1

The countertops sparkled, the floor was freshly mopped, the stove, microwave and windows were clean. It was ten in the morning and Hermione Granger didn't know what to do. Pros of summer holiday: plenty of time to get through chores. Cons: boredom, no school.

Hermione plopped down on the couch and stared at the white doily on the coffee table. Eyed it steadily until it rose off, hovered above the table, twirled in the air. She didn't really understand what she was doing, or why she could do it, but her touch was instinctive, familiar. As far as entertainment went, lace doily was as good as the living-room got.

The sound of a door banging open made her bolt upright. She straightened out the crocheted doily on the table and put on a bright smile just as the door jerked open. "Good morning," she greeted.

Her grandmother headed straight for the kitchenette, her footsteps creaking the wood floor. As usual, without answering or smiling or even nodding.

A familiar feeling rose, pushing up like a budding flower.

I wish she loved me.

Hermione squashed it down, then stomped on it for good measure.

"Bread or oatmeal?" her nan's voice came out muffled from the cupboard.

"Bread, please."

"Fruit?"

"Yes. Please."

She produced a slice of bread, handing it without removing her head from beneath the shelf.

"Can I have some butter?... Just a little bit? Please?"

"Hrmph."

Hermione nibbled on thinly-buttered bread on the couch while listening to her nan go through her routine of preparing her breakfast. It was always scrambled eggs, oatmeal topped with yogurt and fruit, three bialys, a cup of tea. And soon came the whisking sound of eggs being beaten in a metal bowl, the clunk of a pan taken down from the hanging rack. The click of the stove being turned on. The rustling of the kettle being filled up with water while the scrambled eggs fizzled and sputtered in the frying pan. Slowly the hissing of water boiling died down. Now Nan was scooping out oatmeal from box to bowl, pouring the hot water, stirring. A click as she shut the stove off and slid the eggs onto a plate. Silverware clunk as she arranged her breakfast on a tray. The thud of her heels on the floors. The whoosh of the fridge door being swung open.

Then silence.

Hermione waited for the subtle rubberised squish-push of the door being shut. It didn't come.

Instead, "When did you wake up?"

"Eight, why?"

A pause. "Did you touch anything in there?"

Hermione thought of when she'd opened the fridge earlier that day, of the packet of cream crackers and the two slices of roast turkey and of her empty, aching stomach. "No," she lied, her breath catching. "No, I didn't."

Nan slammed the refrigerator door shut. "There's food missing. The turkey. I don't like being lied to! You little—"

She broke off. Hermione watched her chest fill, a conscious inhale. Then the slow exhale as no doubt she counted to ten. Wondering yet again how to survive an unwanted orphaned granddaughter.

"Tell me, girl," she said at last. "How long have you lived here?"

"I'm sorry."

"That's not what I'm asking you."

"Years, Nan."

"In all that time, what's the only thing I've asked of you?"

"That I listen to you."

Nan smacked her palm on the countertop. "And?"

"That I clean the house."

"And?"

"That I don't lie to you."

"I don't ask too much of you, do I?" Her voice was dangerously low. "You've lived here for a long time. You had no one, and I took you in. Nobody wanted you, not even your own parents. They threw you away like a bag of stinking rubbish, but I kept you."

Hermione stared.

"You have to learn to respect other people's things."

"Yes. I'm sorry. I... I won't do it again. I promise."

"I should think not," Nan agreed. For one moment, Hermione actually thought she might get away with it, but then she added, "Now go get it."

Hermione stood and walked slowly to the bathroom. A broom hung from a hook by the door, alongside a squeegee mop and a long-handled dustpan. It was a good broom, with a gloss wood handle and a sturdy straw-sweeper end. Her fingers shook as she reached out for it.

In the living-room she put it in Nan's outstretched hand, stripped off her shirt then turned around to give her back. And tried to concentrate on the wall rather than the sharp pain.

. . .

School had finally come.

Hermione sat with an open textbook and a bunch of notebooks sprawled across the table, in her pyjamas, listening to her grandmother cursing up a storm as she tried to find her shoes.

The summer had been unusually hot that year, with record-breaking temperatures in August. The heat put Rosalind Granger in bad moods. When she opened her mouth, nothing but complaints spewed out. Everything, according to her, was wrong. Hermione was careless, she left a sponge on the table, how dared she? She slouched when she walked, she'd become a hunchback if she wasn't careful. She was greedy, stuffing herself with porridge at dinner. She was scrawny. Why couldn't she be more like Mrs Roberts's daughter? Next to her she looked like a rat, Nan said, a drowned rat with bushy hair.

It was a trying time. Hermione did a good job of avoiding trouble—especially after her rookie mistake with the ham. She'd had such a nasty whupping the bruises hadn't totally faded yet, but then again legs and back always took the longest to heal. Staying out of the way was easier now that school had started. The transition from primary to secondary school had gone better than expected. The secondary school was massive and they'd served Sunny Delight drinks and flapjacks at break the first day. Hermione's uniform—brown skirt, white shirt, maroon sweatshirt—was secondhand, but nicer than her usual clothes. Her classmate Emily Taylor had told her that older kids flushed the ugliest Year Sevens' heads down the bog, but it had been two weeks and Hermione's head remained un-flushed. Emily seemed dead upset about this. All in all, classes had been great.

A blast of fresh air rushed in as the front-door opened. "Come here!"

Hermione dragged her feet to the hallway where Nan waited, wearing a beige knitted jumper and an irritated expression. "Clean the kitchen while I'm gone. I'll be back tonight, but you know how it goes. Don't leave the house, don't touch the television, and don't steal food from the fridge or else... Now lock the door, don't let anybody in."

Hermione stood at the window and watched her grandmother scuttle in the street and disappear out of sight. Then she put her homework away, turned on the television and emptied her secret stash of food. She fully intended to slob about watching telly all day and committing forbidden acts. Who would tell on her? The furniture? She started with some Saturday morning cartoons, munching her way through a packet of Jaffa Cakes she'd found in the neighbour's skip.

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were wicked, though they had nothing on the moves boys at school would pull on you. Just last year Larry had grabbed her in a wrestling move, she'd flown and hit a fence so hard an old nail ripped her thigh. Larry's mum had said she should go to the hospital for stitches and a tetanus shot. Nan hadn't even noticed the gash.

She wasn't one of those fussy grandmothers—actually she would rather not be a grandmother. She was ashamed of Hermione, embarrassed to have her in the family, and, when drunk, occasionally wished her dead.

"You should have died in that accident," she'd sob, clutching at her bottle of gin. "Christ, you should have."

These open exchanges of family sentiment always left Hermione feeling warm and fuzzy all over. At least she's honest, she thought as she licked chocolate off her fingers. Honest and volatile and unhappy with insults spewing out of her like missiles, that was her grandmother all right. But Hermione thought she knew why; Nan hated her for being alive while her son was dead—and for being adopted. Must not forget that one. Hermione wouldn't care about being adopted if it wasn't for Nan reminding her at every turn. She didn't remember specifically being told, it was as though she'd always known, just as she'd always known that her dad and mum were dentists who worked in the same company and died in a car crash on the way home from that Company Christmas.

While they spurred murky and disjointed images in her mind, Hermione knew nothing about her real parents—except that they didn't want her. That was not to say she didn't think about them from time to time. Or wonder who they were. Or if they were even alive. She wanted answers, names, faces. She didn't have that. She had a hundred questions and an ancient blue-and-gold locket.

Hermione leaned back on the couch and pulled her locket out from under her shirt. It'd been round her neck when she was found in the street. It was, for lack of a better word, a weird thing. Once, Hermione, angry at her grandmother for nagging at her and at her mum and dad for being dead and then at her other parents for throwing her away, had taken the locket and flushed it down the toilet. The next morning, however, she had got up to find the locket under her pillow. That had spooked her so bad she never tried getting rid of it again.

She tilted it slightly so the blue stone caught the morning light and glimmered silvery, and, not for the first time, noticed it was beautiful. She didn't understand why her real parents would give it to her. What did it mean? 'Farewell'? Or maybe Nan was right, maybe it meant 'We can't keep you because you're a bag of stinking rubbish, but here's a necklace. No hard feelings'.

These people might be the most selfish people in the world. Hermione knew that, and liked to believe that she hated them, but in truth whenever she thought of them she just had that indescribable emotion. A violent flash of loneliness, making her feel all hollow inside. Empty, in some horribly deep way, as if someone had taken an ice-cream scoop and carved her out. A question bubbled forth, one she'd lost count how many times she'd asked herself.

What is wrong with me?

Excellent. Another morning, same old depressing rubbish. Hermione focused back on the television screen and engrossed herself in cartoons. Watching Inspector Gadget defeat evil made her realize that life could be worse. For example, she could have had to stop her archenemy from stealing the Queen's jewelled crown.

"You must get the Crown Jewels," Dr Claw lisped on screen. "I desired them since I was a child."

His acolyte was mystified. "You were a child, Boss?"

Hermione was wondering why Inspector Gadgets' niece Penny even wasted her time telling grownups stuff—they never believed her and were too useless to help—when someone knocked on the front door. Loudly. She figured it was just some kids being idiots and didn't even think of answering it.

But then it went on.

What, could she not even watch her Saturday morning cartoons in peace? Was nothing sacred anymore?

Knock. Knock. Knock.

"Piss off," Hermione muttered when the noise had the audacity to repeat itself. What if it was one of her grandmother's friends? She didn't want to talk to them. Last time she met Mrs Roberts in the street she spoke and spoke about herself and her cats for what seemed like three whole goddamned hours.

KNOCK. KNOCK. KNO—

"I'M COMING!"

Hermione huffed and stomped out, muttering things like bloody hell and can't catch a breath, can we and if it's Mrs Roberts there'll be a death in this neighbourhood all the way to the front-door.

. . .

Having been Hogwarts School's deputy headmistress for quite some time now, Minerva McGonagall was one of the few who did the customary house-visit and delivered acceptance letters to muggle families.

Thusly, she wasn't exactly a stranger to certain things. Muggles categorically refusing magic's existence. Muggles reading the supply list and going "Parchment? Quills? This isn't the Middle Ages!". Muggles and their overexcited children getting lost in Diagon Alley. Muggleborn children smuggling in non-magical pets, puppies, turtles and guinea pigs—not to mention all those calculators Argus Filch had confiscated over the years. Muggleborn children all decked out in flashy scuba gear ready to do some diving in the black lake because they wanted to meet the mermaids. Muggleborn children asking her if it was possible to turn a pumpkin into a carriage with the spell "bibbidi-bobbidi-boo". Muggleborn children enchanting electric objects to work in the castle without considering their capacity to get sentient over time—students still told horror stories in whispers about the Attacking Toaster.

Muggleborn children flat-out refusing to open the door wasn't something Minerva McGonagall had ever experienced before.

She glanced at the side to make sure she had the right address. Number One, a redbrick terrace house, squashed between two other houses, with a patch of front garden.

It checked out, so she knocked again, firmly, steadily, and heard the sounds of someone shuffling from the other side of the door. Instead of the door opening, she listened to the metal covering scrape back from a peephole. A childish, high-pitched voice came from inside. "If you're selling, we're not interested."

Professor McGonagall took it all in stride. "I'm not selling anything," she answered briskly. Did she look like a saleswoman? "Miss Granger, I suppose. I have a—"

"How do you know me?"

"My name is Minerva McGonagall." She couldn't repress the disapproving tone in her voice. "I am a professor, at a boarding school called Hogwarts. I have come to offer you a place at this school—your new school, if you would like to come. I need to talk to your parents—"

A muffled huff cut her off.

"I want you to know," Hermione Granger said from the other side of the door, "I can smell a scam a mile away."

Professor McGonagall was finding it it difficult to negotiate with a solid wood door, but she did her best. "Well, I never! I've come all the way to your home, because you have qualities we are looking for. Really, now, Miss Granger, what would I get out of it? I'm sure your parents would want to know about it. Given that, do you think I can come in?"

That reply earned her silence, as if the girl were seriously thinking it over.

"Look, lady, I don't know you. You could be one of those serial-killers we hear about all the time on the eight o'clock news."

For Merlin's sake. "Believe me, I have no intention of killing anyone, especially not someone like you. Let me in and I shall tell you about Hogwarts. Now open the door, will you?"

More silence. Some shuffling noises, as if the girl was dragging her feet. Finally, three metal thunks as steel bolt locks drew back. The rasp of a chain being temperamentally released. A key turning twice. Seemed the Grangers took their home security seriously.

The door was flung open and a tiny brown-haired girl stood there, arms crossed, eyes wary. "You can come in. But don't try anything, all right? I'm pretty sure I can bring down some skinny old lady if need be."

With a slight effort, the professor refrained from answering. She stepped gingerly into the house as Hermione Granger went back to work on the bolt lock and chain.

Inside, a small, cramped corridor led to a small, cramped bedroom with the door partly opened. Straight ahead, the family room was half kitchenette, boasting a faded tartan couch, three wooden chairs and a coffee table covered in lace doilies. Walls were painted a drab pumpkin-orange, and the windows were trimmed out with scalloped shades made from a sunflower-covered fabric. The telly was on, blaring away on top of a cheap microwave stand. Hermione took a second to cross the space and snap it off. Then she asked if she'd like some tea or coffee.

"Tea, thank you."

Professor McGonagall sat on the couch while the girl shuffled off to a strictly utilitarian kitchenette with plain white cupboards and cheap orange countertops. The air held odours of bleach and medication mingled with the scents of frying oil and spice.

The Grangers have sickle-pinching ways, she concluded. Money was tight. Or perhaps the household was badly managed. Having run an entire school all too often without enough gold, she recognized the signs of economies being practiced. But the hardships that warlocks could endure in wartime were certainly not appropriate for growing children. So far her opinion of these muggles was low—though she could not fault them on cleanliness. She scrutinised the room as though she were inspecting the Gryffindor common room.

It was spotless.

"Miss Granger, where are your parents?"

"My grandmother will be home soon." Hermione set a loaded tray on the table and sat on a chair. "My parents died in a car crash. When I was five."

The professor murmured condolences as she helped herself to a chipped cup of pale tea. She took a sip. Dull-looking, but strong in flavour. Much like its maker, actually. At first glance, Hermione Granger appeared a scrap of a girl, lost in washed-out pyjamas too big for her, but there was nothing dull about her spirit. Looked like a needy kitten… behaved like the feral kneazles skulking around Hogsmeade.

"I might as well start explaining now. As I told you my name is Minerva McGonagall—Professor McGonagall, and I teach at Hogwarts, which is a school for wizards and witches."

Hermione didn't say a word throughout her clipped explanation that there were witches and wizards still living in secret all over the world, and her reassurances that they weren't dangerous like muggles portrayed them in stories because the Ministry of Magic took responsibility for the wizarding community. Hogwarts was, she explained, one of the finest schools in the world where students were taught a variety of lessons from making pineapples dance across desks to learning about creatures such as unicorns and dragons.

Hermione regarded her, stony-eyed. "Is this some kind of joke?"

"Of course not. Look."

And she turned the sugar bowl into a guinea pig.

"But," said Hermione breathlessly, watching the guinea pig gnawing on the corner of the tray with a mixture of awe and shock, "but why—are you telling me—I can do magic?"

The professor smiled for the first time since she'd entered the house. "Absolutely. And at Hogwarts, we will teach you not only to use magic, but also to control it."

"When do I start? Hogwarts, you say? Where is it? In London?"

"Scotland. Only eleven-year-old students attend Hogwarts, and term has already started. Given that you've just turned eleven you'll actually board next year—"

"Um, what do you mean, eleven?"

"Your birthday, Miss Granger. Do try to keep up."

"How do you know that? When is it?"

"When children of Britain show magical abilities, their names and birth-dates are written down in our records. And when they turn of age—and in your case, on 19 September—we offer them a place at Hogwarts. You do know your own birthday, don't you?"

"I do now," Hermione said, and she left it at that.

The professor pulled out an elegant-looking white letter and gave it over.

Miss H. Granger

The living-room

1 Virginia Street,

Bow,

London

"All the details are in here. You will leave from King's Cross Station on the first of September, of next year. There is already a train ticket too. If your grandmother wants you to, of course. Muggles—non-magical folk, that is, they have a harder time accepting magic than us. It's quite rare when a magical child is born of muggle parents, just like you. Muggleborns, we call them."

"Maybe I'm not completely muggleborn," said Hermione, her mind spinning with the possibilities. "I'm adopted—that's why I didn't know about my birthday. I only knew I was born round September. And it'd be better if you didn't tell my grandmother about the witch bit. She wouldn't understand, like you said."

Nothing a good spanking won't cure, Nan would most likely say about magic.

"Certainly not. Mrs Granger may not be your grandmother by blood, but she most certainly is your legal guardian, and there's no way around her consent. I am sure she would understand the situation, if I, an adult, would explain it to her."

"She won't listen, I'm telling you."

Professor McGonagall didn't look convinced. "We shall see about that when she comes home," she said in a final tone. "By any chance, you don't know your birthparents' names, do you? They could be wizards—"

"They could be dead for all I know," Hermione cut her off. "I don't know anything. They found a necklace and some sheets on me when I was a baby. That's all."

"Found it on you? So you weren't exactly given to the orphanage?"

"No. They found me like most kids."

"On the doorstep?"

"Abandoned in the street."

Hermione shrugged, acting as if Professor McGonagall's tiny gasp and her admission meant nothing—even though it did.

Who'd want to admit that? She was only a baby when she was wrapped in white sheets and left in some cold street. Worst wasn't even the weather; it was wondering how anyone could just leave a baby out there, in the dirt and dark, for some big dog to eat.

"I was about a year old when Mum and Dad got me," she said aloud, "they're all I know."

"I see. Perhaps that necklace is some kind of family heirloom. I know that muggles also have them. Is there any name on it?"

"No. And it's broken, anyway." Hermione pulled the blue locket out from under her shirt and unclasped the golden chain around her neck. "You can open it, see—but I've tried lots of times and it won't budge."

Professor McGonagall weighed it in her hand. It was old and valuable-looking, made of a sapphire stone, and imbedded around the edge with gold. "Goblin-wrought, obviously," she commented, and Hermione nodded like she perfectly understood what a goblin was. Then she tried to open it from all the sides—with no luck—before taking out a wooden wand and tapping the locket, tracing shapes with the tip, all the while muttering unintelligible words, and then smoke was erupting from the wand, encasing the locket until all of it was covered in a glow of light spreading to the chain.

With a final tap of the wand, the light vanished, and they could clearly hear an unlocking noise.

Hesitantly, Hermione put the locket on her knee. It was hot to the touch. With a shaky breath, she opened it.

Nous N'oublions Pas

She brushed her fingers across the carved words, wondering their meaning, wondering who chose to write them here. A photograph was fitted on the other side. She turned it around and stared at the people forever captured by the camera's lens.

It was a young couple. A lovely, dark-haired woman wearing a blue skirt flowing around her calves stood next to a built, tanned man, his white shirt loose at the collarbone and cuffed at the elbows. He had glanced down while the photograph was being taken. Honey-blond hair tumbled over his brown eyes, the hint of a smile tugged at his lips. As for the woman, she flashed a double-dimpled grin at the camera, eyes alight with dancing sparks. It was impossible not to think of a firework.

Hermione was transfixed by their expressions, their fingers entwined in a gesture so natural they didn't even seem aware of doing it. Oh, but how happy they looked. There was real love there. A painful knot lodged in her throat. She drew her eyes up, tried to swallow, and met the professor's gaze. Whatever was in her face made her push the locket away.

The professor reached for it. She read the French words, extricated the picture from the locket, scanned it briefly and turned it over to see if there was anything written on the back. Nothing. She moved to return it to its place but stopped short: in that empty space was engraved a name.

Louise Sirona de Bourbon

19.09.79

Minerva McGonagall removed her spectacles. Methodically, she polished the lenses with her lace kerchief, then balanced them back on her nose.

She eyed the name again.

Bourbon! was her first thought, followed shortly by old French pureblood, which collided with Death-Eaters! and produced the baffling thought of is this girl related to them? which was most logical, so her brain jumped to if she is the Bourbons' child then what in Merlin's name is she doing here? and realized only the people involved could offer an explanation, and about that time she registered that Hermione had leaned in to see what she was staring at.

"Louise?... Could it be my name? Could they be my pa—" She broke off, unable to continue. Her hand pressed over her mouth, her other arm curled around herself. Tears leaked from her eyes.

Minerva gave her a minute. The girl pulled it together. Chin coming up, shoulders squaring off. She didn't understand the story here, she had a lot of questions, actually. But by all appearances, Hermione Granger, Bourbon—whoever she was, she had been raised right. Eleven years old, but she was tough.

"Pompous name," Hermione finally said. "These people look fancy, too. Do you reckon they could be my parents?"

"Let's not lose our heads, Miss Granger. All of this is very unexpected. See, the Bourbons are a French family. An old, wizarding French family."

"Do you mean... they're alive?"

"To my knowledge, yes. I don't care for politics, but I know for a fact that Mr Bourbon is a representative of the French Ministry to the International Confederation of Wizards. Rather young here... I do think it's him. Merlin! What a small world."

Alive. Hermione felt it like an ache at first, a strange pressure building behind her eyes and her teeth. It spread along her skin, a prickling flush of anger and heat and something, and then the floor shuddered. The tremors shook pots from their hooks, spoons and forks in their drawers. The lightbulb swung on its ceiling cord, the windows rattled, and then the professor reached out and poked Hermione hard in the shoulder with her wand. Everything went still.

"That's quite enough of that," the professor said disapprovingly. "Poor house has troubles enough without you having some sort of childish tantrum. You don't want to wake up any mice."

Hermione couldn't help it; she dropped her head back against the couch and started to laugh. After a moment the professor scoffed too, her eyes softening a fraction.

"Why did they give me up for adoption," Hermione asked at last in a quiet voice, "in another country?"

"What you must understand, Miss Granger—or Miss Bourbon, is that it might not have been intentional. You don't know but we were at war, years ago."

"War? What happened?"

"About ten years ago now, there was this—dark wizard, and his army. He wanted power, and planned a revolution against the Ministry of Magic... Those were dark days. Cold, dreary days. He started taking over the country, killing whoever stood up to him. Simply horrifying, every week, news came of deaths, muggles and wizards alike, disappearances, torturing..." She trailed off. "What I mean is that life sometimes separates us from our loved ones. I doubt your parents ever wanted to give you up, as you put it."

The professor gestured toward the locket, reminiscing as hundreds of thoughts and faces and names and deaths and memories fought for room in her head, before she stated in a firm voice, as if her words held an intangible truth, "Family is a responsibility that wizards don't take lightly. We take care of our own."

A/N: Pureblood Hermione gets sorted in Slytherin, yaddi yadda you know the drill BUT she's French because why not? So here is an entire fic about that. Reviews are welcome.

Addendum: To Guest and uqiam and others who might've recognized this fic: the old version doesn't exist anymore, because my stupid ass accidentally deleted the wrong fic yes RIP me I'm so stupid kill me now. And so friends asked that I repost. I'm probably even more frustrated than you.