A/N: All right, now, a certain reviewer wasn't too happy with the way I portrayed Christians in my story. So let me make something very clear. In no way do I think all Christians are homophobic imbeciles. I disagree with the religion of Christianity, but those who want to be Christian have that right. They have the right to their opinion, and I have the right to mine. There are many bigoted Christians in the world, and that's what I was showing in Hermione's parents. I was not saying that all Christians are like that, and I don't think that I gave any indication that I thought that to be true. But someone complained, so here it is. Sadly for those complainers, there will be more Christian bashing in this chapter, and I reiterate: I do not believe that every Christian is like this but you need to accept that some Christians are. If you have a problem with that, then you probably shouldn’t read this. Enjoy the new chapter. Adios!

-CatJetRat

Chapter 5

Broken

Pansy's POV

When Hermione’s house came into view, she started trembling. Not violently, but to the point that I could see her fingers twitching. My gaze returned to the house as we drove past its pillars (pillars?). It was, for all appearances, completely deserted. I glanced back at Hermione, who was rubbing her right arm again. I reached out and took her left hand, and smiled reassuringly. She smiled back, a weak smile, albeit, but a smile nonetheless.

“We should—” she began in a hoarse tone. She cleared her throat and began again. “We should park around back. It’s more inconspicuous, and that’s where my room is anyway.”

I nodded and released her had so I could turn a corner. The moment I did that she began to rub her arm again. I suppressed a sigh.

I parked under the cover of some trees and we got out, quietly shutting the door. “Lead the way, madame,” I said with a small smile. She grinned at last and slowly opened the back gate. We emerged into a garden straight out of A Rich Person’s Guide to a Snooty Backyard. I nearly vomited at the sight of the fountain of baby angels with water spewing forth from their wings. The grass was neat, and there was a cobblestone path leading straight to the back door with signs saying, I kid you not, ‘Stay off the Grass’. There were no fruit trees, no herb garden. Merely pointless grass and perfectly trimmed rose bushes, which was a shame, since I actually like roses.

We reached the back door and she pulled out her key, trying the lock. Her breath caught when it clicked open.

“I was sure they would have changed the locks by now,” she whispered.

“Maybe they aren’t sure,” I said pointedly.

“Maybe,” she mumbled, and opened the door.

The house had hardwood floors, a designer kitchen, designer furniture, designer everything. It was disgusting.

“Jesus, what do your parents do for a living?” I asked in awe.

“My dad is a high-powered lawyer. He works for insurance companies and they pay him big bucks protect them from the oh-so-dangerous poor people that they insure when they screw them over,” Hermione sneered.

“Oh,” I said, I tried not to let my disgust show.

“But they had money to begin with, of course, so whatever.”

She moved towards the stairs and I followed her closely, feeling anxious and apprehensive. This place set my teeth on edge and I couldn’t tell why. Then we reached the living room and Hermione stopped walking.

Hermione’s POV

I felt dizzy and out of breath. The entire situation was already so surreal. I had been kicked out of my home and was now staying with someone I thought had hated me and I had just kissed her even though I’d been certain she was straight. Now I had reached the place where everything had gone down and I just couldn’t take it anymore.

I sank to my knees, gasping, in the same place my father had thrown me to the previous day. My world was spinning, and I was powerless to stop it. But I wasn’t the only person there. Warm arms circled around me and suddenly my face and tears were being pressed into warmth and softness. Pansy stroked my head as the tears that had before been swallowed by her lips finally fell. I shook and trembled in her arms, terrified she would push me away at any moment and I’d be alone again in a cold harsh world. A world where no one wanted me because I was too ugly and fat and stupid to ever achieve anything. But her arms didn’t loosen, her assurance didn’t waver, and for the first time I felt a little tiny bit less alone. I felt loved, which I hadn’t felt since Flor had left. I gathered up what was left of my strength and stopped crying. Because honestly, where would crying get me? Not out of this house, I felt certain of that. I looked into Pansy’s eyes, afraid I’d see pity there, but all I saw was love.

“Let’s go,” I said in a hoarse voice, and to my relief, she said nothing about what had just occurred. She simply nodded and stood up. I followed suit and took the stairs two at a time, suddenly worried that my parents might come home at any point, even though I knew they weren’t due back for at least another two hours.

I opened the door to my room and found it unchanged. I anxiously opened my closet and dragged my suitcase out of it. I rushed around grabbing my notebooks and clothes, and DVDs. I wasn’t much of a packrat, and everything I wanted I managed to fit into that suitcase while Pansy kept watch.

“Ready?” she said when I emerged from my room. I nodded quickly, and started dragging my suitcase. She snorted in contempt and grabbed it from me in her well-muscled arms. I felt the faint stirrings of discontent at this, but tried to ignore it.

“I carry heavy trays for a living,” she smirked. “Besides, I’m obviously the man in this relationship.”

My annoyance at her attitude faded in an instant. Relationship? This was a relationship? Oh gods. I had had plenty of boyfriends who had tried and failed to interest me in their dicks, but never a girlfriend. I had experimented with my friend Angela at summer camp starting when I was thirteen, and ever since then, every time we saw each other there we fooled around with each other, but that hadn’t been a relationship, merely a fulfillment of basic needs. I had also hooked up with a couple of girls I had met at parties of Draco’s my parents tentatively let me attend, but none of those had gone past a single night. They hadn’t been interested in having a girlfriend. So I was a bit at a loss. Was this a relationship? Since when?

My obsessive musings were interrupted by the sound of a key clicking into the front door. I froze. Had I been longer than I’d thought? I checked my phone. No. It was only 8:30. What the hell was going on?

Pansy looked at me in terror and I motioned back up the stairs. We hurried up quickly but quietly. I caught the tail end of my parent’s conversation.

“—still don’t see why we had to leave before the end of the Reverend’s speech, Connie, seems a bit rude, don’t you think?”

“I don’t care,” I heard my mother snap. “We have work to do. We still need to change the locks, and then consecrate and burn everything in her room to symbolize the flames of hell she can probably already feel beneath her feet, and will one day consume her.”

“I know, but I’ve been thinking, I mean, she’s still our daughter, shouldn’t we be trying to save her immortal soul?”

“She’s already too far gone,” my mother snarled. “It’s best we forget about her as quickly as possible, and have another child. I know I have been unsuccessful in the past in bearing you children, but we must try. It still horrifies me that you needed to rape that old maid, Flower, or whatever, so we could even have a child. Perhaps you should have raped Hermione as well—you’re good at that, right? Doesn’t the minister have your help in curing young girls of lesbianism?”

“Yes, but I specialize in 12-13 year old girls who show signs of deviance. They’re fairly easy to work with, and quickly succumb. I might have to get Roger’s help. He’s bigger and better at controlling the older girls, 15-17. I wish we had seen this sooner, I could have started helping Hermione at a much younger age and helped her appreciate and succumb to men so that she would be ready to marry when she turned 18 or 19 and start bearing children as quickly as possible.”

“Yes, well, too little too late. Let’s get changed and head to the hardware store.”

They began ascending the stairs, but at that point Pansy and I had already shut the door to my room silently. I leaned against the wall, panting in abject horror. It was far too much information to take in at once. Flor was my mother? My father raped young girls and my mother knew about it? What the hell was going on?

Pansy’s hand was tight on my arm, for which I felt relieved. She was grounding me, which I severely needed at this point. I sat there and listened to my parents leave.

“Come on,” Pansy said urgently, and grabbed my suitcase and my hand and dragged a dazed and stumbling me out of the house.

She shoved my suitcase into her trunk and gently led me to the front passenger seat. After all, I was in no condition to do anything for myself.

Pansy’s POV

I shot worried look after worried look at Hermione, who seemed totally out of it. Then again, I would be too. I was struggling to contain my anger and horror, but suffice it to say I would inform my parents when I got home that they should closely look at the young girls of Reverend Jeff’s church for signs of sexual abuse.

When we got back to my place, I took Hermione and her suitcase upstairs and told her I would be just a moment. Once I was certain that she had heard me, I went downstairs to my mother and grabbed my grumpy father from his morning newspaper and told them what had happened. Horror turned to disgust and revulsion as they listened to my tale and promised to look into it. Then they insisted that I check on Hermione, like I needed to be told to do that! I rolled my eyes and ran upstairs, and my heart stopped dead at what I saw.

Hermione’s right sleeve was rolled up, and she was slicing violently at her right arm with what looked like a razor.

“What the hell are you doing?” I cried, and ran over, wrenching the razor away from her and cutting my own fingers in the process. “What the hell, Hermione? Why on earth would you—” I paused at what I saw on her arm. She had been connecting her scars to form words. So far I could make out ‘I AM NOTH’. I swallowed the lump in my throat and looked back up at her deadened face.

“You are not nothing,” I whispered rough voice. “You are beautiful and strong and intelligent and—”

A snort of laughter escaped her but I ignored it.

“—and you do not need to feel this way. Nor do you need to punish yourself like this. Stop. Just stop.”

Finally she got around to looking at me, and I nearly broke to pieces at what I saw in her eyes. And perhaps I had been wrong. For I truly saw nothing there. No happiness, no love, no anger. I no longer even saw the broken little girl I had seen before. There was just nothing there. And perhaps I recoiled slightly, perhaps this recognition showed in my eyes, perhaps, perhaps, perhaps a million things I don’t know. But whatever my unconscious reaction had been, it confirmed her worst fear. She stood up and walked away from me. I stayed on the floor, scared and confused for her. She went to the bathroom and washed her arm off, then bandaged it, and I hadn’t a clue how to act or what to do. I was at a loss. She then went downstairs. I didn’t follow. I didn’t know how to. Ten minutes later she came back up and grabbed her suit case and the rest of her things.

“Don’t go,” I begged quietly. She paused, but only for half a second. Then she was out the door and gone. I regained the use of my limbs in the next thirty seconds and rushed after her. She was at the door by the time I got there, thanking my bewildered parents. Her gaze flickered to me, and I struggled to understand what had happened. She took off out the door and got into Harry’s car. My parents questioned me, but I ignored them. After all, I had no more answers than they did.

The next Monday at school, she was in the main hallway, same as usual, hair curled, the bruises on her face quite visible. My cronies and I walked past her, and as we did, the stupidest and sluttiest of them called out to her.

“What happened to your face, Granger?” Ginny Weasley taunted. “Had a collision with a bookshelf?”

“More like a collision with reality,” she replied softly. Her gaze met mine, almost daring me to laugh with the rest of them. I stayed silent. “Which I think, is what Parkinson needs about her chances of passing Pre-Cal.”

My face flushed. Math was my weak point. She knew that. What the hell was she doing? Had last Friday and Saturday just been my imagination?

“Well at least I don’t have to bury myself in school to convince myself I’m intelligent,” I replied, stumbling a little over my words. But then I felt that I had made a mistake. Her gaze was one of satisfaction at this.

“No, I doubt anything could convince anyone of that,” she sneered, and walked away.

My head began to spin. What the fuck was going on?!

I tried to talk to Harry but he just waved me off and wouldn’t answer any of my questions. Desperate, I tried to corner Hermione after school, but she eluded me and escaped in Harry’s car. I was tempted to follow them, but I wasn’t quite that creepy.

For the next week I tried to talk to her, but she kept avoiding me. I went home for the weekend with a promise to myself to continue to pursue her. But when I got to school on Monday she wasn’t there. I felt a little annoyed, but I could wait.

On Tuesday, she still hadn’t shown up. By Wednesday, I was feeling flustered and so I went down to the office to demand to know where she was.

“But Ms. Granger’s graduated,” the lady at the front desk said in surprise. “She’s got all of her credits, and she asked to receive her diploma early. She’s no longer enrolled here.”

“Wh-what?” I stammered. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” the lady shrugged. “She spoke to the principle for about an hour on Thursday, and then on Friday came back to see him, and emerged from his office carrying her diploma.”

“I don’t understand,” I said. I felt dizzy. The lady merely shrugged, and I left her office just as the bell for lunch rang, more confused than ever. Then I saw Harry.

“Harry!” I shouted, and nearly bowled over Draco in my attempts to reach his boyfriend. He turned around, and the look he gave me was almost pitying. My heart lurched.

“Where is she? I know you know, don’t fuck with me, Harry, please, I need to know. I need her. Please, Harry, just tell me,” I went from demanding to begging in one breath. He sighed.

“I actually don’t know where she is. I gave her one of my cars since I have plenty and she took off. Said she needed to sort through some things. She did ask me to give you this, once you realized she was gone.” He pulled out a necklace. Hanging from it was a tiny, heart-shaped vial full of something red.

“Oh god,” I whispered. “Is that what I think it is?”

He ignored that comment. “She said that as long as you kept that, the two of you were connected. She said she kept the razor, so she always has something of you.”

I took the necklace and sat down in the middle of the busy hallway, annoying a lot of students. “I’m sorry,” Harry said gently, and he took Draco’s hand, and they disappeared into the crowd. I sat there, staring at the necklace, until a hall monitor came over and told me firmly to move it along. I got up numbly, and gingerly, lovingly, put the necklace over my head until it fell around my neck. It was surprisingly light. I whimpered in misery. But she was gone. And I had no idea where.

Mexico City

Hermione’s POV

“Perdón,” I said politely in Spanish to the man behind the fish. “Do you happen to know where this address is?” I showed it to him. He nodded.

“Allá,” he said, pointing to a street.

“Gracias,” I thanked him, and went down the street, looking at the shabby houses. Finally, I arrived in front of a rundown pink house. A woman emerged from the house, carrying laundry. She pulled it out and started hanging it up to dry. My heart felt like it might explode.

“Madre,” I called out softly. She looked up with a frown, and then spotted me. She froze, and the laundry slowly fell from her limp fingers.

“Mi hija,” she breathed. “Hermione! What are you doing here?”

I smiled tentatively. “The stupid Americans (this was how we often referred to my parents) found out that I was gay. They kicked me out and I found out you’re my mother. I graduated, and I thought I should come find you.”

“Oh, no,” she whispered. “I am so sorry I left you with them. I should have taken you with me and told everyone you were my daughter. I thought you would be safer with them. I should have known better. Come here.”

And before I knew it, I was being drowned in her arms again, listening to her whisper, “Te quiero,” in my ear over and over again, until I wasn’t broken anymore. Until I realized that no matter how cruel love could be, it would never be so with her. But Pansy…I had left her behind. I loved her, and let her down. So I suppose it remains truth. Love is cruel.

A/N: Okay, yeah, that ending was really sudden. And a lot of you are probably pretty pissed. Especially after waiting for so long. But no worries! A sequel is in the works, and will maybe come out sometime this year. Okay, maybe sooner. Lol. I don’t know how I feel about this chapter. Usually I work up to the ending. But I felt like the point had been made. They fell in love in highly unusual, broken circumstances. It never would have lasted if they had stayed together. And they both had issues of their own to work through. Sequel will be set sometime in the future, five years, maybe? Thanks for everyone’s reviews and encouragement. But I still need feedback. Adios!

-CatJetRat