The Gralfoy Affair (or, The Oblivious Ones) - Dramione

Chapter Twelve

Monika Wilkins had already seen Hermione's shoes approaching the outer edge of the long yellow hospital drapes drawn around Tim Granger's bed.

"Hello?"

"Yes, come in, Hermione." Monika looked terrible - ruddy but gaunt, her jacket draped across her chest like a much too small blanket, her Muggle-wand charging through an electrical cord attached to the wall above her husband's head. She did not smile, did not look at Hermione as she came to stand beside the bed where Tim Granger slept.

Her answers to Hermione's questions about how Tim was feeling were curt, distracted. The doctors were pleased he was resting and had found nothing abnormal in his scans. The quiet was painful, making it hard for Hermione to think of an excuse to get Monika to leave, so she could be alone with her father to try the spell properly, unconflicted by other things.

"We need to talk," Monika began. "We need to talk about your mother. Sit down, Hermione."

She obeyed.

"The names Wendell kept repeating last night, Dr. Tim Granger, DDS, Ann, Heathgate - I had all night to look them up." She swiped at the screen of her phone, untethered it from the wall, and pointed it at Hermione. It was open to the business website for their first clinic, Granger Dental Surgery, in a London burrough, last updated before the war. "Try the 'about us' link."

Hermione touched the words and a picture appeared of Wendell and Monika, only it was labelled Tim and Ann Granger. There was even a note in the caption about their daughter.

"There's more," Monika went on, taking her phone back to flip through more results. "Pages and pages more about this couple who looks like Wendell and me, does what we do, likes what we like, goes where we go, right up until any mention of them ceases over four years ago, when Wendell and I opened the clinic in Upper Raleigh."

Hermione listened, speechless, her pulse in her throat. This was her own mother, her model - how could she not have expected this?

"These Grangers are our perfect doppelgangers in every way but one: the daughter." She spoke the word, and waited. "I don't have any children, Hermione. I have to insist on it every time I go to the gynecologist, but it's true. Wendell has his theories about repressed teenaged trauma but the evidence for that kind of thing has never read as convincing for me. And then I looked deeper into Ann Granger. Such a plain name, you'd expect she'd want to give her daughter something more interesting, she and her husband Tim."

Hermione shifted miserably in her chair. Something imperious and familiar in her mother's tone kept her quiet, as if by habit.

"Here, see this photo from someone's online wedding album? That's Ann Granger and her daughter Hermione." When Hermione had seen the photo of herself and her mother at cousin Janice's wedding reception, Monika sat back, pulled her arms behind her jacket-blanket and said simply. "Explain."

What to confess first: Hermione's true identity, her parents' false identities, or the fact that magic is real? What followed truly was like a legal proceeding. Hermione talking and talking, Monika breaking in to question and clarify, all the while withholding her ruling with the cold, grave restraint of a professional judge. She listened to the story of Hermione's Hogwarts letter arriving when she was eleven, to as detailed a sketch as she ever knew about the wizarding war, to Hermione's justification for charming them, and for the reasons why she had come to find them. Through it all, Monika held herself concerned but aloof.

When Hermione had finished, Monika folded her jacket, sat up straight in her chair and said, "All of that is completely ludicrous."

"Let me show you then," Hermione said, pulling her wand from her jacket.