Treacherous | Hermione Granger Book II

|24| Chapter Twenty-Four

T W E N T Y  F O U R 

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Maya knocked on the door three times. With a small sigh, she took a step back from the spare classroom and stood next to Rachel, gripping her hand tightly. Saffron looked over at her elder sister with a small smile. It meant a lot to her that Maya and the twins had come with her to meet Amanda. They had done everything together for most of their lives and even though school was going to change that, it didn't mean it had to change it entirely. Being there, together, proved that their bond was just as strong as it was when they spent every hour of every day together.

When the door opened, she was there. That was the start that all four Mitchells felt nervous wouldn't happen. But it had, Amanda stood there. She wore a warm welcoming smile and a black one-piece dress. She started off with a standard greeting.

"Good morning," she said, a little too brightly for the children's liking. It seemed rehearsed almost. "How are you all? I'm Amanda," She never gave them the chance to answer as she offered her hand out to all four of them individually, which they all shook politely. "I know you might have a lot of questions,"

"Not really," said Maya bluntly. "We know you know who we all are, we know you knew our parents, we know you sent Saffron the pictures at Christmas, but that's all we know. All we want to know is everything, everything you can tell us about our parents,"

"I understand," Amanda nodded, looking even more nervous now. She gestured them to come inside. "Come on in, I've set the desks up as a table. I've brought pie if you want some,"

"What flavour?" Rowan questioned.

"Apple," Amanda answered.

Rowan's eyes lit up. "My favourite, thanks,"

"It was a gut feeling," Amanda told him, feeling slightly more at ease now that one of them had said something positive. "Your mother liked it too, she came over to my house one Summer and my dad always made it for her. She loved it,"

The Mitchells took seats at the makeshift table where Amanda served three of them, excluding Rachel pie. Once they seemed settled, she took it upon herself to drive the conversation, for which the Mitchells were grateful for they weren't even remotely sure how to begin.

"Will I start at the beginning?"  

Saffron nodded her head. "Yes, I think that would save us all the time of having to go backwards and forwards,"

Holding onto Rowan's hand again, Saffron braced herself for what was about to come. Finally, at long last, some concrete information on her parents. 

"I first truly got to know your mother when I was in third year, up until that point I never really talked to her unless it was about classes or such. She was in Gryffindor and was best friends with Sage Gill, a girl who . . . well, we didn't really click, she was loud and confident and bossy. Your mother seemed to love that about her, but I never really saw it as a good thing until my third year. Because that year was when everything in school started to get very tense,"

"Why?" Rowan questioned. 

"Because of You Know Who," Amanda told him, treading carefully around the subject. "He was beginning to become a more prominent figure everywhere. The war had technically been going on since before we even started Hogwarts, but that's revisionist in my opinion. The true war didn't start until seventy-three or seventy-four when it became clear that You Know Who had successfully built an army to do his bidding,

"This spread into Hogwarts, it was like a viral illness,  and people inside the place that was supposed to be safest of all were infected by it. That was when I started my friendship with your mother and Sage. You see, we had a lot in common, I just hadn't realised it yet. Sage's family were  strongly opposed to You Know Who and so were mine, because of this, certain people in the school held a grudge, because many of their family members were aligned with You Know Who,