The writing on the wall
“Where is the bathroom?” she asked, looking at the obviously bored teenager behind the till.
The boy didn’t raise his eyes until Hermione started tapping her fingers against the wooden surface. Rude little shits, she thought. Be it Muggle or magical; all teenagers were infuriating.
“Third door to the right,” he replied, his accent so distinctly Australian.
Despite everything, Hermione had opted to leave Britain right after the war: while everyone back home was reuniting with their families, her own family was somewhere in Australia, not remembering her.
While the war was won, she had lost her loved ones.
Oddly enough, Harry and Ron didn’t understand her decision to move out and go on a wild goose chase in order to find them; she didn’t have a way to restore their memories, not yet. She could have waited for a while.
The thing was, she had a pact with someone.
As Severus Snape –the man who survived the impossible– recovered, Hermione sat diligently by his side. Talking, reading, caring. Things were going well, until she had the misplaced idea to kiss him, thus making all hell break loose. He sent her away, just as she had tried to get closer.
She had also talked to him about her parents; he had just agreed to help her when things were better.
The dingy bathroom, third door to the right; a common bathroom in the gas station, in the middle of nowhere between the desert and the Granger household –she had found them; but they couldn’t fully remember her, going as far to ask her name only to scold her the next moment. Yet, she went there every day; with a rented car that she filled in the gas station in the middle of nowhere. A routine that kept her from losing her mind.
The end is nigh, someone had written on the wall with a black Sharpie, right next to the basin where she washed her hands. Get it here: another scribble, and Hermione found herself staring at it. The whole wall had several things written like this: doodles of penises, jokes, telephone numbers.
Somewhere towards the corner though, another kind of writing caught her eye as the light hit it –a spidery scrawling she usually saw on her parchments, mostly writing an underhanded compliment.
Would anyone else notice? All the Muggles passing by, writing this and that –did they understand the prophecy written there?
Wipe the slate clean; only then you will remember where you came from and what matters to you.
Hermione left the station in the middle of nowhere; and when she drove all the way to her parents’ house, instead of watching them from afar, she knocked on their door, ready to wipe the slate clean and start their relationship anew.
When her mother let her in, Severus was sitting on their sofa, drinking coffee.