A.N.: Hey guys, sorry for the delay for so long! I got caught up in the college and the workload was unbelievable. Couldn't even find time to upload, let write anything. Anyways, here's the next chapter.
Also, if you are interested in reading ahead, check out my P@tr3on for early access to chapters, for just $5. Hogwarts arc has already started there. P@tr3on username: Fiction Guzzler.
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April 1986
The only light in her room came from a single, silent source: a brilliant, needle-thin beam of indigo that lanced through the darkness. Its target, a small, durable plastic toy soldier, zipped through the air, tracing a complex, unpredictable flightpath. The laser flashed out, missing the target by a hair's breadth and scorching a thin, black line on the thick old textbook she had propped against the far wall.
This was the new phase of her training: target acquisition and combat multitasking. Forging the tools was one thing; learning to wield them effectively under pressure was another entirely.
With one thread of her will, she controlled the toy soldier's erratic movements, not a draining exercise in fine telekinetic control, by itself. With another, she generated and aimed the laser, a task that required absolute, unwavering focus. The goal was to train her mind to handle two disparate, complex magical tasks at once, simulating the chaos of a real engagement.
For the first few sessions, her misses far outnumbered her hits. The coordination was a significant mental hurdle. She would focus too much on the target's movement, and the laser's stability would waver. She would focus too much on the laser, and the target's flight path would become a simple, easy-to-hit line.
But she was methodical. She analyzed each failure, adjusting her mental partitioning, refining the energy allocation between the two tasks. Finally, after countless misses, the two processes synced.
The toy soldier banked sharply to the left, and the indigo beam flashed out, not where the target was, but where it was going to be. The laser intercepted it perfectly, punching a tiny, smoking hole clean through the plastic chest before she released the spell.
A small, grimly satisfied smile touched her lips. The strain was immense, the familiar pressure building behind her eyes, but it was a successful proof-of-concept. She held it, pushing her conduit to its absolute limit.
"Hermione!" Her father's voice from downstairs shattered her focus. The constructs vanished in an instant. The toy soldier clattered loudly to the floor, and the tension in the room dissipated, leaving only the echo of a headache. She took a slow, steadying breath, annoyed at the interruption but curious about the strange note of disbelief she'd heard in his voice.
She went downstairs to find him in the living room. The letter had arrived. It wasn't a bill or an advertisement, but a quarterly statement from the brokerage firm he had, with a great deal of skepticism, opened an account with months ago.
She heard his footsteps pause on his way from the front door to the kitchen. The rustle of the envelope being torn open was followed by a profound silence.
Daniel Granger stood in the archway, staring at the paper in his hands. His face was pale, his mouth slightly agape. He read the statement once, then again, his eyes wide with a disbelief so pure it was almost comical.
"Jean," he said, his voice a hoarse whisper. "Jean, you need to see this."
Her mother came in from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a tea towel, a question on her lips that died when she saw her husband's expression. He didn't speak, simply handed her the paper. Hermione watched as the same wave of shock washed over her mother's face, though it was quickly followed by a different emotion: a deep, furrowed-brow unease.
"Dan, this can't be right," Jean murmured, sinking onto the arm of the sofa. "There must be a misprint."
"I thought so too," he said, running a hand through his hair. "I checked the math. Twice. The dividends alone… Jean, the dividends alone are more than I make in three months."
The 'Hermione Fund' had performed exactly as she had calculated. The safe, reliable, "boring" companies had delivered. It wasn't a wild, explosive growth, but a steady, inexorable accumulation of wealth that, over several months, had compounded into a sum that was, for them, life-altering.
Hermione walked over, her expression calm. "I told you it was a sure thing."
Her parents looked at her, and the excitement in her father's eyes was tempered by the sheer, unnerving strangeness of it all. This wasn't just a lucky guess. This was impossible.
"Right," her father said, sitting down heavily. " This was your Phase One, wasn't it? Its complete, then. We have the base." He looked at her, a new kind of respect mixed with his bewilderment. "So, what's Phase Two?"
"Now we diversify," she said, picking up the financial section from the morning paper. "We use a portion of this capital to invest in the future. The high-risk, high-reward projects. "Her finger tapped a few names she had been monitoring for months. Apple Computer Inc. Microsoft., NVIDIA.
"These are the ones that will build the real wealth," she stated calmly. "But it's along-term plan. Ten, maybe fifteen years."
The professional, detached certainty in her voice was the final straw. Her mother reached out and took her hand, her grip gentle but firm. The financial statement was forgotten.
"Hermione, sweetie," Jean began, her voice soft, but laced with a worry that was impossible to miss. "Can we talk for a minute? Just us."
Her father nodded, his own brief flicker of financial excitement fading, replaced by the same deep concern. He sat on the sofa opposite them, his hands clasped tightly together. "Your mum's right. Honey… we're worried about you." Hermione looked at their faces—at the genuine fear welling in her mother's eyes, the lines of stress etched around her father's mouth—and she felt a familiar, distant ache. They weren't just unnerved by the money. They were unnerved by her.
Her coldness, her maturity, her impossible knowledge. The changes she had tried to mask were still too profound to hide. The carefully constructed walls of her old life were poor insulation against the warmth of their love, and it was a love she found she was unwilling to lose.
Because no matter how many memories she held, no matter how old her soul felt, they were still her parents. In this life, they were her anchor.
She sat down on the floor in front of them, letting them hold her hands. This was a different kind of problem, one that couldn't be solved with logic or power. It required a different tool: a genuine, carefully constructed truth.
"I know I've changed," she said softly, her voice barely a whisper, meeting their worried gazes directly. The admission hung in the air, a shared truth finally spoken aloud. "I know I'm quieter. I don't talk about the same things. Sometimes… sometimes I know I seem far away."
Her mother's grip tightened, a silent affirmation. "You've been so different since the... incident," her mother continued, her voice trembling slightly. Her thumb stroked the back of Hermione's hand, a repetitive, anxious motion. "So quiet. So… old. We see you trying to pretend, but then we'll see you looking out the window, and it's like our little girl is a thousand miles away. This," she gestured to the financial statement, "this isn't just you being clever, Hermione. This is something else. And it scares us. Please, just tell us. Are you… are you really okay?"
Hermione looked from her mother's tear-filled eyes to her father's tense posture, and she let the carefully maintained mask soften completely. She squeezed their hands, a small, tangible anchor in a sea of unspoken fears.
"I'm sorry," she said, and the words were utterly sincere. "I'm so sorry I've worried you. I never wanted to do that." She took a breath, not as a engineer this time, but as a daughter trying desperately to explain the inexplicable. "You're right. I have changed. More than a bit. When the lightning hit me," she began, her parents flinching slightly at the mention, but she continued, "it did something. It… woke something up in my head. It's hard to explain." She paused, searching for the right words. "It's like I was looking at the world through a foggy window my whole life, seeing only the shapes of things. And when the lightning struck, it shattered the glass."
She watched them absorb the metaphor, their expressions rapt. "I can see things differently now," she continued, her voice gaining a little strength. "The patterns. In everything. In numbers, in science, in the way people talk. It's like all the things I've ever learned, all the books I've ever read, and more, everything, they all just… clicked together in a new way. I can see things more clearly now than I ever thought I could, I can see things for what they really are." She took a breath, gesturing to the financial statements at the coffee table. "I don't know how I know which companies will succeed. I just… see the pattern. It makes sense to me now, in a way it didn't before."
She let a small, watery smile touch her lips, a smile meant just for them. "So yes, I've changed. I know I have. But it's not a bad change. It's just… more. But the most important thing hasn't changed at all." She looked at them, her gaze unwavering. "I'm still me. I'm still your daughter. The girl who loves books and hugs and Saturday morning cartoons. I'm just… me, with the fog cleared away."
It was the truth, abstracted and palatable. A version they could understand and accept. They wouldn't know the 'foggy window' was a metaphor for a previous life, or that the 'patterns' she saw were memories of a future they couldn't imagine. They would see it as their brilliant daughter trying to explain a profound, post-traumatic cognitive leap.
The relief on their faces was immediate and palpable. Jean let out a shuddering breath she didn't realize she'd been holding, and her grip on Hermione's hand went from worried to loving. Daniel pulled her off the floor and into a fierce, protective hug, burying his face in her wild hair.
"As long as you're okay, sweetheart," he murmured, his voice thick with emotion. "As long as you're still our little girl. That's all that matters."
Her mother joined the hug, wrapping her arms around both of them, and for a long moment, they just stayed there, a family clinging together in the middle of the living room. In the quiet warmth of their embrace, Hermione felt the familiar, comforting weight of their love. Their fears were soothed. But as she held them, a quiet, lonely thought echoed in the back of her mind.
Whatever she told herself, the man she had been was still the dominant force within her. The memories, the weariness, the cold detachment: they were the bedrock of her new consciousness. Had she lived longer as just Hermione Granger, perhaps a better, more balanced fusion might have occurred. But the awakening had come too soon. The girl she was had been overwritten before she'd truly had a chance to form.
She couldn't love them with the pure, uncomplicated adoration of the daughter they had lost. She couldn't give them the simple, innocent affection they so richly deserved. All she could offer was the fractured, muted version she was capable of; a pale imitation of the love they deserved, but it was the absolute best she could give. And she would try. With every fiber of her being, for them, she would always, always try.
And yet, a sad, lonely truth echoed in her mind, feeling more intense in this familial moment. They loved the girl they saw.
But they would never, ever know the person she truly was.
No one ever will.