Hermione Snape and the Divergence Point: Volume #1

Prologue

"WHAT JUST HAPPENED?!" Ren gasped pointing to the baby on the table. The same baby he had just put in her crib.

"I don't know!" Catherine groaned, lifting their child off the open books. "Mummy needs to study, please go back to sleep for the love of God!"

"What were we thinking?" Ren looked at his fiancee and daughter in desperation. "We're seventeen..."

Ren Granger and Catherine Kirk, graduated top of their class and were admitted to Oxford Pre-Med.

No one saw this coming, least of all them.

Catherine was a first-generation Brit, and as the daughter of Jamaican immigrants, Desmond and Rose Kirk, she often felt the pressure to succeed. Since she was twelve she wanted to be a brain surgeon, and she had worked her way to it. Cat waited tables at her parents' restaurant, earning not one, but three scholarships. Everything she worked so hard for wasn't going to be thrown away by some stupid mistake at their year-eleven-ball.

Ren loved his daughter, of course he loved his daughter. How could he not? But he felt the same as his fiancee. He wanted to be a surgeon. Sure, he wanted children with Catherine someday, but it was clear Hermione would not be with them had they not missed the train to the clinic. They had changed their minds then and there, but there was no way to know if they had made the right decision. He thought about his own mother's disappointment.

Like Catherine, Hana was a first-generation Brit , her mother a Japanese immigrant and her father a Korean immigrant. Something that she would never let him forget. They risked everything not just to move to London, but to be together given the environment at the time. Hana felt immense pressure to succeed but never managed to be more than a secretary with the Londoner. His father, Hugo, being both white and London-born, never faced the same barriers, but he matched his wife's vigour in setting up Ren's future.

He imagined their disappointment and a knot formed in his stomach. He had worked so hard, how could he have mucked it up so completely? It'd been a long time, perhaps his parents had calmed down. Perhaps hers did too. They had a teleporting baby, he wanted support from someone who wouldn't call them mad. Between work, school and Hermione, he couldn't remember the last time either of them slept through the night.

"When's your exam, Cat?"

She ran a hand through her thick brown curls and fixed her red-rimmed, brown eyes on him. Her usually sienna skin paled and her bloodless lips wore thin from repeated chewing. The beautiful, vibrant and brilliant Cat he fell in love with had become a shadow of her former self. He knew he was not much better.

"Tomorrow," she sighed. "At nine o'clock. Though I won't be able to study if you don't finish that thought"

"Cat," he took the baby and kissed Cat's forehead. "I don't know...I love our daughter, and I love you. I just...I don't know."

"I don't know either..." she sobbed. "I wish I did! I thought I could do it all! I just want...No, I can do this!"

"We can do this. I'm off tomorrow and don't have any exams, I can take care of her. Get some rest."

"Okay... wait, is she cold?" Catherine touched her cheek.

"I don't know," he felt her other cheek. "She is a bit chilly. I'll take her to A&E tomorrow if she's still cold."

"Shouldn't we take her in now?" Cat bit her lip.

"The doctor said she's fine two days ago, Cat," he said, feeling as uncertain as Cat looked. "We don't want them thinking we're just paranoid young patents."

"And if it's serious?"

"Jesus, I don't know, Cat! I just...maybe we should...I—" a knot formed in the back of his throat. "I don't know what to do..."