When Eleven year old Charlie Swann went snooping around in his attic, he never expected to find a videotape telling him he was adopted, and was really the illegitimate child of Harry Potter and Hermione Granger.
Deputy Headmistress Hermione Granger is struggling to balance her career, an unknown illness that has her coughing up blood at very inappropriate intervals, and the broken heart that has plagued her ever since she had to give up her only child. When the new DADA professor arrives at the school, that balance is thrown out of control.
As his digital watch beeped to signal midnight, eleven year old Charlie Swann sat up straight in bed. It was now or never, he decided, as he crawled out of bed. He crept up to the attic, making sure to pause at his parents’ door to check they were asleep. The attic was dark, and he used the flashlight that had been stowed in his pocket for the past three hours to maneuver his way to the back of the room. He rummaged around in a cardboard box for a few minutes until pulling out another, smaller box. Making sure that what he was searching for was in the smaller box, he crept back down to his room.
Setting down the box carefully, he turned on his telly, making sure the volume was low enough so as not to wake his parents, but loud enough for him to hear properly. After that he opened the small box, taking out the video inside and popping it into the VCR. The screen was bright blue for a few moments, and then a girl who looked a few years older than him appeared on the screen. She was probably around fourteen, with long wavy brown hair and brown eyes.
“Hello Baby…who probably isn’t a baby anymore,” she said with a broad smile of straight white teeth. Charlie couldn’t help but smile with her. “My name is Lisa, and I am your aunt—by aunt, I mean your birth-mother’s sister, not your adoptive mother’s sister.”
Charlie furrowed his brow. Had this video been meant for another Charlie Swann? Because the last time he checked with his parents, he wasn’t adopted. Well, not that he checked, really, but still, they would have told him!
“That may have been a bit of a shock to you, I’m not sure if your parents told you that you were adopted, but…well, surprise, I suppose! I made you this video, because I’m sure that once you do know you’re going to have a lot of questions about where you came from, and why you’re going to your particular school.” Charlie straightened up this time; how had he known he’d been accepted to Hogwarts?
“So, let’s get started shall we? Your mother, Hermione Jane Granger, was born September 19th, 1980. She basically looks like me, but older and her hair is way crazier than mine. She was sixteen when you were born, on July 1st, 1997. I have a picture somewhere…” Lisa left the view of the camera, giving Charlie a chance to look around the bedroom. There was a comfortable looking bed in the corner with a blue duvet atop of it. The walls were a light shade of sky blue, with a white wardrobe and whit bedside table.
“Here we are, a picture of your dear mum,” Lisa said, brandishing several photographs in her hands. “Alright…this one’s your mother, Hermione, and me. I’m two, she’s four, and we’re taking a bath together.” Lisa rolled her eyes as her face went pink. She held up her first photo, showing him two frozen little girls laughing and splashing around in a bubble-filled tub. Kneeling next to the tub, his hands shielding his face, was who must be their father.
“Cute, right?” Lisa asked sarcastically with a roll of her eyes. She threw the picture unceremoniously over her shoulder and retrieved a second one. “This one’s from the day your mum went to Hogwarts for the first time, you probably know all about that place by now.” The new photo was of an eleven year old girl, wearing her school uniform already, in front of a fireplace mantelpiece. She was grinning broadly as she held up a book, Standard Book of Spells, Grade 1, for the camera to get a shot of.
“I like that one, she looks so happy,” Lisa said with a grin, looking down at the photo for a few moments before placing it carefully on the bedside table. “Of course, when she came back for Christmas, she’d already changed drastically. She said she had a lovely time and made two new friends, Ron Weasley and Harry Potter. I have a photo of them too.”
The picture was of two boys and Hermione walking off of a train together, frozen mid-step. They looked about thirteen now, all laughing at some forgotten joke. Hermione was between the two boys, her arms around their shoulders. “The one with red hair is Ron; the one with black is Harry…your dad.” Charlie grinned this time, now knowing where his green eyes and untidy hair came from, though his was brown.
“Now, your mum and dad started dating in their fifth year at Hogwarts, after Harry got dumped by his date Cho something-or-other. But then, of course…they got in a bit over their heads and…you showed up in the form of your mum throwing up every day of her summer holiday. She was really torn up about being unable to go back to school, because Mum and Dad wouldn’t allow it. They didn’t want her off where they couldn’t keep a closer eye on her.
“Your mum never told my Mum or Dad, but something has been going on at that school, Hogwarts,” Lisa said, suddenly whispering into the camera’s microphone. “She told me about this whacko who’s trying to take over the Wizarding World or something, and doing a pretty good job of it. That’s what’s really beating her up about being unable to go back. Apparently Harry’s the only one who can stop him.
“But anyway…let’s go see your mum, eh?” Lisa said, suddenly brighter. She vanished for another brief moment, and then the camera was setting of through the door of her room and down the hall to another girl’s room. The walls in here were a mint green color, again with clean white wardrobe and beside table. A girl, who looked shockingly similar to Lisa, but a few years older, was sitting on the bed, her head bowed.
“Hermione?” Lisa said hesitantly, her voice quiet.
“Go away Lisa,” Hermione said in a voice that suggested that she had a bad head cold. “Get that bloody camera out of my face.”
“Hermione…are you okay?” Lisa asked, obviously forgetting that the camera was on as she placed it on the desk in the corner, still facing the two girls.
“Do you think I’m okay?” Hermione asked in a small voice. “My boyfriend thinks I ditched him, and my baby’s being taken away from me in a few days.” She sniffed and wiped her eyes. “I never wanted this Lisa…five years ago, I considered myself lucky just to have friends. Now, I had this amazing boyfriend who I am madly in love with, and a beautiful baby boy…and I’m about to lose all of it.”
“You’ve still got me,” Lisa said quietly. Hermione laughed slightly.
“You know that nothing’s going to be even close to the way it used to be Leese,” Hermione said shakily, allowing her sister to wrap an arm around her waist.
“You can go back to school, though, and you can explain to Harry what happened,” Lisa said comfortingly, ignoring her sister’s last comment.
“He won’t listen to me, he keeps returning my letters,” Hermione said whilst shaking her head. “I deserve it too; I’ve been a terrible girlfriend.”
“Hermione, I understand what you’re going through so…” Lisa got up and walked to the desk. The camera’s vision shook as she lifted it, sat down, and settled it into her lap, “…if you could say one thing to the baby—you know, when he’s older—what would you say to him?” Hermione looked down at her hands, shaking and with tears in her eyes.
“Well…” she said, very slowly, “I would tell him…that I will never…in all my life…love any other child…the way I love him…. And, that…that…that giving him up…was the hardest thing…I will ever do…all my life long.” Charlie’s mother buried her face in her hands and her shoulders shook with suppressed sobs.
The camera turned back to Lisa for her final word. “We all love you baby…whatever your name’s going to be…” she whispered with another pretty smile, and the screen went blue again. Charlie stared at the screen for a very long time, reveling in his new bounty of information. The woman he had been calling Mum for as long as he could remember wasn’t even his mother at all. That lonely, scared teenage girl was the person who gave him life.
And she wanted to keep him.
She wanted to keep him, but knew that giving him up and going back to school was best for both of them. Charlie was forever grateful to her, and hoped that someday he would be able to tell her that.
With a small sigh, Charlie rewound and extracted the videotape. He lifted the box for the tape, and another photograph fell out of it as he was putting the tape inside. He picked it up eagerly. It was a moving photograph, of Charlie’s parents kissing under a beech tree by a lake, a large castle in the background. He turned it over and read “Your mum and dad, Yr 5, Hogwarts.”
