277(A/N): I just looked back at my note for chapter 14 and laughing because what a fool I was. That whole 'enjoying my life again' wasn't in the cards for me. Instead, I herniated two discs in my lower back (one in July and one in August) which resulted in me having to go to the ER twice. I had spinal surgery in October and thought that would be the end of it, only to reherniate one of the discs in January. The disc didn't heal correctly so I had a SECOND spinal surgery in June. So, if you were curious about why I disappeared, it's because I was busy being incredibly drugged up and drowning in medical debt. (Insert awkward laughter here).
But on the bright side, I can finally think again! So... that's nice. Kind of.
I've had this chapter mostly finished for over a year, but was just now able to finish it. I loved getting the chance to write out the flaws in Hermione's arguments/thinking. Word of warning- please remember that this Hermione IS NOT canon Hermione in terms of her family, background, and (most importantly) options. Canon Hermione didn't really have a choice. OUAT Hermione did.
A million thanks to RiveraJ88, articcat621, Juvia21, RoseAmeliaSarahNoblePond, Maycooper99, LittleSamMCYT, pendora59, Abbey Carolyn, PaulinaNyghthart, Lilly1127, Lucyole, alexaguamenti, NicoleR85, 1991, PrincessSofiya20, Witch with the Cat, and Guest for reviewing. I love and appreciate all of you for taking the time to let me know that you enjoy my story.
The game that they are playing at the start of the chapter is called 'The Game of Life: Quarter Life Crisis' and every single card referenced is actually in the game. My sister and I had a wild Thanksgiving playing it. Song lyrics for this chapter come from 'Intros & Narrators' by Bastille.
This chapter is definitely not edited and probably riddled with mistakes so sorry about that! I was just super excited to get it uploaded.
Thanks for reading! Enjoy!
I never wanted to be main character
Pretty fucked up there in the light
I'd rather sit at the kitchen table, and
Just start to hitchhike
"Ha!" Hermione crowed, reaching out to snatch the pink peg from Neville's tiny green car. "I warned you that one day I'd steal Hannah from you and now I've done it!"
Neville stared down at the brightly colored board, clutching his bowl of melted ice cream and chocolate liquor to his chest. "What is this game?!"
"It is the Game of Life, Neville, and I am the Master of Seduction." Hermione waved her black card in the air. "Look, it even says that it's not my fault that everyone falls for me!"
Hannah fell over onto her side as she giggled. "Twice, Neville. She's stolen your spouse twice. I'm starting to wonder if you love me at all."
Jefferson shook his head, chin pressed to his chest in a pointless attempt to hide his smile. "Well, what do you want him to do? The cards have spoken."
Popping back up, Hannah stared at Neville with wide eyes. "So, that's it then? You're not even going to fight for me?"
Neville shook his head. "Who am I to get in the way of true love?"
Hermione snorted. "He says, as though he hasn't already gotten in the way of the truest love that's ever been."
"For the last time, Hermione: what's between you and ice cream is fleeting and temporary. Ice cream will never be with just you and you alone."
"You can't know that! Maybe I can change it!"
Hannah leaned in and spun the wheel, moving her car the allotted six spaces before picking up her card. "Spider in the bathroom," she reads. "You had no choice. You had to burn the house down. Return your house card to the deck and draw a new one." With a decisive nod, the blond did as instructed. "That seems reasonable to me."
Jefferson was shaking with laughter. "I forbid you from burning down my house if you see a spider."
"Of course," Hannah agreed, winking at the older man. "As your guest, I can't just burn down the house because I saw a spider. That's only acceptable if I see a snake."
Hermione nodded. "She's right, that is the rule."
"Yeah? I think I'm going to need to see a copy of that rule book."
Neville huffed. "You're out of luck there, mate. Hermione doesn't like to lend out her books. Especially rule books. She gets anxiety if she can't access one the moment she needs it."
"I will dump that bowl of ice cream on your head," Hermione threatened, starting to push up onto her knees but couldn't stop herself from swaying due to the prodigious amount of alcohol they'd had over the course of the evening.
Gently pushing her back onto her bum, Jefferson told her, "I'll negotiate terms with you later."
Neville spun the wheel, moving his car forward several spaces and waiting to pick up a card until after their designated banker- Hermione- had handed him his salary. "Quarter-life crisis," he read. "Existence is meaningless. Lose your spouse. Draw a new job and house card. Keep the kids- you can't get rid of them that easily. Seriously, Hermione, what the fuck is this game?!"
Without looking at Jefferson, Hermione reached out to grab the hand resting in the space between them, uncurling his white fingers and twining hers between his. "Look, Neville, I am not responsible for your quarter-life crisis. You need to take responsibility for your own actions."
"But what even is a quarter-life crisis," he complained as he switched out his cards.
"It's when you turn twenty-five, realize that you hate your life, and totally switch things up," Hermione answered, lips pulling up into a smile as she felt Jefferson slowly relax.
"What life?" Hannah asked. "Aren't twenty-five-year old's just getting started with their life?"
Hermione looked at Jefferson. "As the only one above the age of twenty-five, I think this question is all yours, big guy."
The Hatter wrinkled his nose, throwing back his glass of whiskey. "Fuck, I'm old."
"You're mature," Hermione corrected.
"Experienced," Hannah volunteered.
"Basically dead," Neville contributed, grinning victoriously when Jefferson laughed. "That's what the candle Hermione put on my birthday cake said. It was shaped like a gravestone with 'Basically Dead' carved into it."
Hannah giggled at the memory. "I saved that candle. I'm going to keep it and reuse it for other people's birthdays."
Hermione made a noise of approval. "How cheap. I like it."
The blond witch shrugged. "Neville's the one with money. I'm just coasting by on my ingenuity and good looks."
"I know, that's why I keep trying to steal you away," Hermione winked, and then nudged Jefferson. "Your turn."
"I'm almost afraid of what my card is going to read," he announced dryly, spinning the wheel and moving his car. Unlike the others, Jefferson silently read his card first instead of immediately reading it to the group. Once he finished, he grinned. "High school reunion. Your old gym teacher is looking pretty good… Collect 10K from the bank."
The three wand users were almost howling with laughter. "Falling in lust for a teacher?" Neville gasped. "How Hermione of you."
"HEY! I have never lusted after a teacher."
"Lockhart," Hannah offered with a raised brow.
"Lupin," Neville added.
Hermione leaned in, narrowing her eyes at Hannah. "Firenze."
Hannah turned bright red and Jefferson glanced between the two women. "Who's Firenze?"
"No one," Hannah stated quickly, voice slightly rising in pitch.
"That's what I thought." Hermione sat back with a satisfied smirk.
Neville snorted. "Just spin the wheel, Granger. Let's get this over with."
"Just because your luck has been terrible doesn't mean mine is," Hermione reminded him. "After all, so far this game has mostly just been me stealing your spouses."
"Yes, but now I'm alone. Your luck has run out."
"It's not over till it's over."
"Are they always like this?" Jefferson asked Hannah, who smiled brightly.
"They're usually worse."
"Because you're such an angel," Hermione muttered, picking up her card. "Psycho ex breaks in and pees on everything. Time to move."
Neville pressed his lip tightly together. "So, who'd you think did it? Ron or Krum?"
"Ron," Hannah and Hermione said at the same time.
"Really? That seems pretty creative for Ron."
"The card doesn't say that he broke in with the express purpose of pissing on everything," Hermione pointed out. "Just that he broke in and did so. And Ron getting blind drunk, breaking into my home, and needing to use the bathroom but too drunk to be able to find it is totally within the realm of possibility."
"Huh. That does make sense."
"Who's Ron?" Jefferson asked, reaching over to grab a chip and toss it into his mouth.
"Hermione's self-proclaimed other half," Neville answered promptly.
"An old friend," Hermione hastily corrected.
"Her next victim," Hannah chirped, shoving a spoonful of ice cream into her mouth.
Blinking mournfully at the blond, Hermione asked, "I chose you, Hannah. I fought for you. So why are you hurting me like this?"
"Yes, and you also promised you'd call weekly while you were away. And did you?"
"Now, Hannah-"
"DID YOU?"
Hermione hung her head. "I should have stolen someone else's spouse."
Neville nodded agreeably. "Hindsight."
Maybe to me, other stories are more interesting, and
Maybe to me, they're a mirror back on everything
So much bigger, bolder, braver than I'll ever be
After they finished their game and Jefferson had disappeared somewhere, Hermione escorted Hannah and Neville to the room next to the one she'd claimed before turning in for the night. But only a few hours later, something woke her up.
Hermione rolled over and opened her eyes blearily, slowly taking in the darkened room. Blinking several times in confusion, she groaned. "Why?"
Jefferson tensed from his spot next to the window. "Sorry," he whispered.
"Were you watching me sleep? How long have you been there?"
He shrugged. "A while, maybe, I don't know. I just…"
Shifting slightly, Hermione sighed. "It makes it worse, somehow, that you're standing by the window." Sliding over a bit, she pulled back the covers next to her. "Get in."
"Get in?" Even if she couldn't see the befuddlement on his face in the darkened room, it was plain as day in voice. "Get in where?"
She sighed again. "Bed, Jefferson. Get in the bed. It'll be much less creepy if you're lying in the bed rather than watching from the window. In bed, it feels more like when you're trying to fall asleep and you're just staring blankly in my direction. But if you're by the window, then you're really just here to watch me sleep and that's a bit uncomfortable. So, into bed you go."
Jefferson did as he was told, sliding into bed beside her. "Why?" he finally asked, after he had settled his head on the pillow next to hers.
Hermione could feel herself relaxing. "I had to go on the run for a bit with my friend Harry last year," she told him, her eyes closing as she started to slip back asleep. "We had to share a room and a lot of the time we slept in the same bed… the things in the dark are a lot less scary when you're not facing them alone."
His fingers brushed back a lock of her hair and she heard him echo, "Not alone," right before she fully fell asleep.
So take a walk with me through these lives
I'm your friend, your lover, and your traitor
Take a walk with me through my mind
But I'm an unreliable narrator
Jefferson was sound asleep when Hermione got up the next morning and, after carefully tucking the blankets around the older man, she tiptoed out of the room and made her way to the kitchen. To her surprise, Neville and Hannah were already there.
"Morning," Hannah said once she'd caught sight of Hermione hovering in the doorway.
"Morning. Did you two sleep at all?"
"No," Neville grunted. "We got distracted by some late-night reading." He nodded at the storybook resting on the table between them. "Wonderful way to sober up."
"Ah." No wonder they looked so terrible. "And what did you think?"
He sighed. "I honestly don't know what to think. I know you told us that this had to do with fairytales and curses but this… I don't know, Hermione. I almost wish I could write this all off as you playing an awful prank on us- that's how unreal it all seems."
Hannah pushed a mug of warm tea across the table to Hermione. "The only way I'm able to wrap my head around it is by keeping in mind that this whole situation started in another world with different magic before shifting here. A curse powerful enough to not only transport an entire country to another world and erase their memories and replace them with new ones, but also powerful enough to keep anyone from aging? From our perspective and understanding of magic, that's just not within the realm of possibility."
"Are you really going to just leave Henry there?" Neville demanded, running his hand through his hair. "This woman literally murdered her own father- who she apparently loved more than anyone in the world- to get what she wanted; can you really trust that someone like that is capable of loving their own child enough to protect them?"
Hermione huffed. "No. But what exactly do you expect me to do? Kidnap Henry and run? He won't like that. And the amount of chaos that would cause in town makes it a foolish move. Unlike Regina, I can't erase thousands of people's memories with a wave of my hand."
Neville snorted. "Who cares? At least he'd be safe."
Hannah shook her head. "But he wouldn't feel safe. Henry may be a child, but he's the one who put the pieces together first. He's clever and determined. If Hermione removes him from town against his will, whatever trust he has in her would be shattered. And he would try to run away from her the same way he did from Regina. Removing Henry from the situation would only end up causing him more damage."
"He'd hate me," Hermione stated flatly when the mutinous look didn't disappear from Neville's face. "In his eyes, I would be just as bad as Regina. I am the first person in his life who didn't tell him that he was crazy. I am the first person who believed in him."
Shoulders drooping, Neville sighed. "You're right. Unfortunately."
"I've given him a two-way mirror, I've placed charms on his backpack for protection and tracking, and I plan on giving him a portkey that will transport him from Storybrooke to a friend from MACUSA's apartment," she listed out. "I'm doing my best to make sure he understands the danger of the situations we're in, but it's hard for him to grasp just how much damage Regina might do. He may know that she cursed an entire town and enjoys ripping out hearts for fun, but she's also the woman who tucked him in every night and hugged him when he hurt himself. It's not easy for him to reconcile the idea of Regina with the truth of her."
Drumming his fingers on the table, Neville asked, "Could you make some kind of deal with Henry? So that, if Regina gets worse, you can get him away with minimum fuss? Including him in the conversation and setting boundaries with him would make him feel more secure and less betrayed should you have to get him out of Storybrooke quickly."
"That could work," Hermione hummed. "I'll have to bring it up with Gold first so I can get more insights into what signs to keep an eye out for to indicate Regina's about to make one of her more dangerous moves."
"Gold?" Hannah repeated.
"Rumpelstiltskin."
Neville and Hannah shared a look and Hermione narrowed her eyes at them. "What?"
After several beats, Hannah looked over at her again and flashed a small smile. "It's nothing, Hermione. You've just got a knack for the making the oddest of friends."
She hummed, still suspicious. "Gold is an interesting character."
Neville snorted. "Anyone who could be found in a book of fairytales would have to be. In fact, I'm rather sure being interesting is a requirement."
Hermione lifted her glass in a mock toast.
"Well, now that it's just us, what happened with Emma?" Hannah abruptly asked. "Last we spoke, you were both doing so well."
Through clenched teeth, Hermione gave a more thorough recounting of what all had led to the current tension between the two sisters. "She just doesn't seem to understand the gravity of the situation and refuses to see Regina as a genuine threat," Hermione stated, her rant finally winding down. "If Emma had her way then we would all just be sitting back and waiting for Regina to do something worse than kidnap and curse an entire town before actually dealing with her. And instead of seeing the actual problem here, Emma is acting like my actions are the problem here."
"And you disagree?" Neville asked calmly and Hermione reared back in shock.
"What exactly is that supposed to mean?"
"It means that, based off of what you have told us, this situation is incredibly nuanced and there are multiple issues that need to be dealt with."
Hermione wondered if she would like where this conversation ended up. "Regina is the issue that needs to be dealt with. Everything else is irrelevant."
Blue eyes flashed as Neville looked at Hermione over the edge of his mug. "Careful now. You're starting to sound like Harry. Things didn't suddenly become all better once Voldemort was defeated and it definitely won't be once Regina is gone. As long as the curse is still in place, you still have time, Hermione, to shore up the cracks in your foundation."
She frowned. "You think Emma is going to be a problem?"
Neville glanced at his girlfriend, who told Hermione, "It sounds as though neither you nor Emma are operating with the full picture here. Your perspectives are influencing how you are seeing things, Hermione, and that's not to say that you're wrong about what is happening here and what needs to be done, but you can't just ignore your sister's thoughts and, most importantly, why she thinks the way she does."
"Meaning?"
Adding a small amount of sugar into his cup, Neville turned the spoon in his mug one, two, three, four times. "What exactly are you looking for here, Hermione? Support or honesty?"
That answered the question of whether or not she would like where the conversation was going. "Are the two mutually exclusive?"
"Not exactly," he shrugged.
"What Neville actually means is," Hannah interjected, "would you rather we be blunt or gentle when helping you look at the situation you've found yourself in as a whole instead of your habit of examining each individual piece?"
Hermione took a moment to think it over and was surprised by the answer she came to. "Blunt honesty."
"You sure?" Neville verified, brow raising in surprise at her answer.
"Yes."
"Alright." Setting his mug down on the table, Neville leaned back in his chair and locked eyes with Hermione. "None of us stopped living just because you weren't in our lives to see it."
Hermione felt like she'd been punched in the gut.
"No one is saying that what happened to you wasn't awful and that you haven't experienced more terrible things in the span of a year than most experience in their entire lives. But just because you went through worse than the rest of us doesn't mean that our pain and our suffering doesn't matter."
Hannah reached out to take Hermione's hand, squeezing tightly. "Breathe, Hermione," she coached, and the brunette inhaled, not realizing that she had been holding her breath that whole time. "Too blunt, Neville," she scolded her boyfriend.
"No," Hermione interrupted when she'd regained her voice. "It's alright. It's just been a while since I wasn't treated like I'm seconds away from shattering."
Neville's grin was bitter. "You are seconds away from shattering- we all are. And if I wasn't telling you something I know without a doubt that you already knew, I would've been more gentle. I also know that right now you are desperate for someone to unload on who won't just roll over and take it so let's hear it. Right here, right now, let's get this out of the way."
Hermione blinked at Neville, trying to ascertain whether he really meant it. When she was sure he did, Hermione allowed herself to blurt out the thought that she knew was unfair but still stubbornly clung to. "Everyone refuses to acknowledge or even consider the possibility that I know what I'm talking about when it comes to Regina. They think I'm being reckless and cruel and not thinking things through but they're the ones not getting it. Regina cast a horrifically dark curse, she took thousands of people hostage, and she rips hearts out for fun. Killing her is not the act of someone heartless- leaving her alive is. They're the ones not thinking things through, not me. They're the problem and if something happens, if Regina hurts someone, it'll be all their fault because they could have done something and they chose not to. And just because they're fine with that doesn't mean I have to be."
After waiting a moment to be sure she was done speaking, Neville nodded. "You're right. Your sister and that MACUSA friend of yours have no business being all concerned about your attitude now. They should have been worried about it for a while. After all, it's not as though you being vindictive and cruel is a new thing. That storm has been brewing since fourth year."
Never in her wildest imaginings had Hermione thought Neville was going to say that. "What?" she asked stupidly.
Hannah patted her hand. "Rita Skeeter, sweetie. He's talking about what you did Rita Skeeter."
Hermione jerked her hand back. "She was spying on us and writing that Harry was crazy and I was a whore!"
"Yes, and in response you trapped her in a jar for several months," Hannah reminded her. "You never told anyone about your suspicions, you never handed her over to the authorities when you had proof she was an Animagus. You kidnapped her, held her hostage for several months, and then blackmailed her into doing your bidding."
Just because they had a point didn't mean Hermione had to like it. "The Ministry was already well on its way to being controlled by Voldemort!"
"Professor McGonagall would've squashed Skeeter with no hesitation if you'd told her what was going on," Neville snorted. "But you didn't want Skeeter gone, you just wanted a pawn to do your bidding. That became more than obvious to us after the lovely Dumbledore exposé she published for you."
"Ah." Hermione sat back in her seat. "You found out about that."
Hannah gave her a pitying look. "Harry and Ron are the idiots, Hermione, not us. Though Ginny was the first to put it together."
Pressing her lips tightly together, Hermione tried to figure out what to say next.
Neville beat her to the punch. "I, for one, am not saying that your actions were necessarily wrong. All I'm saying is that I can understand why the adults in your life might be somewhat troubled by your attitude. And honestly, Hermione, I think they might be a more trustworthy benchmark for right and wrong than any of us are. Our upbringings did not help turn us into well-adjusted and well-rounded adults."
"Perhaps," Hermione allowed. "But our upbringing did allow us for a unique point of view. We know the consequences of hesitating to take action."
"Are there really no moments in your life where you thought that maybe, just maybe, you would have been better off if you had hesitated?" Neville prodded. "If, instead of making a choice and jumping headlong into following through, things might have been better if you had taken a second to actually think it through?"
Hermione knew what he meant. Still, she asked, "What are you getting at?"
A Gryffindor through and through, Neville refused to back down. Leaning forward, he challenged, "Does the fact that you struggled more than others mean that theirs don't matter? Does the fact that the choices you made were done out of love make the consequences of them inconsequential?"
She closed her eyes. "You know what would have happened to my parents if Death Eaters had gotten a hold of them."
"I do. I also know better than almost anyone just how painful it is to meet your parent's gazes and see no glimmer of recognition in them." Neville's tone was filled with all the emotions Hermione kept locked away and she opened her eyes. "But I can't even imagine what it would feel like for them to recognize me but look at my sibling as though they're a stranger. I can't imagine the level of guilt I would feel to be put in the position where my parents basically loved me and not them. And sure, maybe the first one is worse than the second, but does that really matter in the end? Especially when you consider the fact that you got to make a choice, Hermione, and Emma just had to live with it."
Swallowing, Hermione whispered, "You think Emma is upset with me for what I did to our parents."
"I know that she is," he stated. "Just as I know that she must love you very much and is thrilled to have you back in her life. But have you two actually taken the time to discuss what you did? To discuss what happened in Emma's life while you were gone? Or has Emma just been too scared of you running off and you too terrified to hear her thoughts to bring it up?"
"I left her a letter."
"You left her no way to fight back," Neville corrected. "You left her no way to argue with you or for her to challenge your idea. Just like with your parents."
"They would have said no-"
"And that would have been their choice," Hannah stated, causing the other two teens to look at her. "Hermione, you made a choice you should never have been put in the position to make in the first place. I absolutely understand why you did what you did. But surely you can understand why Emma would be resentful of the fact that you took away her choices."
Hermione felt like she was moments away from crying. "I just feel so mad all the time. It feels like I'm being punished for what I did by having everyone refuse to listen to me now because I thought they wouldn't have listened to me then. No one is listening to me."
There ain't no God up above, just these hounds of love
We've heard every story before
Genius minds, all these fights just to live a life
What's the motive? And what we're here for?
"I don't think you're mad that they won't listen to you, Hermione," Jefferson stated from where he leaned against the entryway in the kitchen. The trio jumped in surprise, and Hermione was barely able to stop herself from automatically flinging hexes. "I think you're mad that they just won't say what they're thinking. That they- that Emma- won't just have the fight you know is coming and get it out of the way. You're mad that Emma won't hold you accountable. You're mad because you can't tell if Emma actually thinks your current plans are terrible or if she just doesn't trust your judgement. You're mad because she welcomed you back so easily and you know you don't deserve it."
Never in her life had Hermione wanted to run more than she did right then.
"I feel it too, sometimes," Hannah admitted. "Especially after things first started to settle down over the summer. I kept lashing out and my family let me because I was dealing with so much trauma and they thought I just needed to get it out of my system. But what I really wanted was for someone to call me out and tell me to stop. I wanted boundaries and consequences because it would provide something stable. And because some small part of my brain thought that, if no one called me out, then it meant that no one cared. That I really was all grown up and on my own. That I wasn't still a child. Which we're technically not. But we also didn't get to fully experience and appreciate our childhood which has left us feeling off-kilter and as though we missed out on something."
Neville sighed. "You're mad that Emma won't just say it. You're mad that Emma won't tell you the rules. You messed up and it's not alright and someone needs to say it so that you can all move past it. But Hermione, Emma is very likely still afraid that she's going to do or say the wrong thing and make you leave again. She's not going to start that conversation with you. If you don't take that first step, then who will?"
David talked about the daily trenches of adult life, but
I'm still hypnotized by the voices inside my mind
When I should sit down, shut up
Listen, just listen, be humble 'round these stories
Going to speak with Emma immediately probably wasn't what Hannah and Neville had wanted after their conversation, but the idea of waiting made Hermione's skin crawl. Everything she'd been told was rattling around in her head and she needed to know the truth. She needed it all to make sense.
Cautiously making her way through the house, Hermione found Emma sitting at the kitchen table, staring down at the remnants of a grilled cheese sandwich. Her favorite hangover food. When she heard Hermione's footsteps, Emma looked up at her with bloodshot eyes and Hermione's heart hurt at the exhaustion on her sister's face. Taking a seat across from Emma, they stared at each other for several long moments.
Thomas' words kept rattling around in her head. I know you went through hell, Hermione, but I have no real idea what exactly happened to you in Britain. What I do know is what Emma went through here. I was there for all of it. I helped you get your parents out of the U.K., got them settled in their new life in Minnesota, and kept them safe as best I could. It was easy with them. But Emma? I don't think you get just how bad it was for her when you were gone.
"What happened while I was gone?" Hermione asked her sister, finally broaching the topic that had been carefully avoided since she'd fallen into Emma's arms with a sob all those months ago. When she realized that the world hadn't stopped turning for her sister just because she was gone.
Emma was silent for a long moment, staring down into her mug. When she did start to answer, her voice was soft and hazy, the London accent she'd fought to hide since moving to the States slowly coming through and making her sound so much younger to Hermione's ears. "Do you have any idea what it was like getting your note?" she asked. "What it was like realizing that you had been lying to me for years about how bad it was getting back home? I really thought everything was fine until Mum and Dad showed up and had no idea who you were. And then I got your note and realized that you'd erased their memories of you before shipping them off here, forcing Samuel and Thomas to help you do it.
"You made yourself an orphan to keep them- and by extension me- safe and in the process you trapped me here and I hated you for it."
Hermione flinched back. Her sister's negative emotions weren't a surprise to her because she had known the moment she made the decision to wipe their parents memories that Emma would, at the very least, be disappointed in her decision to take away their parent's choices, but she had never looked at it the way Emma had.
You made yourself an orphan to keep them safe.
You took my worst fear and made it real and then made me watch the fallout.
She already hated herself for what she had done, but Hermione still stood by the fact that it was the best decision she could have made at the time. Hermione did what she'd had to to keep her parents safe. But she'd never taken even a moment to consider that it would be Emma caught in the crossfire.
"You are my baby sister," Emma continued. "I'm supposed to protect you too, not just the other way around. Not because our parents or society or whoever you'd like to blame told me to, but because I wanted to. Because we are family. We're supposed to look out for one another. But instead of being there with you, I was trapped on the other side of the Atlantic while you were off risking your life for a boy and country that weren't fucking worth it. And I wanted to run after you so badly, but I couldn't because Mum and Dad remembered me and would have panicked if I disappeared. And you knew that. You knew that erasing their memories wouldn't erase their feelings. You knew they'd be wandering around here sad and scared and heartbroken without a clue as to why they felt that way, and you knew they'd end up focusing all their attention onto me.
"You trapped me here," she repeated, finally looking up to meet Hermione's gaze. "And I was so relieved to have you back that I forgot how angry I was that you left in the first place. But now we're here and I see you running off doing as you please and it's like I'm reliving it all over again. Like I'm holding that note from you saying goodbye over and over again. And I'm so fucking sick of it."
So the cliche says, "History repeats itself"
Well, here we go again
Yeah, the cliche says, "History repeats itself"
Well, here we go again
Hermione took a deep breath and then let it out with a whoosh when she realized that she had no idea what to say.
"And you want to know the worst part?" Emma continued. "I know that I can't be mad at you. I can't. Because God knows I made so many shitty decisions when I was your age and no one ever held it against me. Even though I didn't have the same justifications that you did. Your choices… fuck, Hermione, I get why you made them. You were a kid making the best decisions you could and maybe you chose wrong, but you shouldn't have had to choose at all. I know all of that. But I'm still mad. And if I can't be mad at you, then who the hell am I supposed to be mad at?"
Forcing herself to unclench her jaw, Hermione murmured, "Feelings don't always have to make sense. It's fine that you're mad at me, because I hate myself too for what I did. But I can't be sorry. I can't. Because if I hadn't, then they would be dead. If I had told them- you- the truth and asked for you all to stay away, none of you would have. You know that."
Emma's eyes flashed and she let out a bark of laughter. "That's bullshit and you know it. It's not that we wouldn't have left at all, it's that we wouldn't have left without you. That's the truth you're avoiding. If you had told us what was going on in Wizarding Britain and that we needed to leave for our safety, we would have done it as long as you came with us. We would have gone into hiding for as long as we needed to, done whatever was required of us to keep under the radar, as long as we were together. But you didn't want to come with us. You wanted to stay and fight and you wanted us out of the crossfire so you made the decision that got you what you wanted and fuck what the rest of us thought."
Hermione stared at her sister, mind strangely blank. "I…"
She had never thought of it like that. She had never…
"I couldn't just leave," Hermione tried to justify. "I couldn't just run. I was too well-known. They would have hunted us all down if they knew I was with you."
"Bullshit," her sister spat. "There's a reason that Voldemort and his lackeys didn't even bother trying to get a foothold in the U.S. like they did Europe. This is not Britain and MACUSA is not the Ministry of Magic. MACUSA would not have given a shit about blood status and how much influence they had in Britain. They knew that if any of them set foot here, Sam would have had them hunted down and executed on the spot. That's the reason you had our parents come here in the first place despite the fact that it'd be easier visa-wise to have them to go somewhere like Australia."
Shaking her head rapidly, Hermione whispered, "I had to stay and fight. I had to. I had to try and help-"
"Harry," Emma finished. "You had to stay and try to help Harry."
"He needed me."
"We needed you. I needed you." Pushing herself away from the table, Emma stood up. "You picked a boy who spent years dismissing you and lashing out at you because you were an easy target, who only trusted you and listened to you as long as it benefited him, over your family. You picked him over us. Over our parents who loved us more than anything in the world. Over me. How am I supposed to be alright with that, Hermione? How can you be alright with that?"
Hermione ducked her head down, blinking furiously against the tears welling in her eyes. Picking Harry over her family… that wasn't at all what she had meant to do. And yet, when put like that, Emma was absolutely right. She could have left with her family. She could have kept them safe by telling them the truth and leaving England with them. By staying together. But instead, she had stayed and sent her parents away without giving them a chance to fight back.
"I didn't think…" she whispered through a clogged throat.
Emma walked around the table and sat in the chair next to Hermione. "That's the thing, Hermione. You did think. You're always thinking. You see a problem and then you jump twenty steps ahead and leave the rest of us falling behind. You see that Harry is prepared to start a one-man rebellion against Voldemort and jump right to what could happen to him without you there to pull his ass out of the line of fire like you always do instead of considering how to actually stop or help him. You don't bother to consider reaching out to other people and getting help because why bother when you can do it all yourself. You see Regina and this curse and leap right to killing her instead of consulting with the rest of us about options.
"You never considered that MACUSA might want her alive so that they could learn more about her magic and what the curse she used to get here actually entailed. You never considered how her dying suddenly like that would affect Henry. You never considered that her victims- which you are not one of- might want to have a say in what happened to her. We have a whole vault of her crap and no clue who those hearts belong to or what all those things do. You never considered the fact that she might have information we need. You just jumped straight to what could happen if she was left alive. More importantly, you never considered that it's not your fucking choice to make. We're not in Britain anymore. You're not trapped in a hellhole full of adults that only care about drilling the idea of 'the Greater Good' into your head. You are in a place full of people who would like nothing more than to handle this problem without you and you couldn't care less."
"So what?" Hermione snapped. "You want me to just what? Take a step back? Not do anything about Regina? Ignore what's going on here?"
Emma suddenly looked exhausted again. "Since when have you ever cared what I wanted?"
That knocked the fight from Hermione as quickly as it had appeared.
The two sisters sat in silence for several minutes, each trying to process the pain and bitter truths that had passed between them.
"What do you want, Hermione?" Emma suddenly asked. Hermione blinked at her and her sister gave a half-smile. "When you showed up at my place in May, you said you wanted to get out of Wizarding Britain and give yourself time to recover from the war. Only to immediately throw yourself into another one the moment an opportunity presented itself. You said you wanted to feel safe again only to put yourself in unsafe situations whenever you have the chance. Was any of that true?"
Hermione took a moment to really think about it. "Yes," she eventually answered. "It's true."
"Then why can't you do that?"
She wished she could give Emma the answer that she wanted.
She wished she knew what answer Emma wanted.
Instead, Hermione gave her the only answer she could offer. "I don't know."
Take a walk with me through these lives
I'm your friend, your lover, and your traitor
Take a walk with me through my mind
Never lay your trust in the narrator
(A/N): I don't usually do end of chapter notes, but I felt like I needed to do a short one. Hopefully my chapter helped shape the complexity of the issues between Hermione and Emma. Hopefully none of you want to come at me with pitchforks for being so mean to a beloved character. But just in case, I wanted to flat out state the thought I'm trying to get at here: the choice that Hermione made in regards to her family was the one that was easiest for her. She wanted to stay. She wanted to fight. Which is understandable and somewhat admirable. But she also wanted her family safe and, in order to get that, she chose to force them to do what she wanted- to do what would be easiest for her. And that's not okay. Hermione has also been very clear that she's mad that no one helped them during the war and/or that the Hogwarts staff never asked for help. But neither did she, and Hermione's resources were a lot better than I imagine most of the staff's would be. And while the professor's were adults and should have done better, it's slightly hypocritical for Hermione to be pissed at them for doing the same thing she did. Of course, Hermione's experiences in the Wizarding World definitely shaped her responses and it's easy for us to understand her thought process, she still has to acknowledge her wrong-doing in this so that things can get better.
With that being said... Please leave a review on your way out! xD