“Mione?”

“Yes Mum?” she answered, raising her head from the rough surface of the plant pot, against which she had rested her cheek.

Jean Granger opened the kitchen door and sat down next to her daughter, stroking away the tears which had been streaming, unacknowledged, down Hermione’s face.

“We’ve got some letters, love. Seems your friends have written to you: I found a pile of letters and an enormous vase of flowers in the fireplace. She handed Hermione a small, stiff, vellum card, which was boardered with a frieze of intertwining dogrose briars. A tiny, white butterfly flittered from painted bloom to painted bloom, shimmering softly in the light of the setting sun.

“It’s really pretty, isn’t it?” smiled Jean, gently tracing the butterfly with her nail. “Like a Disney animation.”

Hermione smiled sadly and nodded, before forcing her aching eyes to focus on the words:

OoOoO

Dear Madam Granger and Hermione,

With our sincerest condolences,

Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy.

OoOoO

Hermione smiled “Draco’s parents are really formal and old-fashioned but they’re kind, too.” she explained “What kind of flowers did they choose?”

“A rather odd mixture.” Jean replied “Narcissi, amaryllis, cornflowers, jasmine, tiger lilies, asphodel and pink, red and gold roses.”

Hermione smiled “Draco’s flowers are red and gold roses, so the rest must have been made by his parents.”

“Made?” Jean asked, surprised.

“There’s this spell, ‘orchideous’, which creates a bunch of flowers and everyone’s bouquet are made up of different flowers, depending on their personality. It’s supposed to be a mark of friendship when people… give you their own.” Hermione said, tearing up.

“I wish I could cry” sighed Jean, putting an arm around Hermione’s shoulders “I can’t seem to manage it, somehow.”

Hermione wrapped her arms around her mother “You’ve just gone numb, Mum, like you did when Nan died.”

“What do your other letters say?” Jean asked. Hermione picked up a slender scroll, wrapped with a green ribbon and sealed with silver wax, into which had been impressed the elegant bust of a basilisk. However, the direction was written in Harry’s messy scrawl.

“That looks impressive” Jean commented, stroking the satiny ribbon “Makes me rather sad we don’t do letters this way any more.”

“It’s Professor Snape’s private stationary” Hermione said, smiling sadly “I expect he let Harry borrow it.”

oOoOo

To: Hermione.
From: Harry.

Dear Hermione,

I’m really sorry about what’s happened and I kind’ve know how you must be feeling. When I was eight my uncle died in a car crash and I’ve never really stopped feeling sad about it because he was well nice and even though I didn’t get to see much of him ‘cos he was always at work I really missed him loads. (Even though I’ve got Dad now, I still do sometimes because there each special in their own way.)

I hope your having a nice time I hope that you like Uroborus. The beach is dead real beautiful and it’s a nice place to sit and think. I’ve asked Dad if we could send Toby over to be with you cos I know you like dogs and Toby would love to play on the beach. Dad says I have to ask your mum though. The best thing about dogs is you don’t have to speak to them if your sad they just know you are and will sit beside you.

Draco and Theo and Blaise and me are okay. We didn’t get into to much trouble though Blaise got a howler. (Everyone at school thinks he’s dead cool and brave now cos Madam Zabini yelled about all the times he could’ve gotten hurt.) Oh, and Dad put the Weasley twins in detention for calling us ‘the Heroes of Hogwarts’ though they say they don’t mind cos they always learn cool stuff during detentions. Draco’s arm’s ok by the way Madam Pomfrey healed it in two seconds. He’s swinging the lead a bit with Dad though, telling him his arm’s too soar to cut up his ingredients and asking if I could do the prep whilst he mixes everything together. I don’t mind because we work best this way. Dad’s looking grumpy though, so I don’t think he should push his luck to much.

Best wishes,

Harry.

oOoOo

“Harry sounds a really sweet boy. What happened to Draco’s arm, by the way?” Jean asked.

“Oh, he was fooling around with a sword, everyone told him it was too heavy for him to handle, and he cut himself.” Hermione sighed, then, on noticing her mother’s shocked expression, added “Not badly though.”

“Poor boy.” Jean shook her head; Hogwarts was a very strange sort of school, like something out of a fairytale, and she’d come to the conclusion that it was best to just to expect the unexpected. Even so, swords..?

Hermione wanted to ask about the puppy but decided, instead, to open another, rather thicker scroll, this time sealed with a sparkly sticker of a fluttering Pegasus.

oOoOo

To: Hermione Granger.

Dear Hermione,

Theo here. Look, I’m not much good with this stuff and I expect I will just write something that’ll make you cry so I’m just going to say that I am really sorry about what has happened and we’re all here for you.

I’ve collected our summer assignments (enclosed) for you as I know you won’t want to fall behind or anything.

Regards T.

Postscript: Hope you didn’t get into trouble over our little adventure. Mum was rather upset with me because of all the risks we took but Dad told her that, although I was as much of a Gryffindork as Sal, our surviving the ordeals suggested that I had some Slytherin cunning!! Then I told him that all Slytherins were brave because you can’t be ambitious without being brave enough to face failing. T.

oOoOo

“I’m like that myself,” Jean sighed “Never quite know what to say or even how to start letters. Probably why I went into dentistry.”

Hermione rested her head on her mother’s shoulder: the memory of her father, the only member of the family whose linguistic prowess rivalled his scientific ability, hung heavily in the air. It was strange to think that William Granger was no longer in the world, too strange for Hermione to fully accept it. She still expected to see her father when she walked into the lounge; sitting as he used to sit each evening; socked feet up on the sofa, newspaper open at the crossword, chewing his biro, a little crease of concentration on the bridge of his nose. Or when entering the kitchen, Hermione was always half-prepared to see him standing, wooden spoon in hand, poised to added too much garlic, chilli or wine to her mother’s unattended pot or pan. And even outside, where the very landscape ensured that Hermione could not believe herself in the garden of her former home, she would not have been surprised to see William Granger walking up the beach.

“It was really thoughtful though, for Theo to collect your assignments.” Jean said, interrupting Hermione’s train of thought. “Most boys of that age wouldn’t think to do so.”

Hermione nodded, shuffling through the letters; Blaise’s angular, sloping scrawl, Millie’s carefully printed letters, Neville’s thick quillstrokes, Draco’s large curly writing, abundantly trimmed with flourishes, Daphne’s distinctive ‘bubble’ over the letter ‘i’, Pansy’s violet ink, Tracy’s rounded hand, even a messy scribble that must have come from Ron… they’d all cared enough to owl her and Hermione knew she should reply to their letters but, at this moment, she couldn’t bring herself to do so, the pain was too raw.

“I got a couple of letters, too” Jean said quietly “One is from a woman, I think the handwriting is more like a woman’s, and there’s another with the green ribbon and silver seal, so I expect it’s from that nice Mr Snape, your head of year.” She sighed “It’s ungrateful, I know, but I can’t face opening them at the moment.”

“I feel the same. They’d understand, though, Mum.” Hermione replied, curling a lock of her mother’s smooth, brown hair around her finger. “Are we going to have a memorial service for Dad or something? I mean, I know we can’t have a funeral, not without...”

Jean Granger shut her aching eyes; being told that her husband’s body had been completely destroyed had been the final straw. “Maybe, we should have it here” she heard herself saying “and ask your friends to come along too. Have a barbeque or something. Your Dad would have liked that, it’s what he did when his own father died: cream teas in Dedham, then a trip down the river to scatter the ashes.”

“I didn’t know that.” Hermione replied “Why Dedham, though?”

“Constable country, your granddad liked his paintings and dabbled in watercolours himself.” Jean sighed “I wish you’d had a chance to know your father’s parents, Mione. It’s just us, now.”

“Two’s enough to make a family, Mum” Hermione replied, hugging her mother “We’ll get through this.”

oOoOo

Each minute, hour and day passed, widened the gulf separating William Granger from his wife and daughter. Every morning was an anniversary, which both found bitter in their separate ways: for Jean, the pain was in knowing that yet another day had passed since she had last seen her husband. For Hermione, on the other hand, it was another day closer to the 20th June, the day on which she should have taken the Hogwarts Express to London, should have met up with both her parents, should have celebrated the end of her first year with afternoon tea at the Ritz, a special treat for which Hermione knew her parents had been saving. It should have been a happy occasion but, now, it was never to be.

However, the pain, in itself, was a step towards healing, better by far than the deadened numbness of shock. Against the backdrop of grief, there were little sparks of not joy but pleasure: retelling funny or sweet anecdotes, working, together, on Hermione’s homework and even opening the food-boxes, delivered twice daily from Hogwarts, and discovering the contents, afforded some distraction.

With the wind combing their hair, sea-spray bathing away their tears and Toby, joyful, young and innocent as a newly opened flower, bounding across the sand, looking back at them with bright, affectionate, happy eyes, Hermione and Jean found that, in the melody of life, no voice is lost as long as those who loved them forge a new life in which to remember.