Broken Bits

21. Promise

It takes Hermione well over an hour before she has everything situated, thought out to the most minuscule of details and cried over the unknown.

Ron hovered near the door during the entirety of it. Strengthing the wards with a flick of his wand if the door started bending slightly, or if magic tried to leak through.

The nurses had long since abandoned their efforts, they were all taking shelter in a nearby room. Now it was deranged Aurors firing hexes and spells at anything that moved.

"You need to send a patronus to Neville." Hermione said at once, swishing her wand over her father as she spoke.

"Neville? Why Neville?" Ron asked incredously, gazing at one of his coworkers with a bored expression out the window as he fired a pink lighted hex at the door. The door didn't even flex.

"He's in the room across the hall, his parents are in there." Hermione sighed, leave it to Ron to be so oblivious.

"Shit." Ron breathed, gazing out the window to see a handful of Auror's attacking the door across the hallway. Now that he was being observant, the girl in the window did look a bit like Luna.

"Tell him we are leaving, and that they should go too. It will only get worse." Hermione told him, turning to swish her wand over her mother.

"On it." Ron grunted, he laid himself flat on the ground and peered under the gap under the doorway.

He pointed his wand, muttered a few strung together words and fired. His patronus whizzed between feet before sliding under the door across the hall.

Ron hurried to stand, and pressed his face against the glass as he watched. Luna was gone for a moment, before her face appeared with a big grin on her face and she shot Ron a thumbs up before vanishing.

"They got the message." Ron turned around, and stumbled at the sight of Hermione.

She was coaxing both her parents out of their beds, whispering kind things and rubbing circles on their hospital gown clad backs.

"Hermione." Ron hissed, looking at them startled.

One would think, that spending four years under the care of well trained nurses her parents would have woken up. Not an hour with an unsupervised Hermione and a flock of revenge seeking Auror's banging on the door.

"This is my friend Ron, Ron this is Wendell and Monica." Hermione introduced them. Ron stuck a shaky arm out as Wendell stepped forward to shake his hand.

Ron knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that was not Hermione's parents names.

"Are we going home?" Monica leaned forward, grasping Hermione's arm tightly in her hands.

Hermione found herself caught in her mother's gaze. The same big round doe eyes she stared into as a child. The kind eyes that told her all her boo-boo's would heal just fine. The same eyes that reassured her that reading was an okay hobby to have at seven years old.

The same kind eyes that dropped her off at King's Cross station and told her good luck. That she would do great. That she would make a dozen friends, and go on a hundred dates. The same eyes that held her when Hermione came home crying about a kid that bullied her down the street.

The same eyes that looked into hers now, asking for reassurance. Asking for a promise.

"Yes, I'm taking you home." Hermione whispered, gently prying Monica's hands off her arms.

"Oh thank you darling, you really do have the most gorgeous hair." Monica gushed, reaching out to run her hand through Hermione's curls.

Hermione wanted to duck away, and demand her to never touch her again. But she held still, savoring in the last moment her mother would ever comb through her hair.