Dear Hermione,


Even when you were a little girl, we knew you were special. Everything seemed so alive when you were around. Every parent feels like this, I believe, but with you there was a spark. A spark of something that seemed too bright for our ordinary lives. As you grew, we knew you were spectacularly unordinary. Naturally, we knew nothing of who you really were. You were just our beloved child, who, as much it pains me to write it, frightened us.

The day you received your letter from school, the day everything was explained, it changed our family forever.

We knew you were lost to us.

At the tender age of eleven, our child left home and ventured off into an impossible new world, one of which we were not part. Your first year there you encountered incredible evil, the likes of we have never experienced. And when you returned home, we saw how the last of your innocence had been seared away.

We may be dentists, and we may lead what what you surely view as horribly mundane lives. But you, lovely daughter, got your brains from somewhere. We saw. We saw how you suffered, we saw how much your friends meant to you. And so like a bird leaving her nest, we forced ourselves to let you go.

We saw you grow up much too quickly. We saw you understand things that we never could. Your world is so different from ours. We saw you drawn into your rightful wizarding world, year by year, until you had almost entirely disappeared from us.


You are our only child, and we had to let you grow distant.


And now, a confession. We snooped. During vacations when you were home, we looked through the newspapers in your bag. We gently pulled the books from your shelves, quietly so that you, lying so peaceful with moonlight across your face, would not wake. We followed current events in the wizarding world. We knew most of what was happening. We saw things grow worse.

We have decided to place this note in one of your books (slipped, of course, from your magically enchanted beaded bag). You may not discover it for several months, but when you do, know that every scratch of ink details our love for you.

We saw that you had to leave with your friends even before you did. It was so hard to let you go. And when you decided to protect us, we knew it was coming.

You might ask, why did we not tell you any of this?

In answer, ask yourself: Why did you not tell us anything of your life?

And now, this letter draws to an end. We believe you will do it tomorrow. Perhaps when we next sleep, we will not be ourselves. But most importantly we will not have you, Hermione Granger. And that is the greatest loss of all.

We wish desperately that we could help you. But you are a powerful and intelligent young witch, and what can we offer that you need? You have outgrown your dear old parents, and will function best with us safely tucked away. There is a terrible war approaching.We hope with all our hearts that you make it. We hope you lose nobody that you love. We hope that if you choose to continue your relationship with Ron Weasley, your stories end well. We hope your close friend Harry Potter survives. But most of all, we hope that we will soon become ourselves again, because that will mean we still have a daughter.


All the best,


Mum and Dad