Soul Searching/End Game
SS Chapter 2 - Meet the Grangers
By Chem Prof
Author Notes:
Acknowledgement
As far as I’m concerned, the characters of Dan and Emma Granger were created by the fanfic author Old Crow. I borrowed the description of the Granger house from his story, ‘No Thanks’.
Chapter 2, Meet the Grangers
Dan and Emma Granger were an affluent professional couple. Both dentists, they owned their own practice and had built it up over the years until it was very successful. They owned a lovely home in Crawley, in Oxfordshire about an hour’s drive west of London, and two luxury automobiles which currently were BMW’s.
Their home was a five bedroom, three level brick house with a spacious kitchen, dining room, family area, and a study on the first floor. It was exquisitely decorated, and was a house that would have made Petunia Dursley green with envy. It had an attached car park that held both cars and had once also held a boat. In the back garden there was a pool, a small flowerbed, a fire pit, and an open area. The back was bounded by trees, bushes and hedges so that it was quite private, which Emma particularly enjoyed as she loved to swim and sunbathe.
Dan and Emma had met at University and become great friends. As frequently happens, the friendship turned to love and they were married during their first year of dental school. They spend many years building up their practice so that when they had a daughter Emma was able to reduce her schedule to spend a lot of time at home with her. Having taken time to build up the practice, Emma was in her 30’s when her daughter was born. Due to complications during the pregnancy they had decided not to have any more children, and had devoted themselves to their only child. During the summer when their daughter was home from school, Emma worked about half time and Dan worked about three quarter time.
Like many professionals, the Grangers enjoyed taking long holidays, regularly traveling to the continent for a month during the summer, and also taking a winter holiday at Christmas time. Believing travel to be educational, they had taken their daughter to many of the museums and historic sites in Europe, and she spoke three languages. As their daughter got older, she began to prefer the beach holidays, so their recent summer trips had been to the South of France.
Dan was something of a technophile. His study contained an entertainment system that was the envy of his friends. He had a wide screen TV with both VCR and DVD players. This was combined with a stereo system with surround sound which included a turntable for his old albums as well as a cassette deck and a five-disk CD player. He had something like six different remotes before he finally found a universal remote that would control everything.
He also had a computer system that he upgraded regularly. He currently had a Pentium running Windows 95 and was looking forward to an even faster Pentium with Windows 98. He had the highest speed modem made, with a dedicated phone line. He eagerly awaited the high speed internet connection he had read about, DSL, but it was not yet available in his area. Emma was frequently heard muttering about his toys. He was a living example of the phrase, “the only difference between men and boys is the price of their toys.”
Emma loved her back garden. She spent a lot of time with her flowerbed, and it looked like it could have been on a magazine cover. They had a nice table and chair set on the patio and customarily ate lunch outside during the summer, and Dan occasionally grilled for supper. She was an avid swimmer and sunbather, and on their trips to the continent had picked up the custom of topless sunbathing which the privacy of their pool made possible at home.
They had raised their daughter to be comfortable with her body, and when she was home during the summer she joined Emma in sunbathing topless. They were aware of the dangers of skin cancer, and were careful to not overdo it. Both brunettes, they tanned relatively easily, and they used plenty of sunscreen to keep it to a light tan. Since their daughter had begun to develop a nice figure, she had started wearing quite tiny bikinis. Her most recent purchase had included a thong bottom. While Emma had kept herself in good shape, and looked fine in a bikini, she was now fifty years old and didn’t think she would ever try a thong herself. She had to admit that it had looked great on her sixteen-year-old daughter the summer before.
Dan and Emma were active in the British Dental Society, and attended conferences regularly. They kept abreast of the latest techniques of their profession and occasionally gave talks at regional meetings. They had several close friends, some from their university days and some from Dan’s military service, with whom they got together for dinner at times. They enjoyed each other’s company the most, however, and were still each other’s best friends.
All in all, Dan and Emma would have appeared to be a typical successful professional couple. There was one thing about their life, however, that was anything but typical.
Their daughter was a witch.
Their daughter Hermione was a brilliant student, excelling in all her classes. While her parents were very proud of her academic accomplishments, they worried that she had few friends. Her superior intelligence, combined with some unusual incidents, led to other children avoiding her. As a result, Hermione retreated into her books, becoming a voracious reader. By the time she was ten years old, she had no friends at all and her parents were becoming very concerned.
Then came a visit from a very unusual woman, and they learned what really made Hermione different. While they were reluctant to have her leave home for ten months a year, they realized that she would be happier with others who shared her special abilities, and they hoped that she would finally be able to make some friends.
In her first letter home, Hermione had been very excited, and had mentioned meeting a boy who was very famous in the wizarding world. Unfortunately her subsequent letters were more and more depressing, and it began to seem once again that Hermione could not make any friends. Dan and Emma knew that she had developed a know-it-all attitude which covered up her massive insecurity, and which manifested itself in her desperate feeling that she had to answer every question, and get a perfect score on every test. They were certain that this characteristic was responsible for her inability to get close to other students.
Then everything changed. Soon after Halloween they received a much more upbeat letter that related how Hermione was now friends with the famous boy and another boy. Although they were uncomfortable with the part about being in danger from a troll, they were glad that their daughter’s life was looking much better.
During the next four years they continued to hear about adventures involving these two boys. The famous one, Harry, seemed to consistently be at the center of everything. Apparently things just always happened to him. Although it seemed to them that these adventures involved more danger than they would have liked, and they would have preferred that Hermione also have friends who were girls, they were overall happy that she had such good friends.
They were surprised when there was a ball during Hermione’s fourth year that she did not attend with either of her two friends, and they got the impression that Hermione was not too thrilled about that either. They were definitely uneasy that she had attended the ball with a foreign exchange student who was three years older than her, and that he had invited her to visit him in Bulgaria the following summer, but they resolved to trust her judgment. They were secretly relieved when she declined the invitation and decided to be long distance friends with him.
More recently, there were several things that had them disturbed. Hermione was spending less and less time at home during the holidays. Several times she had not come home during the Christmas break, two summers ago she had only been home half the summer, and last summer she had only been home two weeks. According to Emma, she had developed a crush on one of her friends, Ron, and it was at his home that she spent six weeks the previous year. Emma wasn’t sure she liked that idea, but apparently Harry had been there too, and Hermione had written her with disappointment that nothing had happened with Ron.
Emma was somewhat surprised that Ron was the one Hermione had set her sights on rather than Harry. From her letters, it seemed that Harry was nicer to her than Ron was, and she considered him a better friend. She was constantly reading about yet another row with Ron, some of which seemed rather nasty. She knew that Hermione had self-esteem issues socially, and hoped that she wasn’t getting involved in an abusive relationship. During her unexpected visit home for Christmas break, it was clear that the relationship that Hermione had hoped to have with Ron was not going well.
Finally, Dan and Emma were very concerned about the serious injury that Hermione had sustained at the end of the previous school year, and the news that the wizarding world was at war. Hermione had assured them that she was safe at Hogwarts, but now that assurance was dubious at best, since their headmaster had been killed by the school’s chemistry professor and the place had closed two and a half weeks early. Dan idly wondered how a chemistry professor would kill someone. The chemistry professors he had known seemed to be inordinately fond of explosions.
In this light, they had been thrilled when Hermione had quietly told them that her friend Harry wanted to come home with her and visit them. They definitely wanted to get to know this boy who had such an impact on their daughter’s life. They were of course curious about why it had to be such a secret that he was going to sneak into their car while invisible, and were eagerly awaiting the explanation. Dan was the first to speak, and as usual he found a humorous comment to break the ice.
“I guess my daughter really does have an invisible friend.”
They all laughed and Harry pulled off the invisibility cloak and set it on the seat as Hermione began, “Mum, Dad this is my best friend Harry Potter. Harry, these are my mum and dad, Dan and Emma …” Hermione faltered as she noticed her parents staring at Harry and not listening to a word she was saying. OK, I know he’s famous and all and the scar does look strange but you’d think …
“How did you do that?” asked Emma, interrupting Hermione’s internal scolding. Dan chimed in, “It was like you just pulled yourself out of thin air!”
“Oh, that’s my invisibility cloak. It’s come in handy quite a few times,” Harry explained, sharing a look with Hermione as they remembered some of those times. “Look, it makes anything it covers invisible, but whatever isn’t covered you can still see. He put the cloak over Hermione’s head, which promptly disappeared, leaving a headless Hermione sitting in the back seat.
“Hey, that’s an improvement,” teased Dan. Hermione whipped off the cloak and glared at him, then at Harry as he tried to stifle a chortle. Emma just smiled, grateful for the playful banter that came so easily to her family. Harry, not sure how to take it, and hoping Hermione wasn’t too mad, interjected, “There was one time I was wearing it and it slipped off my head, so it looked like a head floating around. Scared Malfoy to death.”
“Gee, Harry, that wouldn’t be the time you were supposed to stay in the castle for your own safety and snuck out anyway, would it?” Hermione said sternly.
“Oops.” Now he’d done it. If Hermione wasn’t mad before, she probably was now. Not exactly the best first impression you’re making on your best friend’s parents, Potter.
Emma watched the interplay between the two friends with interest. She knew that Hermione hadn’t been mad at Dan as she was used to his teasing. She wondered what Harry’s home life had been like that he hadn’t realized that. She was curious at the mixture of gallantry and awkwardness he had shown as he rushed in to ‘rescue’ his friend from the presumed insult, but in so doing had inadvertently brought up something that he was embarrassed about. She was also curious to see how Hermione would handle it, knowing that she wouldn’t want her friend to feel bad during his first meeting with her parents. And she could tell from the unhappy expression on Harry’s face that that was exactly what was happening.
Hermione had realized all this even before Emma, what with six years of experience at reading Harry’s feelings. She decided on the direct approach and leaned over and hugged the surprised teen.
“Harry, we’re just teasing. Dad was teasing me and I was teasing you. But thank you for trying to make me feel better,” she said, leaning back and smiling at him. Harry was confused, but decided that this was a much better outcome than anything he had expected so he kept quiet and smiled back.
“Actually, Harry and I have had quite a few adventures around the castle with that cloak.” And Hermione launched into a few tales of some of the less dangerous ones, with Harry soon joining in. Dan smiled at Emma and started the car and eased out of the parking lot.
For the rest of the ride home as Harry got more comfortable with the Grangers, he began telling them about himself, with Hermione jumping in with details whenever she thought he was leaving something out, so that the Grangers gradually got to know him better. Hermione waxed on about Harry’s quidditch exploits, much to Harry’s embarrassment. They related many humorous episodes of Magical Creatures class, and mishaps during Charms and Transfigurations. Harry made it clear that Hermione was always the first to learn anything, while she blushed and countered that he could have learned them as easily if he paid more attention in class.
As they told their stories they lightened them up a little. The story of the Chamber was a detective story where they gradually figured out the clues, and ended with the simple statement that Harry had gone down into the chamber and killed the basilisk, omitting the part about the diary. They told about getting rid of Norbert, and about flying Buckbeak to save Harry’s godfather who had been falsely accused of a crime, leaving out the part about the dementors.
When describing the tasks of the Triwizard Tournament Harry caused Emma and Dan to raise their eyebrows and Hermione to blush furiously when he mentioned that Hermione had been the hostage for Viktor Krum. Apparently she had somehow left that part out when she had told her parents about Viktor two years earlier. They also omitted quite a bit about the ending of the tournament.
There were relatively few stories about the two most recent years. Hermione insisted on relating Harry’s disastrous date with Cho leading into the interview with Rita Skeeter (payback for his revelation about Viktor). Harry then recalled meeting Hagrid’s brother Grawp and how he called her Hermy. The Grangers roared at this while Hermione turned scarlet. Hermione had refused to ever let anyone shorten her name. She indignantly pointed out that there wasn’t much she could do about a 20-foot tall giant. Harry finished with the tale of Ron and the love potion, concluding with the disastrous quidditch match in which he had been knocked out by his own keeper and bringing the Grangers nearly into hysterics. With a shared look, Harry and Hermione had silently come to an agreement with each other to hold off the more serious discussion for later.
To say that they were impressed with this young man was an understatement. While it was clear that he was very brave and extremely loyal to his friends, he was also modest to a fault. They soon realized that although he was indeed one of the most famous wizards in Britain (the evidence of which was provided entirely by Hermione since he never mentioned it himself) he was not at all arrogant or stuck up about it but as down to earth as could be. They could quickly see that Hermione had made an excellent choice in having him as a friend. It was at this point that they arrived back home, unpacked the car and took Harry in to show him around.
Harry was amazed at the Granger’s house. He had no idea that Hermione’s family was so well off. When he thought about it, he realized that he’d never known much about her life outside Hogwarts, and that was about to change dramatically.
For someone who usually had something to say about just about everything, Hermione had been unusually reticent about her home life. This was likely due to the unfortunate situations of her best friends. The Weasleys had always struggled financially, and Ron was quite sensitive about it, while Harry had plenty of money in the wizarding world but was apparently kept destitute in the muggle world by his aunt and uncle. One of the first things they were going to do was change that. A shopping spree was definitely high on the list.
The tour of the house ended in the backyard. Harry was impressed that Mrs. Granger’s garden was even prettier than Aunt Petunia’s and thought that the pool looked interesting. The only time he had ever been swimming had been during the second task of the triwizard tournament, and he was looking forward to trying it here. He didn’t understand, though, why Hermione blushed slightly when she told him that she thought he’d really enjoy the pool.
Since it was late they proceeded immediately to dinner. While Hermione was showing Harry around, Emma had ordered Chinese takeout, and Dan had gone off to pick it up. He returned shortly after they came back inside from looking at the pool, and after getting some drinks they all sat down to eat.
As they ate, the Grangers took their turn to tell him about themselves. Adhering to the duty of parents everywhere, they told him embarrassing stories about Hermione that had her wanting to crawl under the table. Harry really enjoyed the one about how Hermione asked so many questions in school that it made her teachers want to pull their hair out. He teased her by asking her if she had ever gotten an answer as to why the sky was blue. She responded with a perfectly serious expression, “Oh, it’s obvious. It’s magic,” which made everyone burst out laughing.
Harry couldn’t help but contrast the Grangers to the Dursleys. This was a family who was nice to each other, laughed a lot, and generally had a good time together. Amazingly, at least to his mind, they seemed to like him even though he was a total stranger. He was unaware that he was actually no stranger to them. Hermione had talked more about him than anything else about school, and between that and what they had witnessed and heard this evening they felt they knew him quite well.
After dinner Harry immediately leapt up and started clearing the table and taking things to the kitchen in preparation for doing the dishes. He couldn’t help himself; this behavior had been instilled in him for years under threats of beatings. The Grangers sat and stared open-mouthed. Why was one of the most famous wizards in Britain acting like a busboy? Was this kid for real? Hermione recovered first. She had a pretty good idea how Harry had got into this habit, as she had heard about his life at the Dursleys. She moved into the kitchen to help Harry and Emma quickly followed, then Dan. Emma gently let Harry know that cleaning up was not his sole responsibility, and that they would all share in the chores.
After they finished they moved into the family room and settled on the couches, Dan and Emma on one and Harry and Hermione on the other. Everyone knew that it was time for a serious discussion. Harry and Hermione looked at one another, and Hermione began. “There are some things happening in the wizard world, actually have been happening for two years now, that you need to know about. You’ve probably figured out that I’ve been keeping some things from you, but this is getting deadly serious and we’re going to be completely honest with you. Harry and I have decided what we have to do and we hope that we can convince you to support us in this decision.”
Beginning with the ending of the Triwizard Tournament that he had glossed over earlier, Harry described the rebirth of Voldemort, the disbelief of Minister Fudge, and the frustrations of their fifth year when few had believed him. Hermione described the horrible teaching of Umbridge and the decision to start the DA.
They went into more detail when they got to the story of the vision, the confrontation in Umbridge’s office, the flight to the Ministry and the Department of Mysteries, finding the prophesy, and the running battle that ensued. The Grangers were impressed that the two of them had taken out half of the Death Eaters. Harry grabbed hold of Hermione’s hand as she described getting hit with Dolohov’s curse. Harry then quietly described the remainder of the fight and Sirius’s fall through the veil. Hermione scooted over and pulled him into a hug while his body shook with silent sobs.
Emma came over to Harry to add to Hermione’s hug, then Dan broke the silence. “This seems like a good time to take a break. What can I get everyone to drink?”
Hermione turned to her father with a grateful expression on her face and said, “Lemonade for us, Dad, but you and Mum feel free to have whatever you like.” She knew that her dad would prefer a beer, but wasn’t sure if Harry had ever had one.
“Wine for me, dear,” said Emma looking up from Harry. Dan nodded and left the room.
Harry couldn’t believe how they were treating him after what he had just told them. “I don’t think you understand. Why are you being so nice to me?” he said with his head down. “I just told you I nearly got Hermione killed!”
The Granger women were having none of that. “Harry, don’t say that!” said Hermione, grabbing his head and forcing him to look up at her. “You made the best decision you could with the information you had available.”
Emma added, “What I heard was that your leadership amazingly kept six children alive against twelve killers.”
Hermione went on, “Harry, you listened to everything I said and went along with my suggestions to verify what you saw in your vision. You tried all the things I could think of and you didn’t force any of us to go along with you. You wanted to leave us behind and we insisted on accompanying you. You didn’t lead us into danger, we followed you willingly. But you did lead us out of the danger we found ourselves in.”
By this time Dan had returned. He passed two glasses of lemonade to Hermione, a glass of wine to Emma and settled into his chair with a pint of beer for himself. “Harry, a good leader makes the best decision he can with the information available. Sometimes things go wrong, but you don’t second guess yourself for making the decision. You analyze what went wrong and use that to make a better decision next time.”
Harry accepted the lemonade from Hermione and nodded. He couldn’t believe how wonderful this family was. He became even more determined to keep them safe.
Harry continued the story with Dumbledore’s lessons and learning about the Horcruxes, considerately leaving out the part about Hermione not believing him about Malfoy, and the unpleasantness between her and Ron during the year. He told about his two meetings with Minister of Magic Scrimgeour and Hermione described checking the paper every day for news of the latest disappearance. They related their separate accounts of the night that Dumbledore was killed, Harry and Hermione both learning some things that they had not previously heard. They paused at this point to drink some more of their lemonade and answered questions and requests for clarifications from the Grangers.
Finally they moved on to the conversation the three of them had had that morning. They reiterated their determination to finish the work that Harry and Dumbledore had started and reviewed the plans that they had made so far. The Grangers were impressed at the thought that had gone into the disappearance scheme, and that it had gone so smoothly. They could see the advantage to Harry to disappear from the wizarding world for a while so that he could conduct his search in secret, but were troubled by his decision to take Hermione along with him.
When they voiced these concerns Hermione responded with a ferocity that they had never seen from her. She let them know in no uncertain terms that she had insisted on being a part of Harry’s quest, and that she absolutely would not hear of anything to the contrary. She knew beyond a doubt that Harry needed her, that he unquestionably could not do this without her, and with or without their blessing she would be in this with him to the bitter end. When she finished she was shaking with emotion and Harry had put his arm around her. After a quick look of astonishment at Dan, Emma came over and put her arm around Hermione from the other side.
When Hermione had calmed down, Dan spoke up. In a quiet, calming voice he said, “Kids, it’s getting late. You’ve given us a lot to think about and we truly appreciate that you’ve shared all this with us. We understand how difficult it was for you to talk about, especially you, Harry, telling such painful information to near strangers. I think we should sleep on this and we can continue our discussion tomorrow.”
As they stood up and Emma collected up the glasses he continued, “Hermione, Harry, I want you to know how proud we both are of you and what you’ve done. We have the greatest respect for you and what you’re doing.” He moved over to his daughter and caught her up in a big hug, and to Harry’s surprise Emma gave him a hug. Emma then went over to hug Hermione and Dan and Harry walked to the stairs.
As Emma went up with Hermione to her room, Dan escorted Harry to his room. At the door Dan stopped and held out his hand, saying, “Harry, it’s been an honor to meet you. You have no idea how much you’ve done for Hermione the last six years. Thank you for being her friend.”
Harry responded, “Thank you sir. It’s been an honor for me to meet you and Mrs. Granger as well. It’s become obvious to me that you two are the main reason that Hermione is the special person that she is. I couldn’t have a better friend.” With that, they bid each other good night, Harry called out good night down the hall to Hermione and Emma, and they retired into their respective rooms.
As Harry prepared for bed he reflected on all that had happened that day. He could not believe that this was still the same day that had started with the funeral of Albus Dumbledore. So much had happened; so many life-changing decisions had been made in the last twelve hours. Could he possibly have foreseen when he got up this morning that he would be going to bed that night at the Grangers’ house? Exhausted, he fell asleep almost immediately.
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