In the Viper's Nest, Fourth Year

King’s Cross, Platform Nine and Three Quarters, crowded and noisy, marks the true end to the school year. Trunks and pet carriers are zooming through the air, levitated by students’ reunited families. Daphne squeezes Hermione’s hand, and then she’s off, shoulders slumped and blond hair hanging limply around her face, her younger sister in tow, to meet the Greengrasses. Theo grins at her, and then he trots off after Daphne as well, meeting a twitchy looking house elf instead of parents. Draco is across the platform already, getting embraced stiffly by his mother. She pulls away quickly and snaps her fingers. A house elf wearing a hot pink pillow case pops into existence next to them and starts gathering Draco’s things. 

He must feel her eyes on him, because he glances up at her and his lips twitch before he quickly looks away. Because God forbid that he acknowledge her in public. Because after all they’ve been through together, she’s still a mudblood. He’ll curse people and almost burn the school down and kiss her, but looking at her for more than two seconds? 

The scandal, the horrors. 

She frowns, and Pansy pulls on her arm, gesturing to where Preston Parkinson is standing with their family elf, Plicky, at his heels, amid a throng of parents. 

Preston is taller than he was at Hogwarts, towering over the people around him. He looks up and grins at them. He's perpetually slouchy with bitten-to-the-cuticle nails, and he’s always grinning. He is unmistakably a Parkinson, with dark hair and eyes, and sharp, angular bone structure, except for his nose, which is flat like Pansy’s. 

“Pip-Squeek!” he says, pulling Pansy into a bear hug and spinning her around. 

“Preston! Put me down!”

Hermione moves past them, toward the exit. 

“Mi!” Pansy calls after her. “See you in a few days?”

“Owl me.” She waves goodbye, and then trudges through the magical barrier, out and  into the muggle world. 

Dad is waiting outside the station, leaning against the car and holding a sign that says ‘GRANGER’ in big block letters, like he’s a chauffeur picking up a wealthy client. He has a set of headphones on, but pulls them off as soon as he sees Hermione. When he pulls her into a hug, Hermione can barely hear music (is that The Beach Boys?) blasting out of his headphones. She climbs into the car as he slams her luggage into the trunk. Crookshanks yowls from inside his carrier at the loud noise, and Hermione whispers soothingly to him. 

Dad climbs into the driver's seat. He pops the CD out of his walkman and slides it into the car’s stereo. 

Dance, Dance, Dance, by the Beach Boys comes on. 

Dad pulls the car out to the road, and tells her that Mum is still at the practice, but they’ll see her soon, for dinner. He doesn’t ask about school. He doesn’t ask about her friends. He doesn’t ask about the bullying.

“I’m going through a Beach Boys phase,” he says instead.  

Hermione just smiles. He starts singing the backup harmony and grabs her hand, bouncing his head to the beat. “Come on, Hermione,  ‘ dance, dance, dance…’ ”

She joins in with the lead lyrics, starting off soft, then as she gets into the song, belting them out and dancing in her seat, as Dad harmonizes. 

The city passes by as they sing their way through the first half of the CD, jumping in their seats with arms flung out the open windows. Hogwarts makes the world so small, but here, watching people in the cars they pass, living their normal, muggle lives, something loosens in her chest, and she feels like she’s been starved of oxygen, and she can finally breathe again.

With every year at Hogwarts, she grows fonder of the muggle world. Magic is brilliant, of course, but the magical world? The last two years have left a bitter taste in her mouth. Things would be simpler if she were a muggle. Things were certainly simpler when magic was just Disney, and the Grimm Brothers, and Frieda’s hair conveniently catching on fire when she made fun of Hermione. 

It’s a short drive home, and the music stops abruptly as the car shuts off. And when she walks inside, everything is wrong. The house is in sepia, a beige monstrosity, the vibrant colors she grew up washed out and replaced with neutrals, sandy browns, and shades of grey. It's unrecognizable. The furniture, the art, even the smell is different. No one told her they’d been redecorating. 

There’s tarps covering the living room furniture, a stack of empty paint cans by the garbage, and tile samples laid out neatly on the coffee table. The kitchen is completely gutted. The flooring is pulled up, and all the cabinet doors are off. The appliances are pulled out from the wall, and the walls are half painted an awful ocher color. 

So many days she spent burning with an emotion so hard to place, somewhere between nostalgia, love, and shame, that she came from this place. 

And now it’s gone. 

Gone. 

Gone.

The word echoes in her head, until it becomes meaningless.

The only untouched rooms are her room and Dad’s study (where the walls are a beautiful, sea green). So she holes up on his sofa for the rest of the day, gazing out the bay window and appreciating the blessed familiarity of the room. The stacks of paperbacks littering the thick, orange, 70’s carpet, the overflowing shelves of CDs, the string of garland and Christmas cards left over from several years before, the set of enormous speakers with their jumble of cords that twist in haphazard knots across the floor, the upright piano, and inexplicably, the bronze, life sized statue of a hissing opossum that he collected on a trip to America (before he met Mum). 

(“Fascinating creatures, opossums,” he says, whenever asked about it, which he is, frequently.) 

Dad sits at the piano, practicing another Beach Boys song, God Only Knows . He’s halfway decent, humming the song then sounding out the chords. 

“For your mum,” he explains. 

Their anniversary is in a month, and he always learns a love song to play for her every year. 

“A bit depressing for a present,” Hermione muses, as he sings the words ‘if you should ever leave me… what good would living do me…’

“That’s where you’re wrong, sweetheart. Your mum’s a sap, she’ll love this.” 

“ You’re a sap.”

“God only knows what I’d be without you…”

As he continues singing, she inspects one of the paperbacks, flipping through the pages absently. The cover features the silhouette of a dinosaur skeleton. “A thriller? You’ve moved on from memoirs, I see.”

Another change. Last summer he was only reading memoirs.

“A thing of the past, sweetheart. Your mother’s got me onto this Crichton bloke.”

“Is it any good?”

He turns around on the piano bench, getting up to fiddle with the speakers, and after a moment, music crackles to life around them in the happy harmonies of God Only Knows. 

“If you can manage to suspend your disbelief. Although, ever since you told me dragons are real, sweetheart, I can imagine dinosaurs much better. What are you reading these days?”

“I haven't read for fun in ages, Dad.”

He frowns, settling next to her on the sofa. “A right shame.”

“Yeah, I was up to my ears in obscure case law last term.”

“Little Hermione, becoming the first barrister in the family?” He nudges her shoulder with his. 

“Hardly. If this year has taught me anything, it's that the wizarding world’s court system is dangerously backwards. I could never work as a barrister. I’d tear my hair out.” 

“Hmm. This was some sort of appeals process for an animal euthanization that you wrote to us about, yeah?”

“Yeah, but it’s not an animal. It was for a hippogriff. They’re very smart—” The sound of the front door slamming open cuts her off. 

Mum’s voice echoes through the house, and Dad jumps up to quickly change the song. “Hello, you two!”

“In my study, Jean,” Dad calls back.

Holding a wine glass, she appears at the door, radiant, even after a full day of dentistry. Shining, wavy hair pulled back into an elegant knot. Her face is flushed, and her smile, wide and dimpled like Hermione’s, looks so sophisticated and elegant on her face, in a way it never looks on Hermione’s. “Hermione, dear, oh, how I’ve missed you.” She pulls her into a tight embrace, as Hermione tells her how much she missed her too.

She pulls away and grasps Hermione’s face between her hands, smiling brightly, eyes welling with unshed tears. “Let’s take a look at you. Dan, do you see how grown up she is? Oh, you’re so beautiful, Hermione.”

Hermione grins and pulls away. “Stop, Mum.” She flops back onto the sofa. “Did you bring dinner?”

“It’s in the kitchen.”

Relocated to the new (beige) kitchen, Mum is pouring herself another glass of wine, and Dad is pulling plastic container after plastic container out of the large, brown paper bag, sitting on the table, as Hermione clears away about a million paint color swatches, all in barely indecipherable shades of off-white. 

“So tell me about this hippogriff, sweetheart. Why did the school want to put it down?” Dad licks his finger after dipping it into one of the containers of curry. 

“Hippogriff, dear?” Mum wanders over to the table, holding her wine glass in one hand and the mostly empty bottle in the other.

“Hermione was telling me about a hippogriff she saved.”

“Tried to,” says Hermione

“A hippogriff? The lion-eagle hybrid?” Mum swirls her wine, creating a red vortex in her glass.

“No, Mum. That would be a gryffon. We don’t like them.” She huffs, as Mum rolls her eyes behind a big sip out of her glass. “A hippogriff has the front half of an eagle and the back half of a horse.”

“So what did you save it from?” Mum offers Dad a glass, and he shakes his head. 

“A committee of old, angry men. And I didn’t. I studied all year, and then I failed.” She rips open her chopsticks, frustratedly gazing at the pile of fragrant noodles on her plate. 

“Oh, how horrible. I’m so sorry, sweetie,” Mum says, watching Hermione struggle with the chopsticks.

“And why were they trying to kill it?” Dad says, mouth full. 

Mum glares at him. “Dan. Table manners.”

“Well, it injured, er—” She glances at the way Dad is holding his chopsticks, trying to arrange her fingers the correct way. “It injured a—a student.”

Dad swallows and wipes his mouth. “It attacked a student?” 

Mum makes a tsk-tsks sound with her tongue and raises her eyebrows. “Dogs that bite get put down.”

“Jean.” He shakes his head, just the slightest bit. 

“Hippogriffs are very proud, and—” And she fumbles the chopsticks again, noodles slipping off the end. Damn. She huffs.  “—we were told not to provoke him, and Dra—another student insulted him—”

“So you’re saying this student got what was coming to them?” Mum says, reaching over to Hermione’s hands. “Honey,” she says, arranging Hermione’s fingers the proper way. “Like this.” 

“Thanks, Mum, and, er—no.” She taps the chopsticks a couple times, testing their pinchability. Six out of ten on the pinchability scale. Much better than before, where Hermione was struggling at about a two. “It didn’t attack the person that insulted him. He tried to, but, er–but some—someone stepped in front of him.”

“Oooo,” Mum says, raising her eyebrows and grinning. “So dramatic. Someone saved him?”

“Was the kid okay?” says Dad.

“She–she was fine, yeah. Spent a while in the hospital wing, but–”

She rubs nervously at her collarbone, but immediately regrets it, as Dad tracks the movement with his eyes.

“Hermione,” Dad says slowly. “How did you get that scar on your collarbone?”

“I—”

Mum gasps. “Hermione! Was it you?” 

“I—“ She fumbles the chopsticks and one of them falls to the ground. “It doesn’t matter, what matters is they—“ She clambers out of her seat, reaching for the chopstick, then heads toward the trash can. “What matters is they killed him unjustly.”

“What matters,” she says, emphasizing her words with her wine glass, “is that this school of yours is bloody dangerous, and you’re lying about it!”

“Jean.” Dad is shaking his head again. 

Mum's eyes widen. “Dan?”

“Sweetheart,” Dad says, reaching to still Mum’s hand, “were you injured?” 

“Yes, but—but that isn’t—“

“Hermione!” Mum sloshes her wine, and it splats on the table. 

She hurries to where Hermione is standing on the other side of the kitchen. Dad sighs and grabs a handful of napkins to wipe away the red mess.

“Oh, honey, show me your neck. Lemme see, honey. How can you say this doesn’t matter?” She grabs at Hermione’s neckline, and Hermione pushes her away, stumbling backward. 

She trips on an empty paint can, and they both tumble to the ground. “God! What matters is that you’re drunk and it’s bloody half six!” Hermione sprints toward the stairs. “And,” she says, “you’ve ruined the bloody house! It’s all brown!” 

She slams the door.

***

She sulks in her room for several hours, oscillating between feelings of grave injustice and unsolicited guilt. Having missed dinner, hunger finally wins out, and she creeps out of her room. On her way to the kitchen, she passes her parent’s closed door, where they’re very transparently discussing her in hushed whispers. 

“You know how she is about school,” says Dad’s voice.

Mum’s voice is muffled and wet sounding, and Hermione doesn’t catch her full response. “...slipping away from us.”

“She’s fine… has friends now.”

“...tell us anything… indoctrinated… cult of a school. It’s witchcraft, Dan.”

“She’s a good kid, Jean. Magic is at least neutral. And if it wasn’t magic— at least… could be drugs or alcohol.” 

“Don’t be like that.”

Dad’s words are too quiet to hear. 

“...being ridiculous,” says Mum, and Hermione doesn’t want to hear any more. 

She rushes to the kitchen and grabs her plate, which is still on the table, and a new pair of chopsticks, and sequesters herself in Dad’s study. He always finds her after her and Mum have had a row. She leaves the light off, huddled on the sofa.

It takes a long time to get through her food, as she’s garbage with the chopsticks, and even more garbage than usual, as she can barely see in the darkness of the room. They give her something to focus on as her parents' whispered argument grows louder and louder, until it ends with the slam of the front door. 

Out of the bay window, Dad’s car peels out of the driveway.

Twenty minutes later, Mum opens the door and switches on a lamp. Her long blonde hair is mussed, half out of its chignon, her eyes and nose are red, and her face is blotchy. Hermione can’t tell if it’s from alcohol or crying. 

And now it’s her turn to pacify her mother. She hates to see her cry. 

When she was nine, Dad left for a few weeks. And Hermione always thought it was her fault. That was the week she had caught Frieda’s hair on fire. Mum took her to her priest and the priest told her she was demon possessed and they strapped her down to a table and the priest was chanting and it hurt, it hurt, it hurt,  and then there was more fire and Mum was screaming and—

In for four.

Hold for seven.

Out of eight.

Mum sighs, inspecting the CD shelves. She trails her index finger over the album titles, landing on Joy Division. After putting it in the stereo, she hits the next button until the opening notes of Love Will Tear Us Apart fill the room. 

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for you and Dad to fight.”

Mum sighs again, slumping into the sofa next to Hermione. “It’s not your fault, honey.” She grabs Hermione’s hand. “Never apologize for something that’s not your fault. You’ll get walked all over that way.”

Hermione nods, trying to swallow the lump in her throat, counting her breath. 

The swell of music is pacifying, even if Mum chose a depressing song. Her comfort song. She always listens to this album when she’s upset. This song particularly will start or stop tears depending on what Mum needs.

(If only Hermione could have a constant like that, that she could fall back on when her emotions start seeping like ink on a wet page.)

Today it’s a crying song, Hermione sees. 

Mum sniffles, wiping at her eyes. “Their lead, Ian Curtis, didn’t live to hear this on the radio. It was released a couple months after his death.”

Mum’s told this to her before, many times, but Hermione plays along. 

“What happened to him?”

“Nevermind that, sweetie.”  

He killed himself, that’s what happened.

“Tell me about this hippogriff.” Mum’s voice wavers. “Did it attack you?”

Hermione shifts uncomfortably in her seat. “It really wasn’t that bad.”

“Please tell me, I promise I won’t be upset.” She smiles wryly. “I don’t have another argument in me tonight.”

What should she tell her mother? What should she…

In for four, hold for seven, out for eight.

How to breathe without Mum recognizing the pattern?

“Well… The scar on my chest is from Buckbeak,” she starts, “but—at Hogwarts, yes, it may be dangerous sometimes, but we have magic. The best witches and wizards in the country work there. They fixed me right up. It was fine.”

Mum nods, wiping at her eyes again.

“You saved someone?”

“Yeah, I guess so. I pushed him out of the way.”

“Wow, Hermione. Who was it?”

“Draco.”

“Your friend from first year. Who turned out to be an arsehole?”

“That’s the one.”

“You’re so brave, Hermione. You’re stronger than me. I probably wouldn’t have, if I were you.”

Something shifts in the foundation from which she views her mother. Her mother, pure, righteous in her morality.  The framework changes, quick as the shutter on a camera. 

“I guess it was instinctual. I just did it, right?”

“And then after this animal attacked you, you tried to stop it from getting put down?”

She’s sobbing. Ugly tears track down Mum’s cheeks. 

Hermione walks her through the breathing technique. 

In for four. 

Hold for seven.

Out for eight. 

Like the tide on the beach, her tears subside eventually. They’re cyclical in nature. They follow the moon. 

And today is a full moon. 

A fluke.

“Yeah.” Hermione attempts answering  her question. “And I was the one in the hospital wing, so you— you would think my opinion would matter. But nothing I ever— They killed him anyway, and it wasn’t his fault. I studied for months to help his appeal. And it didn’t matter! And no one cared! All they cared—Just like you said, Mum. ‘You have to put down a dog that bites,’ but Buckbeak wasn’t a–a dog.”

And wonderful, apparently this is a crying song for her too.

Love, love will tear us apart, again . 

“Oh, Hermione.” Mum pulls her close. She smells like alcohol. 

They sit,  sniffling together, until Mum breaks the silence between them. “What happened with Draco after that?”

She chuckles. How can she possibly answer that question?

He hated it. Bullied me incessantly until I slapped the sense back into him at Christmas. Then he actually cursed a different bully for me. Yeah, it was pretty brutal. He used dark magic, and last I heard, she was still recovering in the hospital. Oh, and he almost burned down the school for me too. Isn’t that funny?  

“He kissed me.”

Mum laughs. “I hope you slapped him.”

“I did.”

Her laughter increases considerably in volume. “Good girl.”

“Not when he kissed me. Before.”

“So you like this boy?” 

Hermione pulls away, seeking refuge at the other end of the sofa. Mum grins at her. “I see then.”

The song ends, switching to something new. “You’re just like me.” Mum wraps her arms around herself.  “I had a string of awful boyfriends before I met your Dad.”

“He’s not my boyfriend, and he’s not—he’s not awful anymore.” 

“Oh, Hermione…”

“I mean it, Mum.”

“I know you do, but—be careful, dear. Sometimes it can be too easy to lie to yourself.”