Bella/Black Sisters

Hermione had tried her best to find her parents after the war. When the war first ended, Hermione had stuck around the castle to help bury the fallen and to help repair the castle. It was practically all hands on deck for the survivors to help rebuild their world. Hermione had been busy attending funerals and fixing holes in Hogwarts. There was hardly any free time for Hermione to plan out how to get her parents back, much less actually do anything.

Then, when Hogwarts was nearly back in one piece and most of the funerals were done, the Black sister’s happened.

The trio had played an intricate part in giving pardon’s to the two sister’s who were on the other side. If it wasn’t for Bellatrix deciding to spare Hermione and even help her get the final horcrux’s, their journey would have lasted longer and would have been much harder. With Bellatrix leading the Death Eater’s to wrong places and even a couple traps, and Narcissa feeding information from her oldest sister to her middle sister, the Light side had suffered a lot less loss than they would have if the Black Sister’s hadn’t swapped sides at the last minute.

The two former Dark side sisters had a lot to make up for, but it seemed the masses thought their fighting during the final battle, not only saving Harry’s life with Narcissa lying to Voldemort but also earning Molly Weasley’s respect by saving her daughter when Fenrir was close to killing Ginny. It took a bit more sweet talking the Ministry to give pardons to the two sisters, but eventually, all three sister’s were happily reunited.

Hermione had then opted to return for her final year at Hogwarts, something her boys had opted to skip out on, but Hermione couldn’t find it in herself to not complete her final year of schooling; no matter how many job offer’s she had lined up. She also opted to return because Bellatrix was going to return to Hogwarts as a teacher and while she had been pardoned, a lot of people were still nervous to have her around their children. So Hermione made sure to publicly announce her return to Hogwarts and her excitement for learning from Bellatrix Black. It helped to ease a lot of worries.

That was how Hermione started to get close to the sisters. Bellatrix worked there as the DADA teacher and Narcissa started work there as an assistant to Madame Promfrey to help her find a replacement and train them while also restocking all her potions and salves and everything else lost from the battle and from the last year. Hermione had never spent such little time in the infirmary before without being a patient herself or visiting one of her boys. But when Bellatrix asked if she could help her sister brew some potions, Hermione didn’t see the harm in helping.

As she grew closer to two of the Black sisters, Narcissa had divorced her husband when he tried to blame some of his actions on Draco and Bellatrix took back her maiden name after killing her former husband in the battle, she started to miss her own family. While Hermione had been missing her parents since she had been forced to send them away, seeing the Black sister’s act as a family made Hermione realize she had lost her own family. Yes, she was still close to her friends and considered them her family but it wasn’t the same. Her parents were all the blood family she had since both her parents had no siblings and her grandparents on both sides had died long before she had started at Hogwarts. She wanted her parents back.

So after finishing her final year at Hogwarts, and spending time with the Black sister’s in their manor, of which they had invited her to move in since she was no longer a student of Bellatrix’s, Andy offered to help her find her parents when the school year started again and the other two sisters would be busy at work. Hermione had initially refused as she didn’t want to take the older woman away from her daughter and grandson. Andromeda was helping Tonks a lot with raising Teddy since Lupin hadn’t survived the battle.

After hours and hours of going over everything they could find on reversing the curse, it was finally decided that while the curse could technically be removed, it was a very complicated and complex spell. The Black sisters had immediately offered their help. So finally after several months of planning and gathering as much information as possible, Andromeda and Hermione were ready to go to Australia and revive Hermione’s parents.

But she was too late.

The same day Hermione and Andromeda were to invite themselves into Hermione’s parents new lives, they were involved in a drunk driving accident. Both of Hermione’s parent’s died before they even arrived to the hospital.

Hermione couldn’t plan their funerals because she was just a stranger to them. She couldn’t bury them in their prepaid lots next to her grandparents because the muggles didn’t know any better. She couldn’t do anything for her parents. It felt like she couldn’t even mourn them properly because she was nothing but a stranger to them and anyone that knew them.

A knock at the door brought Hermione out of her depressing thoughts, reminding her that she wasn’t actually alone in the house she had boarded herself in. She had been back from Australia for a couple weeks now and hadn’t bothered to leave her rooms. She had no need to leave. Food was sent to her via magic, she had ensuite to use and she had zero desire to see anyone. Yes she knew a lot of her friends had lost family members as well in the battle, but she didn’t know anyone who had lost their entire family like she had. She didn’t want to see anyone and be reminded of her loss.

Another knock, a lot more forceful, brought her attention back to her door. She knew who was on the other side and she didn’t want to see her.

Andromeda was the first to try and see her. She had waited by the door for days, doing her best to say as many comforting words as possible to try and lure Hermione to open the door to let the sister’s in. But no matter how long Andy stayed there and no matter what she said, Hermione never opened the door.

Narcissa was next to try, she was a lot more subtle in her attempts. She would send messages and prepare special meals for her Golden Girl. She would stop by Hermione’s room and whisper, she used magic to make sure Hermione could hear her, to give her demands of Hermione allowing the sister’s inside. But Narcissa was ignored just as easily as her older sister was.

So, Hermione should have really expected Bellatrix to show up sooner rather than later. Bellatrix wouldn’t give a damn about Hermione’s privacy and allowing the girl to mourn in private. While the two younger sisters had tried with kindness and patience, they all knew their older held no such qualities when she wanted something.

Hermione only looked at her door as it was blasted open from the other side. Hermione gave a brief moment of thanks to Merlin that the room she was given was large enough to have the door fly in and not hit her with any debris. She poked her head further out of her pile of blankets to watch what the dark witch was going to do. She needed to make sure Bellatrix wouldn’t do anything rash.

“I’m going to make you fix that after I get your arse out of bed.” Bellatrix said as she slowly meandered around the room, taking notice that there were several empty plates. Good, it meant she was at least eating. She also noticed the pile of dirty clothes and even sheets, good. Bellatrix would have hated to do what she was about to do if Hermione was in dirty clothes and sheets.

Bellatrix strolled over to the bed, no longer within Hermione’s sight as she walked around the bed to the far side. She grabbed the blankets and with all the grace of newborn puppy, jumped into bed like a schoolgirl. Before Hermione could turn around or do more than squeak in shock from having the woman jump into bed with her, Bellatrix wrapped her arms around the younger woman and pulled her tight against her.

“You are not alone anymore pet.” Bellatrix husked in Hermione’s ear, causing the young woman to shiver, “Your pain is our pain. It would be best if you remember that the day you agreed to live here, you became a permanent member of our family; regardless of any legal technicalities.”

“What do you mean Bella?” Hermione asked, her voice wavering just a little, her emotions bubbling to the surface. She wasn’t sure she could take anything else having to do with emotions.

“You really are a dense dunce.” Narcissa said as she and Andromeda waltzed, Andy fixing the door with a swish of her wand much to the annoyance of Bellatrix. “How long must we play this game of cat and mouse until you realize what you mean to us?” Narcissa asked as she laid in front of Hermione, wrapping her arms around the younger witch.

Andromeda placed herself behind Bellatrix, her hand reaching out to have contact with the young witch; or at least have her hand touching the blankets still covering the mourning witch.

“You are no longer alone or without family Hermione.” Andromeda carefully said, “We have been trying to tell you that for over a year now.”

“You are a Black.” Bellatrix said with finality. “You will never be without family again.”

All three women tightened their holds on the younger witch, causing the Gryffindor to shed whole new tears. These tears though, while still sad with the memory of the family she lost and couldn’t save, was also happy because while the Black sister’s could be very blunt and demanding, they never said anything they didn’t mean.

“We are your family.” Narcissa said.

“And once you finally stop blabbering like a fool, we’ll show you what it means to be our family.” Bellatrix said with a lecherous grin.

“At least pretend to have patience.” Andy scolded.

“Thank you.” Hermione said through her tears. Perhaps she could move past her loss, especially with the sister’s with her.