Chapter Text
“We need an emergency vehicle right now on Abbotswell Road! We have three bodies and a child on the scene!”
“Copy that sir, we’ll send a backup team”
--
“What’s your name, sweetheart?”
“Hermione Jean Granger, officer.”
“Do you remember what just happened?”
“My mother, father, and I were on our way from my birthday party. Where are my parents, officer?”
“Don’t worry about it right now, alright Hermione?” the police officer sighs. He had received the notification this evening that there was a potential homicide case with the only survivor being the couple's young daughter. After looking away from the girl sitting in front of him, he faces a woman in the corner of the police centre's small room.
The standing women looked sympathetically at the younger before leaving the room with a lingering gaze on the tattered nine-year-old girl's dress. The dress looked like it was covered with soot or mud - or perhaps it was both. The colour spread itself all over the girl’s small hands and sandy-coloured dress. The child looks down at her shoes and her bushy brown hair covered her expression. Her shoes were missing the shine of the evening streetlights that were there a few hours before. The woman felt her heart clench in sadness for the girl who was now an orphan. Finally, she looked away and walked out into the hallway.
Hermionie Granger's ears were ringing. But for the life of her, Hermione could not remember why they were ringing. At least, that's what she told everyone. No, Hermione was a frightening intelligent young girl, she knew something bad had happened to her parents. She was there to see it after all. But she was adamant about not revealing what occurred a few hours ago.
--
The woman had returned to the small room where Hermionie resided. It was her second day staying at the station after her parents' passing.
The woman was dressed in a casual black suit and her hair in a tight bun. Although her hair was greying around the sides, she looked no older than forty.
“Hello Hermione, you may remember me from a while ago." She says while taking a seat across from the girl. Hermione had changed from her sandy-coloured dress into something that resembled a hospital gown.
"You may have been in shock so I'll reintroduce myself. My name is Dr. Taylor, a psychiatrist. I will just be here to ask you a few questions, is that alright?”
Hermione’s eyes roamed freely, critically examining the woman in front of her, “Of course doctor, it is a pleasure to meet you.” A friendly smile attempts to put itself onto her face but only makes a depressing attempt.
Taking a deep breath from the upsetting sight in front of her, Dr. Taylor takes out a small notebook with pre-written questions and a pen from her black leather bag. She pushes her thin glasses up her thin nose and begins asking them.
“Hermione Jane Granger, is it correct that this is your full name and you went out for a birthday dinner with your parents on September 18, 1985, for your eigth birthday?”
Nodding her head in accord, Hermione looks at the small notebook of the psychiatrist. There were small folded pieces of paper that are folded carelessly into random pages of the book and Hermione finds herself focusing on staring at them and chewing the corner of her bottom lip - a habit that she picked up from her father.
“Can you please tell me what you remember about that night? As much as you can.”
Hermione nods again and closes her eyes to push the memory to the forefront of her thoughts. She hears her ears ringing again and moves from biting her lip to the inside of her cheek.
There isn’t much that she can remember. At least that is what Hermione told all the officers that questioned her previously. Even though it had been two days already, they would not stop trying to pry into her story. Feeling annoyance prick at her mind, Hermione holds her breath as she recounts what she told all the people before Dr. Taylor: A warm sensation on the back of her nape, a yell of her name, the taste of something cold in her mouth, and the ringing sound in her ears.
“I really am sorry, there is nothing left that I remember.”
Hermione says choking down tears.
“Don’t feel sorry, sweetheart. It is a difficult situation, the one you’re in.” Dr. Taylor looks at the young girl with an apologetic gaze and shuts her notebook. One of the small pieces of folded paper comes loose from the book and falls under the table where she is unable to see but Hermione can.
“I will come back later tomorrow, please take care and rest well Hermione.”
“Of course, thank you, Dr. Taylor. I'm so sorry for not providing much help for the investigation.”
The woman tells Hermione platitudes that she's already heard before and walks out of the room with a small click of the door. All Hermione can hear are Dr. Taylor's flats clicking on the floor and the ringing in her ears. The ringing mostly came from her left ear, the same side a square bandage slapped onto her face.
Hermione knows why there is ringing in her ears, and cold in her mouth. She knew that night there was a gun and her parents on the floor. She knew the warmth on her nape actually belonged to the man that once held the gun.
Hermione Granger was a frightening intelligent young girl, she knew something had happened to her parents and she knew something happened to the person who hurt her parents. She also remembers why there is a ringing in her ears - a gunshot to her parents' gut.
She knows most importantly, that she absolutely cannot tell anyone what happened - “If it isn’t a birthday girlie! Now, look at these little preppies tryna’ look all nice and dandy. Y’know, if you pay me a good sum and give me this girlie too I’ll leave both ya’ safe.”
Her parents refused and two bodies hit the ground. Not a word came out of the young girl’s mouth, instead, something manifested inside her body and lashed out at the man behind her.
But she wouldn’t remember, she said can’t remember anything. Little Hermione Granger needed to stay like this or else, what would happen to her? Hermione knew that there is a place for people like her called the loony bin, her parents had told her stories of their medical buddies that worked in the wards. Hermione knew what she had done was not a source of her imagination nor that she was going mad. She knew the coldness and the pull of it was something that couldn’t be explained by the people here, something that felt more like magic than anything she watched on the telly.
How else could you explain being found next to your dead parents and a body with no head?
Hermione Jean Granger can’t remember anything, and it would stay that way.
There was somehow a small pile of ash underneath the table the next time a cleaner came in.
Draco Malfoy was an orphan.
Simple, there was nothing else to it. He was here since he could remember and had nothing else to compare the orphanage to. A cold and aloof child is how the matrons of the small St. Fontbonne Orphanage described the beautiful child.
“A truly beautiful child.” They would whisper.
Platnum blonde hair, pale like a porcelain doll, tall for his age and on the thinner side due to the orphanage’s lack of funding. And the most notable feature of the boy is his piercing grey eyes.
Many couples had fallen for the boy, his charismatic appearance, perfect manners, and soothing voice that was still relatively in the lower range for a pre-pubescent child. But it was the eyes that always discouraged them. So sharp, they felt suffocated under his gaze.
Some tried to take the boy home and all they could do was bring him back, accompanied by a bitter taste in their mouths.
“Freak.” They had called him, “Demon” they accused. One couple was bold enough to consider doing an exorcism on the child before something had caused them to be unable to carry it out.
No, Draco was beautiful, perfect, cold, aloof, and an orphan that no one wanted. That was fine to him and he prided himself in his ability to intimidate. The children of the orphanage needed to understand his power, he requires intimidation to survive. It was fine if the adults didn't want him, but the orphans of St. Fontbonne Orphanage are on a constant neck-to-neck hunt with each other. One wrong move and the other children pounce on that momentary weakness. The children there are cruel. They have to be or they would receive less. In order to not be the weaker one means they had to be the stronger one.
Draco Malfoy was the strongest boy in St. Fontbonne, but he had struggled for it.
—
A young Draco’s eyes were never as sharp as they would be when he grew older. It was something he learned to keep others away and wary. By the age of four is when St. Fontbonne would start letting the younger children assimilate into the normal orphan group, instead of staying in the nurseries.
It started with the older kids showing the younger ones who were in charge. The orphanage rooms had beds which were separated by age. Older boys got to sleep near the door and heater while the younger boys slept by the windows which froze during the winter months. Lunch was always limited so the older kids would always push to the front of the line leaving the scraps and leftovers to the younger kids. Bullying was not an uncommon sight in this setting, and a young Draco Malfoy assimilated into the environment.
As a four-year-old, a wide-eyed Draco Malfoy had observed everything in the orphanage hierarchy for a year. Draco was incredibly cunning for a child of four years, by the time he was five, he understood in order to live comfortably (if you could even call living in this orphanage, “comfortable.”), you had to have strength. He knew that being only five, there was not much he could do for himself, but he could make connections, allies, and useful pawns. He befriended the naive matrons, the other younger kids, and the older girls of the orphanage that were caring enough to make a circle of protection around himself.
It was a comfortable situation until Jason Derrol pinpointed the silent Malfoy’s schemes. No one could help him now, not the matrons who didn’t have any proof of Jason's bullying. The younger kids didn’t want to end up the same way and the girls had just as little power over the nine-year-old Jason. Jason would grab the five-year-old Draco by the neck and choke him until he saw stars as a game. Draco had struggled but it had been futile, he was left to the older boy's mercy day after day until one day, a freezing sensation burst inside of him. It reached from inside Draco and burned the nine-year-old Jason's hand until he blistered. Draco had been saved from choking, but from then, it was Jason Derrol’s goal to make life at St. Fontbonne's hell for the blonde.
From the regular bullying to malnutrition caused by the lunch line hierarchy, Draco’s eyes became piercing and calculating. And piercing is exactly what he did to Jason Derrol when he turned six.
Draco knew he was different from the other kids, or else how would he still be alive? After all, it only took three days to heal the damage Jason Derrol caused when he pushed the blonde down three flights of stairs. His cuts and bruises always healed in hours when they should have taken days. He could occasionally pop food into his room when he was praying hard enough. He's realized now though that God doesn't exist because he never helped. In fact, he felt more omnipotent and divine than God. He proved that he was superior to the other children of the orphanage too.
Draco lays on the floor with bruises kissing parts of his porcelain skin, a red welt covering his cheek.
“Why did they look at you again? You worthless piece of shit! All you have is a pretty face anyways! If that’s what it is then I’ll make sure you can never show that face to anyone again.” A manic look engulfed the older boy. He threw the small glass vase onto the ground of the boys' dormitory. A tense yet domineering silence took over the other boys in the room. No one knew what to do but look around nervously and sweat. Jason picked up a piece of glass from the vase he threw.
Jason yanked Draco by his platinum hair and sadistically ginned at the welt forming on the younger boy’s face. His eyes travel from the child’s cheek to his eyes and they were unwavering. Still the same piercing and emotionless grey eyes. Anger bubbled uncontrollably inside of the older boy as he took the small piece of glass and harshly placed it on Draco’s cheek. He smiled and pressed the glass down and the tip drew a small bead of blood, and then, nothing.
The next thing everyone in St. Fontbonne Orphanage knew was that Jason Derrol never existed there and the smell of copper and iron for the next two weeks from the bed closest to the window was nothing to be worried about.
Draco Malfoy, at eight years old makes his way downstairs along with the rest of the children and sees a girl in a dusty pink coat and a huge scarf standing in front of the orphanage doors. In her hand is a large trunk of belonging that the rest of the children look upon with envy. The matron at the door begins to talk about her, “This is Hermione Jean Granger, due to an unfortunate accident, young Miss Granger’s parents are no longer with us. Everyone, please be on your best behaviour and treat Miss Granger well.”
The matron gazes at the primly dressed Draco with a soft smile and silently left the confines of the hall to talk to the policeman outside. Draco inwardly scoffs at her impression of his kind personality, probably thinking that he would take care of the new girl. However, Draco was interested as the matron wouldn’t have said all that dramatic jazz if it was just another orphan girl, there must have been more to her story and that piqued his interest.
As he stepped down one step, the other children noticed and made a small path for him. Draco makes his way down towards Hermione and extended his hand. What seemed like a kind gesture was actually a method to evaluate the new girl.
“Welcome to St. Fontbonne, a pleasure to meet you. My name is Draco Malfoy.” He said with a straight face
“A pleasure, Hermione Jean Granger. You already know that, though.” She said back, smiling softly at him and reaching her hand out for his.
Draco reached out with his magic which had become more powerful with the years. Unexpectedly, a spark of something seemed to go off when their hands touched. Both of the children felt it but neither said anything. Hermione took a deep inhale and Draco's eyes opened minutely. A single thought ran through both their minds.
“I’ve met someone like me”
In an area with houses identical to it stands number four privet drive. For the first time that day, Harry Potter laughed. 'I know what to do to get there!' He thought