does.

I hope he's worth it.