Hero of the Story || James Potter x Hermione Granger Fanfiction

19 | my memory is cruel

xix.

my memory is cruel

(Between the Lines by Sara Bareilles)

__________

August 5, 1977

Hermione almost toppled over when Lily threw her arms around her. The younger witch laughed and pried Lily away, smiling brilliantly at how genuinely happy Lily was to see her. "Hello," she greeted. Her blue eyes landed on the boy behind her and she stared. "You've grown taller!"

"Hello to you too," Severus said, uneasily gazing around the empty street behind them. "Your street is..." He scrunched up his nose, unable to come up with a decent word. Finally, he settled with "... lively" and nervously ruffled his hair.

"It's lovely," Lily gushed out, also glancing at the potted daisies lining the Pettigrews' small, neat front yard. "Living in Cokeworth for years has been terribly depressing and dull. The bursts of colour and sunlight in your street is refreshing."

Hermione grinned and gestured them to come inside. After Anya's constant pestering for her daughter to just relax during the summer vacation, Hermione had finally thought of inviting her best friends over to make her mother happy. Anya had been bustling around the kitchen ever since she had announced that Lily and Sev would be coming over for a few days. Both Peter and Hermione knew it would be wise to keep out of the kitchen if they wanted to live.

Lily instantly sauntered towards the small table where framed pictures of the Pettigrew family were displayed. Hermione stifled a grin when Sev frowned at the still pictures, as if staring longer would make them move. Although a hal-blood, it was Sev who had grown up in a Wizarding household after all. Besides, despite her Pureblood heritage, Anya wanted the infusion of anything Muggle in their home, after living as such when Timothy Pettigrew was still alive.

"I know I've said this before, but you really look like your mother," Lily pointed out as she lifted a brown picture frame showing a younger Anya and a six-year-old Hermione smiling widely at the camera.

"I get that a lot," Hermione answered with a smile.

"You really look like a Selwyn," Sev pointed out, prompting Hermione to grimace. "Anyone who's obsessed with Purebloods can clearly see the golden curls and blue eyes as a distinct trait of the Selwyns."

"They're not my family," she said with a flourished eye roll.

Sev merely shrugged and started to look around - thinly-veiled amusement and suspicion painted in his black eyes. "What's that?" he asked, pointing at a black box with different buttons on it. He leant down and pressed a random button. A news reporter suddenly appeared, prompting Severus to yelp in surprise and glance at Hermione with wild eyes. "What the bloody hell is that?"

"A telly, Sev," Lily said with a laugh. "Think of it as different moving pictures strewn together to tell a story."

The Slytherin glanced at the television once more, this time with obvious fascination.

"You don't know what a telly is?" Hermione asked, surprised, seeing that her best friend was a half-blood.

Sev's cheeks grew slightly red. "It may have slipped your mind the last time you visited, but my family's poor, Hermione," he sniped. "We can't afford any of these Muggle contraptions. Besides, my father left us when I was still young so such Muggle influences hadn't stuck around."

"Err... right," Hermione awkwardly said. "I'm sorry."

Sev merely rolled his eyes and waved his hand dismissively.