Hermione's Reunion ✔️

C H A P T E R | E L E V E N

HERMIONE FELT THE presence of an intruder of her personal space. Not two seconds later, a
shadow fell across the pages of her book. Hermione sighed and, without looking up, said, "May I help you?"

      "You can, actually," said a smooth, feminine voice. Sighing, Hermione held her hands over the pages of her book so as to not lose her place, and looked up at the newcomer.

     She looked about the same age as Hermione, he hair held in several different braids at varying lengths. Her eyes were green—no, brown—no, gray. Hermione shook her head.

     "I was wondering if you've seen an Annabeth Chase. She told me that they were at this hotel, and that she was at the pool today, but I just can't seem to find her." The girl gave a sheepish smile.

     Hermione glanced around. Their family had taken the day to relax at the pool. Except for the Cullens, of course.

     She knew that Annabeth had run inside to use the restroom. Hermione glanced up at the girl. What had caused her to think that Hermione would know where—or who, for that matter—Annabeth was.

     "And you are?..." asked Hermione.

     "Piper McLean."

     "Oh." Come to think of it, Hermione had heard Annabeth mention a Piper once or twice, just in passing. At that moment, Annabeth emerged from the hotel doors.

     "She's right over there," Hermione told Piper. "Actually, she's heading this way."

     Piper turned, and smiled when she saw Annabeth. The girls greeted each other with a hug, whispering something that Hermione couldn't catch, before Annabeth turned to Hermione.

     "I see that you've already met Piper, one of my best friends," she said. Then Annabeth turned to Piper. "This is my step-cousin, Hermione Granger."

     "I didn't know you had family from Britain," said Piper.

     "Well, we've never known each other very well," said Hermione. "So I'm not exactly surprised that I wasn't mentioned.

     "Who's this?" a dreadfully familiar voice asked sharply. Hermione groaned internally and turned to see Shannon. Vanessa and Kyle weren't far behind.

     "A person, obviously," said Draco from beside Hermione, who had watched the whole introduction with an amused expression. Hermione wasn't sure of what had been so funny—or funny at all, for that matter.

     "Who asked you?" snapped Shannon, loud enough to scare Aunt Betsy out of her afternoon nap on a layout chair.

     "I'm Piper McLean, one of Annabeth's friends," said Piper.

     "And what exactly are you doing here?"

     The girl shrugged. She and Annabeth exchanged looks, then took off to where Percy was wading in the water, entertaining Matthew and Bobby.

     Hermione turned back to her book, and was about to delve into the twenty-second chapter, when Vanessa, who had joined everyone shortly after Piper introduced herself, asked Hermione, "What's on your arm?" Hermione looked up, then followed her cousins gaze to her own left arm—right where those scars were.

     Shannon noticed them, too, and demanded, "What the heck is a mudblood?"

     Hermione jerked her arm back, clutching her arm to her chest so that no one could see the results of Bellatrix's torture from approximately three years ago. She glanced at Draco, whose face had gone pale.

     She felt like kicking herself. Hermione had forgotten to redo the glamour that she usually kept over her cuts so that no one would notice them. The spell had to be recast every few hours.

     "What, did you feel so repulsed by yourself that you resorted to cutting yourself?" asked Kyle snidely.

     "No!" said Hermione, a bit too loudly, but she was angry and a bit embarrassed, not that she had anything to be embarrassed about. "I-it's a long story. And I'm shocked to see that you even know what 'repulse' and 'resort' mean, much less that you were able to use them correctly in a sentence." She glanced again at Draco, whose face had gone from white from surprise and remorse to flushed from anger in a matter of seconds. He opened his mouth, probably to start saying a few choice things towards the girls and insult Kyle's mother.

     Hermione put a hand on his shoulder, and mouthed, "It's fine," at his questioning look. They got up and went into the hotel.

     She missed the looks that went between Annabeth, Percy, and Piper, who had come out of the water when they heard the commotion and easily recognized the cuts as from an enchanted blade, having come across their own share of those and recognizing the shade of crimson that would never leave the wound and let it fade, no matter how long it's been since you were cut.

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling does. I do not own Twilight, Stephanie Meyer does. I do not own Percy Jackson, Rick Riordan does.

A/N: Okay, so I usually go strictly by the books, and I know that it never specifically says that Bellatrix carved "mudblood" into Hermione's arm. But the whole thing was written in third person limited, in Harry's perspective, and he didn't exactly pay close attention to her injuries, did he? So it could have happened. And I usually abhor when movie makers add in parts that aren't in the books *cough*theentirepercyjacksonmovies*cough*, but I think that this particular scene really added to the movie. So, it's in here.