Chapter Seven: Homeward Bound

That last book club meeting went so well, Hermione thought. Not only had club members alluded to House differences without hurting each other's feelings, but the conversation she and Severus had shared afterwards had put their relationship back on track. Like any couple, they had some issues to work through, but they were kissing again. That thought alone made Hermione smile.

"Hermione, don't look like that," Severus whispered in her ear. They were sitting together on a sofa in the parlour at Grimmauld Place enjoying...or enduring, in Severus's case...the party after the christening of little James Sirius Potter.

"Like what?" she whispered back as she smiled up at him.

"Like you want to be kissed." Then he did something that Hermione had never expected him to do in front of Harry and Ginny and their guests. He leaned down and kissed her.

Conversation stopped for a moment except for the loud "Ewww!" that came from Ron.

"Ronald!" Luna hissed.

"Oh, right. Sorry, luv," Ron whispered loudly. Speaking normally, Ron said, "Eww... um, I spilled some punch on my shirt. I better go clean it off." He left the room hurriedly.

Hermione had opened her eyes and was sharing a look with Severus. She giggled helplessly, and the corners of Severus's mouth twitched in response. "Oh, he's trying so hard, Luna," she said, shaking her head in sympathy at Luna.

"He really is," Luna agreed, "but it's difficult for him. He sees things black and white. He'll agree that you, Hermione...and even you, Severus...deserve happiness. But that you would find it together..."

"... or that it might involve kissing each other," George Weasley interjected, eyebrows waggling playfully, "is something dear little Ronniekins can't deal with."

"Yet. He can't deal with it yet. Don't worry, Hermione. I'm working on him. Thank you for being patient with him, sir," Luna said.

Severus gave a small chuckle. "Call me Severus. Hermione warned me that if I were going to be involved with her, I would have to learn to deal with her friends."

"Oh, so you've decided to be involved with me, have you?" Hermione asked saucily.

Severus actually blushed. "Cheeky witch," he muttered.

Hermione took pity on him and rose to leave. "We promised to have dinner with my parents tonight," she explained. Suddenly, her stomach felt like lead as she thought about the topic of discussion she would be bringing up that evening.

She felt Severus's arm go around her shoulders and felt his support immediately. "It's the first time I'm meeting Hermione's parents, and we don't want to be late," he said. They exchanged goodbyes with everyone and left Grimmauld Place to Apparate to her parents' house.

~~o~~0~~o~~0~~o~~

Dinner with her parents was going fairly well, for the most part. Charles and Alexandra Granger and Severus had spent the time getting to know each other. Hermione didn't feel that the dinner table was the appropriate place to talk about the war, but the waiting was making her more and more nervous. As the meal went on, she grew quieter. Her parents looked at her with some confusion but continued with the meal politely.

After dinner, they moved to the lounge to talk some more. Charles said to Severus, "Hermione's told us about you before, of course. I know you were quite a hero in the wizarding war. Hermione's never told us much about the war. Of course, she was in a safe house most of the time, but I guess I'm a bit curious about the war and your role in it."

Hermione took a deep breath. Severus, sitting next to her on the sofa, took her hand and held it tightly. I can do this. I have to do this. "Before you ask Severus about his role in the war, there are a few things I should tell you."

"Why, dear?" asked Alexandra.

"You won't fully understand Severus's part in the war until... you hear about mine." She finished in a rush.

Charles and Alexandra exchanged meaningful looks. "I always thought there must be more to it," Charles said. "All right, go ahead."

Hermione started with her first year and began explaining things to her parents in a way they hadn't heard from her before. She had hidden a lot about her school years from them.

"Why didn't you tell us this?" her mother asked in exasperation as she realized the danger her daughter had been living in since she was 11 years old.

"I was afraid you wouldn't let me go back to Hogwarts," she said, her voice laden with guilt.

"Of course, we wouldn't have let you go back. You could have been killed!" her father said angrily.

"But Harry is my friend, and he needed my help. The danger was mostly aimed at him."

"Why would someone target a boy?" Alexandra asked, bewildered.

"There was a prophecy, you see." Hermione explained about the prophecy and how it had affected Harry and his family. She went on to explain about Professor Dumbledore's lessons on Horcruxes, Dumbledore's death and Harry's decision (along with Hermione and Ron) to leave school to hunt the Horcruxes. She described their breaking into the Ministry, their trip to Godric's Hollow, the visit to Xenophilius Lovegood, the decision to be captured and taken to Malfoy Manor, the death of Dobby, their visit to Gringotts and their escape on the dragon and their eventual return to Hogwarts. She gave some details of how the battle had gone, Severus's supposed death, his memories and the eventual defeat of Voldemort.

When she finished, she sat quietly, holding tightly to Severus's hand and awaiting her parents' reactions. Her parents, to their credit, had listened carefully during her long narrative, only asking an occasional question. Now they sat silently for several minutes, obviously thinking over what had been said. The tension in the room grew more and more acute, and Severus put his arm protectively around Hermione.

Charles Granger's fist came crashing down on the arm of his chair, causing them all to startle. "Why the hell weren't we ever told about this?" he shouted.

Nervously, Hermione tried to respond. "I didn't want you to pull me from the school. I..."

"Not by you," her father interrupted. "You were a child. A child who ought to have known better, but still a child." He glared at Severus. "Why weren't we told by the school that these things were going on? We entrusted our only child to the care of Hogwarts, and her life was endangered over and over and over again!" Suddenly, Charles stood up and began pacing angrily around the room before turning and shaking a threatening finger at Severus. "And now you sit there with your arm around your student, holding her hand. What kind of operation were you running up there?!"

Severus stiffened as this accusation was flung at him, and Hermione yelled, "Daddy, stop!" She got up and quickly went to her father, grabbing him by both arms so that he had to stop or run her over. "Daddy, I swear to you that Severus and I never thought of each other romantically before this school year. Nothing like that ever happened to me at Hogwarts. Daddy?"

Charles nodded his acceptance of what she had said. Alexandra said quietly, "I believe we were told about the Basilisk incident but in a very misleading way. Professor McGonagall wrote to us and said that you were suffering the effects of a magical accident, that you were not in any danger, but that you wouldn't be able to write home for a while. We were told that you would be under observation and treatment at the Infirmary at Hogwarts and that we would be updated on your condition weekly. Then we were told weekly that your treatment was progressing normally. Eventually, we were told that your treatment was completed and that you were fine. Shortly after that, you wrote to us, and everything seemed all right."

Severus sighed. "Technically, what you were told was true. Hermione was petrified but not in any danger. As soon as I finished making the Mandrake potion and it was administered, she was back to normal."

"And that is supposed to make us feel better, I assume," Alexandra said in icy tones.

Hermione started to protest their accusing Severus, but he said, "No, Hermione, they're right to be angry. How would you feel if it was our child?"

Hermione gasped. Our child. She watched Severus's eyes widen as he realised what he'd just said. They stared at each other wordlessly for a moment before Severus returned his focus to Hermione's parents. "We struggled with what to tell you. Minerva...Professor McGonagall...and I were in favour of telling you more, but Professor Dumbledore was afraid that you would remove Hermione from Hogwarts. It was clear she was a valuable asset to Harry Potter and was needed for the war effort, so we remained too quiet. We tried to protect the three of them ourselves, but sometimes that was not enough. I apologize. You had a right to know more."

Charles grunted. "Oh, let's all sit down," he said grumpily, his actions suiting his words. Everyone else followed his example.

They all sat silently and waited for Charles to speak, but it was Alexandra who spoke first. "Thank you for telling us, Hermione. We always knew that something didn't quite measure up about what you said. It felt like you were holding something back...like we knew you, but then... we didn't."

"That's exactly how I've felt," Hermione said. "You changed in Australia. You came back with different interests, different hobbies. I thought maybe your feelings about me had changed, too."

"When the memories came back, we could remember how much we love you," her mother answered, reaching across the space between her chair and the sofa where Hermione was sitting to take her hand. "We just didn't know if we could trust you because we didn't understand what you were trying to protect us from. Now that we understand, I think we can move forward. Don't you, Charles?"

"Yes," her father said, his voice a bit husky with emotion. He cleared his throat. "But if you two are going to talk about having children..." he looked pointedly at Severus, "...you'd better think about getting married." Hermione looked at him with surprise. "You thought I missed that comment because I was angry, didn't you, missy? Well, I didn't."

Hermione blushed as she looked at Severus. Severus looked at Charles and said, "We'll take it under advisement, sir."

~~o~~0~~o~~0~~o~~

The Book Club met at the beginning of March to discuss Book Six. It was a lively discussion as the club members were enthusiastic over the thorough way in which Tolkien had tied up the various plot lines in the story. Pomona said, "Tolkien must have been a great lover of gardening. I love how he describes the plant life of the different settings in the story. Plants played such an important role in this last part of the story. Aragorn couldn't get married until the new tree sprouted and was transplanted in Gondor. Sam fixed things in the Shire by using the soil that Galadriel gave him to help things grow again. All the plant references certainly made it an enjoyable book for me."

Here at last, Septima could be enthused over the various threads of romance in the novel. "I was glad to see that Aragorn finally got married. I wish that we had heard more about this Arwen throughout the whole story. I thought it was strange that two of the more minor characters, Faramir and Eowyn, had more of a love story than Aragorn and Arwen."

Hermione responded, "There is a more complete version of Arwen and Aragorn's story, as well as more information on the origins of Middle Earth and what happened to all the main characters, in the Appendices at the end of the book."

After everyone had a chance to comment, Hermione introduced them to their topic of Muggle culture for the evening...Muggle film entertainment. Arthur Weasley had finally come up with charms that would allow a television and DVD player to function, so the evening culminated with a viewing of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.

"They changed quite a lot in the movie," Bathsheba Babbling said with some disapproval. "That battle with the Orcs, for example, didn't happen until The Two Towers."

"True," agreed Sybill, "and they left out the whole section about Tom Bombadil and the Barrow-Downs. That was a big scene."

"I'm glad that we saw a little more of Arwen, but she didn't do all those things in the book that the film has her doing," Septima noted.

"I pictured Frodo as being older," Minerva commented.

"What did you think of Gandalf?" Hermione asked.

"I liked Gandalf," said Ivy. "He seemed like a real wizard."

"He reminds me a bit of Professor Dumbledore," Cuthbert observed.

"Except that Gandalf dresses with more dignity," was Severus's rejoinder. That brought a laugh from the group.

Hermione tried to explain how filmmakers often cannot adhere directly to the text of the book, due to time constraints and the fact that some things don't translate well to film.

Minerva finally grasped what Hermione was trying to say. "It might be interesting to read a book about the happenings of a typical school year at Hogwarts, but can you imagine someone trying to fit all that into a three-hour film?" This also made the book club members chuckle.

I don't have the heart to tell them about Prisoner of Azkaban coming out in May. What kind of name is that anyway? It should be called 'The Battle for Buckbeak' or 'The Tale of the Time-Turner'.

They enjoyed the film so much that they had decided to watch the other two films during April and May's meetings. Septima said, "Wouldn't it be fun to start a Muggle film club for the students next year? That would give them a good exposure to Muggle culture." Others agreed, and Minerva said that would be one of their discussion items in staff meetings after school was over.

~~o~~0~~o~~0~~o~~

They'd had to postpone the May meeting in order to wait for the release of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King on DVD. It was almost the end of the school year, and Hermione wanted the last book club meeting to be something special. She decided to have the meeting in the Room of Requirement, which had finally been repaired through years of charm work to counteract the Fiendfyre exposure it had suffered.

She arrived early to the meeting with the television and DVD player shrunk in her pocket. Pacing three times in the hallway in front of the blank wall, she thought carefully of what she wanted. A tall, arched door with intricate carving appeared. She went inside and was quite pleased with the results. The room bore a strong resemblance to the House of Elrond. The walls were made out of white limestone, intricately carved and having arched doorways. From the windows, she could see beautiful, autumnal trees in spite of the spring season in Scotland.

The room had been set up as a sitting room with graceful, curving seats. Hermione took the television and DVD player out of her pocket, changing them into their normal size. Severus had insisted on bringing some of the elf-made wine from the Prince Estate, and Hermione had asked the house-elves to prepare some finger sandwiches.

The book club members arrived, and with much oohing and aahing, they settled in to watch the final instalment of The Lord of the Rings. When it was over, they sat quietly for a few moments, enjoying the atmosphere and the wine and mulling over the film.

Pomona said, "This book club has been a lot of fun this year. I've enjoyed it so much. Thanks for leading it, Hermione. You did a splendid job of introducing us to Muggle culture."

"Hear, hear," said Severus, who was sitting with his arm around Hermione, her head cradled on his shoulder. They had made their relationship public to their colleagues several weeks before.

Septima seemed enthralled by her surroundings and said dreamily, "This reminds me of the room where Arwen professed her love for Aragorn and gave him that beautiful pendant. What do you think his proposal was like?"

Minerva said, "I'd assumed that was the proposal."

"Oh, no, Minerva," Septima said firmly, "I'm sure Aragorn would be man enough to propose." Septima stood and walked toward the window. "He'd pick some place beautiful, like this window overlooking the valley, and arrange to meet her here. He'd be standing, waiting, when she came in." She looked around the room. "Severus, come here. You be Aragorn waiting by the window."

"I think not," Severus replied.

Pomona encouraged him. "Oh, why not, Severus? There's no harm."

Severus gave her a look from under one raised eyebrow and sat back more comfortably against the sofa.

"You're the only living male here, Severus," Minerva noted. "You're not likely to get out of this without a lot of nagging."

Sighing gustily to show his distaste of the idea, Severus got up and walked toward the window. Septima took his arm and led him to his position. "There. Now Aragorn is waiting by the window, and Arwen walks in to meet him." She looked around the room once again and said, "Guess who gets to be Arwen, Hermione."

Hermione certainly didn't want to be on display in front of her colleagues, but, taking pity on Severus, she stood up and joined him.

"Do you think he'd get down on one knee, Pomona?" Septima asked.

"No," Severus answered with some asperity. "After all those years of walking and riding, he'd be afraid his bad knees wouldn't let him get up again. I think he'd hold her hands like this." Severus took hold of Hermione's hands in his own.

"How would he know she would say yes?" Bathsheba asked. "It would be humiliating if she didn't."

"Sometimes you just have to take a leap of faith," Septima replied.

"What would he say, Severus?" Pomona asked softly.

Severus was looking at Hermione with varying emotions flitting across his face and in his eyes. Apprehension and embarrassment were the chief emotions at first, but that soon changed to a look of determination. "I was going to do this after the meeting anyway."

Going to do what? Hermione thought, feeling as though her brain was moving too slowly.

Severus continued, "I don't know what Aragorn would say, but I know what I would say." Reaching into one of the pockets of his robe, he pulled out a beautiful ring. "Hermione, I love you very much. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you do me the honour of becoming my wife?"

Hermione had never imagined Severus proposing to her in front of a group of people, but she saw the look of love and trust in his eyes. Here was clear evidence, if she still needed it, that Severus had grown to trust her. He would never want to appear vulnerable to others. Giving her the chance to reject him in front of their colleagues showed a trust, not only in her, but in their relationship. With no doubt in her heart, she threw her arms around his neck and said, "I love you too, Severus. Of course, I'll marry you."

With tenderness, he placed the engagement ring on her finger and kissed her while their friends clapped their approval.

**********

Author's Note: Stay tuned for the Epilogue...

Thanks, as always, to morethansirius and sshg316, my alpha/beta team. Your advice was very helpful in this chapter.

Neither the Harry Potter or The Lord of the Rings universes belong to me. I am making no money from this work of fanfiction.