The cashier looked to her father before continuing.
"That'll do us," her father said with a smile and handed over the money to pay the bill. "That's my Granger-girl," he said with a supportive arm around her as he pocketed his candy. "Don't tell your mother."
On its way from her shoulder her father's hand strayed towards her chocolate. She playfully smacked it. "Hands off my Curly Wurly!" she said, reciting the candy's old slogan.
With that little act of defiance near Newmarket, the Chocolate Bar Rebellion had begun.
It was almost an hour later, behind the closed door of her room, that Hermione had finally eaten the serpentine chocolate lattice. Slightly melted from being held in her pocket the rest of the way home, it nonetheless tasted illicitly good. The multicolored wrapper she saved for later use and that night snuck out to the kitchen to stick it to the fridge with a magnet like some modern day Martin Luther.
The next wrapper appeared on the kitchen counter the next afternoon. The purple packaging of a Dairy Milk bar appeared inside the fridge itself after that - propped up against her mother's skim milk like it belonged there. She had tried to appear engrossed in her pleas to McGonagall and Flitwick while her mother looked at her calculatingly.
Her father had thought that one was clever, later saying she was a lot braver than he was. He had no problem at all though in handing over a few pounds every once in a while so she could continue her campaign, as long as he was provided with a large share of the chocolate. Apparently a bit of chocolate once in a while was fine but he didn't want her to think he was okay with her banging her teeth out with a hammer as soon as she got home from school. Hermione didn't mind, she wasn't doing it for chocolate, she was doing it to send a message. She was never going to be her mother.
As the days passed something else had started to wear on her, other than her mother's decided lack of response. She had heard nothing from Ron. Hermione knew she shouldn't have asked him to find out what Harry had thought of her, especially after what Ron had said earlier, but had cowardly thought she had no other option but to get him to ask. Of course she had another option; she could have just talked to Harry and handled the whole thing herself. She just hadn't thought she could deal with that kind of rejection and the risk of losing her best friend was too great for anything less than the absolute surety of a positive response.
Her father finally pulled her aside after Ron's letter came telling her nothing but silence was coming from his letter to Harry and she had looked like she really needed to talk. Once she assured him the feather duster that was Ron's owl was still alive and wasn't her problem, she started to tell her story. She didn't name names, and only said things in the most roundabout way - her father didn't need to know just how dangerous the wizarding world could be - but it didn't take a genius to figure out what the whole issue was about. It was about a boy; a boy she liked, a boy she liked who was also her friend.
Unlike her mother, her father was always one to listen. And unlike her mother, who could only criticize and tear down, her father like to explore. There were no tutting that she was too young for this kind of thing or that she should be concentrating on her schoolwork. Instead, he asked equally roundabout questions about the boy in question. Nothing about what this boy's name was or what their parents were like, instead he asked about the boy himself. What was he like? What did he like? What was his background like? What did they have in common? And just as importantly, what did they have at odds? She had to admit that even after knowing him for months, she didn't really know him that well. She hinted he was well known, even if he wasn't precisely what you'd call popular.
"Well then, I'd say you're in a very unique position here," her father said encouragingly.
"To have my first real friendships destroyed and have to go through the rest of my life like a Puckle?" she asked, referencing her mother.
"I highly doubt that's going to happen," he said bracingly. "You're in a unique position because you're thinking about this now rather than a few years from now, and because everyone else in your year is probably oblivious to this sort of thing. Meanwhile you, my little Puckle, have your foot in the door."
"I am not a little Puckle," Hermione said stubbornly. "And what do you mean 'my foot in the door'? I feel more like I have my foot in my mouth and am just waiting for the opportunity to chew. I can't believe I admitted all that to Ron. If Ha-he hadn't been in the hospital wing at the time I never would have," she said, hoping to play it off like Harry'd had some sort of Quidditch injury.
"You have your foot in the door by already being friends with this boy," her father explained. "They always say the best couples always start off as friends. But you haven't been friends with him so long that your - how do I put this - group dynamic, has had a chance to set like dried cement. There's still a great deal of wiggle room for things to change between now and - whenever it is I finally let you date - in, like, ten years or so."
Hermione rolled her eyes but saw what he was getting at.
.....
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