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When Hermione handed in her Arithmancy homework, she did not expect to be held back after class. Not least with Malfoy, standing broodingly in the doorway, glaring at her like it was all her fault. Arithmancy was her favourite class due to its challenging equations and logic puzzles, and she never let her work lapse, even considering the heavy hours she was putting into researching a spell that would help Harry breathe underwater for the Second Task.
Professor Vector had a severe expression on her face that she usually reserved for those who forgot to balance their sums and who handed in their homework late. Hermione had never been on the receiving end of it in her entire Hogwarts school career.
The professor held up two pieces of parchment, one with handwriting that Hermione recognised to be her own and the other that she deduced must be Malfoy’s. “I am extremely disappointed that one of my two most promising Fourth Year pupils has decided to hand in a set of duplicated equations.” Her lips pursed together so tightly that Hermione worried they would crack.
Hermione and Malfoy turned to glare at each other at the same time. Malfoy sneered, beating her to the punch, “Losing your edge, Granger? Too busy teaching Potty how to crack an egg?”
Hermione addressed the person of actual importance in the room. “Are you saying that Malfoy has copied my work, professor?”
The Arithmancy wizz who had always encouraged and answered Hermione’s questions gave her a long and searing look. “I cannot say yet, Miss Granger. I have found no traces of magic on either parchment and can only deduce that they must have been copied by hand.”
Malfoy started up again, his pointy nose lifted so high that she could see his fine golden nose hairs. “It is clear to me what has happened here, miss. Granger has stolen my work.” He lied, quickly, “I found her snooping about in my papers the other day.”
“I have not!” Hermione insisted, hotly. “This is my best subject. I have no need for your half-hearted homework, Malfoy!”
Hermione found herself somewhat disappointed that he’d cheated in such an impotent way. Professor Vector was not a professor that one could slide plagiarised equations past and Malfoy had never seemed to struggle at the subject like so many of their peers. Like Hermione, he had a head for maths - despite both of their dismay at having something in common.
Professor Vector pensively looked between the two students who were both denying their involvement. “If neither of you will own up to this then I shall have to give you both detention.”
Malfoy spluttered, “You’re punishing me for being a victim of her crime?”
Hermione’s hand itched to pull her wand on him. Maybe she’d be better off punching him across the face again. That shut him up quite nicely last time. She said, “What about asking us about our homework? The cheater would not go through the effort of learning the equations off by heart. There would be no point in it.”
Malfoy eyed her suspiciously before he reluctantly said, “She is correct, professor.”
The professor sighed and proceeded to ask questions relating to both of their identical homeworks. Hermione and, to her dismay, Malfoy answered them perfectly. The middle-aged woman’s face was stern with consternation. “Your idea had merit, Miss Granger, but it appears that either you are the cheater and have gone to great lengths to hide such - for whatever mysterious purpose - or Mr. Malfoy is very fastidious in his memory and copying.”
“She is the one who suggested it.” Malfoy pointed at her with an accusatory finger. “She suggested the test. She is just trying to get me in detention.”
“At my own peril?” Hermione scoffed. “My world does not revolve around you, Malfoy, so much as you may wish it to. Professor, I promise I am telling the truth. Would it be better to work through the equations in front of you to show my working out?” At this rate, Transfiguration class was a lost cause but Hermione had decided to side with her pride rather than cut her losses. Malfoy would not win this one.
“I will do the same!” Malfoy said, silver eyes gleaming as if he was winning something. Hermione was not impressed by his obsession with competition. That was one part of Harry’s rivalry with Malfoy that never failed to bore her.
So, the two students sat at their desks and did their homework for a second time. Hermione cast the appropriate detection spells on herself to get the base quantities and saw Malfoy doing the same. When they handed them in, Professor Vector was stumped.
“This is your own work?” She adjusted her glasses and flicked through their papers for a third time. “This does not make any sense, Miss Granger, Mr. Malfoy. Your homework was on the Blood Lineage equation matrix, a spell to determine your ancestry.” She glanced up at the two of them. “You have identical results.”
Hermione laughed. Even though that did not make any sense and there had likely been a mistake on either of their parts, it was funny to think of how being identical to a muggle-born would undoubtedly hurt Malfoy’s ego. She turned to the boy himself only to frown at the sight. The blood was completely leached from his face, leaving him even more pasty than usual.
“Pruina?” He asked her. She didn’t recognise the word and simply stared at him. “Pruina, is that you?”
“Professor Vector, Malfoy is clearly babbling. He must have made an error with his spellwork.” It was unlike him but it wasn’t impossible. Even gits who were good at maths made mistakes. “Professor?”
The witch was staring off into space with an expression that left Hermione feeling incredibly out of the loop. She sighed and thought of how at least it appeared that she wouldn’t be getting detention for something she didn’t do, now. Professor Vector was miles more fair than Professor Snape in that regard.
Malfoy spoke in a solemn hush. “I think you know what this means, professor. May I use the Floo in your office to fire-call my parents?”
Professor Vector nodded briskly. “Of course, Mr. Malfoy.” With that, Malfoy scurried off into her office which, like all professor’s private offices, had a Floo installed for emergencies.
Feeling as if she were interjecting in a private moment, Hermione tried to say her farewells. “Would you be able to write me a note for why I missed the start of Transfiguration? I think I can make the last half if I rush.”
“Minerva, yes, she should be notified,” the professor said, softly. “Please stay here for a moment, Miss… Granger.” She cast a non corporeal Patronus mist and whispered into it, “Minerva, I believe your presence is needed at once to stand by the side of one of your Gryffindors, Miss Hermione Granger.” The mist flew away and slid under the door into the hallway, leaving Hermione immensely confused.
She asked, tentatively, “Should we not investigate Malfoy’s spellwork to see where he went wrong with his equations? I can cast my sanguis locus charm again, if you need a demonstration.”
“That will not be necessary. I believe the both of you are quite competent, Miss Granger.”
That response made even less sense. If her and Malfoy’s casting weren’t the issue and their equations weren’t the issue then there was no reasonable explanation for why they would produce identical results. It must be a one in a billion chance that they would share identical genetics by happenstance and Hermione knew for a fact that she wasn’t adopted. She had her mother’s buck teeth and her father’s frizzy brown hair, after all!
Suddenly, voices were audible from Professor Vector’s office, as if a silencing charm had been removed all of a sudden. Multiple footsteps sounded before Malfoy reentered the room with his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy. The patriarch had his long snake-headed silver cane like Harry had described and the matriarch had very delicate facial features and the same stunningly pale blonde hair and skin. Either the two were closely related or the Malfoys required their spouses to dye their hair blonde.
“Are you sure, my dragon?” Mrs. Malfoy asked Malfoy once she saw Hermione standing there. Her son nodded, face expressionless and eyes wan. “Pruina?” There was that word again, directed at her. If there had been any wands out, Hermione would have thought it a spell.
“She doesn’t know her own name,” Mr. Malfoy hissed, face flushed with anger. They can’t be talking about me, can they? “And that glamour… Look at her!”
Mrs. Malfoy put a calming hand on his arm. Mr. Malfoy settled but his hand still gripped his cane tightly. Hermione thought of how scared Dobby must have been on the receiving end of that anger. She hated the Malfoys immensely in that moment - but no more than she usually did. Hopefully this strange situation and whatever her involvement was would blow over soon enough.
Professor McGonagall arrived at the door, ashen. In her deep Scottish brogue, she said, “The headmaster has requested our presence.”
Mr. Malfoy did not seem to like that one whit. “This is a family matter!”
“Miss Granger is a student at this school,” her Head of House said, coolly. “It would behoove you to recall that, Mr. Malfoy.”
Mrs. Malfoy said, graciously, “We have questions ourselves. It will be good to have them answered.”
“Shall I attend?” Professor Vector inquired, looking diminished under the combined political power of the Malfoy family. Hermione had read about the uneven and unreasonable power given to figures of the Wizengamot and did not blame her for her anxiety. “I believe Mr. Malfoy, the junior,” she clarified, quickly, “has all the information needed.”
“That will be fine, Septima,” the transfiguration professor assured her colleague. “I studied enough Arithmancy in my day that I can also help with any theoretical questions on this matter.”
Hermione glanced between the adults, a heavy suspicion beginning to weigh on her, but kept her mouth shut. She would bide her time and be smart about this, no matter how unease prickled over her at what they were implying. It simply couldn’t be true. There had been some sort of magical mistake. An equation must have been unbalanced.
Either she was completely misreading this situation or the Malfoys thought she was one of their children.
-
The headmaster’s office was a frosty affair. Malfoy skulked in the background, glancing at her with wide eyes, whilst Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy harangued with the headmaster to be allowed time to speak to their “daughter”.
“It is entirely within our right to speak to Pruina without oversight,” Mr. Malfoy said heatedly and not for the first time. “We are her parents. We have every right to deal with this matter privately, as a family. It is in the Hogwarts Charter, Albus! Do not think you can twinkle your eyes and get away with it!”
“I am not suggesting anything untoward,” the headmaster said, placid and implacable as if the Malfoys' anger was water off a duck’s back. “I am simply remarking that although the Arithmancy points to the blood relation, it is not infallible art. Until we have certainty that Miss Granger is who you say she is, I cannot in good conscience leave you with her.”
“So we shall test her.” Mrs. Malfoy dislocated from her husband’s arm long enough to step towards Hermione, who was staying smartly quiet. “My dear Pruina, this must be terribly confusing for you. Do we have your permission to elucidate matters? It is a simple spell that will prove that you are of our blood.”
Hermione’s chest felt right with a hot and somewhat panicked emotion. She had joined the dots by now. She did not know the specifics of how it had happened but it appeared that she was related to the Malfoys by blood.
This did not mean as much to her as it did to them, however. Hermione loved her parents, her family, her life. She loved her mum who never failed to lose at scrabble and her dad who read to her in German when she was younger. She didn’t want to be whisked away from her muggle life in order to be a cousin or daughter or whoever the Malfoys assumed she was. I may be adopted, Hermione Granger thought, trying to hold herself together by scraps and tears in what she had always believed, but I am still Dr. and Dr. Granger’s daughter.
“No,” she said. “I don’t want any spell.”
The headmaster looked relieved. “In that case-”
“No!” Mr. Malfoy’s voice went low in outrage. “This is unacceptable. Our lost child stands in front of us and you expect us to do nothing!”
“Now, now, Pruina may simply be mistaken or overwhelmed. Do you understand, my love, what we are trying to say? You are our daughter. You are Draco’s sister. You were stolen from our house as a baby and we have looked for you ever since.” Mrs. Malfoy spoke calmly, a woman who Hermione expected many had been tricked and blindsided by in her time alive. Beneath the surface, she could see her brimming with an intense want. For a moment, Hermione spared a moment for guilt at not giving her blood relatives a chance before she reminded herself of Dobby.
Her blood relatives were slave owners. Hermione did not associate with that sort of evil.
“I understand completely,” Hermione said, taking a step back from the woman who had gotten down onto her knees before her. Mrs. Malfoy retracted the hand she had reached out. “I already have a family, parents. I don’t want to be Pruina.”
Mrs. Malfoy gave her a considering look. “What would you prefer to be called, dearest one?
“Hermione. Hermione Granger.” She felt strange introducing herself to the woman who had supposedly birthed her.
Hermione tried to focus on the idea that as long as it wasn’t tested, it wasn’t a certainty. As long as that spell wasn’t cast then she had plausible deniability and a hope to cling onto. She didn’t want to be the flesh and blood of the people who had taught Malfoy to call her a mudblood.
“Hermione,” Mrs. Malfoy said the name easily. “Hermione, my beloved, please let me cast this spell. With that, we will simply have confirmation.”
She swallowed, looking away. The woman’s eyes were bright with warmth and love. Hermione couldn’t stand it. She wasn’t her real mother. Her real mother was in Hampstead, working part-time while she got over a stress related bout of migraines. It would hurt less if Mrs. Malfoy didn’t sound so brutally sincere and wanting.
Again, she reached out. Mr. Malfoy, Malfoy, and the headmaster all watched with bated breath as Hermione allowed the gentle touch to the side of her face. It felt like the epitome of cruelty to deny this woman who had lost her only daughter.
Maybe I can change them, she told herself, faced with the reality of an extreme and undying love. This was a woman who had never given up, even against all odds. Maybe it is not too late to change them. With that, she said, “If I do this and it turns out I am your daughter, will you allow me to still see my parents?”
Mrs. Malfoy swallowed. The hand remained gentle on her face. “We will discuss it further when we know the details, my love.”
Hermione frowned. “I need an assurance. They are my parents.”
With that, Mr. Malfoy’s carefully held tongue released itself. “ We are your parents, Pruina! Not the muggle savages that have kidnapped you and sequestered you away!” His cane slammed sharply against the floor.
Hermione jerked her face out of Mrs. Malfoy’s hand. “Then you have my answer. You do not have my consent to-”
“ Sanguis veritas! ” Malfoy’s wand was out and the spell hit her in the chest, firmly like a shove, before she could raise her own in defence.
“Draco!” Mrs. Malfoy scolded. “Do not cast magic against your sister!”
“But see, Mother. See that she is my sister.” Malfoy stumbled towards her, a golden light emanating from his chest. Hermione looked down to see an identical light coming from herself. “This light, Pruina, means that we are blood. You are my sister.” He sounded lost, as he stared at her and saw the mudblood that he had hated for four years and the sister that he had missed for thirteen. “You are my twin sister.”
Hermione frowned, knowing that this complicated things. The headmaster watched the confrontation from behind his desk while Mr. Malfoy’s anger calmed and Mrs. Malfoy began to cry silently.
She asked the headmaster, “Will you at least give Malfoy detention for casting the spell without my consent?”
Professor Dumbledore gave her an old and kind smile. “I believe that Mr. Malfoy has done you a great service, Miss Malfoy. It is a fine thing indeed to discover that we have more family than we expected. A blessing that not all people receive. Twenty points to Slytherin.”
Hermione stared at him mulishly. If the headmaster was going to stand by and let this play out, she’d at least expected him to not aid Malfoy in winning the House Cup. She’d have to try extra hard next week to make up the points.
The golden light dimmed and the headmaster left them alone in the room. As was written in the Hogwarts Charter, Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy had the right to see their family in private in cases of emergency. Unfortunately, Hermione thought this counted.
-
The family led her to the Headmaster’s Floo with the expectation that she was to follow. Hermione put her foot down.
“I’m sorry. I know this must be a lot for you all but I don’t know you.” She did technically know Malfoy but nothing good. “I cannot simply follow you through your Floo.”
Mr. Malfoy frowned and looked as if he was about to say something before Mrs. Malfoy hushed him. She turned to Hermione with that gentle heartbreaking smile again. “I understand your misgivings, my sweet one, but it is not safe for us to discuss private family matters in this office. Headmaster Dumbledore likely monitors this space. That is the only reason we seek to travel through the Floo.”
“What about somewhere else?” She suggested. She was not keen on the idea of going to Malfoy Manor with only the petty assurance of a blood identification spell. Harry and his relatives had taught her that blood did not always mean love. “The Black Lake is usually pretty empty this time of year due to the snow.”
Malfoy glanced at his mother, nodding to confirm Hermione’s story. “Pruina speaks the truth, Mother. We will be undisturbed there.”
In the end, it was Mr. Malfoy who relented. He nodded to her with a protective energy that Hermione did not feel suited him - although truthfully, she had spent most of her days thinking of him in terms of the harm and censure he had wrought rather than how he raised his son. Placing a hand on her shoulder, he led the way, past where the headmaster and her Head of House lingered at the base of the stairs to the Headmaster’s Office and past the gawking Hogwarts pupils who wiped at their eyes and assumed that they were having stress-induced hallucinations. Why else would Lucius Malfoy have a hand on Hermione Granger’s shoulder?
Ironically, she thought, they might believe he was under the Imperius.
It was quiet as they walked around the frozen lake, quickly separating from the few students playing with snow outside of the castle.
Hermione tugged her Gryffindor scarf around her neck tightly and flinched a little when she saw Mrs. Malfoy’s wand pointed at her. Her body relaxed at the warming charm and Mrs. Malfoy gave her an apologetic smile. “Apologies, Hermione. I hadn’t considered you feeling skittish around my wand. I will warn you next time.”
Her own wand raised in retaliation, she puffed up her cheeks with hot air before slowly blowing it out. “It’s fine. I understand your intention was good.” She paused. “Thank you.”
The watery smile the woman gave her was worth the feeling that she was lying. Hermione did want to give this clearly hurting mother a connection. She just didn’t want to sacrifice her real family to do so.
“Must you call her that?” Malfoy spat, once they were well and truly isolated from the Hogwarts pupils. “Her name is Pruina, Mother. You picked it yourself, did you not?”
Strictly, Mrs. Malfoy said, “Your sister has had quite the shock, Draco. As have we all. It is no great price to pay to call her by the name she chooses to use.”
Malfoy flushed. It wasn’t from the cold since his mother had likely cast a warming charm on him as well.
Mr. Malfoy kept his hand on her shoulder, likely dealing with his own trauma based on the fear of losing her. Hermione knew she was intellectualising this whole ordeal but if she stopped to feel any of the emotions that accompanied the thoughts she was having, she would break down and lose any ability to advocate for herself or her parents.
“There is much to discuss,” Mrs. Malfoy said, gently. “I want you to know, dear Hermione, that finding you again is the greatest blessing I had ever hoped for. I love you as much as I always have and you are incredibly welcome into my home and into my heart.”
Now it was Hermione’s turn to flush. She tried to sound tactful but had the remarkable sensation that this must be what it was like to be a bull in a china shop. “I understand that, Mrs. Malfoy.” The woman gave a pained expression at the title which Hermione brushed off. “I understand that this is very emotional for you but you must understand, from my perspective, that I already have parents and I do not remember you. I do not know you well enough to feel that way.”
Other than the vitriol she felt due to their nasty blood politics, but something told Hermione that this was not the time.
“Of course, of course.” Mrs. Malfoy regained that delicate made-of-glass smile. “I do not want to pressure you to feel anything at all, my love. It is a great shock to us all. Although we never gave up hope, the idea that we have found you again…” She choked on her words. “It is the greatest blessing. Thank Circe, thank Circe for a thousand solstices.”
-
There was nothing quite as awkward as being on the receiving end of a dose of unconditional love that you weren’t sure how to process whilst simultaneously worrying over how your new parents might treat your old ones.
Safe to say, Hermione had a lot of plotting to do and not a lot of time to do it. She put the Second Task on the backburner - and oh, how that gave her a guilty conscience - and focused on how she would sneak out to the nearest muggle village to Hogwarts next Hogsmeade weekend, Durham, and use the emergency cellphone she had buried in a plot there to let her parents know what was going on. She would undoubtedly need to send a decoy owl to a different address than their own in case the Malfoys were now tracking her owls.
Hermione would do everything in her power to keep her parents safe from the Malfoys.
Hogwarts was a mixed bag of reactions to the reveal of Pruina “Hermione” Malfoy. Lavender went on the offensive, making sure Hermione knew that just because she had purer blood, it didn’t make her any prettier - until Pavrati elbowed her in the stomach and said that she was calling Hermione Granger , house elf liberationist, a blood supremacist. Lavender went pink under her makeup then and apologised. She even offered to dye Hermione’s hair blonde, assuming like the bookworm had that it was a rite of passage for a Malfoy.
She still needed confirmation on that front.
Ron was at first hurt by the reveal and tried to ice her out. Harry quickly reminded him that Hermione was the one who’d stood by Harry when his name came out of the Cup and so he would definitely be taking Hermione’s side if Ron decided to be a berk again. Ron flushed and told her the story of the Malfoys’ missing twin daughter, Pruina, who his mum had sadly assumed had died of Wasting Sickness as a baby. The story went that Mrs. Malfoy had been so heartbroken by the loss that she had never tried for another child.
Hermione could believe that.
Malfoy - who Hermione couldn’t yet bring herself to call Draco - was cornering her at every spare moment to try to bond with her. He failed to empathise by saying how horrible it must have been to live with muggles and then joked that he finally understood how she always beat him academically, considering she wasn’t actually a mudblood. Hermione punched him, received and ignored an apology, and then eventually went crawling back to Malfoy after he sicced Parkinson on her.
Parkinson was distraught.
For years, she had spent every waking moment taunting and bullying Hermione in order to get on Draco’s good side only to find out that she was Draco’s long lost twin sister. She declared fealty to Hermione and handed over her wand. Hermione gave it back and told her to stick her apology where the sun didn’t shine. (“Go, Hermione!” Ron cheered, ignoring the flat look Professor Snape sent him.)
That did not put her off. Parkinson intensified her apologies in such a way that it was distracting Hermione from her plotting and studies. She made grand gestures in the Great Hall, would loudly defend Hermione to anyone who was listening, and had made her hair frizzy in an attempt to “make Hermione more beautiful by comparison.” When Parkinson broke into the Gryffindor dorm to set fire to Lavender’s hair, after Lavender made a passive aggressive snide comment about Hermione’s relationship with Harry, Hermione decided that Malfoy was somehow the lesser of two evils.
The worst part of this was that no one would ever believe her about her date. Hermione had a Long Term Plan and Viktor simply didn’t fit in it. The poor boy made a confused Bulgarian noise when Hermione told him that she simply couldn’t attend the Yule Ball with him anymore. “You must understand,” she said. “My parents would simply approve too much.”
He blinked at her with his crystal blue pure-blood eyes as if she had a few screws loose but accepted the rejection gracefully.
Hermione considered who she could enlist to attend with her while she worked on her long-term project of curing the Malfoys of their blood-supremacy. Meeting her loving, intelligent, amazing parents would do wonders for their muggle-hating tendencies but she needed to ensure now that there would be no question of who she could date or marry.
That is to say, Hermione Granger would date whoever she bloody well wanted to.
fin.