CHAPTER ONE:

Bella POV:

It was the slight tapping on the window, followed by the low hoot of an owl, two sounds that might be considered unusual by some and disregarded by even more, that had my heart pounding so hard I thought it might break my ribs.

I was alone in my room, Edward not due to arrive for another half hour, having been banished an hour ago as per the rules of my grounding- Charlie not being aware, of course, that he snuck back into my bedroom to spend the nights with me. Usually I couldn't wait for Edward to be back in my presence, but for once I was actually glad he wasn't here. I wasn't sure how I could have explained the way my hands were shaking and sweating.

I pulled open my window, the hinges moving soundlessly, and an impatient looking owl, and yes, owls can look impatient, hopped through, flapping once around my room before landing on my bedpost and holding a leg out imperiously. Being wary of the sharp beak, and even sharper talons, I hesitantly plucked the scroll from his outstretched leg.

I stared at the rolled up, thick-yellowed paper in my hands, not sure whether I wanted to open this or not. Schrodinger's cat. This could hold news that made my entire life, or broke it.

I wanted Edward to hold me, to be with me in this moment, but at the same time I knew he couldn't, like I knew I wouldn't be able to just stare at this forever. So with numb, uncooperative fingers, I unfurled the aged parchment that the Wizarding world was so fond of.

A choked sound of relief escapes my throat, almost a sob, as I recognize the neat script.

Dearest Bella,

It's been a long time since it's been safe to contact you. I have no idea how it's been, how you've felt, never knowing if I'd contact you again. Every day I've wanted to at least send you some sort of message, letting you know I'm still here, that I'm still alive. But I couldn't, and it's not just because I was protecting you, I had to protect myself and my friends as well. If they'd ever got their hands on you, Bella, I don't know what I would have done, what lengths I would have gone to, to get you back safe.

It's been years without seeing you, without reading your chicken-scratch writing, Bella, without hearing your voice, your atrocious accent. But it's finally over. We won, and the monsters are either dead or rotting in prison where they belong. It's finally safe, and I want to see you. And if it's okay, I'd like to move in with you. I need to be away from the Wizarding world, right now, and completing at least a term of high school sounds unbelievably therapeutic.

I love you, so very much, and I dearly hope that you are healthy and well, and that I'll be seeing you again. Please write to me as soon as you can- I miss you.

All my love,

Your sister, Hermione

I'm breathing too fast, way too fast, and my head is starting to spin. The owl is still standing on my bedpost, and I realize with a start that it's waiting for a reply. I can barely get a pen and paper fast enough, and my handwriting is even worse then normal in my rush to get the words on the paper and the pen-nib rips the paper, more then once.

Hermione,

Oh god, thank god, I need to see you, I love you- I am so happy right now! I'm in Forks, with Charlie, I've been living here a while. You can come and stay here, of course you can, for as long as you want.

I pause, taking several deep breaths, to slow my heart-rate down before I continue writing.

Before you do come, though, there are a few things you should probably know...

-

The story of my twin sister, Hermione Jane Granger, is complicated, and on so many levels. Renée came to Forks when she was eighteen- Charlie was twenty-three at the time. Renée had spent the first eighteen years of her life living all over the states, her father's job taking them to all sorts of places. After his death Renée's mom, who had been born in Forks, moved them both back there. Renée resented the move to a boring small town, and had acted out- her relationship with Charlie had been to punish her mom, except she'd accidentally gotten pregnant.

Charlie, doing what pretty much any small-town, born and raised young man would do, proposed, and Renée, for whatever reason, accepted. They were married within the month, and Charlie was honestly smitten with her. Thing was, Renée got cold feet. Seven months into the pregnancy, six months after her marriage, she organized an adoption. Thing is, she was only expecting one daughter. When two of us were born, Renée took it as a sign that she was meant to have a daughter, and while Swan Baby One became Hermione Granger, Swan Baby Two stayed a Swan- Isabella Swan. Me.

Charlie, who had been training at the police academy up in Seattle, wasn't aware of the adoption, or of Hermione's existence. Before I'd even turned two, Renée had skipped town, taking me with her and leaving Charlie behind.

I didn't know I had a sister until I was eight, and Hermione tracked us down. She wanted to meet her biological parents and twin sister, and the Grangers could afford flying over to America to visit us.

Hermione and I weren't identical (for example, where I got Renée's straight hair, Hermione got Charlie's wild, frizzy curls that he kept cut short to control them) but we were very clearly sisters. I loved her the second I saw her, and from that moment forward, we saw each other whenever we could. Being separated by an ocean barely hindered us- we wrote to each other daily and Hermione's adopted-parents were happy to fly their daughter down over the holidays so we could spend them together. They even started paying for me to join them when they went on holidays.

Despite this, despite their willingness to allow Hermione and I to spend time together, I had never liked the Grangers. They were generous with their money, easily funding Hermione's constant trips to America, but they had only ever accompanied her the first time, and from what I could tell they weren't exactly huge parts of their adopted-daughter's life. Dr. Helen Granger was a somewhat mousy brunette with thin hair and curls which came from a salon. Dr. Richard Granger was a sandy blonde with pin straight hair. They were both workaholics, and never seemed to have much time for Hermione.

Hermione was warm, caring, and sweet. Sure, she was a bit naggy, and she had the tendency to be a little bossy, but her every action was always laced with worry and care for others, rather than the need to show herself superior.

Charlie adored her. I knew he would be overjoyed when he learnt she was safe- he loved Hermione, and was furious with Renée for not telling him about her.

It was because of Hermione I'd ended up spending so much of my summer holidays with Charlie, before deciding to move in with him when Renée remarried. Hermione couldn't stand Renée, and I didn't blame her for it. She had given Hermione, my other half, away. Keeping me while discarding her, Renée had no idea what she'd just given up, because Hermione? Hermione was special- and more special then either Charlie or Renée knew.

My twin had magic.

Finding out Hermione was a witch was shocking- at first I could admit I was jealous, but when Hermione wrote about how horribly she was teased for being a muggleborn, about all the times her life had been put in danger, and about this terrorist, mad-man who people were too scared to even say the name of even when they thought he was dead... well, lets just say I became significantly less jealous, while also becoming significantly more worried for my twin.

Hermione still wrote to me from Hogwarts, practically every day, and we still caught up over every holidays, right up until we were fifteen.

I knew that there was danger in the Wizarding world- the month Hermione had spent petrified by a giant serpent that could literally kill you with its gaze and the terrible, heart-wrenching panic I'd felt waiting for news because she'd stopped writing alone told me that. Hermione had only ever told her closest friends, Harry and the Weasley family, about me, saying that it would be safer if the Wizarding world didn't know that I, that Charlie, existed.

I thought she was being paranoid. It turned out she truly was as clever as everyone said she was. I saw her for the last time in June, three months before our sixteenth birthday. She'd revealed the horrifying news that Voldemort had returned, and that she- being a known close associate with Harry, the boy Voldemort held responsible for his temporary downfall and was determined to kill, as well as being a Muggleborn- was going to be a target. And that meant that my existence made her vulnerable and put my life in terrible danger.

So we hugged and cried and that was the last time I saw her or contacted her- until now.

Voldemort... Voldemort was dead. He was dead and Hermione was alive and I was going to see my other half again.

I didn't realize Edward was in my room until his hand brushed against my shoulder. Swallowing a shriek of surprise, I spun around to face him, to face my soul mate.

Mate... the first time Edward had said that word, in Volterra, in front of the Volturi, I hadn't realized what it meant. It was Alice who had explained it to me, days after, once we were back in Forks. She told me about how on this earth, all vampires have their one true soul mate, and that when they see them, something just clicks. It's not love at first sight, but it's an undeniable pull that has you gravitating towards the other person, it's the spark that shocks you the first time you touch hands. It's falling in love with someone, so quickly and so intensely. Knowing Edward was my soul mate, in a very literal sense, took my breath away, and made me tear up. Yes, I was a bit of a crybaby, but I would forever cherish this link between us, this link that told me fate decreed that I stand by Edward's side.

"Are you okay, Bella?" Edward asks, face creased in concern as he looks down at me. He sits on my bed, lifting me up like I weigh nothing, which to him I would, so that I'm curled up at his side.

"No. I'm... I'm not sure." I tell him. He looks alarmed.

"Did something happen? Are you hurt? Is it Charlie?"

"You're close," I tell him, as I try to figure out how I'm supposed to say this.

I hadn't spoken her name since that day, so long ago. Losing her, knowing that she could be dead and I'd never know, never find out... I'd never been brave enough to face that. Renée never spoke about Hermione if she could help it, and Charlie learnt very quickly not to speak her name in front of me.

I don't think I'd heard her name out loud since I was fifteen years old (the depression I'd fallen into after Edward left wasn't the only time I'd fallen so low).

It was the one secret I was keeping from Edward- the secret of a world of magic, a world of witches and wizards, a world that had taken my sister from me.

The world that had finally given her back.

"There's something I've never told you about." I finally say, and my heart is beating in my chest, too hard, too fast. "Something I haven't spoken about... not for years. It's just... it hurts too much." Edward caresses my face with icy hands.

"You can tell me anything, Bella," he soothes me, and I blink back tears.

"I have a sister." Edward inhales a sharp breath of air that I know he doesn't need, and his body freezes beside me. I'm too scared to look at him, so I look down at my hands instead. "She was given up for adoption when we were born. I never even knew she existed until we were eight, but after that we spent every second together we could." I laugh, but the sound is wet and bleak and the opposite of what a laugh should sound like. "She lived in England, but that didn't matter, not to us. She was my best friend, and then, three years ago, she had to go into... witness protection. I haven't seen her since we were fifteen, haven't spoken to her, haven't known if she was alive or if she'd been killed-"

Edward's hand covers my mouth, stilling the words pouring out, and I realize how garbled my voice is, realize that I'm crying.

I hadn't really noticed it. He holds me to his body, close enough that I can feel the marble lines of his body, feel the cold that's seeping through the material of his shirt, through my thick jumper, to my skin, chilling it. He rocks me, and eventually my tears dry. It's Edward who breaks the silence.

"Did you just receive... news?" His voice is gentle, and I wipe my eyes with the back of a sleeve.

"I did. And it's- it's good news. She's safe again, and she- she wants to come here, to America, to live with me." And as I speak those words out loud, the relief hits me so hard it almost feels like I've been punched in the chest, knocking all the air from my lungs. "She's safe, she's alive, she's coming here, she's coming back to me." I repeat, and Edward kisses the top of my head as I press my face to his chest. I'm laughing now, the sound giddy, all the emotions I've experienced in the short stretch of time having left me unsteady.

"Tell me about her," Edward urges. I know he's trying to get me to calm down, to come off this emotional roller coaster, and I can only love him more for it.

"Her name's Hermione and honest to god, she's the smartest person I know. When we were little, she had the craziest hair, and when she tried to put it in a bun or a ponytail, it looked like she was wrestling a hedgehog. She had to buy extra-strength hair elastics. When we got older though, it smoothed out and became less bushy, more curly. She'd buy me these ridiculous books for my birthday and Christmas- called them 'light reading' and me an 'uncivilized American'. For my ninth birthday she bought me the entire Jane Austen collection. For my tenth, the entire compilation of the works of Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath and Edgar Allen Poe. She was going through a poetry phase, and had decided that I should too. I could only read about every second or third word, and had no clue what any of it was about, but we read them together, and I pretended to understand what she was going on about so enthusiastically because I loved to see her so happy. She's also brave- the bravest person I know. She has the heart of a lion."

"She sounds incredible." Edward murmurs, "Of course, she'd have to be, being related to you."

"Charmer," I smile at him. His distraction had worked, and I was feeling calmer, I could breathe properly again. "We're so alike in so many ways, but also so different. We're not identical, we're dizygotic twins. She was never clumsy, not like I am- even when she was eight, she moved with none of that awkwardness you see in little kids- she always put her full being into each action, each movement. She loves dancing. She used to beg me to dance with her. I took ballet to try and impress her the next time she came to visit, but, well," I cringed at the memory of the ballet studio, at the memory of everything that had gone down there. Edward holds me just that bit tighter, the same thoughts obviously running through his mind. "She also loves shopping. Not like Alice does, with clothes and everything, she loves going through op-shops and second-hand bookstores, seeing what treasures she could find."

"She sounds wonderful. Do you know when I'll get to meet her?" Edward asks.

"As soon as possible," I say, fervently, meaning every word. "But Edward... Hermione and I, we don't have secrets. We've never kept secrets." Edward stiffens again, and I brave a look up to his face. He looks... well, his expression is tightly controlled, which isn't always a good thing. In fact, it rarely is.

"You want to tell her. What we are." He says.

"I do." I tell him. Which is true, except that I've already told her. About a half hour ago, in written form, anyway. Edward's expression remains unreadable for several long, long moments, and then he sighs.

"I couldn't ask you not to tell her," he says, "I can't imagine... not knowing what was happening to her, if she was alright... thinking that she could be dead," he cringes, and I assume thoughts of the cliff-diving incident, and the three horrible days that followed are at the forefront of his mind. "Yes, of course Bella, of course you can tell her." He looks so earnest that my heart melts, and I hug him as tight as my weak human limbs can.

"I love you," I tell him, and I kiss him, pressing my malleable, human lips to his icy stone ones. The kiss continues for several long moments, before Edward pulls away, and I don't try to fight it, instead I pull the duvet up over my body, sliding down the mattress so I'm lying down. Edward gently runs his slender fingers through my hair and I let out a soft sigh.

"Good night, my love," he says softly, and then he starts humming my lullaby, still stroking my hair, and I gradually drift off to sleep.