What happened afterward

*NOTES* Okay I keep changing this chapter and I don't really think it likes me that much. If anyone is questioning Hermione's age than I suggest you check out JK Rowling's web site where it confirms that Hermione's age. As for that I hope you enjoy the chapter and some of your questions are answered.

Harry and Charisma made their way down the transfiguration hallway. Hermione had just cried herself to sleep; Madame Pomfrey said her emotions could be a little wacky still, but that, that, was a little insane.

“Professor?” Harry called out as he entered her classroom. Lucky wasn't the term he would use for himself today as he was suddenly bombarded with “oh's” and “ah's” from the girls in the class. Apparently Professor McGonagall was teaching a class.

“What a cute little baby.”

“Can I hold her?”

“What's her name?”

Girls were ruthless when it came to a baby. All they wanted to do was fawn over it, and all Harry wanted to do was get away from them. He tried to make it through the crowd that had swarmed around them, but they wouldn't let him through. Charisma didn't like the swarm either for she immediately started wailing.

Professor McGonagall let out a shrill whistle, and the crowd of girls suddenly scrambled back to their seats. “Class is dismissed; you all have a four foot essay to do on human transfiguration. And I expect you to use this free time to get started.” The class scrambled out of her classroom under her glare.

“Hermione can do that exact same glare, it is really scary.” Harry said, he was trying to lighten the mood, but it wasn't working very well for him.

“What can I do for Mr. Potter?” She hadn't looked up from her desk, where her hands were shuffling papers around.

“I wanted to thank you. And to ask you a question.” She looked up at him, he was so much like his mother, and he didn't even know it.

“She would have.” Minerva said as if she guessed his question. “Your mother, Harry, would have approved of Hermione.” She paused as if remembering a memory.

“Your parents loved you very much, Harry. I remember the day you were born. James was at the Order's Headquarters, working on something with Sirius, and Remus was in charge of looking after your mother. They were both praying you would wait one more day, for then you wouldn't be the prophecy baby, but you didn't. Anyway your mother went into labor rather quickly, and Remus flooed Headquarters, he got Peter. Peter was sent to find James. Once James got the news he went tearing through the house screaming at the top of his lungs that the baby was coming. The funny thing was that he was going to apparate to the house, and almost did if I hadn't stopped him Albus had put up wards around the house to prevent apparition within a hundred yards of the place.”

“Lily was so pissed off at him for telling half the Order such trivial news.” She continued the story with tears brimming her eyes. “And finally you were born, on July 31, at 9:00 at night. At that point they didn't give a damn about the prophecy all they cared about was you. Lily didn't let you leave her sight for two weeks afterward; she was just so happy to have you in her life. Out of all the choices she made I am sure that the last choice she made was one she didn't even give a second thought too.”

“Professor?”

“Minerva, Harry. It is Minerva.”

“Right, well, I knew Hermione's parents weren't thrilled with the idea of her getting married but I never thought that it would come to this.” He transferred Charisma into Minerva's waiting arms as he talked. So far she and Poppy and Albus had been the only one allowed to hold their little girl without Hermione wigging out inside.

“Harry, let me tell you something.” She nodded to one of the desks and sat down. He followed suit telling this was going to take some time. “Hermione made her choice a long time before she even voiced it. That choice to stay in the wizarding world, and even though you influenced that choice in a huge amount, you were only a small factor in it. Each summer, most, muggleborns go home, and find that they don't belong. They drift away from their roots because it no longer becomes the place where they can be themselves. They have to hide their identity, and that is a weight upon them that most don't want or even need.”

Harry knew exactly how that felt having to go back to the Dursleys every summer. It felt like being trapped in a room that was too small to stand up in and too small too lie down in.

“When did she make that choice?” Harry asked not looking at his Professor but at his daughter.

“She made it during her third year. Also she realized that year that she loved you.”

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“Professor I need to tell you something rather important.” Hermione was shaking she was so nervous that what she was about to do would ruin her friendship with the one person she needed it from the most, the one person who needed her the most, Harry.

“Miss Granger?” Professor McGonagall knew it had to be important if the girl looked this worried on Christmas day. She knew it had to have something to do with young Mr. Potter. The boy though amazingly like his father had an anger streak too true to his mother.

“Harry received an unusual gift for Christmas. He received a broom.” Hermione felt like her tongue was stuck to the roof of her mouth. Her brain was telling her she just made a huge mistake, but her heart was telling her that Harry being safe was the main issue.

“The thing unusual about the gift is that it didn't have a note. I suspect it was sent by Sirius Black.” The Professor, who was sitting relaxed in the chair in front of her immediately stiffened. Hermione turned to leave the Great Hall.

“Miss Granger, Hermione, what you just did could cost you his friendship for sometime. So I need to know why?”

It was the simplest answer in the world for her to give, but she felt like she wasn't ready to tell anyone. She glanced at her head of house and saw that she would keep the secret of her heart. “Because I love him.”

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“But Professor, sorry Minerva, that doesn't tell me when she made the decision to stay in the wizarding world.” His little girl was playing with the Professor's robes. She gurgled up at him, and Harry smiled at the innocence of it all.

“No it doesn't.” She mused. “Harry let me tell you one last story. Some of this one you know, just like the other one, but some of it Hermione kept secret from you. Whether you tell her you know or not is up to you, but be careful with this information it could hurt.”

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Hermione was juggling everything at this moment in time, and it was beginning to become too much. The new term had started; breakfast was well underway as she came crashing into the Great Hall.

“Sorry, I'm late.” She bumped into a third year Gryffindor as she sat down. “I just need to stop and think.” All she wanted was some more time; time to sleep and to spend relaxing, but there wasn't any time to spare.

“Hermione, you need to stop going a hundred miles a minute.” Ron said as he looked his friend over. She glanced up at him her eyes wild. Not only were her eyes wild, but her hair was a huge mess too.

“If I stop than I will miss something, and I can't afford for that to happen.” Ron opened his mouth to say something, changed his mind, and than closed his mouth. Harry glanced at the two, sighed, and than kissed Hermione on the cheek.

“Morning,” he said. She smiled at him, but didn't turn in his direction. “Studying for potions I see.” That smile was all he was going to get out of her today he reckoned. Before he had anytime to object to that thought Professor McGonagall entered the Great Hall with two unusual visitors.

“Hermione,” Harry said, but she didn't glance up from the book. “Hermione,” his voice got slightly louder. “HERMIONE!” He shouted at her.

“There is no need to shout I am perfectly capable of hearing and ignoring you.” She finally looked up from her potions book and smiled at him. He opened his mouth to say some unintelligent thing, or so she guessed. “Shut up and kiss me.” It was a line from some old movie used over and over again but she loved it. She grabbed his tie and yanked him toward her.

Harry forgot all intelligent thought as his mouth came crashing down on hers. She kissed him soundly for a second and than opened her mouth up to his. A minute or two of clashing tongues and they finally came up for air. “Your parents are here, love.” He breathed out against her lips.

It was the last thing she wanted or needed to hear. Quickly, as if electrocuted, she jumped up from the table. Running a shaking hand through her hair she glanced up to see her parents looking at her with disapproving glares on their faces. “See you in potions.” She stammered out as she fled from the Great Hall.

“She is mental.” Ron said to no one in particular.

Hermione never made it to potions class. She, in fact, never made it to any of her classes that day. Her parents found her in one of the corners of the Hogwarts Library. She didn't glance up from her work when they sat down opposite of her.

“Harry I want to know where you want to put Hagrid? I mean he is so big, but I don't want for him to feel out of the mix if we sit him too far out back.” Hermione assumed it was Harry coming to see her about something or another. “Are you going…Oh?”

“Hermione,” her mother was sitting in front of her. Harry was nowhere to be seen. “We got your letters about the wedding and we think that this foolishness has gone on long enough.”

“Um I think I lost you.” Suddenly she began moving papers all over the place as if looking for something. Her parents shared a look that said this talk was going to be a long one.

“Hermione, honey, we need to talk. Now you've always been a rational child. Never did anything without thinking it through first. But that all changed when you came here.” Her dad began to speak. To her it sounded like they had prepared the whole thing. “At first we were skeptical about you being away from home for so long, but you really wanted to go. So we let you.”

“Here you made friends and you sounded happy. But than you came home for the holidays, and it was like you spoke a different language. You tried to understand all this magical stuff, we really did, but we couldn't.”

“So you are saying what, exactly?” All of her attention was only halfway glued on her parents. The other half was trying to figure out the seating arrangements for the reception at her wedding. It was one of the last things on her list for her to finish.

“We are saying that you are only seventeen and far to young to get married.” Her mother spat out at her. “What happens if the stress of your lives becomes too much and one of you wants out? The other will be devastated. Honey what I'm trying to say is that right now you are young and impressionable. You are far too young to really know what your heart tells you.”

Hermione felt something cold gripping at her heart. She felt the tears in her eyes and she felt rage for the two people sitting in front of her. Slowly her gaze went from the ring on her finger to her mother. “I'm sorry mum that you didn't get your prince, but I got mine.” She said it so quickly. Her hand flew to her mouth with such quickness she wasn't sure if it was there before or after her hurtful comment.

“Oh mum. I'm so sorry.” She reached out to grab her mother's hand but it was jerked back to its owner. “It is just the stress of planning all of this.” Hermione waved a hand at all the papers around her. “I didn't mean it.”

“There is no changing your mind, is there?” Her mother asked. She looked up into those eyes that had comforted her in some of her worst childhood moments, those eyes that she wished would comfort her one more time, but they didn't.

“I could never say no to Harry. I gave my heart way to him such a long time ago that I know I can never get it back.” Suddenly an understanding of some kind flew through the two women sitting at the table.

“This is outrageous. Hermione you are going to give this boy back that ring and than you are coming home.” Her father wasn't going to give up so easily.

“No, daddy, I'm not.” She got up from her table, picked up her bag, and walked out on her parents. She had tried to cross the bridge that stretched across the gap between her parents and her, but somewhere along the way the bridge came crumbling down.

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“You see parents want all there is for their children and so much more.” Minerva's attention was focused on the little girl she held in her arms. “But they also try to force their dreams and ambitions on them too. Hermione just wanted, and still does, to be with you, wherever you are.”

“Her parents, Harry, wanted her to come out of this phase in her life and do something more normal with her future. It is so hard to be a parent, especially, when the child does something you can't really comprehend. Here let me put it this way,” She saw his puzzled face. “Hermione's parents are dentist, so they have studied science and all that other medical stuff. They thrive on facts, much like Hermione, but magic isn't real to them. It is suppose to be something made up, a fairy tale for a child, but to Hermione it is real.”

“So because they can't understand magic it started the rift between Hermione and her parents?” Harry asked. Minerva nodded her head. “Is that the same thing like Aunt Petunia and my mum?” Once again she nodded her head. “What happens now?” Harry asked the ultimate question.

“We continue to live our lives and you raise this darling little girl. Remember to love her, but also let her be free. The same goes with Hermione. I'm afraid, Harry, that you are going to have two very stubborn women on your hands.” Harry chuckled at this comment. Charisma was placed in his arms and they made their way to the door.

“Oh, one last thing.” He grinned back at his professor. “How did you know that Hermione's parents were going to act that way?”

“Last night at dinner they kept saying that Hermione should go home when she was out of the hospital. But when I said that she was home they immediately shut up.” Her face was grim, but it held a small smile. “As for knowing that Hermione and you would need help this morning, Ron told me that.”