Hermione sat upon her very muggle bed in her very muggle room, placed within a nice muggle home in a to-do muggle neighborhood, and felt…foreign.
She always had, really. That's the whole point, isn't it? The wizarding world did a neat job of indoctrinating her while also doing its damndest to keep her on the outskirts. Always the one looking in longingly, while her back was facing the milling millions of people who would never give look twice at her or snicker as she passed—so long as she forsook her birthright and ignored the sparks in her veins.
Splaying her fingers over the bedspread, she considered with a dissimilar comfort the familiar walls, worn book spines pricking at her accusingly with their muggle titles, folded sweaters that would never pass muster in Slytherin enclaves. Is it more wrong to miss the embrace of her childhood, or to scorn it for the cold arms of an uncaring house?
Scoffing, Hermione picked at the fraying threads of her faded red bedspread, a harkening to a person she never was—couldn't be, maybe. Piddling over philosophy was a waste of her time, and certainly a waste of a well-deserved break.
Not that her break would find itself in any way cousin to the breaks of her housemates. No, Hermione would use her break to fix her breaks and to learn best how to break others.
Not that she considered herself dramatic. Her grandmother's mirrored vanity, a relic of an antique that had survived the Blitz despite the attempts upon its life, reflected a visage utterly clear of drama. Minus the drama that had occurred due to the visage itself.
Hermione's break had begun in a mundane, casual way, she reflected-London traffic was congested as a runny nose in high spring, and polite society had deemed itself unfit to abstain from jaywalking. She had met her parents outside the train station (not inside, never that after her first fall at Hogwarts) and been subjected to immediate, virulent conversation.
"Oh my word!"
"Her-Hermione? Sweet?"
Hermione's clenched fist tightened on her trunk's leather handle until it creaked. She ignored the fine leather's protests. "Mum, we need-"
"-to talk," a fine, yet imperious tone finished.
Hermione—Astarte—the amalgamation un-yet formed, rolled her eyes. Narcissa's perfume had wafted delicately before her Wiltshire accent announced her presence. Hermione had no doubt that the spritz of perfume had been perfectly calculated, or perhaps bespelled, to extend a certain amount from Narcissa's person to declare her approach beatifically and meaningfully.
With a furrowed brow, Hermione began to wonder at the arithmancy of such a spell. Surely, a contained space spell would need measures in 3rds for the-
"And you are?" Daniel Granger demanded in his undemanding manner. He had always had a skill at settling people; Daniel was unassuming, but firm, and so no one suspected the snake in the grass until they succumbed. In retrospect, Hermione wondered how much personality was passed to children, even if biology did not have a say.
"Narcissa Malfoy," she extended a slender, pale hand. Hermione failed to stifle a laugh when Daniel shook it rather than grip it lightly in a bow, as wizarding custom dictated when meeting a noble lady for the first time. Like a timely and predictable school matron, the authoritative yet frustrated form of Lucius Malfoy loomed into being at his wife's side.
Truly, a family so bright-haired as to necessitate sunglasses for eye contact shouldn't be able to phase into reality like specters. Hermione was aghast at her lack of awareness; but perhaps, her focus had been on her mother's rapidly paling face.
"Narcissa Malfoy," the woman repeated slowly, "neé Black."
"Oh," Emily Granger said, both in damnation and fear.
"Yes," Narcissa said. "We have much to discuss."
And so Hermione picked at her bedspread, and strongly considered charming it green to flout the Ministry, while her visage looked on in increasingly green-toned amusement.
The loo beckoned as voices raised.
It felt disgraceful to use her wand as a slipshod pencil to keep her hair back, but Hermione was left with little choice as the momentous conversation downstairs rolled over her. She had gone upstairs ostensibly to change, but she knew the truth: she was hiding.
Hiding was easier than looking her Mum in the eye, or Dad, Daniel, whoever, just please could she be told the truth? For once? Without the bone-breaking misery, without the emotional agony, without the whispers and the yelling-
A crash from downstairs. Without a doubt, the Grecian urn replica Daniel had bought for the front entry way. Lucius found recreations to be an affront to the gods.
A deep breath in and out. She brushed her teeth and swigged water, and turned the accusing spines to face the wall on her way out. The door shut behind her on its own, an unvoiced inquiry answered.
A short jaunt down the stairs, and Hermione stepped into the storm.