Disclaimer: All characters belong to JKR. Plot line credited to... me, but great thanks to my good friend WaterLily who has inspired me to keep writing!
Previously on Crossing Over:
He kept to himself, refusing to emerge from his room during our stay at Grimmauld Place, which, following the death of Sirius fell to his ownership. He wandered aimlessly around his new property every now and then, sneaking into the library when he could; my being a complete know-it-all DID have its perks. My decision to help him would later on be the best thing that the Dark Lord could have hoped for; but for the time being, I was, and still am, to the Order, Hermione Granger, Hogwarts bookworm.
It was a week after my parents’ death. Since I was already 17, which was, in the wizarding world, the legal age, I was my own guardian. I left the building I could now call my house in search of a small flat in the busy streets of muggle London. My only thought was to just get away; away from everything that served as a reminder of the death of my parents. After four days’ searching, I came across a comfortable, average-sized, and cheap apartment in a building just a few streets away from The Leaky Cauldron. However much I would have liked to be rid of the magical world forever, I still had a year left at Hogwarts, and being the stubborn Gryffindor I was, I was determined to complete it.
I settled in soon enough. My parents had left enough for me to be able to live; that, coupled with the selling of the house meant that I need not look for a job. My days were spent, for the large part, in Diagon Alley, where I would see Hogwarts faces: some, like me, leaving for their last year; others bringing their eleven-year-old lives into a place of magic and mystery. I looked at the younger ones with pride; there were numerous times when I would think back to the past six years of my life, and the many adventures they contained, the many times that Harry had defied Voldemort… Harry. He and Ron didn’t yet know about my parents.
I had never wondered what it would be like to tell them that my parents had died over a week ago, since I hadn’t had the courage to owl them about it. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to tell them… I think. Their reactions if I told them now would be nothing short of the same reactions that would have come out of telling them earlier. Oh ‘Mione… I’m so sorry, Harry would say. Yeah, says Ron, why didn’t you tell us sooner? We thought something had happened to you! Why did McGonagall never tell us? We have a right to know! Hermione… never told… And so it would go on, question after question.
Walking around Diagon Alley in a daze was, of course, not the best thing to do. I had rather hoped that I would notice Harry and Ron before they noticed… well, bumped, into me. Before I knew it, I had sighed with an air of annoyance, having seen both of them laden with large books about Quidditch, one of which was labelled ‘Quidditch: Sixty-six Famous Incidents and More (Added Encyclopaedia Just for the Sake of It)’.
“Hermione!” shouted a very tall Ron. I eyed him before grinning.
“You have a speck of dirt on your nose, Ronald. Let me just…” I closed the gap between us, and proceeded to wipe the grey mark from his face. Pretending to take no notice of the ever-growing flush that had risen in his cheeks, I turned and smiled at the slightly shocked green eyes beside me.
“Harry! It’s so good to see you again,” I exclaimed, and pulled him into a one-armed hug. All of the books the boys were holding had fallen to the ground by this time, and it wasn’t until I had looked down that I noticed a deep red book poking out from the insides of ‘Quidditch Through the Ages 2: The Things They Missed Out’. I paused, bent down to pick it up, and began to flick through the pages. The pages were full of, if I remember correctly, well, girls. Girls who were dressed extremely… not dressed to be honest.
“Harry, Ron”” I started, but was cut off, extremely rudely, by Draco Malfoy.
“Well, well… If it isn’t Potty, Weasel, and, look, mudblood Granger. What are you fine three up to on a day like this? Books, yet again, Granger. I shouldn’t be surprised! Ha! Hold on… why are you””
“Malfoy, get the Hippogriff out of here! How can you still be here after what you did a month ago?” Maybe my anger showed. He certainly wasn’t welcome anywhere within a hundred miles of Harry. His involvement in the death of Dumbledore had sent Harry over the edge, and I had hoped, in time, that Harry would see that he was living a happy façade on the outside and a depressed existence on the inside. Right now, though, his happy façade had melted into a silent outburst of fury. Just skimming over Harry’s eyes was enough for me to become scared.
“Malfoy, I advise you to go. Now.” Why I was giving Draco Malfoy advice was anyone’s guess. Harry surely didn’t need to give the Dark Lord another reason to hate him even more, but his anger could blind him, something I had found out at the beginning of fifth year. I had experienced the same with Ron at the start of sixth year. His jealousy over whether or not we had all snogged led him to stay every waking minute of the day with that Lavender Brown. At least Draco didn’t have to resort to jealousy to put his point across.
“I don’t take orders from the offspring of contaminated blood,” he spat. “Oh, wait…” He smirked that smirk of his, and turned his eyes to mine, “Your parents no longer have blood in them!” He had gone too far, and I hoped that he had realised it. The glare I was giving him was, in my opinion, quite terrifying. I had, however, no more time to mull over this; both Harry and Ron had pulled out their wands and pointed them at Malfoy’s throat.
“Don’t, ever, say that about Hermione and her parents again. You don’t know the first thing about her, let alone telling us her parents are no longer alive. You can not, will not, and do not scare us, Malfoy,” seethed Harry. It was the first thing he had said since bumping into me. The venom in his words could have been the Basilisk’s poison from what I heard.
“Yeah,” added Ron, “don’t you think she would have told us if they really were?”
“I’m surprised, Granger.” His iced over eyes were still boring into mine. I longed to look away, but the guilt-like hold the steel blue tunnels had over me stopped me from doing so. “Not telling the so-called best friends life-changing events, I see.” The questioning and determined look in his eyes was unsettling, to say the least. And why he wanted to know whether I had told Harry and Ron was beyond my thinking.
I managed to muster up what I thought was a calm and collected voice. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Malfoy. Leave us, now.”
“Oh, Mudblood… Staying in that little flat of yours has certainly given you a flair for lying. How, I’m not sure, but seeing as how you haven’t spoken to friends or family recently””
“EXPELLIARMUS!”
And that was when I suddenly wished Harry and Ron weren’t so overprotective of me.
“Harry, Ron, wands down, now. Let’s go.” I shot one last scathing look at the shaking Malfoy before making my way slowly towards the Leaky Cauldron. Somehow, I had known that my parents’ deaths would have come up, mentioned, I had hoped, by myself, when the time was right. Unfortunately, Malfoy had just beaten me to it; all I could hope for now was for Harry and Ron to not question me…
“…Hermione?”
A/N: What dya think? Review!! :D Oh, and thanks to the two reviewers (as of this moment) who so kindly reviewed!!