Disclaimer: The Characters and world in this story are the creation and property of JK Rowling.

Several months after the Battle of Hogwarts, Hermione stalked into the Headmistress's Office at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and slapped a packet of papers onto the desk.

“What, exactly, is the meaning of this?” She was staring at a portrait over the left shoulder of the Headmistress.

The portrait sighed and spoke quietly. “Minerva, it would be a great courtesy if you could give us some privacy.”

“I need to see about some shipments, anyway. All this reconstruction... I'll be back in, say, an hour?”

“That should be sufficient.” The Headmistress left the office and the portrait stared at the young woman who was shaking with rage.

“It can't possibly be true.”

“It can and is. I clouded the truth and obfuscated throughout my entire life, but I never told a direct lie. I certainly wouldn't lie about something like this. Have you seen the memories I gave young Potter?”

She shook her head. “Harry told me what was in them, but I haven't actually looked.”

The portrait guided her to the cabinet where the Pensieve and the vial she had conjured both lay. He waited while she looked at those memories.

“What is in there, Severus?” asked the portrait of Albus Dumbledore, unable to keep quiet any longer.

“You know about most of what is in those memories. There are others she must see, too. There is something I took with me almost to the grave, Albus. Only one person living deserves to know the whole truth, and only she may tell others, as she chooses to do.”

“That one person is Hermione?”

“Yes.”

The girl herself reappeared after a few minutes. “That's all well and good, but it doesn't prove anything.”

“Of course it doesn't: however, what I gave to Potter provides some background.” He told her how to put the memories back into the vial and then how to find another vial hidden in a secret compartment. “This will show you exactly what happened, or rather, what you should see of it.”

Hermione dove into the Pensieve again and watched Lily Evans eat dinner with Severus Snape at the Three Broomsticks. She stood at their shoulders as they kissed under the mistletoe and watched them move into the bedroom. After passing through a swirling mist, she saw them part the next morning and the anguish on Snape's face as Lily left.

She viewed the scene in the kitchen and bedroom where Lily told Severus of her pregnancy and her desire to end it. She saw that while he didn't work to prevent ending the pregnancy he refused to participate by giving her a potion. She watched as the scene shifted to later and the heavily pregnant Lily spoke with Severus of adoption. Hermione watched him answer the call to the Dark Lord's side that separated her parents forever.

Hermione saw the man who was her father stand and speak with the woman who must be Harry's—and her own—Aunt Petunia before Petunia slammed the door in his face. She listened to the last conversation between her parents. Then she saw the look in her father's face as he sat in his library and wept.

Finally, Hermione saw short instances from her own education at Hogwarts. Where she had thought the Potions Master had been grim, stoic, and sarcastic, she learned that at times he was jubilant, proud, worried and concerned, all because of her. She found that he admired her scholarship while he worried that she would become insufferably conceited. He was glad she found good friends although it galled him that one was the son of his enemy. Most of all, she found that he was extremely proud of the way she worked to bring down Voldemort even as he feared desperately for her life.

Hermione came out of the Pensieve and looked at the portrait again. “I accept it, but it's all so strange. Am I the only one who knows? What will Harry say? What should I call you?”

“What would you like to call me? I'm hardly in a position to make demands or have hurt feelings, as rarely as we are likely to converse.”

“I'd like to stick to 'Professor,' at least for the time being. I have my parents to consider.”

“Yes, that seems fair to me. Have you spoken with them since the solicitors visited you?”

“Not yet; you're sure it's me?”

“I was unable to trace you until you came to Hogwarts. Once I knew it was you, I was able to track the proper records and confirm it to my satisfaction. I didn't want to go against her wishes and speak with your parents directly though. More recently, I was occupied by other business.”

Father and daughter exchanged a grim smile at this last comment.

“I'll be speaking with them, then. They're still a bit confused after their year long sabbatical in Australia. I guess I'll want to speak to Petunia Dursley as well.”

“Give her my regards, but I suggest waiting until the end of your conversation. It wouldn't do as an ice-breaker.”

“Do you mind if I tell others?”

“I'm not in a position to argue and neither is she. We can hardly die of embarrassment at this point. I would suggest a certain amount of discretion for your own sake. You wouldn't want to find yourself tainted with my infamy.”

“More likely I'd be accused of trying to tag onto your heroism. You've become quite a romantic object, you know.”

“I'm glad I died without knowing the shame of that.”

They exchanged an actual snort of laughter that time.

“I just meant that I would like to tell Ron and... and Harry.” Hermione stumbled as she realized what this would mean to Harry Potter.

“You should confide in your closest friends as need be, but that will take a great deal of care and delicacy, I think. Neither Potter nor Weasley are fans of mine.”

“Harry sees you differently than he did, but this--” Hermione waved to the papers. “--changes some things. He will see you differently yet again. He has such romantic notions of his parents.”

“I've worked for eighteen years not to disturb those notions, Hermione. It would have caused me endless bother. It's up to you to decide how to approach that.”

There was a knock on the door and the Headmistress came back into the room. “May I have my office back, please?” she asked acerbically. “Some of us are still expected to work around here.”

“Certainly, Professor, er, Headmistress. Thank you very much. Thank you, too, Professor.” Hermione grabbed her papers and waved to the portrait and then left the office. She had a great deal of thinking to do, and a little research. If Professor Snape could find the correct records, she could do so, too.

The portrait of Albus Dumbledore spoke up. “Severus, now that it's been pointed out, it seems so obvious. How could the rest of us have missed it?”

The portrait of Headmaster Snape snorted. “The idea would have been preposterous to you all. Everyone shared the same romantic notions of the Potters that their son has. So many years after the fact, no one remembers that they broke up over insignificant things for months at a time.”

The current Headmistress cut in. “Am I allowed to know what is going on?”

“No,” answered several of the portraits together.

“Only one person alive has the right to tell you, I'm afraid, Minerva,” elaborated Snape, “and she has much to think about before she tells anyone.”

---

Hermione reached out her hand to knock on the door and drew it back again. Finally, telling herself to stop being silly, she reached out and gave a sharp rap. As she waited for the door to open, she thought again of the conversation with her parents.

Hermione's mum cried when she realized that Hermione knew she was adopted. However, both her parents had known for some time that her special skills must have to do with her birth parents. When she had first gone to Hogwarts they lived in constant fear that she would come home in anger, demanding answers as her family would surely introduce themselves. As the years had gone by and this did not happen, they started to hope it never would.

She had reassured them that she thought of them as her parents. As both of her birth parents were now deceased, there was no likely competition from them for her affections. They had a nice long talk, then, about how desperately the Grangers had wanted a little girl of their own and how she was an answer to prayer.

The door opened a crack.

“Mrs. Dursley?” Hermione's voice was squeakier than she would have liked.

“Yes.”

“I'm the researcher who called you this week.”

“About the photo spread? Yes, come in.”

The house was as immaculate as the other time Hermione had been in it, the night Harry was moved to the Burrow. She looked around the sitting room. “It is a lovely home.”

“But you're not here from a magazine, are you?”

Startled, Hermione looked up. “What makes you say that?”

“You don't look like either of them, but you have her mannerisms. She did that same thing, trying to look directly in someone's eye when she was nervous and not quite managing it.” Petunia looked with narrowed eyes at Hermione. “You have just a look of his mother, and my own, perhaps. I suppose that awful boy told you all about it?”

“If you're referring to Severus Snape, Professor and Headmaster at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, I have the unhappy task to inform you he's dead. Harry and I were there. We saw Voldemort kill him, but not before the Professor was able to give Harry the information he needed to end Voldemort's life for good. I only found out when his will went to probate.”

“The man who killed my sister is dead, then?” Petunia's face took on a grim satisfaction at Hermione's nod. “So what do you want from me?”

“Please, I didn't really know either of them. You, at least, knew them as children and saw them together. I just want some background, to piece things together.”

The grim, angular face softened just a bit and the eyes looked at the young woman with something that approached compassion. “Well, to start with, your mother was always my parents' favorite, pretty as she was...”

---

“So it was all confirmed?”

This time Hermione made an appointment to visit with the portrait in the Headmistress's office. She nodded to the picture of the man she now accepted as her father. “The records were exactly as you said, my... parents told me how it happened from their end, and Petunia Dursley confirmed everything. She even said I have Lily's—my mother's—mannerisms.” She sighed at the memory of her last hope dashed in Little Whinging.

“I'm sorry that this has caused you hurt.”

“You are, aren't you?” The most startling aspect of this was the realization that her professor—her father—really had an emotional attachment in this situation.

“It's not how I would have done any of it. Lily could be so stubborn and difficult when she decided that something was the right way of doing things. Every issue was a hill to die upon.”

“And for you, nothing was worth dying for,” the daughter said, spiritedly.

“Not quite,” answered the father. “I would have given my life to preserve hers the night she and Potter died, and I would have given my life much sooner for your safety if I had to do so. Perhaps my morality has been too flexible, but her lack of flexibility is the reason we are here as we are, now.”

“Would you have wanted her to become a Death Eater like yourself?”

“That was never my wish. I realized later that we should have gone to Dumbledore and worked out the solution I eventually ended up with, anyway. Regardless, I would have given just about anything to raise you, myself.”

“Did my parents do such a bad job on me?” Tears stung Hermione's eyes.

“No, you're a young woman to be proud of raising. I'm proud just to have had the small input I have. There are times though, that is there were times, when I would have done anything to raise you as my daughter for the world to see. Especially once you came to Hogwarts and you were so talented, even before you started classes.”

“My parents expected you to come forward while I was a student. Why didn't you?”

“It wasn't what Lily wanted.”

“You must have really loved her, even then, to have set aside your own wishes like that.”

“Always.”

---

Ron Weasley looked at the young woman sitting in front of him. He knew and loved every one of the brown hairs on her head, every contour of her face, but she was suddenly a stranger. She was no longer a Muggle-born witch, no longer just the smartest, brightest witch of her age, no longer quite his Hermione.

“All this time, you've been his daughter?!” This explosion was not unexpected, but was hardly an auspicious beginning.

“What am I supposed to do, Ron? I can't help who my parents are. It doesn't change anything, though.”

“It changes everything. Your father was a Death Eater, the greatest Death Eater of them all.”

“My father was a hero! He gave everything up for the sake of those who wanted to stop the Death Eaters forever! He even gave up me!”

“He caused your mother's death.”

“That was never his intention, and he regretted it forever afterwards.”

“You've always stood up for him, haven't you? Ever since the beginning, you've made excuses for the things Harry and I caught him doing.”

“And I've always been right about it, too, haven't I?”

A stony silence followed. Hermione looked up and saw that Ron's face was still furious, covered in ugly red blotches that clashed with his hair. She silently begged him to—what? She hadn't done anything requiring forgiveness. She merely informed him of the circumstances of her birth. They had been discussing marriage. A prospective husband should know these things about his future wife. She made a decision and stood up.

“I'll leave you be. Nothing is really different, Ron. I love you and I'm still the person you always knew. You know how to find me when you want me.”

“Good luck telling Harry,” Ron muttered nastily.

“It would be better luck if you actually meant it when you said it.” She walked to the fireplace and was gone.

---

Harry Potter didn't think he could ever again learn anything about Professor Snape that would surprise him. Hermione surprised him. She had gone straight from the Burrow to number 12, Grimmauld Place, deciding to get both difficult interviews over at the same time.

Unlike Ron, Harry was thoughtful. Hermione could see that this disturbed him greatly, but he was trying not to overreact. “I have to know, Hermione,” he said first, “you are convinced this is true?”

She nodded. “Along with the will and the private letter that accompanied it, I checked the public records myself. I spoke with my parents, the portrait in McGonagall's office... and with Petunia Dursley.”

Harry gave out a hollow laugh. “You bearded that lioness in her den?”

“Yes. I wanted to do a complete job of it before I told anyone. She was pretty personable, actually. She mentioned that she wouldn't mind if you dropped by once or twice, just to let her know you're okay.”

“I've known since fifth year that my parents didn't have the great romance with love at first sight and all, but this, Hermione...”

“I know, but it seems that your parents had a tendency to quarrel and break up before they got married. During one of those times she ran into—my father—and it just sort of happened. He showed me his memory of that in a Pensieve.”

“How did that work?”

“He had set it aside for me, knowing that I would one day ask. He showed me other memories from the next nine months, too. She wanted nothing more than to get back together with your father the whole time. I was sort of,” Hermione sighed sadly, “an inconvenience.”

“Don't say it like that, Hermione. Somehow it makes it worse.” Harry sat next to her on the couch and put his arm around her. “I don't know what to say or think about any of this. It's all too strange, but some things fit well, too.”

“Like what?”

“Well, Sirius always said that Snape came to Hogwarts first year knowing more curses than most seventh years. You arrived knowing more magic than most of the kids at school, too. You were excellent at potions, too.” He gave a small smile. “It fits that we should have been drawn together, as brother and sister, but never like boyfriend and girlfriend. From what little I know of her, I think my—our—Mum is glad we became such good friends.”

“So you think we'll be all right, Harry?”

“It's hard to say. I need to think about this, you know, but I'm pretty sure we'll be fine with this. It's just a sort of way of proving that we were always meant to be good friends. It even sorts out some things with Snape, actually.”

“Thanks, Harry.”

---

Hermione Weasley never remembered that year as the one in which the world reconstructed itself after the final fall of Voldemort. She never remembered the hours of studying that went into N.E.W.T. testing for the students whose education had been interrupted. She didn't remember much about that round of interviews and media attention.

Hermione would forever recall discovering that she had a witch and wizard as her parents. She remembered the way Ron finally came to grips with her parentage, deciding that she was still the girl and young woman he had loved almost since the time they helped Harry find the Philosopher's Stone. She remembered how sweet and supportive Harry usually was, except when he couldn't stop thinking that his parents might not have been as in love as everyone said. The picture of perfect love that had gotten Harry through childhood was shattered. The new picture he came to have, of a less perfect love but greater effort and reward, served him better in the long run.

Snape's daughter spent long weekends at her father's house in Spinner's End, sorting through his books. She kept some while others she donated to the Restricted Section of the Hogwarts Library. Every so often she found a keepsake such as a lock of reddish hair or a daisy that could only have come from the park up the road where her parents had met. There were a couple of notes from Lily on classes or to arrange study sessions. Hermione shared all these things with Harry and the two finally decided to burn them, choosing to let their various parents keep their own memories.

Several years after the Battle of Hogwarts, Hermione became the wife of Ron Weasley. That was the year she sold the finally empty house at Spinner's End and disposed of the last items that had been boxed up in the former Potion Master's quarters. She had finally decided what to do with the bulk of her inheritance from her father.

A year later, the press was invited to visit a rather modest home in London, near Diagon Alley. Hermione had discovered, in the course of training in magical law and researching her own records, that many children were in difficult circumstances. Some were orphans like her brother, and others were abused like her father. She found a childless couple willing to manage the house and guide boys and young men who needed a safe home. This did not help young witches, but perhaps with the success of this endeavor, the girls' home would soon follow.

The reporters from the Daily Prophet and the Quibbler were quite impressed with the young woman who had been named Executrix of Severus Snape's estate. They teared up with her as she described the plight of young wizards who were orphaned or abused. They cheered when she dedicated the home in honor of Severus Snape.

Information about the home had leaked out and several benefactors had made it possible to establish an endowment. Hermione sat down for some shrewd dealing with the goblins of Gringotts, with her brother-in-law, Bill, acting as her advocate. At the end of that meeting, she had arranged a promising rate of interest. The home's endowment would enable it to be self-sustaining for years. New donations would enable the trustees to enlarge the principal and make the opening of a girls' home in the near future that much more certain.

Ron Weasley stood a little to the side and watched the day's celebrations with great satisfaction. He had many accomplishments in his own young life but was quite proud of the woman he loved, who shared it all with him. He admired her passion for those less fortunate, occasionally wondering if it had initially drawn her to him. He respected her brilliance, which had helped him at school and still helped him at work from time to time. He couldn't help but respond to her devotion and love, which somehow knew when to argue with him and when to soothe his ruffled feathers. She was the sum of her parents and yet more besides. As Hermione bantered with Rita Skeeter, Ron could just make out the slight roundness under his wife's robe. Before long another person would be in their family, a person who would likely be very much like both of them and yet more besides.

Thank you for reading this. I realize it's a bit out there, so I appreciate your time.

Thank you to beta reader Trickie Woo, who helped with some significant re-writes on this.