Chapter Text
Godric’s Hollow – 20 June 1984
Hermione Granger watched from the backseat of her father’s car as her parents made their way up the stone path to the unassuming cottage. She’d been instructed– very sternly– to not move a single muscle until they came out to get her, but she couldn’t help but shift uneasily in her car seat. The whispers were louder here than they’d ever been before. It was causing chills to race down her spine despite the balmy June air filtering in through the cracked windows.
Hermione wrung her tiny, chubby fingers in her lap and leant closer to the window just in time to see her parents disappear behind the charcoal grey wooden door. She didn’t know much about who they were visiting. Just that she was a friend of theirs, and that Hermione was to stay in the car. She squeezed her eyes shut tight and tried to do what her nanny had taught her when the whispers were particularly loud.
“One,” she started shakily but stopped before she’d even really started when a creaky voice spoke indistinctly in her ear.
She squeaked and quick as she possibly could, made to scramble from the car with every intention of following her parents into the mysterious cottage no matter what her mother said when she was stopped in her path by something she’d never seen before in her nearly five years of life.
There, right in front of her, was what looked like a floating ball of fire that occasionally spit out ribbons of flames from the perfectly contained sphere. Her head tilted to the side and her fingers twisted into the fabric of her pretty dark blue dress. Without conscious thought, she slowly reached toward it, but before her fingertips were close enough to feel the warmth, it shuttered then winked out of existence.
Hermione gasped and swung her head around quickly only to see it reappear a few metres away from its original spot, but more importantly, away from the cottage.
She sucked her bottom lip into her mouth to chew on it thoughtfully as she glanced between the golden flame and the grey door.
Hermione Granger was a lot of things: well-mannered, clever, and obedient to name a few, but her prevailing trait (and the only reason she ever truly got in trouble) was her curiosity.
With one last pained glance back to the solemn door, she turned and quickly closed the distance between herself and the flame, only for it to repeat the same disappearing and reappearing act as before. She huffed in mild outrage and before she could think about it, she was off like a shot, chasing the ever elusive flame. She didn’t notice that the voices that surrounded her so loudly before were quieting until it came to a complete dead silence as she pulled to an abrupt stop at the bottom of the stone pathway leading to a cottage that couldn’t look more different than the one her parents had disappeared into. This one seemed to have huge parts of it that were completely gone and hovering in place right inside where a front door should be was her flame. Her eyes widened as it flickered and danced like it was gesturing for her to come closer.
More nervous than before but no less determined, she squared her small shoulders and stomped her way toward it. Once she’d crossed the threshold, it flew around her and grew in an instant so that it was taking up the whole entranceway, blocking her way back out.
Hermione screamed, all desire to catch the small sphere completely gone with its suddenly horrifying size. She backed up and tripped over her own feet, frantically sliding away on her bum. All at once there was a frightening silence and then large, echoing voices and sounds coming from deeper in the house.
“Lily!” Hermione cried out at the man’s deep voice and turned. “Take the baby and run!”
She couldn’t see anything besides some destroyed furniture and debris, so she squeezed her eyes shut tight. Then there were yelled words she’d never heard before, a resounding thump of something heavy hitting the floor, then the deep and perfectly spaced thud, thud, thud, of someone’s footsteps calmly walking up the stairs. She clapped her hands over her ears as a woman started screaming, and by the time all that was left was the quiet, filtered cries of what sounded like a baby, Hermione was crying too.
She’d heard whispers her whole life.
Indistinct, rushed hisses and occasionally sounds she couldn’t explain, but never had it felt this real, sounded this real. She cried harder than she could ever remember crying as her small body shook with the effort.
She didn’t know how long it had been before she felt she was finally able to open her eyes and breathe, sure that for now, the voices had left her alone, but when she did, hovering right in front of her were two grey-tinted transparent forms, crouched a few centimetres off the hardwood flooring.
“Poor witchling is going to make herself sick,” the man said quietly to the colourless woman beside him.
Hermione’s mouth dropped open as she sucked in a rapid breath and glanced between the two.
“Are you sure she’s a witch, James?” The woman’s equally soft voice responded.
“Did you see the runes, Lils? Now I may not be as well read as Moony, but even I know what those mean,” he replied quietly.
Hermione wiped her cheeks and yelled out in a panic, “I’m not a witch! Swear!”
The hovering man somehow lost his balance in mid air and dropped onto his side in what appeared to be shock. Hermione was too busy trying to block out the memory of her parents' quiet and fearful whispers about witchcraft to pay attention to the loaded and silent conversation the pair in front of her was having. “I didn’t mean to do it, you see,” Hermione continued. “The flames found me!”
The man started mumbling something under his breath that sounded a bit like, “Circe’s knickers!”
A few seconds later the woman came a bit closer, and Hermione resisted the urge to back away. She’d never seen a person quite so grey before, but that didn’t mean they didn’t exist, right? Plus, the hovering was probably just in her imagination. She’d imagined plenty of weird things before. Like the voices.
“What’s your name, honey?” She asked gently.
Hermione sniffled and reached for one of her braids to tug on it nervously. “I’m Hermione. Hermione Granger.”
The woman gave a smile that instantly put Hermione at ease and said, “I’m Lily Potter.”
A few seconds of silence later, Lily was pushing her elbow into the gut of the man beside her who, like a trained show dog, popped right back up into a crouching position and waved at her enthusiastically, “I’m James Potter.”
Remembering her lessons on manners from her mother, Hermione held her hand out and said, “It’s lovely to meet you Mr. and Mrs. Potter.”
Hermione’s brow furrowed in confusion when neither of them took her hand, so she stuck it out even further.
”It’s rude not to take an offered hand, you know. My mother told me so!”
Mr. Potter snorted and said, “Would take your hand if I could, Witchling.”
This only made Hermione more confused, and she refused to drop her hand out of sheer stubbornness. Not even noticing that he’d called her witchling again, she said indignantly, “Well, why can’t you? I don’t have germs or anything. And cooties aren’t real no matter what Jimmy Davies says!”
Lily and James exchanged another look while Hermione watched with narrowed eyes.
“What makes you so sure you aren’t a witch, Hermione?” Lily asked softly, completely changing the subject. Hermione dropped her hand in favor of tucking them both in close at her sides nervously and looked at both of them through her lashes
“Witches aren’t real, and magic isn’t real. My father says so,” she said under her breath. Hermione was almost certain magic was real. How else did you explain that she could move things like Matilda when she got angry? Or change the colour of the ugly church dress her grandmother picked out for her? But she had no plans of ever telling her parents that.
“Only a witch would be able to see this cottage, Miss Granger,” Mr. Potter said in a dreadfully serious tone, and Hermione’s eyes welled with tears again.
“My father says witches are evil, and that anyone who practiced witchcraft won’t get to go to heaven,” she whispered desperately. “I want to go to heaven so very badly, so I can’t be a witch!”
Mr and Mrs. Potter looked at each other and had a conversation with their eyes the way her parents sometimes did before they backed away a few feet and started having an actual conversation that was very difficult for Hermione to follow. She only was able to catch a few words here and there.
“…the runes, Lils!”
“…a child…”
“…our child!”
“Maybe Severus…”
”You’ve got to be joking!”
“...knight bus…”
“...might work if…”
”Won’t remember…”
“...parchment… study…”
“...need a wand…”
“...Hecate…”
“...no trial… Sirius…”
“...find Arcturus…”
“Severus will help!”
“Take her to Lucius… power…”
Hermione couldn’t hold it in any longer and burst out with a huff that shook her entire, tiny body, “Hello!”
They both spun back to her with wide eyes, and she pointed a bony finger at both of them.
“First, you won’t shake my hand.” She held up a second finger, “Then you accuse me of witchcraft,” A third, “ And now you talk about me like I’m not here!” She took her hand down and crossed her arms over her chest, “I think I should go find my parents.” She turned and looked at the no longer flame filled door and got to her feet shakily.
In the blink of an eye they were both hovering right in front of her again and looking at her with puppy dog eyes.
“Wait, I think we could use your help, Miss Granger,” Mr. Potter said in that same deadly serious voice from before.
Hermione’s spine straightened and her head popped up. An adult needing help from her? The curiosity that brought her to the cottage in the first place returned in full force.
Mrs. Potter moved a little closer and asked in a gentle voice, “Have things ever happened around you? Things you couldn’t explain? Things that scared your parents?”
Hermione deflated a little and looked to the ground, the toe of her summer sandals scuffing lightly against the grimy wood floors. “Sometimes,” she whispered. She looked up at them with watery eyes and said desperately, “But I didn’t mean to! Swear it!”
They both gave her reassuring smiles before Lily leaned even closer and whispered like it was a great big secret, “Things like that happened to me when I was your age, and it scared my parents too.”
Hermione’s eyes widened, and she gasped, “Really?”
“Yes, really.” She shot a look at the man and added, “Happened to James too, but his parents weren’t scared because they knew what it was.”
Hermione hopped on her toes at the idea of finding people like her. She’d never found someone like her, and she grew more excited the more she thought about it.
“What was it?” She asked in a rush.
Mr and Mrs. Potter grinned and looked at each other before turning to her and saying at the same time, “Magic.”