Chapter Text

A year six essay

 

Hermione Granger

Ms. Malabul

Year Six History

04 September 1990

The Curio Shop at Holborn

In 1567, Charles II gifted the Duchess of Portsmouth a curious building built out of salvaged ship parts, to be used as a dairy.

Ms. Ducharme teaches us in English about tautological place names such as Torpenhow Hill, which is said to mean Hill Hill Hill Hill when the languages it has gone through are translated. She said the origin lies with people asking what a region is called. When the local people say “that is a tor” meaning, “that is a hill,” and the person asking in their Celtic tongue calls a hill a “pen,” the name becomes Tor Pen. Then when a Norse speaker, to whom a hill is a “howe,” asks, he is told “that is Tor pen,” and it becomes Torpen Howe.  Finally an Anglo-Saxon speaking English asks and it becomes Torpenhow Hill.

This dairy, later on a shop, has never been named. It was called “the curio shop” or “the curio shop on Portsmouth.” as the years passed, and it is now almost four-and-a-quarter centuries, it naturally became known as “the old curio shop,” or “the old curiosity shop” as it was referred to in the 19th c. It became famous through the efforts of Mr. Charles Dickens, writing in the series “Master Humphrey’s Clock.”

It did a steady business until the market area it is in  was purchased by the School of Economics. Several years before I was born, it became an antiques shop, and officially closed a bit before my time. Rumours about it included housing a new department of the School of Economics, being purchased by a South African billionaire and shipped to that country, and being repurposed to sell Japanese designer shoes. Its current status remains officially in limbo.

CONTEMPORARY HISTORY

Eager to see a piece of living 16th c. history, I traveled to Holborn station and visited the shop on Portsmouth. In passing, I will write it is interesting it was never called the ship shop, the dairy shop, or most likely, the Portsmouth shop, but it was not.

Much to my surprise, it still seemed to be open, and to have reverted to being a curio shop. It had but one employee, a girl who seemed no more than seventeen years of age. There was no opening sign, nor were any hours posted. The shop girl had no register to work with, apparently she operated out of a small cash box, and hand-wrote the receipts with a quill pen. The whole thing made me feel as if it hadn’t changed since the time of Mr. Dickens.

She waved me in, and I wandered about the store. In all honesty, most of the items for sale, which were definitely from all parts of the globe, were incomprehensible. As I left, the shopgirl finally spoke to me.

“You heard we were closed, yes? Before you were born, even, I reckon?” she asked.

I admitted that was the case.

“A bookish thing like you tends to believe whatever she’s told, I think. It won’t serve you well,” was the reply. If I hadn’t heard Ms. Malabul and Ms. Ducharme say similar things, I would have taken offence. As it was, I decided to politely agree, since I was leaving, anyway.

“You should come back tomorrow. We get books in on Sundays, and you’re the very type we cater to,” was the last thing I heard as I left. The jangling bells attached to the door, which had not rung when I entered, somehow did so when I left.

This bit of London history ended up being quite fascinating. I see that I have run out of space, since you encourage us to be concise. If I have further experiences with the curio shop, I will mention them if they’re germane to my topic in another history essay. At any rate, I have learned that you cannot always depend on papers or books to tell you the historical facts: you must sometimes, occasionally, see for yourself.

Works Cited

Jollidodue, A. Ne vous inquiétez pas, les non-magiques ne pourront pas lire ceci de toute façon., Paris: Presse de Sorcière Maladroite,1978.

Bâtonsec, H. Les idiots habituels que je finis par enseigner. Flintshire: Gwasg Argraffu Gwrachod Creulon UP, 1968.

 

 

 

Chapter Text

It probably was unfair to say Hermione Granger, 10, had no friends. Her teachers were all at least friendly, and Ms Malabul and Ms Ducharme were confidants and mentors. But it was accurate to say she had no friends in her year, or in any year.

It hadn’t helped that at first, before she was placed ahead a year, she was older than all the other pupils (having just missed the deadline for starting Reception by three weeks). Now, she was the youngest in her yeqr; but her maturity and seriousness made making friends very difficult. To boot, she was somewhat prissy, and even something of a tattle-tale.

The last had been the result of teasing that almost amounted to bullying, but it had only worsened the situation. Her first couple of years at primary, Hermione, a small, slender girl with dark, curly auburn hair that became bushy whenever it rained, and always got in her eyes when it didn’t, pale skin that blushed easily, and freckles on her cheeks that for some reason she found embarrassing, had almost become the cliched “rich girl whose only friends are dolls.” Middle class girl. Upper-middle?

When she had attempted to reach out to other students in older years (she was rebuffed the first few times she tried to talk to girls in her own year), they had mocked her teacher-like mannerisms and said she acted “bossy,” and “full of herself,”

Finally, when she was placed ahead a year and still got the best marks in her year, she was noticed more, and not positively. She didn’t regret tattling: it had, after escalating for a while, probably reduced the bullying somewhat. And if you were that sort of person, she reasoned, she had no obligation to pretend you were a friend and not tell what you were up to.

Still, with no one to turn to but very busy adults (her dentist parents, who were, unfortunately, a bit distant at the best of times, and her teachers), it was fair to say Hermione was a lonely little girl. It made her blush, even after several years, to remember using her dolls to represent her classmates, and as “the mighty Sorceress Hermione” ordering them to be her friends. Well , she thought, and as usual, it was a very grown-up thought, as she surveyed her immaculate bedroom, that’s a secret I’ll carry to the grave.

She remembered with a visible cringe reading the American author J. Steinbeck’s Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights,  and in particular, the part where Lancelot reasoned out the pathetic motivations of an evil magician, reflecting on his own feelings when he was an invalid. Hermione saw herself all too well in the frustrated magician wanting magic to shore up the feeling of powerlessness and isolation they must live with.

Well, Hermione had one last year at her primary, which ran for six years. Soon, she would leave behind those who knew her, and it was time to re-make herself as a new person. She was past being ashamed, she decided. She would straightforwardly tell her parents and her two favourite teachers her goal for this year and the next, and ask them for advice.

For starters, she planned to curb any annoying habits she had heard complaints about. She had adopted a ten-second rule for waiting before raising her hand, and this year she would extend it to twelve or even fifteen seconds. She would ignore all but the most serious misbehaviour. She would not tell people more than they asked for. She had made a list of people who hadn’t reacted to her badly, and she planned to approach them, not seeking friendship but exchanging short pleasantries. Her first milestone was her upcoming eleventh birthday; she wasn’t going to subject herself to another party no one would come to, of course. Nor was she shooting for any cards. She did, however, plan to be extra pleasant. And if anyone brought up a topic she could shoe-horn it into, she’d say her parents were going to take her out of school for the day for her birthday. She wanted to get at least five “Happy Birthdays” in the days before and after her day.

On Tuesday, she put her plan into effect. Somewhat disappointingly, she got four “Oh, well then, Happy Birthday, Hermione” responses. It wasn’t ideal, but it was progress. Her parents really were going to take the day off Wednesday for her birthday: this year her mother had been feeling guilty about neglecting their lonely, somewhat sad daughter. She’d talked her husband into announcing a vacation day on the 19th a fortnight ago, and they planned to take Hermione shopping (two bookstores and a music shop), then have dinner at her favourite restaurant.

On a whim, to cheer herself up, leaving primary that day, Hermione decided to transfer to the line going to Holborn instead of heading straight home. Since it had no posted hours, she wasn’t at all sure the curio shop on Portsmouth would even be open, but happily, it was. The same shop-girl was there. She, surprisingly, scolded Hermione for not returning on a Sunday, but then stated that there were probably still some books available that were “just right for you,” in the very back of the shop.

Hermione had a weakness for fantasy novels. One of the things she’d pondered this year was whether that was too embarrassing a preference, and then she decided she was overthinking everything. The book area had only a half-dozen novels left. They were about a boy named Harry Potter, and for some reason, reading their dust jackets, she found them oddly compelling.

Totalling up the cost of what turned out to be seven volumes in the complete series, she realized her book budget for the month, combined with her budget for her birthday, would barely cover the cost. Well, she decided, she’d just have to window-shop tomorrow. The chance to get a complete series that sounded so interesting couldn’t be passed up. That decision was clinched when she noticed the dust jacket for the first book had a quote from The Guardian, which she had just started reading and really liked.

She lugged all seven books up to the front where the shop-girl sat. That girl, without saying a word, pulled out a cloth bag just the right size to hold the books. Hermione worried that she might not be able to cover the cost of the bag, though it was otherwise a welcome sight. She noticed for the first time that the shop-girl had a very pleasant smile. Other than her eyes, which were very slightly protruding, she was quite a beauty - the kind of girl that normally made Hermione feel inferior. Surprisingly, she spoke up: “You just made it. I was about to close up.”

When Hermione was fumbling with her handbag to pull out her money, she was shocked to see the shop-girl resolutely close her cashbox. The girl put the books into the bag, handed it back to her, and indicated she should leave. Hermione was too startled to protest.

As she left, she heard over her shoulder, ”Oh, well then - Happy Birthday, Hermione.”

Chapter Text

While reading was a great comfort for little Hermione, it was also a compulsion. From cereal boxes to her mother’s Mary Balogh novels to dentistry handouts, she read. Eventually, she could not control how much she read, just (somewhat) what she read. It was a miracle she’d never needed spectacles, if one looked at it objectively. But these rare fantasy books were a particular treasure.

As part of her initiative to re-create herself, she paced herself by explaining to her parents why she came home late before opening the first book in the series. Normally, the look on her mother’s face when she admitted she’d been a bit downcast because even after she mentioned it to several students, she’d only gotten four “Happy Birthdays” would have put Hermione off talking to her parents, but she steeled herself to stay calm and objective.

Her parents were fascinated when she told them the old curio shop was still going, and still doing business as it had in the time of Charles Dickens. Looking at her report, and remarking on how mature she was, her mother worried aloud that any boy who could keep up with Hermione would of necessity be much older, and therefore, untrustworthy.

Since she’d brought up the topic of dating, Hermione forthrightly requested that she get braces as soon as possible. She would work on her hair, she said, but to have two parents as dentists who’d allowed her to be tormented over her teeth for five years now was like the cobbler’s children having no shoes. At first, her father especially looked offended. Then both parents sighed. They’d actually been planning on getting her braces within about a year’s time. They weren’t completely convinced that it was entirely healthy to give very young children braces, but they had probably left it too late, and they grudgingly said so.

Her mother raised the issue of the brand new plastic trays that some girls substituted for braces. Hermione, surprisingly, had read up on them and declared they took too long. A bit more discomfort and unsightly braces were well worth saving six months or so of time. She was, she said frankly, basically writing off her primary school years. Furthermore, getting braces would mean she wasn’t, at least, being mocked any more for being a dentists’ child whose parents clearly didn’t care about her.

Because she sensed her mother was going to suffer further pangs of guilt over that , and she’d guessed correctly that the braces issue was a solved problem now, she changed the subject to the books she’d bought. Neither of her parents had ever heard of either the series or the author. It was decidedly odd, they all three agreed, that someone would have as many as seven books out in a series without Hermione, a fantasy novel collector, having heard of him or her at all. Especially when it had a quote from the Guardian about it in an early edition of the first book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.

Her father’s only comment was that the name, J. K. Rowling, resembled J. R. R. Tolkien’s eponym. “It would be funny if one day people just said ‘Rowling’ and you knew whom they were talking about, wouldn’t it?” he mused. With that hanging in the air, Hermione tucked herself in to the sofa and opened up Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.

Hermione’s heart immediately went out to the Dickensian waif that was the title and main character.    Like Oliver Twist, but more so, he was ludicrously abused. Clearly the old wizard Dumbledore was going to be the early villain, and whoever You-Know-Who was, assuming he was ever named, would be the power behind him. She didn’t have any respect for the old woman, who apparently made noises about doing the right thing before doing Dumbledore’s bidding - in this case, leaving an infant on a doorstep in November like a bottle of milk. And that on the doorstep of a family she’d watched all day and declared “the worst sort.” The Hagrid oaf seemed like genial but dim-witted muscle. Hermione surmised Sirius Black would eventually rescue little Harry Potter, and probably train him to be a hero; he was the only character with an obviously heroic name.

The next chapter continued the Dickensian atmosphere - no wonder the books were sold in the old curio shop! Hermione couldn’t help herself - she looked over at the stairs by the living room and imagined living beneath them. She speculated their house, being only four bedrooms, was probably half the size of the Grangers’ home. As such, the stairs there would likely be only two-thirds as tall as theirs. It was an open question if even a child could stand up anywhere but the entrance, assuming it was on the tall part of the wall.

So. The boy’s gifts apparently included talking to animals (of course) and having magic happen around him in a haphazard fashion. Hermione would never have tormented a boy like that, but apparently, his aunt and uncle were imbeciles.

Then again, she learned in the third chapter that “Hogwarts,” the alleged school presided over by the villain Dumbledore, was filled with idiots, too. Presumably including whoever named it. Instead of following up in person when Harry failed to respond to his invitation letter, they wasted inordinate amounts of time and money terrorising Harry’s relatives, and he still never saw one of the hundreds of copies of the letter his relatives were swamped with. 

The actual appearance of the Hagrid oaf didn’t add anything nice to the picture. The only clever thing he did was steal the Dursley’s boat. Even that might have opened him up to an attempted murder charge if the Dursley family remained trapped on the island too long.

The shopping trip with Hagrid saw him dismiss a whole race of intelligent beings, but also buy Harry the obvious mascot of the series. Hermione wondered when Hagrid would see the light and turn on his headmaster. It would depend on when You-Know-Who or rather “Voldemort” appeared and aced out Dumbledore as the main antagonist. Hermione confirmed with her well-used French-English dictionary that his name very roughly translated as “Flight of or from Death.” She wondered if the spoiled Malfoy boy would end up as Harry’s friend, or his rival. He reminded Hermione of Ethel Hallow from the Worst Witch.

Finally, the book arrived at the train to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. She had waited patiently while they established Harry Potter’s situation and character, but now the story really could begin!

As to it being a school of “witchcraft AND wizardry,” she assumed girls and boys would be separated, with the girls learning witchcraft and the boys learning wizardry. She enjoyed good world-building like that immensely.

She immediately wondered at the red-headed woman and her family. How she got away with tossing around, quite loudly, the general insulting name the wizards called normal people, then following it up by having her small daughter shout about “Platform 9 ¾ !!” Hermione couldn’t imagine. It seemed, combined with the nonsense with the letters, the author equated magic with whimsy. This made it more resemble Alice in Wonderland, so presumably, the author was a fan.

It was also somehow fishy, and when one of the children obviously lied to get in Harry’s compartment, she decided the red-headed family would turn out to be villainous. That guess was helped along when Ron turned out to be the only wizard with a rat as a familiar.

Hermione immediately identified with the girl who came in helping another student find his toad. She could tick off all of her perceived flaws - hair, teeth, "bossy" voice. She was immediately rooting for her. Since she was introduced early, she had a good chance of becoming a friend to the main character - possibly even a love interest. Hermione could dream. It was while she was musing thusly that her thoughts almost skipped past the girl's name. She'd gone on to think it was a good sign the villainous Ron Weasley disliked her.

Then she froze.

She made herself trace back with her finger to the girl's name. No matter how long she stared at it, it didn't change a single letter.

Hermione Granger.

Chapter Text

Those who knew Hermione well, basically her teachers, would have guessed she would either take the book to her parents and muse over the coincidence or assume it was an odd prank, and recall that the shopgirl seemed to know her name and birthday.

Her parents might have guessed that she did neither of those two things. First, she closed the book and laid it down as if it were a strange dog that might bite her. She opened her bag and took out the next book. She flipped through the pages. There her name was, again.

“ Harry missed his best friends, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. They, however, didn’t seem to be missing him at all.”

She lost some of her sympathy for the book’s Hermione.

She closed it and opened the third book.

“Harry’s other best friend from Hogwarts, Hermione Granger, hadn’t been in touch, either. Harry suspected that Ron had warned Hermione not to call, which was a pity, because Hermione, the cleverest witch in Harry’s year, had Muggle parents, knew perfectly well how to use a telephone, and would probably have enough sense not to say that she went to Hogwarts. ”

On the one hand, this was proof positive Ron Weasley was no friend of anyone nice. On the other hand, yet again, the book’s Hermione was in some sort of thrall to him. If Ron told Hermione not to do the right thing, apparently, his wish was her command. The chilling thought occurred to her that she didn’t have to be the hero’s love interest. In fact, even if she was destined to be with the hero, if this was a romantic YA series, it was typical for the damsel to throw herself at the wrong person, especially a stealth villain. “Hermione, you great idiot!” she muttered.

Once Hermione started something, she finished it. Fourth book. By this point, the likelihood someone had written a mocked-up set of books as a prank became vanishingly small.

“At once, Hermione Granger’s voice seemed to fill his head, shrill and panicky.”

Am I? Am I really? Shrill AND panicky? I mean, is SHE? She thought.

“Your scar hurt? Harry, that’s really serious … Write to Professor Dumbledore! And I’ll go check Common Magical Ailments and Afflictions. Maybe there’s something in there about curse scars.”

At least at this point, in the fourth book, Ron wasn’t around, vetoing whatever ESP Hermione and Harry were using. Maybe that’s why they learned it? It was also interesting that Harry, like Frodo, seemed to have a cursed scar. Hopefully, it was just something that healed slowly or something, not like Frodo’s, which gave him a connection to the evil wraiths and pained him whenever they were around. Oh, and Hermione was still a fool, telling him to go to the arch-villain. The readers were meant to go, “Oh no! Don’t!” and Hermione admitted it was working.

The fifth book was, sadly, a reversion to form.

“If he was lucky, there would be owls carrying letters”

Owls? she thought, confused.

“ from his best friends Ron and Hermione, though any expectation he had had that their letters would bring him news had long since been dashed. ‘We can’t say much about you-know-what, obviously … We’ve been told not to say anything important in case our letters go astray"

…” By Dumbledore! Hermione snorted mentally.

“ ‘We’re quite busy but I can’t give you details here … There’s a fair amount going on, we’ll tell you everything when we see you. ’ But when were they going to see him? Nobody seemed too bothered with a precise date. Hermione had scribbled ‘I expect we’ll be seeing you quite soon’ inside his birthday card, but how soon was soon?”

No, it wasn’t a reversion. It was worse. Ron had clearly been the only one allowed even to write to Harry. Given that they seemed entirely under Dumbledore’s thumb, and to a degree, Ron’s, Hermione had to assume Harry Potter was still, even in the fifth book, confined to his abusive, Dickensian prison.

My God, he really won’t be able to stand up in that cupboard, she thought. If he’d been eleven in the first book, he could be thirteen, fourteen, even fifteen by now. And she noted with alarm that Hermione had been reduced to “scribbling” hurriedly inside a birthday card to send Harry a message. It was even money she was imprisoned, too. What had started as a light fantasy was shaping up to be a rather grim novel of suspense. Still suitable for YA, hopefully. Otherwise, what Ron and Dumbledore might be up to with Hermione was quite unsettling. She read on a bit. It was clear Hermione was, indeed, bookmarked for Ron by Dumbledore, and Harry was quite jealous about it. Maybe there was a sign of hope there. Perhaps by the time Harry won his way to her side, he’d be fed up enough to tell them all off and escape. She noted that Sirius Black apparently hadn’t freed Harry yet - five books in and counting was a bit late if anyone was going to be training Harry to confront Voldemort and his less obvious enemies. She wondered if Black was injured, imprisoned, or worse. As for the owls, perhaps they were like the paper owls in The Owl Service, capable of coming to life and delivering messages.

The sixth book had a chapter, “Hermione’s Helping Hand,” but she forbore skipping ahead to it. “

‘You can’t Apparate anywhere inside the buildings or grounds,’ said Harry quickly. ‘Hermione Granger told me.’ ‘And she is quite right. We turn left again’ “

So, nothing. She gave in and turned to her chapter. Hermione was definitely one of the main characters - the series was nearly over and she was still all over it.

“As Hermione had predicted, the sixth years’ free periods were not the hours of blissful relaxation Ron had anticipated … “

Well, of course not, Hermione fumed.

“And to Hermione’s increasing resentment, Harry’s best subject had suddenly become Potions, thanks to the Half-Blood Prince.”

It would be a cold day in hell before a Hermione based on her would resent someone having a best subject. This was decidedly not a good sign. Apparently, the Dumbledore/Ron group had managed to turn Hermione against Harry to a degree. This was probably the proverbial “lowest point” the hero had to go through, where everyone deserted him. Still no mention of Sirius Black, though to be fair, she was only looking for mentions of Hermione. Perhaps the villains had already managed to turn Hermione against Sirius Black, and they didn’t interact. 

She pondered the possibility she’d sort of scoffed at - that there was some sort of unimaginable truth or reality to the books.  That she was like Bastian Bux, reading some sort of Neverending Story about her own analogue. If that were so, it would still be odd if it followed a standard fantasy storyline so closely. If that weird thought had any truth to it, then definitely some things would be modified and distorted to fit the narrative. She’d have to read the books very, very carefully and make note of any contradictions or dubious assertions.

It was in a grim state of mind that she closed the sixth book and opened the final one. As she had with the sixth book, she skipped ahead to “The Wedding,” looking for the end of the ceremony to determine whose wedding it was. Well.

“Hermione turned and beamed at Harry; her eyes were too full of tears. ‘... then I declare you bonded for life.’

“ Well, thank God for that. Now, in more of a disciplined mood, she turned to the front of the book. 

“Making a mental note to ask Hermione … The idea of a teenage Dumbledore was simply odd, like trying to imagine a stupid Hermione … There was a general cry of greeting as Hermione flung her arms around him.”

Clearly, the ‘Hermione problem’ had been cleared up, and presumably, they were uniting to take on Dumbledore and Voldemort. She decided that the author had dropped the ball with Sirius Black. Perhaps he’d died before he could rescue Harry, and was relegated to serving as an example to be striven for.

If the more likely scenarios were true, she’d already spoiled some of the series. So, she resolved to start over from the beginning. But she’d be taking notes, that was certain. And if it were all a prank or a fluke, it would, nonetheless, always have a special place on her bookshelf. It was a unique series for her in particular, no matter how you looked at it.

And the mystery her teachers (and perhaps even her parents) would have noticed could be cleared up if they’d known about Hermione’s own personal history. For a while, as a toddler, Hermione had had what amounted to a poltergeist around her. It had made her mother, in particular, collect books on hauntings and the paranormal. After it seemed to cease, they had an unspoken agreement not to mention it again. Hermione didn’t really remember the floating books and toys. But she was, it so happened, very familiar with absolutely unexplainable, weird things happening around her. When she made it up to her room to put the books away - and perhaps take a nap, for she felt exhausted for some reason - there it was. She had packed away her dolls and their table and tea service when she decided the sixth year was her time to reinvent Hermione Granger.

And yet, the table and chairs, and all the dolls, were out and arrayed in front of her bed. And as she entered, they all turned and regarded her. Expectantly.

Chapter Text

Hermione had made their clothes herself. Plain seemed the oldest. She had a rather stern face and combined with her fancy dress, it gave off a somewhat royal impression. Meanwhile, Clumsy had a ruddy and lively face, and wore riding gear.  Shy, whose eyes naturally reverted to being downcast, wore a simple parlour maid’s outfit, and Genius, whose hair was almost as untidy as Hermione’s own, contented herself with a laboratory coat and spectacles.

To her surprise, it was Shy who spoke first.

“Everything that’s been bothering you, you can’t keep hiding it. We … we can’t take much more.”

“Yes,” Plain agreed. “You need to tell Mother and Father.”

“And she needs to go back to the shop, tout suite,”  added Genius.

Clumsy was so excited, she bumped her cup off the table. Fortunately, only Hermione’s cup ever filled with tea, and that only if there was some in the pot in the kitchen downstairs. “You need to keep reading the books, Mistress!”

Hermione took a chance. “Can some of you - I dunno, read through them and make notes while I’m at school?”

Genius shook her head but said “Well, we could - maybe one of us turns the pages, one of us reads, one of us writes. We could mind you …”

“ … but if they’re to be of any use to you, you’re going to be so tired at school it won’t be funny,” Plain finished.

“Yes,” Genius continued. “You would use a lot of power to make us pretend to think like a real person. You’re better off studying them at home and letting us help with the little, mindless things.”

Clumsy gave Hermione a pained look. ‘Things like unpacking your tea set and table!!” Then in a grumbly, muttering voice,  “It’s a real bear unpacking ourselves, you know!”

“As if we’d have trusted her with the china!” sniffed Plain

Shy spoke up again. “We do let her start. Clumsy is very strong. And I think Mistress should try. Yes, she’ll be very tired. Ummm. Leave her alarm clock out on the table and one of us stays awake until the little hand is on the three and the big hand is on the twelve. That way, she can at least try. One of us can turn pages, and one of us can read and write. Just for half an hour at first.”

Plain wondered what the point was. Genius was pondering that when Clumsy asked her if Genius hadn’t said Mistress needed to expend her power to get stronger.

“Well,” Genius tempered her earlier statement. “So far away is rather dangerous.”

“There is a nurse’s station there,” Clumsy objected.

“And … and she does wish to change!” said Shy, more forcefully than Hermione remembered her ever speaking before. “We’re tired of being a nobody.” But then she became self-conscious and hid her face in her hands.

Just to test it out, she had Clumsy turn the pages and Genius write notes while Plain and Shy napped, and Hermione waited downstairs. Sure enough, she could tell by a sudden sense of fatigue when they started. Unless distance did some crazy things to her - whatever it was; call it witchcraft, if the books were right - a half-hour should be fine. If she was too tired, she’d forgo the curio shop and take the tube straight home to the station near her house.

She let her dolls take notes on the first book for a couple of hours while she wearily chipped away at her homework. Musing that it would be interesting to see what sort of notes she’d end up with, she fell into a dead sleep the minute she lay down.

Chapter Text

As it fell out, she was woken by Shy.

"Umm, Mistress. Mistress, wake up, please!" Hermione heard a small, whispery voice saying, as she felt a tiny hand shake her shoulder.

Still more than half-asleep, she took it in stride: "What is it, Shy?"

"Ummm... Ummm... Mistress can't experiment at school today, after all!" Shy's downcast eyes raised up a bit and met Hermione's bleary ones.

"What?" Hermione exclaimed as she sat up suddenly, which always made her dizzy. "Why not? If this is about Genius saying it's dangerous ..."

"No, Mistress, no. It's ... it's ... Happy Birthday, Mistress! You're eleven!" With that, Shy gave Hermione's shoulder a hug.

Eleven. Eleven what? Birthday what? Hermione paused. Then she struck her forehead with the back of her fist. Yes, it really was her birthday. And on her birthday .... "We don't go to school!"

"No, Mistress." was the soft reply. Hermione heard rustling as the others came awake.

"You won't wish to dishonour your parents' efforts by tiring yourself out, anyway, Mistress Hermione." When Plain talked like that, she was reminding Hermione of her manners.

New age, new you. Hermione had planned to start the Women's version of the Royal Canadian Air Force fitness plan. She felt the running in place would wake her parents, so after spending ten minutes on callisthenics, she left quietly for a three-block square walk, which should be about a mile. It took her about 20 minutes. After that, she showered while the dolls took notes on the first book. She didn't feel half as fatigued as she had the day before. Perhaps she was more used to it. She was also physically closer, being on the same floor. In any event, she felt refreshed and ready for the day. Which was, she recalled, two bookstores and a music shop.

Now, that was handy. One bookstore near the curio shop, one near “The Leaky Cauldron” - she was fond of Foyles on Charing Cross Road. She could happen to want to check if there were interesting books or music in the curio shop. Getting her parents into the Leaky Cauldron (assuming she wasn’t dreaming or delusional and it actually showed itself) would be harder. She’d have to warn them that “Doctor Who-level weirdness” was going to be on display. Then come up with an excuse for getting into Diagon Alley and getting a wand. Again, given the Neverending Story Hypothesis was correct.

Before she went down, she reviewed the notes her dolls had taken. They were surprisingly long. It was basic reconnaissance, including information about Hogwarts, and more importantly, about buying books and wands.

Things (after her mother made an excellent breakfast, and Hermione opened one of her presents - fitness equipment. It was what she’d asked for and she hugged them excitedly) fell out roughly as she’d planned them. And not at all as she’d envisioned.

When she got them to detour to the front of the curio shop, it was boarded up, dusty and dingy. It looked as if it hadn’t been touched in years. Her father recognized the shop after Hermione mentioned it was out of Dickens. “But what’s upset you about this shop, Hermione?” asked Mrs Granger.

She had to cringe, then explain that she’d “misplaced” the curio shop where she bought the fantasy books she’d come home with the day before. She actually slumped down onto a box resting against the front of the shop. A newish looking box, a box with, yes, her name on it. Wearily, she stood up and opened it. As she did so, her father noticed the name on the box. Both her parents gasped.

Inside the box were three dolls. One had an enormous Afro hairstyle and looked vaguely non-white. Another had exaggerated buck teeth. The final doll had limp, scraggly hair covering one eye and most of the other, reddened one, had scratches on her face and was confined in a straitjacket. “Who would do something so cruel?” Mrs Granger asked her husband.

Hermione surprised them by carefully closing the box and putting it in the boot of the car after getting her father to open it. “Never mind,” she said, “I can actually use these. And it’s not the strangest thing you will see today.”

Her heart sank, however, when, en route to Foyles, they passed … The Leaky Cauldron. There it was, and that meant she really was inside the books instead of outside them as she’d hoped. She had her father stop the car and told her parents the strange-looking structure across the street was a passageway to a very interesting shopping area.

Her mother kept anti-personnel spray in her purse, which she checked, and her father took a truncheon out of the glovebox. Nonetheless, they very sweetly humored her as she dragged them to what had to look like a shanty in a slum.

When “The Leaky Cauldron” finally appeared and they crossed the door, Hermione whispered fiercely to her parents. “No matter what you see or hear, say nothing, and do NOT look surprised.” 

Tom the barman was there, just as advertised. “Can you let us in?” Hermione asked him, bravely. “I need to get a wand today.” Tom looked at her suspiciously, but did as she asked. She first whispered to her parents to look at the wall for a dozen seconds, so they wouldn’t gasp in alarm. She pulled them through the suddenly opened back part, then explained that they were intruding in a fantasy world, and thus discretion was of the utmost importance. They would have to go to Gringotts first, then Flourish and Blotts and finally Ollivanders. She didn't give them any time to think, but forged ahead pulling on both of their arms.

Her parents were growing both frightened and impatient, so Hermione explained a little. “This is all connected to the curio shop. However it does it, it’s capable of playing games with time or worse.” 

“Young girls like you may take all this as a matter of course, Hermione, but this sort of thing doesn’t happen in the real world,” her mother said.

“There are more things in heaven and Earth, Mother,” was all Hermione replied.

She instructed them to be on their best behaviour in Gringotts. They very quickly exchanged half her birthday money for Galleons, which turned out to be garish and not all that attractive. Their politeness drew a little attention to them and their clothing from the bigots, Hermione noticed, but they left unmolested.

At Flourish and Blotts, Hermione asked for the “standard first-year books” as well as books on Wizarding Britain history and culture. The first-year books were surprisingly inexpensive, so she had plenty of money left even after buying five more books. Of course, not being charged anything at the curio shop had helped immensely. It was part of the reason she believed the dolls weren’t some sort of cruel jibe.

When they got to Ollivanders, Hermione had to warn them again. “He’s going to sneak up on us and startle us. Don’t fight it, don’t overreact.” And so it went.

After quite a few misses, she ended up with a vinewood wand, about eleven inches long, and with what the wandmaker said was a “dragon heart-string core.” Well. Hard luck on the dragon, then. But she didn’t wish to imitate the Hagrid oaf, so she decided to be philosophical: a dragon wouldn’t turn down a human heart-string. She had a strong suspicion it would turn out to be the same wand - or as near as didn’t matter - as the one in the book. Which was further evidence it was not a coincidental Hermione, but her that was having her future written in fantasy novels.

When they finally left Diagon Alley and were back at the car her father slumped in the seat and said, “I was sure I was having a heart attack.”

They didn’t say anything on their drive back home to prepare to go out to dinner. Hermione was on the edge of taking pity on her parents and suggesting staying home and eating takeaway when they saw someone waiting at their front door. Hermione heard her father groan, but she happened to be looking at her mother. Said parent looked back at her as if to say it was all Hermione’s fault.”I knew it. I should never have gotten rid of those books on the paranormal,” Mrs Granger sighed.

Waiting there was what they now knew to be a genuine witch, pointy hat and all. And she didn’t look happy.

Chapter Text

At the sight of what had to be Deputy Headmistress McGonagall on their very doorstep, Hermione felt extremely shaky, and even a bit nauseated. Which … gave her an idea.

I have nowadays got, she thought to herself,the nerve of a bank robber. Reflecting on what she’d done that day, she decided that wasn’t a gross exaggeration. But now to prove it.

She rapidly considered what they could do to get out of this without anyone at Hogwarts twigging to Hermione’s situation.

The dolls could stay in the boot. She gathered all her books and crammed them in her bookbag, then gently placed her wand in its side pocket,

She regarded her parents with the same seriousness she had at Gringotts and Olllivanders. “It’s really important they not know about the curio shop, nor should they know we already acquainted ourselves with the magical world. Please, trust me on this.”

Her parents nodded - certainly, they’d seen some rather frightening things that day, and clearly, Hermione knew what was going on better than they did. “But you will explain everything to us,” Mr Granger stated.

“Fine, fine,” said Hermione, waving that away. “Now, I need you to cover for me while I hide anything suspicious. Say I ate something that disagreed with me. Ask who she is. Stall, if need be. I only really need a few minutes.”

With that, all three left the car. Just as Hermione got out, she added, “and be sure to put some tea on.”

Professor McGonagall, who’d been waiting there for almost two hours (this was the last on her list, and she hated leaving a job undone), turned to face the Grangers. She saw Hermione run towards her with her hand over her mouth. Before she could blink, she felt the girl sweep past her. A few moments later, she heard a door slam behind her.

“Were you looking for someone?” Mr Granger inquired, walking towards the door.

“You are the parents of one … Hermione Granger, correct?” the woman responded, a bit shortly.

“May we inquire who is asking?” Mrs Granger riposted.

“I represent an institution that wishes to contact you and your daughter about things that must not be discussed on a doorstep,” was the vague reply.

“Look,” began Mr Granger, “If you’re with one of the paranormal groups, that was all years ago, and no one made head nor tails of it, really.”

“Para … normal?” said McGonagall.

“Well,” said Mrs Granger, “in that outfit, you’re not from a school. Hallowe’en’s not for a couple of months, after all.”

The woman was visibly controlling her temper, and Mr Granger figured they’d given Hermione enough time, so he unlocked the door and invited her in. Mrs Granger got her seated on the sofa in the sitting room while Mr Granger put the kettle on and filled the pot with very fresh Darjeeling leaves.

Meanwhile, Hermione had been dashing about as if she was still doing her XBX exercises. She had briefly discussed with Genius what to do in a situation like this, which is why she wanted to make sure there was tea downstairs.

First, she bundled the dolls and placed them and her bookbag in the hamper in her wardrobe, under the clothes to be washed. She deliberately left the tea things out. Her notes were pushed to the very back of her desk drawer, and the seven books were packed where the dolls and tea set came from.

She heard her parents and McGonagall moving to the sitting room. “No, no!” she heard McGonagall saying, “That was accidental magic. A real poltergeist is never as nice as all that.” Hermione had gone across the hall to the loo. She had a tinkle and gargled with mouthwash. She’d perspired a bit hiding things in her room, and she left herself sweaty and her hair dishevelled.

As Hermione descended the stairs, she saw McGonagall pointing her wand at an end table. She made a spiky circle around the table, and said, “Mensam mutatio ericius!” whereupon it turned into a hedgehog and slipped under the sofa.

Her parents expressed proper astonishment, but Hermione hurried into the sitting room, and they all heard her call out, “Again, please?”

The woman was, of course, put off by her manner, but she humoured Hermione. She noted with both approval and dismay the fierce attention the girl paid to every motion and syllable she used.

“Hermione! Manners!” Mrs Granger got out.

Hermione looked up and shook her head. “Oh, yes, and where are mine, indeed?  Hello, there, I am Hermione Granger, I’m eleven today and am a sixth year at Jollidodue primary school. Whom do we have the honour of addressing?”

Professor McGonagall introduced herself again. She had a moment to look over the girl - indeed, it seemed she had been ill, so she wouldn’t hold that against her. She was, however, a bit overwhelming.

“And can you reverse it as easily?” Hermione interrogated her. “Technically, more easily,” was the reluctant reply, as McGonagall pointed at first one, then the other, made a small circle and a line straight across and recited “In formam rediit” twice. But the girl’s next question almost made her rise up in shock. “Could I borrow your wand? I think I could do that.”

Remembering the girl was uneducated in even the basics of the wizarding world, she denied her request and told her that lending wands was simply not done, any more than lending toothbrushes in the Muggle world. Then she had to explain the term and why it was not derogatory, like “Mug,” for instance.

Hermione nodded almost cheerfully. Then she shocked them all and pointed her finger at a now, again, end table and mimicked McGonagall’s wand movements and intonation perfectly. The end table even transformed … sort of. It looked as if the half-table, half-hog was in pain, so Hermione begged McGonagall to reverse it.

While doing so, McGonagall reflected it wasn’t a bad thing, having a new student experience firsthand how dangerous and unpredictable Transfiguration could be. But what an amazing talent! It was as if all the qualities of Lily Evans in her prime had been gifted the girl, then amplified.

Finally, she’d gotten the Grangers back on track, given Hermione her letter, and briefly discussed Hogwarts. Hermione was firmly in school mode, and she amused the professor by raising her hand. In the spirit of the gesture, the woman said, “Yes, Miss Granger?” 

“Umm … so.”They’d have to break her of that sloppy habit of speaking. “So, my poltergeist was actually accidental magic?” McGonagall nodded. “And, well, what was it? Charms or Transfiguration?” 

“According to what your parents report, I would say it was a mixture of both.”

“Is there a name for combining Charms and Transfiguration?”

“No,” responded McGonagall, continuing, “though, technically, if it’s Arithmantically balanced and the proper Runes inscribed, Charms and Transfiguration are combined when Enchanting is taking place.”

“Right. And Enchanting just means permanent, magical change?”

“Not how we’d put it. And not quite accurate. But it will do.”

“So has there been much accidental Enchanting, then?” Hermione asked, eagerly.

“In my years of experience? I would say none at all. Why do you ask, dear?”

“Can we show you something before you go, then?” With that, Hermione led them over to the teapot, which still had plenty in it. She then asked the professor to come up to her room.

“This is where I had tea with my dolls,” Hermione said. Her mother almost said something at the word ‘dolls,’ but Hermione made a quick, sharp negative motion with her head. “The thing I want to show you is my cup. It fills with tea.”

“It what?” exclaimed McGonagall.

“Watch, please.” With that, Hermione sat down and the cup visibly filled with tea. Hermione held it up to the professor, who could tell it was the same tea she’d just been drinking downstairs. “It always comes from the pot downstairs. If there’s no tea there, there’s none here.”

“Well, of course not, that’s a Principal Exception to Gamp’s Law of Elemental Transfiguration. But do you mean to say you think this cup is …. Enchanted?”

“I do, now,” said Hermione solemnly, nodding her head. “Before, my parents thought it was a remnant of the poltergeist doing it, but you say they don’t help out like that.”

McGonagall considered that. “Even if it is enchanted, the likeliest explanation is that a magical teacup was accidentally sold to a Muggle second-hand shop.” 

“But we bought it for her when she was much smaller,” Mr Granger objected. “From a proper toy shop and all. It wasn’t like this even when the toys and the books were flying around. It was later that the cup started filling up. And just hers - like it could tell the dolls didn’t need any.”

Mrs Granger nodded at everything her husband said. “Hermione was being bullied, and in despair at ever having any friends. She even said she wanted to stay home with her dolls. That’s when it started.”

McGonagall was sure an explanation other than accidental enchantment would present itself, eventually. Still, she was more than a bit unnerved. She hastily moved to wrap things up. The Grangers surprised her when they said they didn’t need accompaniment to Diagon Alley, “just instructions.”

“After all,” said Mr Granger, “we’ve got what, almost a year to handle this? I’m not complaining, it was the same way at her regular school. It’s hard luck on a child with a September birthday. Fortunately, we decided to accept one of the offers she got to advance two grades.” 

The Grangers asked if that happened at Hogwarts, and McGonagall said it didn’t, to her knowledge. Hermione thanked Professor McGonagall sincerely before she left. As an aside, she asked what wizardry was like. She was visibly shocked when the professor told her that, except for a few rituals, wizardry and witchcraft were the exact same thing, arbitrarily divided by gender.

Afterwards, Mrs Granger asked “The dolls?” to which Hermione nodded and answered, “Yes, your eyes were fine, they did move around. It’s just like the teacup, but it would bother the British magicians more than that would. Now they can’t say I didn’t tell them I can do Enchanting.”

“Hermione … did someone at that shop …warn you in some way about that Hogwarts place? Is that why you’re so cagey and so determined to misdirect them?”  Mr Granger asked her.

“In a word … yes, Dad,” Hermione said. She didn’t reveal the full truth, but told them the “fantasy series” was a thinly veiled guide to the actual world of wizards and witches. In fact, she told them, they were the main books she would have to study immediately, because her involvement in that world was about to escalate, not waiting for the next school year to start.

The three exhausted Grangers looked at each other. “It’s a good thing I cancelled our reservations when I saw we had a witch on our doorstep,” Mr Granger said.  They looked at each other and said “Takeaway” simultaneously.

They spent the next few hours eating and watching Hermione open her remaining presents.

Chapter Text

Hermione returned to school Thursday, brimming with confidence. Perhaps for that reason, perhaps not, she got an additional five classmates, all girls, who asked her about her birthday and gave her belated well-wishes. Now that she was an official - what? Magical Girl? Witch? Heroine? She realized she needed to be even more organized and effective than she’d been planning to be.

She asked about all assignments carefully, made full use of the playtime breaks, and figured out how to cut corners and save time while keeping her marks good.

On the advice of a book she found in the library, she began writing her assignments freeform for a while - no more than fifteen minutes at a time. She would plan from the start how many pages her assignments would be and work towards filling that with meaningful content. Even though she spent fifteen minutes or more editing each assignment, the total time it took went down from her efforts before the change, and they were vastly improved.

She was already a solid music student, and when she had art classes she’d supplemented the teacher’s instructions with books that took her through the basics. She discovered that moving her whole body when drawing, and not using a pen-holding grip on her pencil or charcoal, gave her a very pleasant line.

In maths, she stopped fretting and simply did lots and lots of extra problems, swiftly. If they were doing the even-numbered exercises, she did the odd, and vice versa. She dashed through the tests extremely fast and did all the extra credit problems. Then she’d go over the test again with a calm mind, answering any she’d skipped and correcting any mistakes.

All of this was how she planned to study going forward, but starting it in primary had amazing results. She realised that, had she not had so little confidence, she might have been one of those prodigies who end up in college before they are into their teens. But I am about to go to magic school, so there! She thought, consoling herself with that fact.

She still had very little wind, compared to the more athletic students, but she dived into football during the playtime break nonetheless. She played cheerfully, not minding being roughed up or winded.

Unfortunately, that day marked the start of the doll experiment. Not a half-hour after play break, Hermione became visibly faint in her last class of the day. She brushed it off, and told the teacher and the school nurse it was a common thing for her, but she’d been hiding it before now. She was anaemic, she told them, but also needed to build up her stamina. So she was exercising in the mornings and during play breaks.

The nurse was concerned, and told Hermione she needed a doctor’s slip to continue playing pick-up football with the other children. Like all setbacks since the start of the year, Hermione determined she’d find a way to turn that to her advantage. She told the nurse and teacher she wasn’t very good at football, anyway, so she’d practice dribbling the ball a few hours a day until she got the slip, so she could enjoy it more when she returned. That did not at all match the character of the Hermione Granger they were familiar with, but they found her pluck very endearing, and wished her well. Meanwhile, she decided to switch her XBX walks out for longer runs every morning.

All of this should have given Hermione plenty of free time at school, but it didn’t, really. First of all, she was being more social with the children in her year. Her posture was better, she wasn’t rounding her shoulders with excessive books, and she dressed more smartly, and kept her hair in a neater ponytail. There were, after all, a couple of Jamaican girls at the school whose hair was as naturally bushy as hers, and their pony-tails poofed out like hers; no one gave them any grief, so Hermione didn’t anticipate any, and consequently, she didn’t get any.

Everyone knew Hermione had advanced a grade. Most of the students in her year weren’t sure if she was ten or eleven, so she wasn’t teased about boys, a great relief. She was gradually admitting that she wanted to meet Harry Potter before she started even thinking about “ordinary” boys.

At any rate, she no longer regarded talking with others during lunch as wasted time. A worse problem was that she wanted to pay attention in class enough to keep her marks up, yet work on her many projects at the same time. However, when she tried that, she was caught out several times not paying attention when she needed to answer a question. She took to using loose-leaf paper to take her class notes, resting on the left side of the notebook she made her lists and plans in. She would write for a minute, then take class notes for a minute, and so on.

She was worried her reputation would change; actually, the teachers assumed she was growing up, and attributed her spaciness and newfound interest in sport to hormones and puberty. Switching her attention back and forth was quite difficult, and she fretted about possibly looking to purchase some sort of vibrating alarm she could set.

She headed straight home to rest, but promised herself she’d check on the shop at least once a week. Her father had put the box with the three dolls from the shop on her bed, and she decided it was time to unpack them. Genius, as usual, was the note-taker, and today Shy had turned the pages. Plain and Clumsy woke from their nap, and all four dolls eyed the new arrivals with curiosity. Shy, the most sensitive, said there was something hidden on the box lid. She guided Hermione in cutting a section of the lid out, and the girl put the rectangle of pasteboard in her book bag. Genius told her she should bring it out on her next trip to Diagon Alley and say “Aparecium” while waving her wand from right to left, then left to right in a wavy motion. Hermione believed it was impossible to trace magic in such a thick cluster of wizards and witches.

The straitjacket on the doll she named “Looney” seemed somehow cruel to Hermione, When she took it off, she was surprised to see she was holding a small crystal ball in her hands. It was filled with what looked like thin white smoke or vapour. She placed it carefully on the nearest bookshelf. The round ball reminded her of her new physical project. “Don’t let me forget, girls, I have to ask Dad for his old football so I can practice with it before dinner,” she said. And at that exact moment, the smoke in the ball turned thick and red. That’s curious, she thought.

Well, no time like the present, she decided. She went downstairs, then came up with her father to hunt through her parents’ closet for his old football. She brought it to her room, and happened to notice that the smoke in the crystal ball had gone clear again. “Did any of you notice when this thing went clear?” she asked. Genius, of course, had actually been studying it., “About the time you asked your father for the ball, I think,” was her distracted reply.

Hermione was excited. This was quite possibly the silent alarm she’d been needing. To test it, she put the ball where she could see it out of the corner of her eye. She opened the first book to where she’d left off in it, and said, aloud, “Remind me in thirty seconds to stop reading and look up.”

Sure enough, a half-minute later the ball went red. When she looked up, it went clear. It was quite promising, but true to her commitment, Hermione put it back on the shelf and changed into joggers and a pullover. Because there was no traffic where they lived, she decided she’d dribble the ball the entire way on her mile walk. She was ruthless with herself, correcting every mistake, yet forcing herself to look away from the ball and her feet to train herself to sense where it was. It took her half an hour to cover the mile this way, but that took her almost into dinner. She wiped herself off with soap and water before she changed back into her school clothes for dinner.

She told her parents over dinner that one of the dolls from the curio shop had been holding a reminding alarm in its hands. As they discussed it, they agreed the curio shop seemed to be not so much mocking Hermione as teasing and challenging her. Mrs Granger was a little put out by the fact that the doll Hermione nicknamed “Bucky” had vaguely Oriental features, an unpleasant reminder of American (and even British) illustrations of her grandparents’ era. Hermione decided that was simply one more dig at her sensibilities.

Genius was looking over all three dolls, and she was eager to learn what she’d found out. Hermione couldn’t shake the fear that if her parents learned she had a stable of magical servants created by her, they’d be a little afraid of her. She resolved to break it to them gradually, starting with admitting the dolls still moved on their own, and even did simple tasks.

After dinner, Genius told Hermione what she’d learned. The new dolls weren’t lively like her own were. They had magic inside, but no interest in serving Hermione, or even befriending her. They were content to lie in their box, doing nothing. When Hermione wondered aloud how she’d be able to figure out why the curio shop gave her these strange dolls, hers went away to confer in whispers.

“Somehow, Mistress,” Clumsy began, “You must read the message that was on the lid.”

“Which means,” Plain continued, “You will probably need to wait for the weekend so you won’t be found doing magic.”

It was annoying, but she was right. It really irked Hermione when she couldn’t make progress. Especially on solving a mystery.

But then Hermione decided to try another experiment. She put her wand away so she wouldn’t be touching it, and changed into her pyjamas.  She was afraid to make wand movements with her hand, or even pronounce the spell out loud. Aparecium, she thought, clutching the piece of pasteboard to her side. She began to worry she’d tear it, so she rested it over her heart and clenched her hands to her sides as she willed the message to reveal itself. Aparecium. Aparecium. Aparecium! She visualised waving a wand across the piece of lid.  Right to left. Back right with a wavy motion.  Aparecium. Aparecium. Aparecium!

Finally, the lid began to glow. Hermione was so exhausted she wasn’t sure she wasn’t asleep and dreaming already. As she slipped away, she thought she read:

“If you want someone to help YOU, you must first help THEM.”

Chapter Text

Hermione added the message she thought she’d read to her notebook the next morning. She felt a bit sluggish doing her fitness activities that morning - she had to rise ten minutes early to give herself time to push the football along. She was already a little better, and a little faster, but not so much she could obsess over it. Progress would be slow and steady. At any rate, she told the dolls they’d lay off note-taking until she returned from school.

The “Reminderball'' as she’d dubbed the golf-ball-sized crystal alarm thing, worked perfectly. It was a bit distracting at first, but heaps better than trying it on her own. She tried subvocalizing her reminder commands and was pleased when it worked immediately. Hermione was a somewhat strange girl, so no one commented on her colour-changing smoke-ball.

During break time, she discovered that she could not escape her new status as “delicate.” From what she remembered the nurse saying, and what the other girls said, she deduced that they assumed she’d always been delicate, being a bookworm instead of an active girl. And now she was anaemic due to her periods. Wonderful. She wondered if Harry Potter’s mother,  Lily, had had days like this. “Don’t worry, I’m just on my magic,” wouldn’t fly. She really would have to get her doctor to give her a slip, clearly.

Thinking of Harry, she’d added a few items to her list about him. She was nearly finished close-reading the first book.

Harry Potter and the first book. Questions.

If they go around talking about Muggles and platforms and so on - perhaps the death of Voldemort was an exception, but then explain the Weasleys - how can they justify not letting students with non-magical parents use magic at home? Pattern: we’re second-class citizens.

When did which part of the abuse start? Petunia hit at him with a skillet. He learned not to be within the range of Vernon’s hand. Dudley must have started Harry Hunting years before the Hogwarts train. Probably neglect and deprivation started when he was a toddler. Cruelty in making him slave, including very dangerous tasks, perhaps as early as three. The lack of nutrition may have damaged his health, his intelligence, and his magic. Permanently? Pattern: Harry was deliberately abused. Dumbledore had ten years to fix it, and chose not to. Perhaps he used some sort of curse to egg them on?

Did Vernon and Petunia prevent any investigation by themselves? It’s more likely Dumbledore did something. Mrs Figg seems to be a Dumbledore spy, keeping tabs on Harry but never helping. Surely the wizarding world has child protection of some sort, and Dumbledore clearly did his best to keep them from helping Harry. Pattern: Harry was deliberately abused.

Harry’s father was well-off. Harry lived in squalor and poverty. Where did their family money go, and what happened to their will and testaments? Pattern: Harry was deliberately disinherited and disenfranchised. More Dumbledore. Pattern: Dumbeldore is a child abuser. Harry is likely not the first victim, just the most unfortunate.

Re-reading the Draco Malfoy introduction, he’s a definite villain. He blatantly tells Harry everyone else is a second-class citizen. Pattern: the Malfoys are Voldemort villains the way the Weasleys are Dumbledore villains. Hogwarts will be a two-front war. Pattern: Harry won’t stick up for himself - or anyone else. In the second meeting, he should have said, “If you are going to insult me, my friends, and my mother, I am going to ask you to leave. I don’t need the son of a Death Eater telling me what to do. And if you’re going to threaten me, two can play at that game.” That would have spared him countless hours of aggravation. After that, it’s just “Leave us, Death-Eater spawn.” In other words, speak your mind!

Hagrid gives Harry’s key to the tellers - not to Harry. Tells him nothing whatsoever. Set up for the Weasleys, obviously. Dumbledore’s orders, obviously. Pattern: continued disenfranchisement of Harry. Objective: instead of turning Hagrid against his master, learn how to worm secrets out of him. Evidence is abundant that he cannot keep them.

Hermione is very crude and blunt on the train. Instead of, in essence, sneering at Ron’s non-spell, she should look expectantly, then when nothing happens, share a glance with Harry. Patterns: the twins aren’t healthy towards Ron. Ron is plain awful, but a bit pitiful. Objective: keep Harry away from Ron at all costs. At least until Harry can make real friends.

Neville is sort of pitiful, like Ron. I think Harry should adopt him. Pattern: Neville’s abuse included two attempted murders. Was Dumbledore involved somehow?

Is the “Nitwit, Oddment, Blubber, Tweak” or whatever just simple sadism? The painful death thingy clearly is. Pattern: Dumbledore is a child abuser and enjoys it.

Snape will need his own section. As bad as Dumbledore. Probably playing for both sides, but he seems to be a straight-up Death Eater, as Draco’s father almost certainly is. I assume the Death Eaters are stand-ins for the death squads in banana republics - which strongly resemble Wizarding Britain. They must have connections to the government, or it’s ruling junta, anyway. Patterns: Dumbledore supports blatant child abuse (of course!). Non-junta children are second-class, and have no rights. It’s chilling to think of them not being far away in Brazil or Honduras, but right here where I live - and with super-powers.

The Dolls

How could I help dolls that lie in a box all day? Maybe that’s silly. I am too old to play with dolls, perhaps, but I certainly remember how. I could brush out Bushy’s hair and give her a ponytail. As for Bucky, I doubt filing her teeth would be looked on as “helpful.” And God only knows what I could do for Looney. Time to reignite my imagination. It would be convenient in more ways than one if there’s a tooth shrinking spell. Of course, you wouldn’t want it shrinking uniformly, or it’d come out.

Plan: fix Bushy’s hair (somewhat). Brush Bucky’s teeth then try to shrink them (lengthwise only) find a tooth-lengthening spell in case I mess up.

Loony: Hold her?

Hermione looked over her notes. In all the chaos she’d read about, and assuming the Harry Potter boy was even real, given her determination to chart her own course, she was not guaranteed a romantic “ending” with him. But after all, did she even really want to end up with him?

She nibbled the end of her pen and thought hard.

He probably saved her from Ron and perhaps Dumbledore, although she might now end up being the one that saved him. Still, he seemed like a saving type. And she would probably be plunged into his life over her ears. A “best friend that some thought would become more” had a lot more leverage to help than an aloof acquaintance. The fact that he was famous might lead to stiff competition, but it didn’t seem to play any role whatsoever in the first part of the book where he came out of seclusion. And if she set getting him as a goal, she could; that was just how she was.

So under Harry Potter First Book Questions, she added:

How did she get him, in the first place?

And …

How will I?

Chapter Text

"Yes," said Amandine Malabul, who taught history at a very nice state school in London, speaking for herself and her life-long friend Pamela Ducharme, who taught English at the same school: "We certainly approve promoting the poor girl ahead a year. As for the consequences, she'll be no worse off. Really, she should have been promoted ahead twice by now, or taken a few days early for Reception. She won't lose any friends, for the simple reason that she has none."

Getting no response to that, she explained, "Well, she is a rather clumsy, plain, shy girl. But plenty of those find friends somehow, and very close friendships they are." Saying that, she smiled at Ms Ducharme. "But she is also a genius, and that is one thing schoolchildren cannot abide."

« mais alors, pourquoi Esmeralda était-il populaire? » asked Ms Ducharme. 

If you are wondering why the headmistress did not raise an eyebrow over their English instructor preferring French, it was because Pamela Ducharme had an enormous vocabulary, even in English, including all the words favoured on SATs and GCSEs; and after mastering French grammar, she considered the English equivalent to be child's play, and let the students know it. But that is another story for another time.

"Well," answered Ms Malbul, "It was a very private academy, and we both know Esmeralda Pâtafiel is a saint, which I suspect Ms Granger can't manage to pull off."

"It is one of our friends from L'Académie; she is very bright," explained Ms Ducharme. To which Ms Malabul responded, "And that's you saying that, Pamela."

"Oh, here we go again," Ms Ducharme said, "Yes, I did well, but you talk like you were the worst girl in the whole school."

"Not far from it," said Ms Malabul. "But we both eventually bloomed, and so will she. Keeping her with what she must regard as kiddies and dummies won't help there."

The frank talk was meant for little Hermione's benefit, and would be. However, Hermione was both curious, and a little sneaky. The seven-year-old had gotten a hunch her fate was being discussed when her parents came to school, and she'd managed to find a nook by the office which was in shadow, where she could eavesdrop.

Where older ears might focus on the good news that she wasn't to be bored in classes any longer, Hermione heard her most-loved teachers admit that she had no friends - none at all. And that she was clumsy and plain and shy, and even what would otherwise be a compliment was turned to something no one could abide.

Hermione went home in tears, and wouldn't tell her mother why.

She took out her four favourite dolls and arranged them on their chairs by the tea-table. Like some other girls, Hermione liked making clothes, and had her own sewing machine. She had dressed one doll in a maid’s outfit, one in a scientist’s lab coat, and one, who always seemed somehow aristocratic, got her most ambitious princess’s dress. Snuggled in next to her was a doll dressed in a riding outfit that Hemione had bought her, since something that demanding was a bit beyond her skills. Their unblinking eyes seemed to stare back at her as she regarded them.

Was school worth it, or was anything, if your only friends were going to be dolls?

She really didn’t deserve this. She was a very, very good girl. She always obeyed the rules. She never picked on anyone. She shared fairly and took turns. Neither parents nor teachers practically ever had to discipline her. It was massively, monumentally unfair.

The little girl’s sadness and despair began to turn to rage. She was tempted to kick over the table and start smashing her nice things all over her tidy little room. She restrained herself with great effort.

If she wanted to be promoted, after all, throwing a tantrum was perhaps not the best way to go forward , she imagined the regally-dressed doll saying. But she couldn’t imagine her correcting the part where she was plain.

There’s nothing wrong with being smart, that’s the whole point of school! the doll in the lab coat seemed to be saying, with her wide staring eyes magnified a little by her spectacles. 

The way she’s treated, who wouldn’t be shy, she felt the maid was thinking.

And, Clumsy? Perhaps so, but who’s ever given her a chance to learn not to be? would have added the horsewoman.

Hermione looked over the dolls she’d named after girls who wouldn’t associate with her; Sarah, and Laura, and (after twin sisters who’d been particularly beastly to her) Emma and Gemma looked back at her. She took out her fairy wand. If she was going to play with her dolls, then being magical might calm her down even more; she wasn’t quite sure why, but it often helped.

“You’ve no choice now, being friends,” She declared. “The Mighty Sorceress Hermione honours you, and you will obey!” Well. At seven, that seemed rather pathetic. If the eight-year-olds learned how she was talking to their namesakes, it would be so embarrassing she’d have to leave England, never mind school. Despite herself, she willed it to work, like a sort of voodoo. When she opened her eyes, she was furious still.

Her parents felt a rumbling in the house. At first, they were only moderately alarmed. There had been, after all, a fairly large earthquake when they had gone to stay in Oban only the year before, and this might be no worse. Then they could hear their daughter screaming something upstairs.

Hermione pointed her wand at the dolls in turn. The table had already started moving as the floor shook.

“I'M NOT PLAIN! YOU’RE PLAIN!!”

the walls shook a bit. The face of the doll in question seemed somehow to grow older. Strained. You couldn’t see her as Sarah anymore. Perhaps Sarah’s governess.

“I'M NOT CLUMSY! YOU’RE CLUMSY!!”

the windows rattled in their frames. The horsewoman fell off her chair, but the others soon followed suit.

“I'M NOT SHY! YOU’RE SHY!!”

Things began to fall off the shelves. The maid’s eyes seemed to turn down a little.

“I'M NOT A G-G-GENIUS! YOU’RE THE GENIUS NOW, SEE HOW YOU LIKE IT!!”

Nothing changed about the doll being pointed at, but by that point, Hermione wasn’t paying any attention to anything but her anger.

By this point, her parents had realised it was exactly like before. They ran up the stairs and yanked open the door. Then they both hugged their daughter, and her poltergeist calmed down.

With all the chaos and anxiety, they missed Hemione’s tumbled dolls making small movements to watch them, then keeping still before they could be seen in motion. And they never noticed that the teacup in front of Hermione had filled with tepid tea, nor that it had then spilt half of it on the still-trembling little table.

When she was nine, Hermione was reading about the younger years of Galahad the Ancelot du Lac, in a book by the American J. Steinbeck.  Hermione was an avid fan of Arthurian literature. She knew he was normally referred to by his title of L’Ancelot to avoid confusing him with his son, also named Galahad, or with his friend Lord Galehaut. She was pleased to see the author giving him his correct names, but displeased at the memories reading the story conjured up.

She’d put the dolls all away, because the way they seemed to grow more lifelike over time scared her a bit. Occasionally, she unfolded the tea-table, sat on the floor in front of it, and put the special cup she’d always used in front of her. Sure enough, if there was still tea downstairs, some of it would fill the cup, you had to admit, magically.

Just a month ago, she’d shyly admitted to another girl that she believed in magic and ghosts, because she’d seen them. Being called “Loony” didn’t suit her, so she’d never make that mistake again. 

She arrived at a point in the book where several witches had imprisoned Lancelot, entirely out of spite. Their unfriendliness for absolutely no reason resonated with Hermione quite strongly.

  When she had gone and the darkness closed down, the knight clawed in his bowl and gnawed his supper from the bones while he thought about the strange and frightening creatures who had made him prisoner.

  He had two reasons for fear. In his long and relentless struggle with himself and with the world to become the perfect knight, few women had crossed his attention. Thus, in his ignorance he found a fear of unknown things. And second, he was a straightforward, simple man; the sword, not the mind, was the tool of his greatness. The purposes and means of necromancy, demons, and secrets he found foreign and fearful. His few failures and fewer defeats had been accomplished through enchantment and now he was taken prisoner by that same black and midnight art.

We are not all like that, Hermione thought. But it certainly made her stop and consider that being a magical girl - or, to put it crudely, a witch - had both good and bad consequences.

  So even now when he was near to panic, his second mind probed his opponents, for although they were ladies and queens, they were also his enemies, and enemies must have purpose and means and direction.

As a good little girl, Hermione didn’t approve of thinking like that about her fellow students, but it felt oddly appealing.

  They could not hate him, he thought, for he had not injured them. 

Hah! thought Hermione.

Therefore, revenge was not their end. Robbing was out of the question, for they were bloated with possessions and he had nothing but his armor and his fame. 

  What, then, could be their purpose? They must want something of him, something perhaps he did not know he had, a service, a secret. It was beyond him and he gave it up, but his fighting mind out of habit went on with its analysis.

  If a man flinched under a certain stroke, or cut short on the near side, there was usually a reason--an old wound, or even an old sorrow. A man took the profession of arms for clear and definable reasons, but why did man or woman study the despicable arts of necromancy?

Necromancy was … raising the dead, right? Hermione was pretty sure this was a matter of superstitious religious folk hating magic. Then again, the author admitted Lancelot feared the unknown. As long as you admitted it honestly ...

Lancelot was lost again, and he reined and spurred his mind to a new course when a picture came to him, but a living picture in the round and clear and brilliant as cathedral glass. He saw a young, determined Lancelot, only then called Galahad, go sprawling to the hoof-mauled tourney ground under the blunt lance of a fourteen-year-old. Again Galahad tried, and again flew through the air. His short chin set and his lips were blue with determination. And the third time the blunt lance tore him from his saddle, and when he struck the earth a scream of pain went up his spine. 

The tough chevroned dwarf, wide as a barrel, carried the boy to his mother, bubbling with pain. "The other boy was too big, my lady," the squire explained. "But he's outclassed his age and there's no holding Galahad here."

“But she’s outclassed her age, and there’s no holding Hermione here,” she imagined a teacher saying. And the feeling of being up against impossible odds was familiar.

There was holding him easily for a long time, for he couldn't move. They put bags of sand against his back to keep him still. And as he lay wedged while his wrenched spine mended, his opponent grew treetop tall in the boy's mind. Waking and asleep, the blunt spear wiped him from his horse until he found a poultice for his pride. 

Hermione was no longer just enjoying the story.

Under his left arm there was a tiny knob so small that only he knew it was there. Three turns to the right and half a turn back with the fingers of his left hand, and in mid-course he grew to a black cloud and overwhelmed the fourteen-year-old. But the secret knob could do more than that. Two turns right and two left, and he could fly and hover and dart. Sometimes in the joust he left his horse and flew ahead and struck the giant boy down--and last--a straight push in and he became invisible. He would wait anxiously to be alone in his sandbags to bring out his dream. It was odd that he had forgotten all about it when his real ability began to grow. And suddenly Lancelot, in the darkness of his prison, knew about magic and necromancy and those who practiced it. "So that's it," he thought. "Poor things--poor unhappy things."

Well, thought Hermione, so much for the Mighty Sorceress Hermione, may she rest in peace.

For old times sake, at that thought, she brought out her old dolls and her old tea set, and she left them out, though in a corner of her room. She left them there, and neither Hermione nor her parents ever mentioned the tea that sometimes disappeared when everyone was sure it had been filled all the way up and Hermione was sitting at the table upstairs, so couldn’t have taken it.

And she didn’t pack them away again until her sixth year, when she decided to reinvent herself.

[AN: the long passages in boldface are from the Lancelot chapter of John Steinbeck’s 1959 The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights . These will be the only excerpts. However,  they will be referred to in future chapters, but regarding Harry instead of Hermione.  I may as well mention that Hemione’s favorite teachers are borrowed from Amandine Malabul, sorcière maladroite by Jill Murphy. The Worst Witch series, books and shows and films, is very popular in France. I believe I am putting a spotlight on most of my other references - Caribou]

Chapter Text

Hermione Granger, 11, swooped down towards the football-sized object at blinding speed, clutching the broom she was riding firmly between her legs. Seeing an obstacle, she shifted suddenly, forcing her broom around it. Then another. Then she snagged the ball out of the air. Her hands were a bit small for, essentially, football goalkeeping, but she managed. At the next opportunity, she swooped right, then stayed her course. Finally, she swooped left, then left again. As she passed near the hoops, she feinted to the left of the keeper, then threw right. It bounced its way through, and Hermione continued left until she could fly back up-field.

It was a heady feeling that made Hermione smile without worrying about her teeth as she slowly flew back. She had done it - scored a goal as a Chaser.

Of course, she hadn't been dodging two ten-stone black iron cannonballs going 60 miles an hour. Her broom hadn't had more than a yard's leeway on either side. She was wearing a crash helmet and knee and arm padding, instead of whatever it was Harry Potter would wear. Her obstacles were helium balloons tied to anchors on the ground, not other fliers. The opposing goalkeeper was a straw dummy. Her manoeuvres were limited to straight-ahead fast, or to the left or right at a couple of junctures that would curve you to a right angle only after several seconds of flight. The broom was only partially supporting her, the two harnesses hooked to the cables above did most of that, the broom and the two cables below her were for steering. The weather in September at this off-season ski line was much better than in central Scotland. But she was Hermione the bookworm, not some young champion athlete; as a heroine, at best she might be able to pass for Patty Lucas (reading Patty's World when it was revived in Girl was a bonding experience for her and her normally too-busy mother).

Hermione's uncle, who owned the ski resort and did ropes and zip-lift courses in the off-season there, had felt a little sorry for his niece. He also believed the girl to be unhealthily allergic to fresh air and exercise. He didn't have room for the sport she'd envisioned and rattled off to him, and even if he had, it would be an insurance nightmare, but he was willing to test the concept since he was an expert on ropes safety.

The worst part, the junctures where you could throw yourself to one side or the other and the wheel would latch on to one of the three cable sets that overlapped there, was ingenious. He'd tested it himself, and while it was a bit of a jerk, he never failed to stay on course, shift left, or shift right. That said, when he deliberately half slipped - which took two dozen tries - all that had happened was the cable shoes cinching, and him coming to a halt abruptly, but not with dangerous g-force or torque. He'd been worried it would be a whiplash factory, but it was very mild. Using your hips and shoulders and the four cables, shifting the lower ones with the broom, worked far better than he'd envisioned for moving almost a yard to the left or right. If she was entirely sane, she could be his ropes instructor in a few years.

Now, that was not to say the girl wasn't somewhat mad. He was delighted with her new sportiness - apparently, she needed medical permission to play football with the girls at playtime; what was the world coming to? But that "sport" she'd dreamt up was obviously a non-sporty girl making it up as she went along. Ten points a goal - well, that was bad - why not one? Then the 15-point, sorry, the 150-point spectacle of a small ball being remotely controlled as it flew or swung across rapidly. If it was caught by a player whose only job was to cool his heels for perhaps an hour (she decided it would be slower than cricket), the game ended. If not, not. It would make anyone yearn for the longest cricket test of their life in comparison.

And of course the broom. She assured her uncle that boys would love to fly on a witch's broom, too. Of course they would. And adopt cats as familiars, wear pointy hats and long dresses, and brew love potions. All the things boys love. When she mentioned shooting iron cannonballs at the players, he stopped her and they went out to look over the site. Clearly, there wouldn't be enough room, nor enough cable, to have two goal areas on the downslope side that you struggled to shift the football to. Which was fine, since any sort of interaction on this crazy field would probably leave everyone involved at the A&E, if they were lucky. At first, Hermione looked crestfallen.

Then she seemed to determine to make the best of it, and she had. A week of rigorous practice after school, and she was quite the accomplished flier. He'd promised that if she stuck to it, he'd film her, using the silvery screen he used to project movies on the hillside as a backdrop. And so he had. He'd allowed her to put a black robe on, loose enough to fit over her arm padding, and the cables and her silvery crash helmet disappeared against the background.

The crew that developed the film he shot during ski season owed him a favour, and they merged the grey-screened footage with a background of a nearby meadow with a woods behind it. It truly was impressive. And of course, the whole thing was the best birthday present ever. Her uncle had no children of his own, he doted on Hermione and was overjoyed at her stated decision to take charge of her life.

When Hermione brought the VCR tape home, her parents were floored. There was their daughter, flying a broom and playing some obviously witchy sport. They knew the significance of the footage, to a degree; others would put it down to her uncle being mechanically brilliant, and Hermione being a genius girl with an overactive imagination. Her father told her if the whole magical world thing turned out to be drastically inferior to what she anticipated, she could teach rope line courses at her uncle's resort for a summer job, and perhaps become a stunt-woman one day.

The session that led to Hermione's big moment today was the last time her uncle could supervise her this year.  She'd told him, cheerfully, that she was way behind on her reading anyway. When he groaned, she promised she'd persist in her daily football practice and exercise regimen. She'd been to her doctor, who'd cheerfully given her a medical permission slip. She usually kept the goal in the impromptu games over break time, but was willing to run around anywhere she was needed. The constant dribbling practice had left her as an above-average player, despite having below-average coordination and only middling wind. It was a testament to her newfound determination.

As more people saw her as normal and sociable, the other students in her year became friendlier. Fortunately, everyone could see how hard she worked at school and how busy she was, so no one asked her to do their homework. Anyone who wished to copy her notes she let do so, if she wasn't using them. Interestingly, a friend of the girl who'd called her "Loony" confessed to her one day that she, too, believed in ghosts and supernatural events. Hermione told her about her childhood poltergeist phenomena but spared her any further details

.

Hermione started going to sleep earlier, exhausted by her routine. She had one or two dolls read and take notes while she slept. It meant she wasn't as refreshed in the morning, but she felt doing things this way strengthened her magical power. Her list-making tapered off so she could be more attentive in classes. Coupled with her newfound sportiness, her school decided whatever puberty-related health issues had been troubling her were being taken care of.

She tried her program with the new dolls. She indeed brushed out Bushy's hair and collected it in a ponytail. She brushed Bucky's teeth and, after learning the Dens minui transfiguration spell, she subvocalized, visualised and willed it every night. After a few days, she believed it had progressed. But it was not by much, and in case it somehow took off and the teeth became too small, she learned the Dens augeo spell, just to be safe. As for Loony? At first, holding her made Hermione feel self-conscious. But she soon got over that, and had to admit she found it comforting.

Her dolls assured her that none of this was wasted effort. Plain suggested she ask about something magical for hair called Sleekeazy's Hair Potion and Scalp Treatment, which was apparently invented by Harry Potter's grandfather, even though his hair remained worse than hers. That didn't sound promising, but Hermione said she'd look for it the next time she went to Diagon Alley. Even saying those words made her shiver. The book world was infiltrating her world like a cloud of thin, white smoke. 

When Hermione said once, "If only they could talk," Plain replied, asking her how she was so certain they couldn't. As her magic strengthened, as her stamina increased, Hermione's dolls became more and more true personalities. It was unnerving and comforting at the same time. She supposed they'd been absorbing her magic for a couple of years by now. That might explain why they were so unusual.

Hermione had told them to follow leads, and look for what was important. Now, a couple of weeks after her birthday, they had highlighted a path for her to follow; she should continue close reading of the books in order, but before that, she should do a quick read-through of the tenth, 34th and 35th chapters of the fifth book. 

She needed to learn about Sirius Black. She didn't know why Genius saying that made her feel a chill, but it did, remembering she'd mused that if Black was ever going to show up, he was overdue by the fifth book. She needed to know about the Ministry Six, two of whom would be her and Harry Potter. She also needed to skim ahead to the word "thestral" in the final chapter. Reclaiming her life, helping Harry Potter, preparing to survive in the backward society of Wizarding Britain, all were important.

But first, she must save Luna Lovegood.

Chapter Text

Hermione didn't have the courage to add her name. Not yet.

Dear Harry Potter

Someone knows what you're going through. Someone cares. You cannot let on that you got this. Hide it where you hide things. I will help as much as I can, but it won't be much right now.

What you're keeping a secret is that you aren't a freak. Your parents weren't layabouts. They didn't drink. Your aunt Petunia was jealous of the both of them. The person that left you there was not a nice man. He didn't like Petunia, he didn't like Vernon, he didn't like Dudley, and he didn't like you.

The strange things that happened like your hair growing back overnight. Like finding yourself on the school roof. Like turning a teacher's hair blue. Like making the glass in the snake cage disappear. If that hasn't happened yet, don't worry when it does.

It's all connected, Harry. Connected to you. Your parents, James and Lily Potter were HEROES. A car smash wouldn't have what it takes to kill them. The person who killed them was named Voldemort. And he died in the process. His followers want to hurt you because you were there when he died. And because there's a prophecy. Someone who sees the future saw his ghost getting a human body again, and you fighting him. You have to keep all this secret. I won't even give you the name of the bad man who left you where you are now. If you are angry at him, if you don't like him, he'll just read your mind and find everything out.

When you meet people your uncle Vernon calls "freaks," make sure you don't have any hostile, suspicious thoughts. Think of something else. Right now, you need to hide what you have, and what you are. I'm sorry it's that way, but it is.

Harry, you're a wizard.

Sincerely,

A Friend.

Chapter Text

Everything centred on Ottery-St-Catchpole, as best she could determine. The Weasleys and Lovegoods both were all over Harry's life. You didn't see it with Luna and her father until you looked closely. What did the Weasleys know about the Deathly Hallows? Not a thing. Hermione had been told by Genius they were an urgent study, and that only Xenophilius knew about them. 

What could the Weasleys do to counteract the Daily Prophet - the mouthpiece of the Death Eater faction in the Ministry? Nothing. Arthur would just lose his job, and the Umbridges and McNairs would redouble their efforts. Rita Skeeter would be given more money and an even freer hand to destroy not only Harry, but the Weasley family alongside them.

As for the Burrow, it held the key to Sirius Black's freedom. She congratulated herself on guessing he was the key to helping Harry. Then again, she blushed. His "obviously heroic name," after all, was just his name. If you're going to do this like a silly girl, she thought, you may as well give up now.

Her parents felt like the entire Granger family had crossed the Rubicon already. When she asked them to drive to Devon over a weekend, they went along. They gave themselves plenty of time, and it was a pleasant trip. Sure enough, when they got to a crossroad with a sign pointing to Ottery-St-Catchpole, her parents could not see it.

On a whim, she asked her father to stop and go back. When he arrived at the crossroads, she had him stop. She touched his arm and pointed at the sign. He looked over it and then snapped back to stare at the intersection. "Well, I'll be," he said.

It read "Ottery St Catchpole - 5 Leagues."

"Leagues!" said Hermione out loud. "Good Lord. I wonder how many furlongs that is."

At that, the sign changed to read "Ottery St Catchpole - 120 Furlongs."

Hermione was in no mood to actually meet (in her head, confront) anyone from the books there. Because both the Lovegoods and Weasleys were purebloods, and because the sign was invisible to Muggles, she feared the worst. The town, however, had clearly had Muggleborn visit with their parent before, and everyone was polite. When Hermione asked what the interesting buildings around were, they got clear directions - well, clear for Wizarding Britain - to both the Burrow and the Rook. 

They drove near enough to see the outlines of both buildings. After that, Hermione gratefully said they could go home. It was yet more confirmation that what she thought of as "the book world" was nothing of the sort. It was merely the world.

Chapter Text

The week after they returned from Ottery-St-Catchpole, Hermione worked ahead as much as humanly possible. She finally deciphered the purpose of the dolls in the box. By caring for them, she actually learned how to care for herself. The Sleekeazy's worked so well on Bushy's hair she tried it, tentatively, on her own. The results were so good, she ended up budgeting for it even at the expense of her book allocation. The Densminui and Densaugeo charms let her fine-tune Bucky's teeth. Very tentatively, she envisioned a Densminui affecting her front teeth. She didn't see or feel anything different, but at least it did no harm. After a week, however, her mother asked her in a worried tone if she was playing at magic on her teeth. Hermione told her, truthfully, she was using a very slow magical treatment, but she could stop.

Her mother fretted, but finally agreed she could continue. No one wanted the braces discussion to be revived.

As for Loony, her dolls had been right; the new dolls could talk. I'll say they can talk, she thought, bemused. She'd made a habit of holding Loony every night as she went to sleep. She was woken by a quiet, whispering voice.

"I am a witch, I really am, I realize I'm unusual and I have no friends and that's just what someone like that would say, but I really do have magic, I have powers, I am a witch, I really am ..."

Loony talked a great deal after that. Fortunately, she didn't expect to be talked back at. She wanted Hermione to listen. Hermione made pretty clothes for her, and, like Bushy, her billowy blonde hair benefitted from the Sleekeaszy's.

A few days later, her dolls told her the new dolls had joined in reading and taking notes. That was funny. Hermione hadn't felt any more drain on her power than usual.

She wouldn't, Genius explained. The new dolls used their own power, not hers.

With Hermione not having to contribute to note-taking, it was time to read the books.

She'd been so distracted, she started over with The Philosopher's Stone. By the time she reached the end, she was a bit more confused.

Ron, in particular, confused her. She'd already discovered he was smarter and sneakier than he appeared.  Yet, in the final chapters, he'd behaved like a total idiot. Well, he was an eleven-year-old boy, and not a particularly mature one. He should have made Harry the King, obviously. And if he knows chess, which I would assume he does, he should know better than to make anyone a knight or bishop. Make me and him the rook pawns, those things never die. She also wondered if he deliberately played for a knight sacrifice, to make the adventure grander. It would, however, be a lot more sinister if he'd opted for that because someone told him it was safe - or relatively safe - to do so.

She had been both right and wrong about Dumbledore. He was quite evil, true, but even more deranged than evil. He took terrible chances for the opportunity to test Harry, or kill him without getting his hands bloody. It reminded her of the hundreds of letters idiocy. She still had to give Ron plaudits for keeping his head with the troll, overcoming his ego, and getting the spell he'd been so beastly over to work the first time he needed it. Indeed, she didn't know what compelled Harry to charge in to save her in such a heedless fashion. He didn't even know a spell to cast, although he'd had the best possible attack point with his wand up its nose. Then again, her running off to cry all day in an isolated place no one knew about, or could help her in? Nonsense. The whole troll thing was more sinister than heartwarming.

Her paranoid mind wouldn't let her discount the idea that everything had been a farce, that the Stone wasn't really in the mirror, and that Ron had been either coached or controlled. She really didn't believe Dumbledore was responsible for the effect of touching Harry on Quirrel. If anything, she reflected, if he had transferred the protection to Petunia, Vernon and Dudley, he'd probably drastically weakened the protection on Harry, whatever it was. Maybe, if Harry had been with the Longbottoms or Sirius Black, when Quirrel touched Harry, his body would disappear in an explosion immediately, as it had in 1981.

Since she'd read ahead on Snape, she really didn't mind Gryffindor winning, though a less perverse, more caring Headmaster wouldn't have done so all at once, but awarded all points the day before, saying they'd be explained after the point recipients woke up and were on their feet.

What sort of person lets the colours go up, then yanks it away at the last minute? she wondered. A narcissist. It was a word she'd found in one of her father's books, and it fit.

She did a very quick read of all the books, but it was too much to take in. She did, however, read the Epilogue 19 years later, twice. It was utter rubbish. When she mentioned that, Plain, Shy and Clumsy all referred her to the sixth book, but agreed. It was comforting no one would die that she cared about for three years, but with a basilisk, that wasn't completely assured. As she read, she tried to imagine how events would have fallen out had Luna's mother been saved, had Harry met her family before Hogwarts, had Sirius Black been free and wielding the power of the Black family.

If Harry was not only the Boy-Who-Lived, not only the last of the Potters, not only the last of the Peverells, but also the heir to the Black family, well, let's assume somehow Sirius could arrange protection for him; virtually none of the events she read about would be unchanged, and many would never occur at all.

A very close reading of the books was too exhausting with the rest of her schedule, so she decided she'd compromise: in the future, she'd read slowly for both information and pleasure. 

Meanwhile, the notes were accumulating.

Chapter Text

Ten-year-old Harry Potter was confused. There, among the morning mail on the mat, was a hand-addressed letter for him. It was quite queer. 

There was a note in the lower-left corner stating that "interference in the mail" would necessitate a house visit, "backed by Aurors." He turned it over, and on the back was another note. "Harry, if this is you, stuff this in your pocket and hide it." Whoever it was knew Harry usually got the mail, but they had tried to take precautions if it ended up being Vernon instead.

He saw no reason to tell Vernon about his mail, so he did as requested. That night, he read the strangest message he'd seen in his life. While he pondered it, he realized he could ask his aunt the name of whoever had left him with them. Then he reconsidered. First of all, it was a step he couldn't take back, and he'd be alerting the Dursleys something was up. Second of all, if the man who left him here could read minds, and planned a return visit, Harry agreed with "A Friend" that he wouldn't be able to hide his anger at him.

If he was a wizard (and the strange things that happened around him were evidence he might be), there was no harm in trying. He occasionally rummaged in Dudley's second bedroom for things to hide in his cupboard. He remembered a discarded magician's kit. He found the hat and wand and brought them down to his cupboard. He placed the top hat upside down on the floor.

Harry spent all of his free time at school, even on play break, in the library. It was the only time he could escape. When a teacher tried to shoo him outside, he would go, but sneak back in, if he was fortunate, before Dudley's clique could get at him. When a teacher asked him if he didn't want to get some sun and fresh air, his response had silenced her:

"I'll just be beaten by my thug of a cousin and his gang. None of you will ever do anything to help, because my child-abusing uncle has an in with the headmaster."

The worst part was the lack of emotion he displayed. Two different teachers had been dismissed for trying to help Harry, so she knew he was simply stating facts. The worse of the two was the school nurse, who had been there for years. It was rumoured Vernon Dursley had some sort of "in" with the police as well, since otherwise, Dudley would surely have been at least detained at the station by now for what he was up to after school. The teacher who asked him had salved her conscience by sneaking him food to wolf down, using the pretext of keeping him after class, which made Dudley happy.

At any rate, Harry had read every fantasy book in the library.

 Waving the wand, he wished for a rabbit, and quietly said "Abracadabra." Nothing happened. "Presto, change-o!" "Hocus Pocus!" "Sim Sala Bim!" "Ajji Majji la Tarajji!" "Jantar Mantar Jadu Mantar!" "Izzy wizzy, let's get busy!" Oh, I wish you would work! he thought, desperately, unconsciously drawing a rabbit in the air in the rough direction of the hat. He definitely felt something then. Unfortunately, nothing appeared. He looked in the hat, and even felt around in it. Nothing. Well, being a wizard probably took practice. Perhaps "A Friend" would send him instructions. He went to sleep disappointed, but not hopeless.

In #2 Privet Drive, Esther Williams had the rare privilege of making her rather short-tempered, gossipy mother smile. Not at the news that Privet Drive had been visited by a bury of rabbits overnight, and they were everywhere, wreaking havoc, but at the observation that they seemed to have burrowed out from #4. She could see her mother contemplate complaining loudly to Petunia Dursley, drawing the other neighbours' attention, then slump. Both Williams women realized the Dursleys were simply too unpleasant to confront. Still, there was no law against gossiping. Esther was silently cheering her on. Sure, she and her mother had more than their share of arguments, but Petunia had made a point of blathering about each and every one of them for at least a week per tiff. See how you like it, Rabbit Woman, she thought.

Hermione couldn't believe herself.

There were some things she did not want to involve her parents in, but still. Sneaking out in the middle of the night and raising her wand, she'd nearly fainted when a bus appeared out of thin air, headed right at her! Then stuttering out Lavender's name, of all people, when asked who she was. She'd been planning on how she'd get along with Sally-Ann, Fay, Parvati and Lavender just before leaving the house. She vaguely recalled Harry doing much the same the first time he rode the Bus, and now she understood why. He was on the lam over some accidental magic, wasn't it? At least I didn't get Luna or Ginny involved, she thought. In fact, invoking poor Lavender was more likely to break the pattern than establish it.

Enduring the ride was her penance for sneaking out, she supposed. But actually pushing a note through the mail slot at #4? Well, perhaps it hasn't the same status with the Royal Mail as an approved postal box? she thought, hopefully. She might be willing to be a minor criminal to help - and, let's face it, win - Harry, but not if it could be helped. 

"Hullo, Lavender!" she heard Ernie say as she reboarded the death-trap bus. "What desperate business brings a young witch like you out in the wee hours?"

Hermione was so very tempted to say "A rendezvous with my boyfriend, Ron." She had contemplated fixing them up when Ron became interested in girls. She would make sure Ron wasn't actively evil first, of course. At any rate, drawing anyone's attention to Ottery St Catchpole, or worse, to Privet Drive, where she was being picked up,  was completely not on. She decided the truth was best:

"Believe it or not, I had to meet a mailing deadline." Ernie nodded wisely, but Hermione didn't know him well enough to decipher if he was actually wise or not.

As she closed her eyes later at home, she heard Loony whisper, "You did well."

When she woke up, the dolls had a letter prepared to introduce Hermione to Luna Lovegood. It was full of what she recognized as private Lovegood family code. "Nargles" meant someone being driven by their feelings to do something not thought out, "Wrackspurts" meant they were confused and irrational, and so on. Obviously, her dolls, even Genius, couldn't think as well as she could, but being as they were, they were more objective. And they knew the storyline better than she could, so she agreed to send it. She made a list of things to do and get in Diagon, where she would need to go to rent an owl. She was tempted to buy one, but the "one animal" policy at Hogwarts put the kibosh on that. She couldn't wait to get Crookshanks if he was already there, to be honest. On reflection, she decided a personal owl was too identifying, anyway. When she got Hedwig for Harry, she'd sit him down and give him a long talk on how to send conspicuous, unimportant messages with her and covert messages with a random owl at the same time.

Chapter Text

Unfortunately for "A Friend," the Lovegoods were used to cranks reading the Quibbler and responding hysterically and with extreme paranoia. So when their daughter showed them a letter addressed to her, their principal reaction was anger. It was all well and good to send your crank ideas for spell-crafting to Pandora, or your conspiracy theory to Xeno, but their daughter was out of bounds.

The problem was, the tone of the letter wasn't deranged. In fact, talent at Divination ran on both sides of Luna's heritage, and the writer felt authentic. Still...

"What does she mean by "Nargles," mommy?" Luna wondered. When she'd opened the letter and Pandora had finally turned around and noticed Luna reading it, she'd panicked for a bit. But she seemed unharmed and there was no trace of magic or potions on the letter.

Pandora looked at her husband, who fancied himself a cryptozoologist. He shrugged.

Pandora thought for a minute. "Xeno," she asked, "didn't you ask Luna about her invisible friends and write it down in that journal? Wasn't one of them called something like that?" Referring to a project he'd started to take childhood fantasies seriously, since sometimes they might reveal some sort of magical secrets. Xeno's head shot up, and he nodded. Without further ado, he went into the library and found the notebook in question.

Pandora took it from him and put it next to the letter. Sure enough, both Nargles and Wrackspurts were names Luna had given to the creatures she said she could see. She'd barely been talking a few months, though, and she promptly forgot most of it.

"Luna, I promise this isn't me having Wrackspurts confusing my mind. Your family is in imminent danger. It may be caused by the backfire of a spell your mother is crafting. Or maybe bad people are going to do something bad and make it look like an accident."

"If I remember correctly, this isn't like an infestation of Nargles. More like an invasion of Heliopaths."

"Heliopaths are real," Xeno said. Pandora looked at him, but he had a stubborn expression, so she went back to the letter. She would be hypocritical to blame him for being more open to fringe ideas.

When he first started the Quibbler as a muckraking journal, they'd faced vandalism, death threats and legal action. Pandora lost her internship at the Department of Mysteries and had to become an independent spell-crafter.

They changed the Quibbler from the Daily Prophet's broadsheet size to a tabloid, and always included mythical animals, exaggerated government conspiracies, and even some Witch Weekly-style gossip. Most of that had been Pandora's initiative, though Xeno turned out to be scarily good at it. Pandora had contributed a runic puzzle that had to be solved by turning it at a right angle three times as you went on (and couldn't be fully solved unless you had three copies of the Quibbler page layered on top of one another), and because it was so easy for her to do, she had enough saved up to last the next several years.

"Your family won't survive your mother's death, Luna. Your father can't raise a child alone, especially with only the income from the Quibbler. When you get to Hogwarts you'll be an outcast. In my vision, I saw you kicked out of Ravenclaw tower without your clothes, and no one to help you if bad people came along to hurt you in the middle of the night, and no blanket to keep you warm."

That certainly wasn't an image the Lovegoods wanted to envision.

Pandora decided to suspend disbelief. After all, her cousin Sybil Trelawney sounded more deranged than this, but if you got her drunk, you could usually get a good reading in some form of divination or another, eventually. It was funny, though. The writer definitely felt like a female, but much younger than Sybil. Luna was so bright, if she'd had the time, she might even have suspected her of writing the letter as a game.

What, she wondered, does this "Friend" want us to do about this?

Well, actually.

Never working alone again, was fine. Increasing the warding to at least double the protection might be doable. She'd made enough money lately spell-crafting that they'd considered giving Luna a sibling, but that could be put off.  To replace the lost income from not performing rapid, high-pressure spell-crafting, she was offered a unique proposition. The "Friend" would negotiate(!) with Harry Potter, who was not much older than Luna. If he agreed, then they would send the Lovegoods to get a Potions book that had Lily Potter's notes on potions and spells, along with those of a friend who was a Master Potioneer. Some of the methods were still unreleased. It might, she thought, just be enough.

The Friend warned her against the usual suspects - the Ministry, the surviving Death Eaters. But most dangerous of all, she asserted, was Albus Dumbledore. They should put their wards further from the house and try to figure out how to tell when he or his "Order of the Phoenix" were around. Xeno told her that not only did they exist, and he could and would write down all the members he knew of, but their existence was very secretive nowadays. It lent plausibility to the letter.

"We take this to your cousin, and we have a nice dinner and play with Luna," Xeno declared. Suiting his actions to his words, he put some powder in the fireplace and said "Sybil Trelawney's tower room."

When her cousin answered -- already a bit tipsy, but not badly -- Xeno asked her to hold and read the letter, then tell them what she could read from it.

After dinner, the Divination professor flooed them back. "Whoever wrote this may or may not be a Seer. It's quite unclear. But this is true seeing. Everything in the letter is true."

They gave the letter back to Luna, who put it on her wall. While Cedric would sometimes talk to her, and Ginny had at one time been something of a friend, it wasn't like she had so many that she didn't treasure making another.

Chapter Text

Good Grief! thought Harry Potter.

It would have been really ungrateful to let on how his heart fell when he realized his mysterious "A Friend" was a girl his age. Basically, he was doomed.

Even worse, the Dursleys were away for the weekend. They'd left him less than half of what Dudley ate at a sitting to last for two or more days, but fortunately, Harry was dining at his new friend's house.

Harry had slipped out, following a suggestion by Hermione. She'd brought a stuffed figure she got somewhere, and propped it up at the Dursleys' dining table. Then she had Harry turn out the lights except for a lamp they put behind the dummy. If you looked at the window it did look like someone was home. 

Harry never borrowed trouble; leaving like that without permission was demanding compound interest. Still, if he had to be "rescued" by a little girl, he supposed he could have found worse.

The "Friend," whose name was Hermione Granger, was a small, slender, sporty girl with lightly tanned skin, perfect teeth and a head of curly, somewhat frizzy hair kept in a ponytail. Harry was going to spend the night on a cot in her room, and tomorrow she was going to wake him up for exercise, which she was apparently a fiend for. As tomboyish as all that made her seem, unfortunately at the moment, the situation they were in couldn't possibly be more girly: Harry was going to have tea with Hermione and her dolls. 

Well, he decided, perhaps boys should do this one time just to see how the other half lives. With any luck, he could interrogate the strange girl about how and why she knew so much about him, and was seemingly so interested in him. All she'd volunteered was that she had investigated him "magically and not magically."

He followed the girl up the stairs carefully, since she carried a tray with lemon, cream and sugar. He'd offered to take up the pot of tea she'd brewed, but she surprised him by saying "Don't bother, please."

He would have assumed she was completely mental, had it not been for their neighbour, a young woman named Esther Williams. "Sneaking out with a girl, are you, little Harry? Precocious little thing, aren't you, then?" she'd exclaimed, giving him a wink. Then, she asked Harry, "Not that I want any trouble, dear, but do you know anything about all the ... well, the rabbits?"

He hoped he hadn't looked guilty. "Rabbits?" he asked.

"Hundreds of them, at least it looked like. It was on page four of the papers. And, well, I saw the bulk of them -- they were all burrowing out of Number Four. Turned Privet Drive into a proper warren. People had to have men come and get rid of them."

Hermione had been watching his face, and announced they had to rush or she'd be late getting home. Harry told the woman, who lived with her mother in Number 6, that he did all the chores for the Dursleys, and Petunia had not asked him to take care of any rabbit problems.

They hadn't lingered in Number Four one second longer than they needed for Hermione to ring the door, barge in, tell Harry she was his friend, have him gather a spare shirt, tee and shorts in a bin bag and leave it near the door, put the dummy in its chair, grab the bag, and lock up. If it had been anyone not as desperate as Harry, it would have been almost comical.

Hermione raised her wand and conjured a speeding bus out of thin air. Harry began to be very afraid of her, but she gave him no time to hesitate. "You won't like this a bit, but bear with it. We all do. If he asks your name, do you prefer Neville or Ronald?" Harry hadn't responded, so she'd picked Neville for him. After they'd settled in, as much as one could on the crazy bus, she turned to him. "Rabbits?"

"It wasn't me!" he said, defensively. "I was trying to make some come out of a hat, true. But nothing happened."

"Sounds like you have power, but no control. That's ... more data for me!" It was evident that she loved data.

"Is that him?" a woman, who had to be her mother, asked when they got to the door. Hermione smiled and agreed. When she smiled, she reminded Harry of girls you saw playing parts on television. The woman welcomed Harry inside. 

"Well, at least he's real," said a man's voice from somewhere inside.

It was Hermione's mother that suggested that Harry and Hermione should have a tea party in her room

Harry had never had any friends, let alone any girl friends, nor had he ever been to anyone's house but Mrs Figg's. For all he knew, it was a reasonable suggestion. He thanked the Grangers for having him over, and they brushed it aside. Mrs Granger put the kettle on, and Hermione got down a pot and some leaves. The same pot she later left in the kitchen.

Hermione had the boy out of the storybook put his folded shirt on a hanger in her wardrobe. She'd had Harry bring up a pair of cushions to rest against on the floor by the little tea table. They were on one side of the table and all seven dolls were clustered around the table, turned to face them.

"Watch my cup," she told Harry, suddenly. As she drew herself to the table, she saw Harry's eyes go wide as it filled itself up. She poured the tea from her cup into his, put hers back, and waited for it to refill. 

"How do you take it?" she asked. Harry stuttered out that he liked "mi-milk and ... and sugar." 

She had him set down his cup and move back from the table a bit. "Tell me all the strange things you can remember," she said.

Something about her disarmed him and made him trust her, it seemed. As she wrote down all the incidents - his hair regrowing, his teacher's hair changing colour, flying onto the roof -- and what is it with him and hair, she wondered, she hoped he was relieved to unburden himself of what had to be a painful amount of secrets.

"Okay," she said, as gently as she could, putting her notes away. "Strange things happen to me, too, as you can see." She pointed at the tea. "Now, I am going to show you some more, but please, please don't panic. Can you try to do that for me?" She had no idea if a plain, immature girl like her could make doe eyes, but she gave it her best shot, and he did nod his head.

However, when seven tiny voices rang out, saying "Welcome, Harry Potter!" he nonetheless shrank back in fear. Hermione got teary-eyed instead of what she'd attempted. She put her hands on Harry's shoulders and her eyes looked deep into his.

"They're my friends, Harry. The only ones I've ever, ever had."

Harry, being an isolated ten-year-old boy,  didn't normally think about, or care about, how girls looked. Even the ones in shows and films on the TV. But when Hermione looked up at him pleadingly with her wide, brown eyes, he couldn't help but notice she was very pretty. And her eyes were super beautiful. Then again, when her dolls came alive, he could see why she might have trouble making friends. When she started to cry and told him she only had her dolls for friends, his heart went out to her. He tried to comfort her. He put his hands by her side but didn't really know what to do with them. She solved that by clinging to him, and he hugged her, stiffly.

Suddenly, he realized what he could do. "I'll be your friend if you want me to," he said in her ear. When he pulled back, she had another of those smiles that made his chest feel strange.

He forced himself to greet all the dolls. Bloody hell, this is like being in Alice, he thought. Living under the Dursleys had taught Harry discretion and tact, so he didn't change expression as he realised how many of the dolls' names could apply to Hermione. He did wonder what "Bucky" was about. Possibly from the same time when she regarded herself as "Plain?"

It was better to straightforwardly refuse information than to lie. Hermione told Harry she couldn't tell him how she knew things - it was a secret. But she could tell him things. Sometimes, she could share her research, too. After they finished their tea, they went downstairs and Mr Granger put on the video of Hermione practising Quidditch. She told Harry he'd be doing that in a few years. It seemed amazing to him. Hermione looked very cool.

They had a light supper, and Hermione gave Harry a selective view of what she knew about him so far. She again shamelessly cribbed from Rubeus Hagrid when she told Harry the truth about his parents. No car smash, she told Harry, could have taken James and Lily Potter. It was the work of a very bad man who could do magic as they could, and his very bad friends. She took his hand, seeing his expression on hearing that.

"I think things will be okay, Harry," she began. "We need to keep the man who put you with the Dursleys from finding out about me. Mrs Figg is his spy - spying on you. So don't let on what you know around her. We're going to feed you and get you healthy, and you and I are going to study. You have a lot to learn, and less than a year to learn it. And I and my parents will handle the Dursleys. We'll make them stop hurting you and making you slave for them. They will be threatened with the police, telling their neighbours,  a lawsuit if they've taken money to help you, telling Vernon's employer, and if it comes to that, I'll threaten to go to the magical police. They are not kind to those without magic, Harry. But that's a last resort because we'd have to get them arrested before the man who put you there finds out."

They brushed their teeth and washed up. Mrs Granger donated an old pair of tracksuit bottoms and a sweatshirt for Harry to use as pyjamas. Noticing it seemed to stay up, Hermione told him he wouldn't need to change out of his track clothes to exercise. He could wear the same trousers after he showered, and change his underwear and shirt. She could tell by his expression she was being too bossy, but she also saw a lot more warmth in his eyes than when she met him on Privet Drive.

She showed harry a carefully vetted sample of her notes. He noticed quickly that some of them were in various handwritings. "Hermione," he asked suddenly, "do your friends ... the doll friends ... do they, like, um, tell you things?"

She admitted they did. "I have a lot of different sources, Harry," she said. "Please don't tell anyone else about the dolls. I'm keeping it a top secret." She got the impression sharing a secret like that was making them better friends already.

When he asked if they were alive, she replied they were close enough it would be rude to speculate on it.

They talked for quite a while with the lights out. Hermione told Harry this was what she imagined a "sleep-over" was like. Harry said he liked it.

Exercise the next morning was gruelling. Mrs Granger told Harry to keep the tracksuit, so he put it in the bin bag.  Hermione had bought a pair of matched journals in Diagon Alley. She gave one to Harry, and showed him how writing in one made the writing appear in the other. He said it was too much, but the Grangers said it was a late birthday present.

"Some strangers gave me the best possible birthday present recently, Harry. And my uncle gave me the Quidditch practice you saw. So it's high time I give someone something good," Hermione explained.

They chatted for an hour to let breakfast settle before braving the bus again. Harry went behind Number Four and circled around before entering it, making it look like he was doing early morning chores. Soon enough, that became reality. He had gotten a second wind after being with the Grangers, so his chores went quickly. There was, as luck would have it,  laundry to do, so he washed the tracksuit with it, and hid it in his cupboard.

Two meals at the Grangers meant he didn't have to parcel his food supply out in too meagre a fashion. He was tired, so he went to bed early.  As he was falling asleep, he reflected on his day. True, "A Friend" turned out to be a strange little girl. Then again, he decided, she was undoubtedly a formidable one. On an impulse, he pulled the little chain attached to the naked bulb that lit his cupboard and opened the journal.

"Sweet Dreams, Harry."

He scribbled a response, closed the journal, and turned the light out.

"Sweet Dreams, Hermione."

Chapter Text

Mrs Granger had started to keep a journal. She had written "Never such a puberty!" at the top of the first page.

Her little bookworm had transformed into a sporty mutant who'd already set her cap for a boy they'd only met once.

Out the window she saw Hermione in the back yard, riding a broom. It hung from a pulley on a rope, and must have been hell to stay on. Even with pads and a helmet, it looked more dangerous than she should be all right with. There were three of them. One went southeast, one southwest, and one south. They had put down flashing so Hermione scrambling onto the roof didn't harm its integrity. The three ropes had basketball hoops without netting that Hermione passed on either side, five sets in all.  Her goal was to throw a football through them. At times Mr Granger would help her by throwing the football as she rode the rope down. Once she'd lost her balance and had to hang from the broom and catch her fall on her hands on the lawn, but was unharmed. Coupled with her report that she'd nearly fainted playing football during play break because her dolls were siphoning her magic, Mrs Granger was wondering when she'd have to step in.

What held her back was the reasonable argument that it was better for Hermione to be mildly hurt now than killed later because she had no allies in "Wizarding Britain." Her association with families like the Potters and Lovegoods could literally make that difference. Hermione was, for the first time ever, making friends at school. She was at least an average football player now. Sometimes, when she was reading Quidditch books at school, she passed them off as football training. The old Hermione would have never gotten away with it.

Those utterly queer books had described the sort of girls and their traits that were popular at "Hogwarts." "Hogwarts" was, apparently, located in "Hogsmeade" where the headmaster's brother ran the "Hog's Head Inn." Three guesses what the economy of the region had been. Hermione had told her she was consciously learning from the advice the girls gave each other in the books, especially the girls who had ensnared the hero. What a twist, actually meeting him! It gave you pause, though. If Harry Potter was real, and magic was real -- was her daughter in there?

If so, she feared the worst. If she perished in the book, which seemed to have some sort of magical ability to mimic reality, Mrs Granger could well understand turning Hermione's life upside down over it. And it would also explain the curio shop. According to Hermione, the shop girl resembled the description of one of the Lovegoods, and they were said to have the ability to "divine" the future to a degree. Perhaps one of them wrote fictionalised accounts of the future intertwined with romance, then sold them in the non-magical world so only those in the know would see them? It was distinctively odd, however; probably the quotes on the dust jacket were fabricated? It had to have been a vanishingly tiny print run or magical children like Hermione would have told their parents about it by now.

Hermione put away her football, stripped off her helmet and padding, and came in. She marched upstairs, and Mrs Granger could hear her having a quick shower. When she came back down, with still-damp hair that actually looked controllable compared to the dry version, she had the box the three new dolls had come in.

"Harry bonded to them, somehow. That's what they told me." So Hermione was going to give them to him. This was the pretext for the Grangers meeting the Dursleys.

Hermione's perpetual nervousness and shyness were less and less evident nowadays. She got out of the car and walked up at a moderate pace to the front door of Number Four. Her parents stood a few feet behind her. When a woman who matched the description of Petunia Dursley answered the door, Hermione, and then her parents, introduced themselves. Mr Granger said, ominously, that they needed to have a discussion about Harry Potter that would be best not held on her front doorstep. They could all see Mrs Williams in Number Six looking over intently. Less obvious was the couple in Number Two, who according to Harry tended to, as now, simply have their window partly open and part of the curtain pulled away at the bottom.

Before Petunia could react, she dashed in and knocked on the door to the cupboard. "Harry, come out, I have something for you. It's Hermione," she said. She stepped away as the door opened out, and Harry emerged, blinking owlishly. He didn't look entirely shocked when she opened the box she was carrying and showed him it was more dolls.

Hermione made a point of taking Harry's hand as she went towards the front of the house again.

Her parents had been laying down the law to Petunia. To sweeten the bitter pill, however, they'd discussed the wizard who left Harry on the Dursley's doorstep. The Grangers believed the headmaster's explanation was misleading.

"We think that, far from increasing the protection on Harry, caused by your sister's sacrifice, he's weakened it tremendously. He really wanted Harry raised ignorant with people who disliked magic, so he lied," Mrs Granger was saying as Harry and Hermione returned. 

Mrs Dursley tried to object when she saw that Mr Granger had brought out a camera. Mrs Granger gently reminded her what a precarious position she, her husband and his sister, and her son were all in. Hermione, Harry and Mr Granger paused, amused.

“You see, once the wizard - his name’s Dumbledore,” she said, and ignored Mrs Dursley’s “we knew that!” “Once that wizard,” she continued, “placed Harry here and transferred the protection from whatever ritual your sister did from Harry’s body to this house, it ensured you all protection from those ‘Death Eater’ terrorists. It would have been far better for everyone if he threw you a little money to leave the country or change your names. As it is, as long as Harry calls this place home, apparently, some of his mother’s protection extends to the house. Or so he claimed, though we trust him no more than you do, Mrs Dursley.  If Harry leaves, or even more likely realises he could live somewhere else and this place is no home, then the wizards that kill the families of Muggle-borns will eventually find you and kill you all. That’s,” raising a finger, “One.”

“The general community of wizards venerates this boy like few others. He’s their national hero. And you, Muggles as they call us, have beaten him, starved him, abused him, and sicced your son and your sister-in-law’s bloody dog on him. You’d be lucky to get life in their wizard prison, which is worse than Devil’s Island. And we don’t need pictures for that, they’d never believe you over him anyway. That’s two.”

“We’re trained medical professionals and we’ve already taken pictures of Harry. The dog bite scars are still there. Apparently, when your husband backhanded him, that didn’t leave permanent marks, but the fact that he flinches whenever a man’s hand gets anywhere near his head? I’m surprised, given you nearly killed him with a frying pan, it’s not a woman’s hand, too. And your son did create permanent scars, and bones that didn’t heal properly - not taking for treatment a child in your care is yet another crime. All of which adds up to prison for Vernon Dursley, for Marge Dursley when we have her investigated, and probably for you. And your son in a foster home. All of which you’d be lucky to get, considering the other two possibilities. At the very least, Vernon fired for bad publicity. That’s three. Now, we were talking about your roses - I think Harry’s done a great job with them, don’t you?”

Mr Granger meticulously photographed the cupboard, including Harry’s marks on the wall - the only recognition his birthday had ever gotten. 

Hermione and Harry grabbed some bin bags from under the kitchen sink and went upstairs again, while Mrs Granger kept Petunia Dursley occupied. They came back down shortly with what, from the noise the bags made when they were dragged downstairs, might well be Dudley's broken toys. Without any fanfare, they shoved them in the cupboard under the stairs.

"We found a bed, under all the junk, Ducks," Mr Granger said. "It will probably do. Mrs Dursley, where's some bed linen Harry can use?"

Wordlessly, Petunia indicated the little laundry room near the guest bedroom. Harry and Hermione headed back up carrying sheets, a blanket and a pillow.

When they came back down, Mr and Mrs Granger were still talking to Petunia. "We're still working everything out, Mrs Dursley, but tell your husband we'll take the gloves off if he plans to make trouble. Our daughter will be checking up on Harry, you can count on it."

"Now, Harry," asked Mrs Granger, "we were wondering, would you like to meet a friend of Hermione's? That's where we're headed."

"What's she like?" asked Harry.

"Well," Hermione said, looking at her parents, "the truth is we haven't met her yet."

Harry had the same expression he'd worn when he saw that "A Friend" was an 11-year-old girl. 

"But we're ... pen-friends," she concluded. "And she's very nice."

"Harry, we might be able to go by Hermione's favourite shop, too. It might help you understand all the strange things that have happened to you."

Hermione wanted to shake her head at her parents. Heck, she wanted to shake them. All she needed was for the curio shop to be open and the shopgirl to say something about Harry being in the books she bought. That was all it would take to ruin everything. Well, she thought, it's not like I planned to outright lie to him. She would put a brave face on it, and que sera, sera.

Still, it was with a feeling of impending doom that she saw the shop was open. It isn't really on the way to Ottery St Catchpole, she fumed. She babbled a little as they went towards it, explaining to Harry how old the shop was and how unusual. The shopgirl didn't actually wink at her, but it was a very knowing look she delivered to Hermione as they entered. Then she addressed Harry.

"Those three dolls, did the book-girl explain them to you?" she demanded.

Harry shook his head, but said, "well, a little. They're ... kind of scary, honestly."

"You, Mr Potter, are the very last person who should be scared of them. They've been the making of Miss Granger, there, and they'll be the making of you, too. And even better, you won't get tired like ..." she nodded her head in Hermione's direction, and that girl nodded glumly, "she does. Have the Grangers take you to Diagon, have her explain what they can do for you."

Then she reached under the counter and brought out a little hand mirror, which she gave to Harry. "A bargain, this is. Wasn't easy to find. Only a galleon."

Everyone but the shopgirl whipped their heads around at Hermione's sharp gasp.

"Harry doesn't have any, but I'll pay for it," she said. "You can buy me an ice cream or something sometime, Harry," she said, looking at him. Then she took the mirror, treating it like a butterfly that had landed on her palm. Gingerly, she turned it over. You could see the word "Prongs" embedded on the back.

"Hold this, Harry," she said, offering it back. "My hands are shaky. Tap it on the front, once, gently." He did so.

"Moony!" she said, and waited. "Moony, please answer. Remus Lupin! Remus Lupin, this is a friend of the son of Prongs calling. Please answer."

It seemed like the mirror twitched a little, and she had a strange feeling of magic coming off of it. At a guess, Lupin had the mirror near him but couldn't, or wouldn't respond.

"That's really odd," she heard Harry say. "It feels almost like it's alive, it gave me the strangest sensation. Does it read minds or something?"

"It's ... it's like a cellular phone, Harry." He still looked confused. "I am sure you've seen someone with them on the telly. It's a kind of phone you carry with you, it has a battery ... you punch in the numbers like a cash register, you don't dial it." Harry's expression said he was familiar with push-button phones, thank you very much. "Anyway, this is like that, but magic. So you can kind of sense how the person on the other end is feeling, I guess."

"Feeling like not answering, I guess," Harry responded. She nodded, glumly.

"We'll try again, Harry. The person that put you with the Dursleys told Mr Lupin to avoid you, he ordered him to, but he never said anything about the mirrors," Hermione explained.

It would have looked strange if she didn't go to the book section. She was sure her face was white, and she almost collapsed, before straightening up, putting on a blank expression, and going to the opposite part of the store. After that, she stayed with Harry, who fortunately didn't even know about the book section. There was no way she could have explained "Harry Potter and the Yearning Yeti." At least in this context. Maybe at Obscurus or Flourish and Blotts, she could act more surprised.

As they were leaving, Hermione said she'd forgotten something and had them go ahead without her. She went back and shoved all dozen volumes of the adventures of Young Harry Potter into her book bag. Fortunately, they were half the price of the real books.

The shopgirl was openly laughing at her as she paid for them. As she was putting them back in Hermione's bag, the door chimed. 

"Good to see you again, Mr Dumbledore," she heard the girl say.

Chapter Text

Hermione was considering blatantly fleeing. Perhaps she and Harry could get around the corner before the arch-villain found them?

To give herself time to plan, she dragged Harry behind an aisle divider.

"Got anything in for me?" she heard the wizard saying from near the front counter.

"We do have," they heard the shopgirl say. "Magicked spectacles, in fact."

"If they're unset, or even if they are set, I'll take them," the wizard said.

"And your order from our bulk supplier's here. I think it's normal, Mr Dumbledore. A pound of scurs, a matchbox of fairy wings, and some envenomed Acromantula silk, perhaps a bolt."

"That's all as it should be. You should invite the two customers hiding in the back to come here so we can set their minds at ease," Hermione heard. It stopped her breath -- it felt like it stopped her heart.

Hermione saw Harry was cowering, probably she was setting him off. "Let's go, Harry, it's no use pretending," she said, with a sigh. Her parents saw them and followed to lend their support.

"Hello, there. Since I'm the one intruding, I'll introduce myself. I'm Aberforth Dumbledore. My tavern is the Hog's Head Inn in Hogsmeade, and I'm the last breeder of magical goats left in Britain."

Hermione felt her pulse speed up, slow down, speed up again. It may not be the villain, but was it much better to encounter his brother? Either way, Harry's being rescued would be found out.

"I can see you're no fans of Albus, and that's sound as hell, if you will accept the opinion of someone you've just met," was the wizard's surprising pronouncement. He looked at Hermione with some amusement. "I was like you, girl. But you'll learn you can't approach every problem head-on, I reckon."

She realised she'd clutched her fists and was even standing slightly in front of Harry.

"Your boy there, according to Albus, is all safe and happy. Albus has claimed through his ... ahem ... close friend Doge and even, he says jestingly, in person that I cannot even read, but between the things he told the Daily Prophet and those entertaining books -- well, I'm surprised your boy isn't a head taller and dressed in dragonhide he killed and skinned personally."

Harry Potter and the Yearning Yeti came to mind. It was probably a good sign if he was mocking them.

"Umm, we're Hermione Granger," she said, pointing to herself, "and Harry Potter. We've heard a little bit about another Dumbledore, but nothing about you."

"Well, as I said, I've heard quite a bit about Harry, there. So, Harry," he began, turning to fix his gaze, "You're doing well, yes? In a nice place with people that love you and keep you safe, being trained up to take your place in the magical world, and so on, and so on."

Harry looked to her for courage, but replied, "well, no, sir, none of that, really."

"I sense you're still shaking with fear, girlie. That's what I meant by putting your mind at ease."

"You should really pay attention, Hermione," the shopgirl surprised her by saying.

They'd been around the man long enough to notice that, while dressed in clean clothes and not dirty, he did have dirty nails and smelled faintly of the goats he said he was breeding.

"I understand not wanting to trust a Dumbledore, but you've little choice," he said, with a very serious expression. "It's occurred to you that when Albus does finally meet little Harry here, he'll read his mind and know you've seen me, and this shop, and take steps to put Harry back in his cage?"

Hermione nodded grimly.

"Well, let me have a look at his memory, then. I have the best knowledge of Albus' magic of anyone alive. And that includes his beaus, Gellert and Elphias." without further ado, he looked Harry in the eye. Harry looked like it hurt a bit.

"That famous scar of yours," Aberforth said, "it's bad, and you better get rid of it, but it's not all bad, if you know what I mean. If it twinges you, either someone connected to Voldemort or someone reading your mind is around. Either way, pay attention and get out of wherever you are as quickly and quietly as may be." He then went back to reading Harry's mind.

"Aha!" he exclaimed. "This is good news. Yes, my brother's actually Obliviated Harry a bit. And on a child not even two -- that's dangerous. Very dangerous. But it works, it works for us."

"When you two leave, I will put a haze over the memory of this shop in Harry, including meeting me, how's that?" he asked.

"Won't that interfere with Harry's progress?" Hermione asked.

"Not tragically," came the reply. "He just has to try really hard to remember. But someone like Albus reading his memories won't even notice. It'll be hidden behind his magic, which mine is already similar to. So, now that that's out of the way, ask your questions, girl." He looked at Harry apologetically. "Not that I blame you for it, but we both know you're too cagey to ask anything, and she asks enough for both of you."

She'd planned to ask why he would help them, but that's not what came out of her mouth. To her chagrin, what Hermione asked was what his supplies were for.

"To begin with, Miss Granger, the magical spectacles, they're like Spectrespecs that also work as Sneakoscopes. Do you know what those are?"

"Luna wears Spectrespecs, I think ...." Hermione mused.

"Does she? I always gave Xeno more credit than most people do. Good for him, and her."

"And the Sneakoscope ... it's also called a 'foe glass', I think ..."

"It is. But the magicked spectacles are particular to particular tasks. You have to set them to look for specific things, or they're just weaker Spectrespecs or Sneakoscopes. But once they're set, they find what they're looking for, better than anything. Albus uses his to look through the best invisibility cloaks, for example."

Hermione shuddered at that thought, and it made Aberforth smile.

"As for my supplies, well. They're for enchanting -- not charming, as that never lasts, enchanting -- goats so they stay clean and their horns stay sharp and curly. And thereby hangs a tale, or several."

Hermione was a little worried they'd miss seeing Luna if this went on too long; then she consoled herself that meeting the arch-villain's apparently hostile brother was a priceless opportunity to gain information that could save Harry, and also advance her suit with him.

"In the first part of the 12th century, the Malfois -- or Malfoys, as they started calling them -- brought in fancy goats from France. They were actually stolen from a family that were relatives of the Flamels, a family they eventually killed off back in France. Hogsmeade dates back to the time of the founding of Hogwarts. As you can guess, it was all hogs back then. My inn's named for that era. But by the 12th century, it was all goats. The Malfoy goats were like Malfoy peacocks in a way. No one eats peacock eggs who's normal. And the goats didn't give much, or good milk. But they were showy. My mother, Kendra's family, had squibs on both sides, and they bred magical Hebridean goats for generations, even going back to the Malfois' time. At any rate, after our father, Percival, went to Azkaban like a fool, for what did Britain have to offer any of us but Albus, and even he would have been just as happy going to Durmstrang, we needed to make money. Kendra's family had already crossed Dera Din Panah and Girgentana with our magical Hebrideans, and we had a very showy goat as well. Still, that said, it wasn't quite as showy as the Malfoi goats were. Though, really, as each generation came along, goats were becoming less and less profitable anyway. I developed an enchantment that uses scurs - baby goat horns that have grown back once - and fairy wings - they shed them at the change of seasons -- and some diamond or carborundum, powdered and applied to envenomed silk, you rub the goats with it, you cut their horn with a ritual knife, you recite an incantation that I derived from my mother's family's magic. That will cause a goat to be clean, and have sharp, curly horns as long as it lives. They'll just shed any dirt or grime like a duck sheds water."

He paused, and surprisingly, the shopgirl handed him a shot of what looked to Hermione like whiskey. He took a sip, and a little flame came out of his mouth.

"Anyway," he continued, "The Malfoys were already corrupting the Wizengamot something fierce. They said I was using an illegal and unnatural charm on the goats. It was all-natural, unless you want to declare magic itself unnatural, of course. And there were no laws against it, obviously, since it was brand new. But the Wizengamot banned us from selling goats for ten years. And right in the middle of it, supporting the Malfoys, was my brother, Albus. His sycophant Doge claims we got along, but I resented being in his shadow." At this, Aberforth spat out the door. "Doge makes my skin crawl. At least Grindlewald is an in-your-face villain. But I digress. I wasn't in his shadow, nor did we get along. He was off with special tutors our father had arranged, collecting accolades, and I was home, desperately trying to save our family business."

"Albus," he said, "was going all over saying the Wizengamot had prosecuted me for 'using unnatural charms on a goat' and that 'I may not even know about it, since I couldn't read.' I really wonder how the morons who bought Albus' crap thought I made it through seven years of Hogwarts without reading anything. The main things Albus had in spades were gall and hypocrisy. Here was a wizard's wizard making insinuations about goats to cause people to think I was the invert in the family. But I didn't retaliate, because some things are a man's own damn business."

"You know," he said quietly, "when Ariana and I were small, our mother read us from Beedle the Bard. Our favourite story was 'Grumble the Grubby Goat.' She related it to our goats. It's one of the few things, along with Ariana's portrait, that I have to remember them by. And Albus has pissed all over that. Pardon my language, sincerely. I don't talk to the kiddies much."

"Anyway," he continued, "Right at the time we lost our father as the breadwinner, Albus decided to amuse himself destroying our only source of income. I sent him a letter, saying I would haul him in to the Wizengamot myself, and make him pay. He'd be disgraced, and at least our family would have its revenge. And don't let what Elphias Doge told people fool you. From a very early age, I was Albus' match and more. He did learn obscure things that would have given me trouble, but he simply wasn't as quick as me. He didn't dare duel me, and back then, everyone who knew us both, knew it. So he arranged to do spellwork for people that he could do from our family estate. I had to do the same, and reduce the size of our goat herd. He'd created the situation, entirely out of spite, malice, and his perverse, sadistic sense of humour, but he blamed me and Ariana. I didn't know if we'd have food on the table or a roof over our heads, and Kendra and Ariana were panicking. Finally, it came to a head -- Ariana was closer and closer to being an Obscurial, seems she'd taken aboard what those brutal Muggle bastards told her, and blamed her magic for what they did to her, and our family's troubles."

When Albus was, finally, heading home to only partly fix the dire straits he'd put us in, it came to a head, as I said, and our mother died. Was he contrite? Not one bit. He complained endlessly about being tied down to me and Ariana and the family estate. I actually duelled him a couple of times, and I made sure I had witnesses. I duelled Doge, too -- they'd already become close, although Albus didn't really care about Doge, he was convenient. Anyway, Doge was lying about me and I duelled him, and he finally realised Albus wouldn't help, and he shut up."

He pulled out a very yellowed piece of paper and handed it to Hermione. As she read it, she realised it was an apology to Aberforth from Albus Dumbledore. Below it, you could see part of an article that described the Malfoys corrupting the Wizengamot. Their star must have been fading then, she mused. The apology, printed in the Daily Prophet, admitted Aberforth had been legally enchanting goats to improve their health and their horns, and that his and the Malfoy's insinuations were false and contemptible.

"But, of course, Albus, Doge and another sycophant, Bathilda Bagshot, have arranged so anything detrimental to Albus gets swept under the rug," Aberforth said. "For instance, when Grindlewald used the Cruciatus on me, Albus did nothing. When I was fighting back, he joined forces with Grindlewald. Ariana couldn't take it, she loved me too much. She got in the way to protect me, her magic flared, but Albus and Grindlewald hit her. Grindlewald, probably, killed her, but they both hit her. Well, I didn't have anything to spend money on, so I sold off most of the estate, after I put Albus and his beau into St Mungos - wish I'd had the stones to kill Grindlewald, and I'm not sure about Albus. Anyway, I spent that money making sure Albus wouldn't get out of this one. He fled with Grindlewald to Germany, but there was a cloud over both of them after that. Then he came back to Britain, claiming contrition. He had the gall to come back for a day for her funeral. I broke his nose, I reversed all his joints, he still feels pain where I did that, I'm glad, I carried him out and dumped him, unconscious, into a hog's trough. I didn't care if he drowned."

"And that's the sort of pri ... person Albus was, and he hasn't improved much with time."

Hermione had read a little about Dumbledore besides the books, as she said, and she was not going to mention the books to anyone. "Didn't he end up fighting Grindlewald, though?" she asked, timidly.

"He did. When Grindlewald's Muggle allies, the Nazis, had lost their war, and his plans to take over the world were obviously scuttled, Albus left Britain, duelled Grindlewald to get his wand, put his beau in Nurmengard, and came back a conquering hero -- at least to Magical Britain. And he fooled enough leaders in the ICW to eventually become a Mugwump. France, of course, has never trusted him. He was all over Europe in the early days, helping Grindlewald, and they don't forget that. Magical Germany was guilted into supporting him, even though they knew something of the truth."

Albus Dumbledore's status as an arch-villain was confirmed, and by the person that knew him the best. Hermione was chagrinned, but also, inwardly, she was patting herself on the back.

"I see I've ruined your day, children," Aberforth said. "Let me make it up to you. Once you've drawn Albus' attention to you, girl, this won't help as much, but still. Selene, get us something so she doesn't have to live her days dreading the next mind reader that comes along, please."

The shopgirl grinned and went near the book table. She came back with a necklace. "Put this on, it will stop Legilimency. The drawback is, it's discoverable. Then the Legilimancer wants to know why you have it. They're pricey, and rare, and it's an unusual Muggle-born that has one. Remember that, and keep on not drawing attention, alright?"

After Hermione put it on, he looked her in the eyes, then winked. "Safe as houses. Now, give Xeno my regards, if you don't mind letting him in on what you're up to. My advice is not to mind -- they'd be powerful allies, and I doubt a child not even in Hogwarts yet has a plethora of those."

Hermione nodded. It made sense.

"I suppose," she said, "at least we're doing things in the right order." He clearly caught her meaning, given Luna would cheer them up as much as he'd depressed them, and he laughed.

"Look me in the eyes, and let's get this over," he said, addressing Harry. The boy shut his eyes, then realised that wouldn't work, so he let Aberforth's gaze meet his. The wizard passed his wand over Harry, muttering incantations to himself.

"There you are, Harry," he said, as he finished.

"What have you done?" Harry asked. It was the second time he'd spoken up.

"When someone's reading your mind, they won't see anything about this shop, and that includes meeting me here. If they try to track this day, it will seem to be tied to Albus' obliviation of something, and he'll assume you almost found out what he's hiding from you today. He won't mess with it for fear of jogging your memory."

"Can you do that for ... well, all the things I'm doing for him?" Hermione asked.

"If you can slip out at night, take the bus to the Hog's Head, disguise yourselves, and slip in towards the jakes, I'll do it. But it will take hours -- you won't get much sleep that night."

"It won't hurt Harry, will it?"

"If anything it'll be the foundation of Occlumency and Legilimency training," Aberforth responded. "The only downside is Albus seeing many, many days where Harry was apparently fighting his Obliviation. Might bring another one down on him."

"Ask Harry's dolls to help you disguise yourselves," Selene said. "And it's high time you all headed out to Ottery St Catchpole." 

With that, Hermione suddenly realised her parents hadn't said a thing. Aberforth must have cast some sort of aversion charm, because they looked like they'd been wandering around the shop the entire time. Hermione did notice, however, that her mother had been taking notes on a little pad, so that wasn't all bad.

As they headed for the car, Hermione was mostly in high spirits. However, Harry raised the issue that was still bothering her, though she was trying to suppress it and enjoy meeting the Lovegoods:

"What did that Albus Dumbledore guy have to make me forget, if I wasn't even two years old?" he asked.

Chapter Text

Ottery
St-Catchpole
5524 Rods

"I give up," said Hermione Granger, 11. She and her family, and a younger boy named Harry Potter, were in a car driven very rapidly by her father. They were off to meet a pen-friend of Hermione's for the first time in person, a girl named Luna, in a small village in Devonshire (Although Hermione's generation called it Devon). For some reason, looking at the road sign for Ottery St-Catchpole, where Luna and her family resided, made her slump in her seat.

Her father had driven them in a tear since they had rescued Harry from some awful relatives in Surrey. They'd gone south to the Grangers house and collected Hermione's dolls, based on a gut feeling Hermione had, so she was the guilty party in her father's speeding. They had covered what should be a four-hour trip, even using M3, in around three-and-a-half hours. Unfortunately, that meant they'd arrive just in time for dinner, a dreadful imposition.

To the surprise of everyone who got out of the car by the walkway to Luna's house, the girl had run out to meet them, and was waiting while they debarked and Mr Granger had the bonnet up, checking the radiator. She immediately hugged Hermione, and waved cheerfully at Harry. Hermione was grateful for that, as Harry, for the most part, did not like it when other people touched him.

"Father's made dinner, so we should go in," Luna said. "Mother's working on her spells ..." she looked at Hermione with a serious expression, "... in the kitchen where Father can see her." Hermione's face must have registered concern, just thinking about what she'd read, because Luna patted her hand. "Everything's just fine, Hermione. You can't order the world, you know. That's what my grandmother always said."

Now that Hermione could get a look at her, she was a very pretty girl, about Harry's age. Her slightly bulgy eyes reminded Hermione strongly of Selene, the shopgirl at the curio shop in Holborn where she occasionally bought extremely rare magical objects. So much so, they might be related, she mused. She had what looked like radishes made into earrings, and a necklace of wine corks. Her bare feet were tanned and a bit scuffed up, and she had a couple of bits of leaves in her hair.

Before they knew it, they were all seated around the dining table in the Lovegood home, which was built like a single castle turret, or a chess piece. "I suppose you've come to enlist our aid, as a quid pro quo?" Luna's father, Xenophilius asked, as he served them all soup, salad and bread. Everything was so fresh, it had clearly all come out of the Lovegoods' garden.

Hermione, Harry and the Grangers all looked at each other.

"Don't misunderstand," Luna's mother Pandora said. She had a sandwich and a bowl of soup filled only halfway so she wouldn't spill it, and was still perched on a stool by her work desk. "We realise your letter was mainly meant for Luna's sake. She's going to be your friend, that much is clear."

"We simply hate it when things aren't said, and then later, people say 'you should have said.' So we say them," Xenophilius explained. "We have a little more than your word about the danger involved. A relative who's gifted in Divination confirmed you were likely correct. But that raises another question: if you believe someone's trying to do my wife in, or she's incompetent to the point of being dangerous, why would you come here and risk being bystander casualties? The two adults can't do magic, and you other two are too young to defend yourselves. I'm only curious."

"Remember, my husband is a journalist, first and foremost. If he doesn't know something, it annoys him. Me too, in my field, I suppose," Pandora said. She smiled as Harry and the Grangers all turned and looked at Hermione, who blushed.

"I like not knowing things," Luna observed, breaking the silence that had ensued. "But you don't always get what you want, so I find myself knowing things whether I wish to or not!"

Pandora was humming to herself, meaning she'd tuned out everyone else and was thinking of her project. Xenophilius took up the gauntlet. "We've also noticed you've gone out of your way to avoid the Weasleys, either visiting them or even mentioning them. The Diggorys as well."

"Cedric and Ginny are nice, you needn't shun them," Luna said.

"Well, Luna," her father said, after a pause. "That's true. However, their families have something in common. I think that's the reason they're being avoided. They're both a kind of servant to the man who runs Hogwarts school."

Hermione nodded her head at that.

"Is he not a nice man, Daddy?" Luna asked.

"Well, he pretends to be, but no, he's not nice. Useful, yes. Quite often. But no one who's truly seen him for what he is would ever use the term 'nice'."

"Like your father and 'sane', Luna," Pandora said, with a bit of laughter in her voice.

"Or your mother and 'careful'," Xeno riposted. But they smiled at each other.

"Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure," Luna recited. "Oh, that reminds me. Hermione, would you like to guess some riddles with me? The prize is a cursed ring that makes you old and evil without dying and lets you sneak around and strangle your friends."

"Luna!" Hermione said, scandalised by her blasphemy. But the effect was ruined, since she couldn't even get out her name without laughing. Harry looked puzzled. "It's a book, well, books, Harry. I will give you my copies to read, and you'll understand." She then turned to Luna, and said, "I don't mind, would you like to start?"

"Because it can produce a few notes, though they are very flat; and it is never put with the wrong end in front!" the girl responded.

Well, first of all, it wasn't a question. Or even a question-like classical riddle statement, because none of them started with "because". Second of all. Second of all, it seemed somehow familiar. Third and worst, her mother's expression suggested she knew the answer. Well, the new Hermione didn't stand on pride.

"Is it all right if my mother guesses, Luna?" she asked the girl, who nodded excitedly.

"Why is a raven like a writing desk?" Mrs Granger said, tentatively. Luna nodded. It was only then that Hermione noticed Mrs Lovegood had started looking at a tabloid - upside down. Perhaps that was a motif with the Lovegood family.

Hermione cleared her throat, then said:

I talk, but I do not speak my mind
I hear words, but I do not listen to thoughts
When I wake, all see me
When I sleep, all hear me
Many heads are on my shoulders
Many hands are at my feet
The strongest steel cannot break my visage
But the softest whisper can destroy me
The quietest whimper can be heard.

Luna clearly thought for a while, then ventured, "Is it a mummer?"

"Luna," her mother said, "when they make sounds, it's what, darling?"

"Oh, an actor?" Luna guessed, and before Hermione could tell her she was correct, continued, "I was fooled a bit by not speaking their mind -- that's not at all the same as not speaking. And mummers don't snore. So am I right?" Hermione nodded.

My first displays the wealth and pomp of kings,
Lords of the earth! their luxury and ease.
Another view of man, my second brings,
Behold him there, the monarch of the seas!

Hermione almost thought Luna was tailoring that to her, but she piped up with "Courtship!" anyway. Then again, maybe she likes Jane Austen, too, she thought. She looked over at the girl and smiled. "Does Luna know any languages?" she asked, looking at her parents in turn.

"French and German," said Xenophilius. "She can read Latin," Pandora added, "and get by in Mermish and the goblin language."

"I really want to listen when Harry talks ..."  Luna began, but a stern look from Pandora cut her off. Harry and the Grangers just looked puzzled. Hermione guessed she did too.

Nevertheless, she continued, "I think these have been too long for the Ravenclaw door, so how about a short riddle in German?"

Mein erster ist nicht wenige
Meine zweite ist nicht schwer.
Mein ganzes Ding
gibt den Sinn
Es ist möglich und nicht mehr.

"Hmm," said Luna. She looked so cute and adorable while pondering, it made Hermione nervous. After all, Luna and Harry were closer in age than she was to Harry, and she'd probably be an excellent girlfriend. Unlike all her other potential rivals, she decided, honesty was the best policy with Luna. She'd find some way to ask outright if they were rivals for Harry, and go from there. You never won a race by giving up, after all

"Viel ... leicht .... oh! Vielleicht!" Luna said. "Alright, one last short one, then I'm tired."

There is a house. One enters it blind and comes out seeing. What is it?

"Harry, would you like to guess? I guarantee you, if we end up in Ravenclaw, they will ask this one. It's a guarantee," Hermione said.

It was a good sign that they had rescued Harry in time that he still thought of

"A school?"

as a place like that, even with all the bullying he'd experienced.

With that, Luna fished out a gold ring and handed it to Hermione. "Here," she said, "you can look it over, and share it with Harry."

The ring was cooling the air around it when Hermione palmed it. She felt it heat up and twist a little as she started to put it on her finger, but stopped. "Can I see it?" she heard Harry ask.

In a way, they were calling her bluff. She knew quite a bit about magic in a theoretical way now, but she didn't know any charms to discover the secrets of the ring. She would have to simply trust Luna couldn't be consciously evil, so she nodded and gave Harry the ring.

"Weird, Hermione, it's cold but when you put it on, it's warm ..." she heard, as Harry slowly faded away. Hermione sat there, stunned.

After a bit, she heard Pandora laugh. "I kept my wand under the desk and subvocalized the incantation, so it wasn't hard," Luna's mother said.

"Oh, was that what that was," Hermione heard the air saying. "It felt like someone cracked an egg above my head."

"Go ahead and take it off, Harry," Luna said. Hermione watched Pandora closely. Her wand was out and not moving. She shifted her gaze back and forth between her and where Harry was, as he faded back into view.

"I like it when you're thinking, Hermione," Harry startled her by saying. "It's nice. It's ... cute, I guess?"

At that, Xenophilius laughed. She'd forgotten there was another magician in the room!

"Please," she found herself saying, "teach me things!"

"Not right now, Hermione. You, yourself pointed out it's tricky for me to do my work and stay safe at the same time. If I have to also watch over a beginner doing things, that's dangerous for me and them both. If you died, who'd watch over Harry?" Pandora asked.

Hermione's eyes shifted to Harry in a panic, but it seemed from his expression he didn't mind her watching over him.

"IF things settle down, and AFTER you've proven yourself at Hogwarts ... Maybe?" was Pandora's final declaration.

"She's a born researcher," Luna interjected. "Have her research things."

"That would be fair," her father agreed. "We tell you things about the magical world, things you are not to repeat, and you are our dogsbody for finding out things that take a lot of work."

"And we'll help you learn, but not what you might want to learn, you're too young," Pandora said.

"On behalf of the Lovegoods, is it a deal?" Luna asked, extending her hand.

"It is," said Hermione, shaking it. Then, "Oh! Before we leave, I brought our dolls, would you all mind looking at them? But not," she said, looking at Pandora apologetically, "in a way that could harm them. Think of them as more like a child, and less like a crossword puzzle."

Mr Granger went out at that, and came back a minute later with all seven dolls.

Mr and Mrs Lovegood immediately cast spells over them that made them glow in different colours. "Nothing harmful," Pandora assured them. Then she asked, "they aren't ... alive, are they?"

Hermione went with her stock answer. "They're close enough that I think it'd be a rude question to ask them," she replied.

"Good answer," Luna said. "Although, there's plenty of living things I'd still ask about that."

"What do they do?" Xenophilius asked.

Hermione pondered that.

"Can you get us a Hogwarts textbook? Something second year should do," she asked. "And something from third year for me."

She asked her dolls to make notes from the third-year text, and asked Harry to have his dolls do the same with the second-year's. "You might want to cast spells on me and Harry, too," she volunteered.

Her rather blank expression, as Pandora pondered the situation, was identical to the one the shopgirl in the curio shop usually adopted. They could be sisters, Hermione thought. Her dress was worn, but lovely. The textbooks were dog-eared and scribbled-in. Clearly, the Lovegoods put function over form preferentially.

"The dolls are draining the girl, she must have more magic than she looks to have," Mr Lovegood observed.

"But the boy's dolls -- it's unclear where they get theirs from," agreed his wife. "His are leaping around, drawing conclusions out of thin air. Then they have to backtrack when they reach a dead end."

"Hers are quite systematic, but much slower," Xenophilius said.

"May I?" Luna asked Harry and Hermione. They both nodded, and Luna hugged all the dolls in turn.

"There's a good deal of her pain and sadness in them," Luna said with a sigh. "And something of her, just her, as well. Yet she gave three pieces of herself to Harry." Addressing Harry, she continued, "The names of your dolls are 'cause Hermione's teeth used to be bigger, and her hair was too bushy, people thought. And if she talked about magic, they called her Loony, like they call me. And kids were really mean to her."

"I think you fancy him, Hermione. Are you worried about me taking him from you?" she suddenly asked.

Hermione had promised herself she wouldn't lie outright, and Luna didn't ask many open-ended questions, so she nodded. Harry looked deeply shocked.

"Well, don't. You're the best person for him, even if you don't tell him everything, or even a lot. And I'll fight anyone who disagrees." With that, Luna put out her hand again, and again, Hermione shook it.

"What about the shop, though?" Hermione asked.

"Well, my wife can't go there, so we rarely will, out of solidarity with her," Xenophilius explained. "Her and Selene having a conversation could be catastrophic."

"She wouldn't be able to stop herself, and we'd all be in trouble," Pandora added. "I've seen pictures, she's a very sweet-looking girl. It's a pity."

"Ah," Hermione said. "Well, I mentioned it because they gave me Harry's dolls, and my dolls were the ones who suggested passing them to him."

"As true as that is, Hermione, your dolls are still you, magically and spiritually, so it was still your decision. You were just talking to yourself," Pandora said.

"I don't understand," Harry said, "what fancying someone means."

"It means that right now, she thinks of you as a good friend, Harry," Mrs Granger said.

"Well, yes. I don't have any other friends, and even if I did, she'd be my best friend," Harry replied. "But I still don't get it."

"My wife said right now, Harry. Right now, she thinks of you as a good friend. But in the future, she wants you two to be boyfriend and girlfriend," Mr Granger said, a bit nervously.

"What does that mean?" Harry asked

"Well," began Mrs Granger. "Hermione's father and I were friends, then we were boyfriend and girlfriend. We went on walks together, we held hands a lot, we hugged a lot, and eventually, we kissed each other."

"Why did you do it, though? What was the point?" Harry asked.

"It was fun?" Mrs Granger said, "We enjoyed it? Mr Granger was very special and important to me."

"Anyway, Harry, after we'd been boyfriend and girlfriend for a couple of years, we got married, and then we had Hermione," Mr Granger said.

"Is that the point? Does Hermione want to get married?" Harry wondered.

"Since you're both so young, I think she'd settle for the walking around, holding hands and hugs," Mrs Granger observed with a smile.

"Well, I suppose I could get used to her hugging me. It's not my favourite thing, but if she's doing it, it's not as awful," Harry decided. With that, Hermione found herself involved in a handshake for the third time that evening.

"So," Harry said, "did you come help me so I'd be your boyfriend? I don't mind, I guess, but it felt nice that you just cared about me, because no one else ever did."

"Harry," said Hermione, mortified, and she could hear her voice choking a little, "do you remember what Mr Lovegood asked when we came here?"

She let him think about that. After a bit, he said, "I think he asked if you sent a letter to Luna to help the Lovegoods so they would help you. Like, you were trading favours."

"Yes, Harry. And Mrs Lovegood said she knew my main reason was to save Luna from losing her mother, because I knew Luna, but not her mother, but I also knew the Lovegoods could help both of us."

"You won't tell me how you knew Luna when you never met her, will you?" Harry said, looking at her with slightly narrowed eyes.

"No, I won't. It's not a vow or magic preventing me. I just think it's a bad idea," Hermione admitted.

Surprisingly, that seemed to satisfy Harry. "It's better than if you lied to me, Hermione. You really seem to like me a lot, and you spend a lot of your time worrying about me. I think you knew me without meeting me like you knew Luna. Is there anyone else like that?"

Hermione thought about it. "There probably are," she allowed. "Erm .. one of them I want you to help instead of me doing it, if that's okay, when you're in a position to do so. His name's Neville. After your parents died, you were supposed to live with him. You were supposed to be raised together. He's kind of like your brother, only not."

She looked over at her parents, who were obviously just as curious as Harry. "And your mother and father loved you so much they died sheltering you. Don't believe what the Dursleys say. As for me?" She paused.

"You were #1, and Luna was #2, and the rest are just 'save them as I can,' I guess," Hermione said. "Ahem." She thought about it, and continued. "There is one other person that's vital. Neville can survive on his own until we go to school. But you need this other person a lot, Harry."

"Sirius Black," she heard the Lovegoods say in unison. They looked at each other and laughed.

"Harry," Mr Lovegood said, "like Neville is your brother, Sirius is your father."

"Bad magical people killed your parents, they hurt Neville's parents so much they couldn't raise you, and they put Sirius in a prison guarded by demons so he couldn't raise you. You've been treated terribly by the magical world," Mrs Lovegood said.

"Come back and visit again," Mr Lovegood said. Only then did Harry and the Grangers realise how late it was. "Is this weekend acceptable? For lunch?"

"There's a wonderful cafe in Ottery St-Catchpole," Mrs Lovegood said. "You have to hide Harry, but you'd be surprised how little it takes to disguise him."

"My dolls are supposed to help me disguise him," Hermione said. "That's what your ... the shopgirl at the curio shop said."

"Sadly," Mr Lovegood said, "you shouldn't even ask what relationship Selene and Pandora have. Don't mention Pan's name to her, or vice versa. It's simply a bad idea."

Luna hugged Hermione again, and Harry let her hug him, too, after she promised it wouldn't make her his girlfriend.

With that in mind, when they arrived at #4 Privet Drive, Mr Granger used a key they'd forced Petunia to give them, let the boy in, and Harry and Hermione went up to the room quietly, bringing the dolls.

"It's okay, Hermione," he said, as he was about to close his door. "But there's going to be absolutely no kissing."

Chapter Text

Hermione Granger hit the books from the curio shop at Holborn hard again after she got home from Ottery St-Catchpole.

From the sixth book in the series, she noticed that Headmaster Dumbledore became much more cooperative after he realised he was dying. She chose not to focus on that part; it was gratifying just to realise the wizard was actually capable of cooperating. She also noted in his favour in one of the books that the arch-villain Voldemort claimed he'd protected Harry "better than he [Harry] realised." While she had issues with that passage - first, how did the author know, second, that flew in the face of the countless times Dumbledore bragged about that protection to justify his behaviour. The most she would grant was that it was probably a half-truth. Probably Snape was the source.

It was probably time to discuss which house she wanted herself and Harry in. She was leaning toward either Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff. She still wondered why the hat had suggested Slytherin. She had never met a less ambitious child than Harry. Maybe, she mused, that was the Headmaster's interference. Everyone in the book accepted that he wanted Harry in Gryffindor, but why? It would break the pattern established by his captivity at the Dursleys. On the other hand, being thrown to the wolves in Slytherin, and giving the sadist Snape free reign to continue the abuse where they left off would be very Dumbledorian.

Alternately, if Harry's scar really was a piece of Voldemort's soul, the hat could have been reading that. It would explain the "striving for greatness." If you wanted to claim Harry was a Slytherin because he was cagey and guarded, fine. But thirsting for greatness? She snorted at the thought. That would be way down there after peace, security and a family. And it was a flat out, undiluted lie that being in Slytherin would help Harry with his goals. He'd be harassed on a daily or hourly basis and be a lonely, bitter pariah all seven years. That sounded like Dumbledore wrote the script the Hat was reciting, to Hermione. Alternately, it also fit the Horcrux theory like a glove.

At any rate, they were still massively outgunned. Hermione was in the back garden, and she'd adorned her strawman goalie with an old jacket of her father's. She had a pink stuffed mouse and a blue one, and she was trying to switch the blue one in and the pink one out without a wand. In a pinch, she would be willing to say "Commutandum" as long as it wasn't so loud Percy Weasley would twig. Then, all she would need to ask the Lovegoods for was information about when Percy would be out of the house. She didn't much relish carrying a live rat around, but it was a small sacrifice to make to start adjusting the balance of forces towards her and Harry.

However, try as she might, out loud or thinking, and no matter how desperate she tried to make herself, she couldn't even feel it start to work. It was probably simply too precise a spell to be cast "half-accidentally." She might be able to practice it, and cast it, in Diagon Alley. But getting two different opportunities there was going to take too much time, and be too risky. She guessed she would first try to throw herself on the mercy of the Lovegoods. If one of them would switch a rat in for Scabbers, she'd be on her way to enlisting Sirius Black's help, which, she could remind them, they had agreed was her logical next step. They were the only wizards or witches she could really count on, since she had to operate in secrecy. Or were they?

She would try them first, then Aberforth. Both the Lovegoods and the Headmaster's brother were already doing them favours, unfortunately, so assistance wasn't guaranteed. Practising and casting in Diagon Alley would be the last resort.

The stray thought occurred to her that she could swap that last resort out for another: enlisting Amelia Bones, who should already be the head of the magical police. Of course, she'd have to operate anonymously, and that brought its own headaches. If she saw an easy way to do it, however, it might be better than owing more favours to the Lovegoods or the innkeeper. Done carefully, she could say "Percy Weasley will be out shopping today, he has Peter Pettigrew with him, try to detect him and if you find him, swap a rat in for him and he can tell you Sirius Black is innocent." She could even sign it "A Friend," so those in the know would later realise she'd done it.

Then, she had yet another realisation: she could lay out all her alternatives to the Lovegoods, and they'd, no doubt, volunteer advice. Dumbledore himself had advised them to tell the Lovegoods about their encounter with him at the curio shop. She could detail the options she'd considered, admit she couldn't do a wandless Commutandum any time soon, and see what they thought. She didn't even have to mention them helping her as an alternative. As a compromise, she decided to list that option last.

With that decided, she felt as if she'd gotten a second wind, as trying to cast Commutandum had tired her out. She came to her senses and looked stupidly at her strawman goalie, who'd turned a bright pink. She felt an extra weight on her arms, and when she looked down, she discovered she was wearing the jacket, which had turned a solid blue. Moreover, the two stuffed mice were nowhere to be found.

She resolved to spend the time up until the weekend reading, and making notes.

Chapter Text

I need to sort these.

1. Winning harry ✓
2. Saving pandora. ✓
3. Saving myself from persecution.
4. Finding out the facts.
5. Saving harry.
6. Saving my parents.
7. Befriending Luna ✓
8. Befriending Neville, and anyone else who seemed nice in the books.
9. Keeping Harry and Ron apart.
10. Keeping Harry from getting to know Ginny or Cho too closely.
11. Learning how to excel in school like Bill did  (not how I did in the books.)
12. Check on other schools.
13. Check on goblins.
14. Check on Potters.
15. Free Sirius black.
16. Get peter Pettigrew captured.
17. Learn about the curio shop. ✓
18. Teach Harry about the curio shop if possible. ✓
19. But not too much
20. See if two of my teachers know magic.
21. Continue making friends in regular school while I still can. Writing them will give me Secrecy practice

Immediate goals:

1. Get Harry to meet the Lovegoods. ✓
2. Get Harry as many books as he needs to catch up with both
1. Normal school work thanks to Dursleys.
2. Magical work thanks to Dumbledore.
3. Work up a cover story. Try not to lie
4. Enlist the Lovegoods. ✓
5. Show edited list to Harry.

It was backwards. She was getting more of the long-term goals and fewer of the short-term ones. She decided at some point when her notes got ugly, she'd rewrite the whole thing as a list of goals, period. And the short-term ones would be the ones she put under as sub-items. Because she'd resolved to be less obsessive, she didn't correct the mixture of imperative verbs and gerunds. But it was a bit of a struggle. 

Lists were dangerous if they put you under emotional stress. She was already the most organized 11-year-old she knew of. She decided to limit the number of goals she'd worry about on a given day. Besides, she needed to add some time for meditation. If Harry had already known how to clear his mind, clear his emotions, he might have been able to learn Occlumency, and that seemed to be a recurring problem. Both she and Harry were under emotional stress already, so meditating could help in a number of ways. It would help her learn to excel in a more relaxed way. She put "Meditation" as a sub-item there. It would help Harry with both magical and non-magical school, so Meditation went there, too.

She'd gotten strong, she realised with surprise. All four dolls were taking notes, all day, and Genius was organising them. Yet she felt no fatigue. It wasn't impacting her football during play break. She was exercising magically and physically and it showed. A stray thought caught her mind that she'd assumed Diagon Alley would be a place that the trace on her wand wouldn't send off a signal. But was that true? She was devoting the days before meeting up with the Lovegoods to getting a firmer grasp of the books. They were the resource that, probably, no one in the world but her had. They had to take precedence.

But after the meetup, she'd need more books, more studying, to figure out what she could get away with. Again, if she was willing to impose more than she was comfortable with, maybe the Lovegoods could work it so she could learn magic before Hogwarts. But was that, really, safe? Xenophilius and the Quibbler were gadflies. A normal pureblood family of their standing would have no issues teaching their daughter magic. But in their case, all the Ministry had to do was have the Daily Prophet investigate them - they hated the Quibbler, anyway. Then if Rita Skeeter flew over and spied on them, they might get a warning for Luna. But if Hermione was there? That would put her on the Ministry's radar.

Given what had happened with the house-elf, it was certainly likely that doing something where there was already magic -- by an apparition point would be the only place she could think of, to be honest -- would go undetected. It would be in a magical area, and it would probably be masked. However, again, staying off both Dumbledore's and the Ministry's radar would have to take precedence over wanded learning. She'd already gotten away with more than anyone in the books had. That was a somewhat chilling thought. She herself might be the expert on getting away with underage magic. It was possible she should be writing the books, not reading them.

Again, the fact that this wasn't somewhere a thousand miles away, but right next door, with some of the attributes of the Nazis and others of the feudal era, and with authority over her. It was amazingly stressful. The fact that she read about it in books mainly must not fool her.  Alright. She had already decided the Lovegoods would mainly be asked for information. And thereby hangs a tale, maybe: what if Harry wrote Neville and asked for information? After approval by the Lovegoods, naturally. Neville could be Harry's source. The key question was, what sort of mail from Harry would cause Neville's grandmother to remark to Dumbledore about how Harry was writing Neville now.

So. How does the trace work. How would Neville's grandmother respond to him getting mail from Harry? It could be they'd have to enlist her help first, but that was rather bootstrap-y. 

She dived back into the books. You really had to work backwards, but she had a very rough timeline.

A long time ago, Percival Dumbledore had a family with three children. The youngest, a girl, was abused - the book didn't say how - and lost control of her magic. Apparently, something that can happen. The father took retribution - the book didn't say how - and went to Azkaban for it, and died there. Unless the whole society had gone backwards since then, it was hard to imagine what he could have done to Muggles that would put him there. The oldest child, Albus, was away doing something. The girl's magic went out of control and killed her mother. The younger boy, Aberforth, was her caretaker. Albus had to come home, probably to take care of the estate. When he came back, the history writer Bagshot had a nephew visiting named Grindlewald. Hermione was a firm believer in gay rights, and she decided the euphemisms for Albus' relationship with Grindlewald, and with his companion, Elphias Dodge, were part of being in the closet. It was, after all, nearly a hundred years ago. The two became very close and travelled around together, for an unspecified time, doing unspecified things, probably adventures of some sort.

There was a fight, details unspecified, in which the youngest girl died, and possibly Albus helped her death. The book implied he'd broken completely with Grindlewald then, but didn't state it outright. Grindlewald went back to Germany and was somehow involved with the rise of the Nazis.  Dumbledore eventually apprenticed under the alchemist Nicholas Flamel, and when he got to Hogwarts again, he taught transfiguration there. 

Dumbledore opposed Grindlewald, probably late in the progress of the second world war, and they duelled. Did Dumbledore get the Elder Wand, which increased his power, and Grindlewald's home? fortress? was turned into a prison just for him. Meanwhile, Tom Riddle, a student at Hogwarts, was brought there by Dumbledore (still teaching Transfiguration, but probably also the deputy headmaster). He killed a student with a basilisk and possibly made a soul container powered by the murder. Then he killed his entire family except for an uncle, who he framed for the crime. He learned to make soul containers from the Potions teacher, who let the Slytherin house become a Death Eater recruiting and training house.

Dumbledore became the headmaster at Hogwarts and also presided over the Wizengamot, the wizarding court. He became the British Representative to the ICW, a kind of Wizard UN. he was elected Mugwump, which apparently was like Secretary-General. It didn't seem to rotate, which Hermione decided was really odd, and really bad.

Sybil Trelawney, who was related to the Lovegoods, made a prophecy at the Hog's Head Inn. That was a very odd place for Dumbledore to be interviewing teachers. He was possibly also interviewing Severus Snape around the same time. That person heard half of the prophecy before Aberforth threw him out. He brought it to Tom Riddle, who decided to kill Neville and Harry on the strength of it. Dumbledore had created a watch group called the Order. He told its members they had a spy, but didn't hunt him out. Instead, he let that announcement turn the members against each other. It turned out the spy was Peter Pettigrew, one of Harry's father's friends.

It was implied that Dumbledore cast a very difficult secrecy charm. Peter Pettigrew was the secret keeper, though Harry's parents and their friend Sirius let people think it was Sirius. Given how difficult the charm was, Hermione thought it was all but certain Dumbledore had cast it, and knew Sirius wasn't the secret-keeper.

Snape asked Tom Riddle, whose nickname was Voldemort, to kill Harry and his father and spare his mother. Hermione snorted at that. Then he went to Dumbledore and offered to spy for him. In the later books, Hermione thought it implied he'd told Voldemort what he was going to do.

At any rate, Voldemort did kill Harry's parents. Then something happened that killed Voldemort, but kept him around as a special, parasitic kind of ghost. Harry's godfather, Sirius, came to take him to safety, but the oaf, "just following orders," stole him away. Sirius let him borrow his motorcycle to get away faster. That, Hermione thought, already made it impossible that he'd betray Harry: even if he couldn't overcome a giant, it'd be child's play to simply kill Harry, and if Sirius were the spy and the betrayer, that's what he would have done. Probably getting away clean on the motorcycle, to boot.

Then Sirius went after the betrayer, who framed him. Meanwhile, Neville's unprotected parents were removed. Hermione suspected Neville's mother was Harry's godmother, but the books didn't say. The head of the magical police, the minister of magic, and Dumbledore railroaded Sirius into the demon prison. No trial, no questioning. It was a stark contrast to every other case. Any will the Potters made never came to light.

Hermione was certain that was all deliberate on Dumbledore's part. When you added it all up, Dumbledore's friend Snape had eliminated Harry's parents and the people likeliest to adopt him. He'd rendered both prophecy boys vulnerable. The spy Dumbledore hadn't bothered to find had eliminated the person who should have taken Harry. Sirius and the Longbottoms were both silenced.

And Snape had been rewarded - not only not tried, but given a prestigious teaching post at a young age. A post he turned into a sham and a shambles, except for his real agenda - recruiting Death Eaters and destroying Potions education. That wasn't a harsh assessment. He refused to teach, he encouraged dangerous sabotage, and when all else failed, he vanished potions when they were in flasks waiting to be graded.

It was clear to Hermione that Snape was rewarded precisely for doing Dumbledore's dirty work. Looking over the Potions, History and Muggle Studies classes, Dumbledore, too, was deliberately sabotaging Hogwarts. Some Teacher! she sniffed. All by himself, he was plenty to cure her overdone respect for authority figures.

At any rate, Draco, the Nazi student, had a father who took over the Hogwarts Board of Education and, using bribes, effectively took over the Ministry. Even with their leader dead, the Death Eaters continued to run Wizarding Britain, and clearly, that suited Dumbledore perfectly.

Harry was dropped off on the doorstep of his magic-hating aunt and uncle, and proceeded to be beaten and starved for 10 more years. The neighbours would have eventually said something, so Hermione inferred that Dumbledore had done something to prevent that.

He left a barely magical woman to report on Harry, but from what happened later in the books, Hermione realised her job was to watch for rescuers so Dumbledore could defeat them. On Harry's 11th birthday (Which hasn't come yet! she noted, and underlined), they further harassed the magic-hating couple by sending hundreds of letters. It had absolutely no purpose other than that. Eventually, Hagrid, the dim-witted muscle, went to fetch Harry. And further terrorise his relatives. On Dumbledore's orders, he told Harry basically nothing about anything. The information he was allowed to tell him was tailored to lure him into a future confrontation with Voldemort. That said, out of the kindness of his heart, he bought Harry a friend and a means of communication. Dumbledore might have advised him to buy a distinctive owl, so he could monitor Harry's communications, but Hermione didn't think so.

Not having been told anything about anything, Harry was dumped by his relatives in the station. Cue, thought Hermione, the Weasleys. Blatantly violating the laws, because they were purebloods, probably, Mrs Weasley shouted out "packed with Muggles, as usual!" which must have drawn attention to her, by design. Then she cued her innocent little daughter, who'd been brainwashed with years of Harry Potter books, to yell "Platform 9 3/4!"

When a grateful Harry got on board, the first person he met was Ron. Boo, hiss, she thought.  If the train had really been full -- and how that was possible was anyone's guess. The castle was basically empty and several places in the book indicated the war at the time of Harry's parents' deaths had more than decimated the wizarding community -- Harry would have noticed that, immediately, but he didn't. After all, he'd barely made it on ahead of Ron.

But this blatant lie, of course, went right over Harry's clueless head, as planned. Ron proceeded to be unpleasant to everyone there, clearly in an attempt to isolate Harry. Hermione decided her image of Dumbledore was as a cult leader. She'd read as much as she could stand about cults, and he fit the profile perfectly. The first tactic is to isolate the targets so they only communicate with the sycophants of the leader, after all.

The only thing probably not coached was eating all of Harry's candy. That, certainly, would not endear him to a boy who was used to going hungry. But apparently, Harry was appropriately meek and beaten down -- but don't forget, still capable of occasionally giving cheek to the Dursleys -- to forgive Ron for that gross violation of charity and hospitality.

Cue the nearly-as-clueless Hermione, and the too-scared-to-enlighten-them Neville. While it was true that Ron recited his coached lines about Slytherin and Gryffindor, Hermione believed it was Harry's two encounters with the Nazi child that put him off Slytherin.

She'd already settled, to her own satisfaction, that Dumbledore or the scar were involved in the ridiculous Slytherin suggestion. After all, all of Harry's new acquaintances were in Gryffindor, and if the hat couldn't sell him on Slytherin, it would default there.

That Ron was trying to drive her away was a given. It was a pity Hermione couldn't get a Pensieve memory of what happened in the books, to see how much Ron actually did with the troll, but there you go. It wasn't going to happen.

The end-of-year confrontation, too, she'd already settled. Add love, you dimwit! she said to her book self after she had solved the poison and fire puzzle. The whole protection issue was key. She didn't know how to test it, but her working theory was still that, contrary to his claim, Dumbledore had actually weakened Harry's protection, though he was probably right that it came from Harry's mother. That whole "recharging" thing made a lot more sense if you looked at it as the protections on the Dursleys leaching power from the protection on Harry. 

Probably he'd halved it or worse when he first messed with the wards around the Dursleys. Then he proceeded to further weaken it with yearly drainings until it reached some arbitrary strength there.

It would neatly explain why, for instance, Tom Riddle hadn't noticed anything special about Harry - no protection - by the time their second year ended. True, Voldemort had made a big deal later about the fact that he could now touch Harry -- but he hadn't even tried for two years.

Dumbledore's behaviour in second year was equally damning. Hermione decided there was little to learn from it, except that Harry really did value her as a friend by them. It was ludicrous to think Dumbledore had anything to do with the phoenix and the hat giving the sword to Harry, since he'd chosen the entire year to watch and enjoy. That probably put paid to the phoenix being some sort of endorsement of Dumbledore's goodness, too. It was unclear in the extreme if it was bonded at all, and if so, to Dumbledore personally or to his office.

The third-year debacle had one out-of-character exception -- Dumbledore allowing them to save Sirius. That said, Harry was showing signs of starting to completely distrust the headmaster, and she put it down to that. A worse interpretation was that it was another test, or even that he hoped somewhere along the line Hermione, Sirius, or Remus would die, and yet he'd look squeaky clean.

Dumbledore's sociopathy in their fourth year, and that of wizarding Britain, raised another acute question: did the Cup nonsense really apply? Any child could see the potential for social destruction there. If it was true, they'd both prevent the nonsense with Harry, and scheme to use it for their ends. It was comforting that Harry saw her, finally, as beautiful. There will, too, be kissing by then, if not before, she resolved.

Their fifth year might even be where she started with Harry, if she could figure a way to abstract everything back to their current time. If she'd had any doubts labelling Dumbledore the #2 villain to Harry -- and Lucius Malfoy, the Nazi dad of Draco, was a strong contender -- they were put paid by that year. All the villains --Snape, Molly and Ron Weasley, Dung Fletcher, Albus Dumbledore, etc. -- deliberately destroyed Harry's godfather. Clearly, Dumbledore was still angry Sirius had beaten his frame-up and silencing, and punished him by making his last days as hellish as possible. His more intelligent minion, McGonagall, even conspired with a Ministry unmarked Death Eater to torture Harry, with the headmaster's approval. And even that ultimate betrayal of the students didn't save her. Dumbledore's narcissistic sociopathy truly knew no bounds whatsoever!

At any rate, Dumbledore's hubris condemned him to an early death in their sixth year, and meanwhile, his evil history began to emerge. Coupled with his outsized love for and protection of Snape, Hermione thought maybe Dumbledore simply enjoyed evil, and admired men who did it. It would also explain his love of Grindlewald, and the degree to which he seemingly used, but didn't respect, Elphias Doge.

At that point, as she'd earlier observed, he started to cooperate ... a little. But, being Dumbledore, he had to do it in a nearly useless, maximally sadistic way. He probably didn't care about Harry stopping Voldemort at that point, she decided. He was worried as a narcissist about his legacy.

She was completely certain that some sort of spell or potion had been applied to her all of their sixth year, so that didn't need to be pondered on. Dumbledore and the Weasleys had set their end game, and Harry and her were, basically, through. 

She didn't believe Snape's memories for a second, either in sixth year or at the final battle. The sixth-year memories were very convenient. The battle memories were a final gaslighting of Harry. Over and over, she pored over Lily's words. Clearly, Snape called everyone BUT her a mudblood, on a daily basis. Hermione would have bet enormous sums that within Slytherin, Lily wasn't an exception. He helped his Death Eater friends torment younger students with dark spells, and even designed both prank spells (Levicorpus) and dark spells (Sectumsempra) for his, and their use.

Snape had always done the bare minimum to fulfil whatever weak vow he'd taken to give himself and Dumbledore deniability. Without the time turner, for example, Snape's interference in their third year would have certainly killed Harry, Hermione, Sirius and Lupin. Ironically, his behaviour might well have killed him, too. So the nonsense about vowing to protect Harry resulted in another snort from Hermione.

Given that purebloods, even after the wars, faced zero accountability, it would only make sense that Harry and Hermione would be controlled by spells or potions until it no longer mattered, and that was her working hypothesis. The sword in the pond was an obvious set-up, and either the locket was controlling all three Horcrux finders, or someone loyal to Dumbledore had spelt or potioned Harry and Hermione into becoming idiots. It was noticeable that whenever Ron was away, Harry and Hermione had cooperated like an extension of each other, and been, for the most part, terrifically effective. Their one faltering came in the face of an ambush by Voldemort himself and his super-powered familiar.

That Ron arrived "somehow" just after Snape left the sword under the ice in a pond. Vow to protect Harry, anyone? Hermione thought. That Harry would not take off the locket even to dive into the potentially deadly icy water. This from a boy that had never been shown to know how to swim, anywhere in the books.

It was all insane, and Hermione was 7 years younger than her befuddled self, and she could see it.

It was certainly valuable information that IF Voldemort built a body with Harry's blood and IF his scar was the final Horcrux and IF Voldemort killed him with a killing curse he didn't try to avoid, he MIGHT be able to come back from the dead. Though meeting Dumbledore was pretty small beer. We'll file that for consideration, she decided.

At any rate, she was sure whatever was controlling them when Ron was around continued into the indefinite future. Making it a Bad End. For a while, Hermione had been fond of Choose Your Adventure books, and this whole timeline felt like one.

The sheer evil of the Weasleys forcing Harry to name an actual child after two of his chief tormenters ... It really staggered Hermione. Then again, even so, there were still worse evils than them. The idea that they'd have to tip their bloody hats to Nazi terrorists after giving up their families, their futures, their lives? No. If it came down to that, if she managed to get Harry to marry her, they'd leave England and never look back.

I'm eleven, now, she thought. What would I be willing to do to those bastards when I'm not eleven? It was a sobering thought. But it was a little too dark. She was, in fact, eleven. She would have to go to the library and read about what people who lived in Latin America under Wizarding Britain-style fascists did, once the fear and terror and tyranny was over. Especially the young people.

The whole history was depressing. Well, history tended to be that way. The number of kittens you cuddled, or the gooing noises your baby made, didn't tend to make the grade.

That brought her back to the Lovegoods. Looked at objectively, they were a family not far shy of Hermione's acumen. It suddenly occurred to her that the best way to learn about the things that mystified her was to volunteer to research whatever they assigned her, and put herself out. That might obviate dozens of hours of ambling study.

Chapter Text

With a contact in the Department of Mysteries, Hermione Granger realised, they could get Harry’s prophecy and even inspect the Goblet of Fire. Probably she would need to work both the Lovegoods and Mr Dumbledore for that. So she would have to research for the Lovegoods, which she’d already resolved to do. As for Aberforth, what had she learned? That his brother was a bastard? Maybe it was the opposite; he’d pointed out there were worse people than Dumbledore out there. And she’d already decided he could be useful if he were dying -- perhaps also if his legacy were threatened.

What threatens his legacy? she wrote.

She could actually interview Aberforth, she realised. And if Grindlewald was still around … the sycophants like Elphias Doge would be no good. Maybe Bathilda Bagshot could be shamed into telling the truth about Dumbledore’s early years by reminding her Grindlewald was her great-nephew.

After school, she went with her parents -- now accustomed to blending in in Diagon Alley, but nonetheless clutching each other’s hands tightly the whole time -- to Eeylops Owl Emporium. She had no immediate plans to use a new owl for anything important, but rather, as a distraction, while she used public owls. She was preparing to take a chance with it and had written a letter to Luna, but enclosed a note to her parents inside, stating she was ready to be assigned a research project whenever they wanted.

Just before heading to the owl shop, she used a public postal service that handed off to the Muggle post to send a note to Harry Potter, the cupboard under the stairs, etc. inviting him in very indirect language to visit again. This time, no tea parties with dolls. She’d show him her backyard Quidditch practice and let him try, and she’d invite his help with non-verbal, wandless magic to see if the Scabbers switch would actually work with two of them trying at the same time.

When she got to the shop, she found that Hedwig was already there, and, surprisingly, there was a male snowy as well. It was unusual, she’d found out, for a female like Hedwig to be pure white instead of spotted. She borrowed money from her parents to get both of them, plus cages and treats. 

She read that Hedwig was a German girls’ name that meant, roughly, “war,” and decided to name her owl Günter, which meant, roughly, “warrior.” They were both excellent decoys. Harry’s would, after school started, be sent overtly as often as possible. She was either actually or spiritually his familiar, after all. Hermione had found Crookshanks, too, at the Magical Menagerie and her parents had lent her even more money to get him, so now for the first time in her life, she had to be a responsible pet owner. Worse, it turned out magical postal owls weren’t all that domesticated at first. She had to give Günter more attention than Crookshanks at first.

In addition to sending him to Luna, she took a chance later and put “The Curio Shop on Portsmouth” in as the address, with a little note asking if they had a catalogue. The reply that came back the next day was 3 folded pieces of paper with very general categories, not really a catalogue at all, yet highly informative.

She fretted about not using Günter enough. Perhaps, she thought, she could surreptitiously “meet” Sally-Anne Perks or Fay Dunbar or … well, who might be a muggle-born, even if they weren’t in Gryffindor, as she speculated those two girls were? Maybe she could “meet” the Patil twins? They weren’t likely to know anyone who knew Dumbledore. He cast a shadow over the whole wizarding world for Hermione, and now she was trying to avoid him yet live a productive life, her resentment was growing. She talked it over with her parents and with her dolls. They managed to give her perspective and calm her down. It was obvious from some things Aberforth had said that Dumbledore was not, in fact, the greater evil. But he was the immediate one, and the fact that she might have to work with him later didn’t make him any less inconvenient now.

Finally, she slapped herself, and not just mentally. Instead of having her parents brave Diagon Alley, she sent Günter for catalogues and ordered by owl. If McGonagall had someone check in on her periodically, the owl flights to shops would establish her cover, after all. And Günter was well-pleased.

The research the Lovegoods assigned to her via Günter was a shock, more than a shock, it made her have to sit down or fall over. They wanted her to research Horcruxes! My God, they know! she thought. Well. It was good, actually. She could now blame them. And she would start, not with how you made them or where they were. She actually knew all that. It was, she decided, too late to save Regulus the Death Eater. Sirius would have to settle for being freed two to three years early.

What Hermione would research was how to remove a Horcrux from a living creature. Safely.

Harry had scribbled a reply on her note that the Dursleys were visiting Marge two days after he’d got his missive. Since he was home alone all day, Hermione took the bold step of visiting via the Knight Bus, helping Harry finish all his chores, and paying his way to her home. Harry genuinely liked “Quidditch practice,” but far more importantly, however he did it, when he concentrated with her after waving a stick in the correct pattern (and Hermione decided she’d been overcautious not doing the same, since a stick wasn’t a wand) and, if the truth be told, both of them were probably subvocalising, so it wasn’t truly non-verbal -- at any rate, it worked. “Pink Scabbers” was swapped out for “Blue Scabbers” every time, without a hitch.

Hermione was not too big a person not to worry about Harry outshining her. She was going to keep him from Ron Weasley’s clutches and tutor him, and he was probably more powerful than her. It went against her competitive instincts to let anyone, even a “boyfriend,” get one up on her in school. She was, she mused, probably a lot like a racehorse in that way.

She had learned to strike while the iron was hot, so she and Harry took the Knight’s Bus to Diagon Alley, bought a rat familiar with magic, and carried him out in a cage she’d bought a while back. They were in luck. Not only was Percy Weasley there with just his mother accompanying him, but more fortunately, they were headed to the Magical Menagerie to have the rat checked out. With her and Harry concentrating, it worked just as it had at her home.

They then went to the Lovegoods with Peter Pettigrew in hand. Hermione had explained a little about what they were doing, and why, but before they met Luna on the edge of her family land, she’d given him more details about his godfather, and enough about the rat to make him cautious, but not enough to have his magic flare up and kill it.

At the Lovegoods, they planned out how Pandora would sneak the rat in for Amelia Bones, the Director of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, to find. They had Harry write the “A Friend” note. No-one associated with Dumbledore, not even Arabella Figg, had ever seen Harry’s writing, and even the Dursleys had not seen enough to recognise it. It also made Harry smile a lot.

If she could get Director Bones on side, along with the Lovegoods and Mr Dumbledore, they would have their entry into the Department of Mysteries. If Director Bones heard the prophecy, that would go a great distance towards increasing Harry’s status and her desire to protect him from the headmaster’s abuse.

As a thought crossed her mind, she wrote down a note to let Sirius Black know about his brother as soon as possible, and to tell him about the locket once she was sure he wouldn’t trust Dumbledore and blab to him. The Black Family’s library was probably her only hope at conducting useful research for the Lovegoods.

When they were done with everything and had gone back to Number Four, Privet Drive, Harry told her having a girlfriend wasn’t that bad, and even put up with her kissing his cheek.

Chapter Text

CHAPTER 24 NEVILLE LONGBOTTOM

La baguette de Neville.

“*I want you to help, instead of me doing it, if that’s okay* … *Neville can survive on his own until we get to school.*”

Hermione didn’t like how she’d been thinking when she told Harry that. Now that she felt more in control of her life, she changed her mind: both of them would help Neville, and now, not almost a year from now.

Then, as evidence that she really had changed, she wrote to Harry in the journal about what she’d decide in the journal. 

“You are a nice girl, Hermione. You really think too much. Hope that doesn’t make you mad. I will be happy to help Neville with you as you’ve done for me.”

Somehow she knew Harry had been laughing when he read what she wrote.

“So what are his problems?”

“The one we can deal with is his wand. We’ll simply get him one. I plan to bring you to Gringotts after I nose around first to make sure they don’t tell people that would interfere with you. If it’s not safe to bring you there, I will pay for things and you can pay me back when you get your letter. At that point, you can ask certain people for your key without becoming suspicious to them. And you can officially meet people like me and Neville and Luna when shopping. At any rate, we get Neville a new wand to use. However, having his father’s wand isn’t all bad. He should get used to both: having to use his father’s wand will make him much stronger; using his own wand will give him confidence. Think about how you would have felt if you saw the two hundred or so rabbits you conjured.

You’re too many steps ahead, Hermione. Harry’s confidence was clearly growing. I guess Neville, my almost-brother, has his father’s magic wand, and it doesn’t suit him?

Yes, Hermione replied. 

And you would prefer I bought it, because of the almost-brother thing. But me getting money from Gringotts would somehow alert people like the person who put me here?

Hermione agreed.

Why do I have money there?

It’s your trust vault. Your parents set it up. One of the people I am trying to avoid gave the key to your trust vault to another person I am trying to avoid. But he’s going to get it back to give it to someone else who is loyal to him, but will give you the key. Okay, this is another thing I have changed my mind about.

The person who had your key is Albus Dumbledore. He’s a powerful mind reader, and he put you where you were, knowing full well how you’d be treated. He doesn’t want you to have any freedom and when you get to school, he plans to subject you to increasingly dangerous situations. I don’t know if it’s to test you, harm you, strengthen you, or what. But it’s definitely designed to make you more isolated and dependent. The woman he gave your key to is Molly Weasley. She’s completely loyal to Albus Dumbledore, and unlike the person who will have your key later, she’s not nice about how she obeys him. I now realise you should get any anger out of your system now. It’s not likely he’ll choose to visit the Dursleys before school starts. That was me panicking. By the time you start school, either we’ll have learned to hide our thoughts, or you will have gotten your anger under control. We have to learn Occlumency, which helps with both.

That’s a lot. And I see what you mean. We have almost a year for me not to think about blasting him. Who is he, in general? Besides the brother of the guy we met. And now I know why you two were talking about him so much.

He runs the school we’ll go to. He also presides over the wizard’s high court. And he’s like the head of the UN, but with less power. He’s Britain’s representative to the Magical UN. He’s famous and people admire him because when he was a teacher of Transfiguration, which is just a magical class, he went out and fought with an old friend of his, Gellert Grindlewald, and defeated him. He was trying to take over the wizarding world.

I should add that some of the information we have on Dumbledore is that that guy wasn’t just his friend, but his boyfriend.

What?

If that were the only thing you’ll have to get used to, you’d be lucky. It’s definitely a scandal for Dumbledore. It’s also a way to understand him. Harry, what if you went insane and tried to take over the world, and I was the only person brave enough to step up? It would be very hard, I promise you. It would probably take more courage to oppose you than just facing the danger.

And then, if I had to keep it a secret, because -- I don’t know, you were in a marriage contract from when you were a kid or something -- I might resent the fact that no one would know what I was sacrificing. And that might make me more selfish and self-centred. It’s also true that he was that way before, but no doubt it made him worse.

You are kind of like him, though, Hermione, already. I mean, you’re kind of sneaky and secretive. It’s not a bad thing, in fact, because I am just glad you are on my side. 

Hermione paused at that. She could look at this two ways, but chose to focus on the fact that Harry clearly wasn’t going to keep anything from her or walk on eggshells around her.

I suppose that’s true in a minor way. I guess neither of us - nor you, once you’re better informed - can be judged fairly. The person that killed your parents embedded himself in British wizarding society. The person who runs the board for our school was a murderer, he raped and tortured and stole. Whenever anyone got in his way, or he just wanted what they had, he worked with his fellow criminals under the person who killed your parents and got rid of them and took their money and their possessions and their businesses and their lands. He got away with it, and now he uses his stolen money to bribe the head of the wizard government. If we got rid of Dumbledore tomorrow, the next day part of the gang that killed your parents, and as good as killed Neville’s parents would be running Hogwarts.

Hermione, why don’t we just leave?

That’s a very good question.  Can we agree that we will plan for that as well as all the other stuff we have to do? I didn’t want to say before, but first of all, you are very famous for killing the guy who killed your parents. You were only a year and a quarter old, but maybe you were just really powerful. We don’t know.  But the fact is, he did a magic ritual so when he died, he became a wraith. It’s a kind of ghost that can possess people and can even have a new body if some other rituals are done.

Hermione, I like you and I really respect what you have done, but we’re ten-and-eleven-year-olds. I’m really poor and have been kept ignorant. And if you could go to the magical police about all this, you would have, so you’re probably not much better off than I am. If you wonder what I want, I want us to work on leaving. I will go with you, so you will have your boyfriend, at least. And we can bring Luna and Neville, too.

I really believe my knowledge gives us an edge. Yes, we have to keep our heads down for a year or two. I am spending my time making sure we can do that, and enlisting people on “our” side. It’s basically three sides now. Ours, Dumbledore’s, and Tom Riddle’s. Tom Riddle killed your parents, and he calls himself Lord Voldemort. It’s a French name that means flight from death, but he uses it to mean he’s escaped death with his ritual. As bad as Dumbledore is, and as much as he feels like he can do whatever he wants to whomever he wants, because the alternative is Voldemort’s gang? Well, the same goes for us. We just have to make it obvious he’s helping Voldemort’s people by harming us. If he looks bad, he’ll stop whatever he’s doing.

Okay, fine. I still really have no idea what a boyfriend is, but I think it means you want to keep me happy?

Well, happy, but also safe.

That’s good, because being able to leave somewhere would do both.

Is it good enough I have agreed to work on that? It will take more work than you think. And we still have to discuss Neville Longbottom.

Are you sure? You know him without meeting him, and I don’t know him at all, so you will basically decide most of what we do, right?

Maybe, Harry, but mostly how do we sneak a letter to him, how do we keep his grandmother from telling anyone, and so on.

If he doesn’t know you, and if he’s not being raised by bad people like I am, I don’t know how you do that. I guess, tell the truth. Say bad people will harm you if he blabs.

Harm YOU. But okay, I agree.

Fine. I will write him a letter, and you can figure out how to get it to him. What should I say?

Say your mother was his godmother and his mother was yours? I think. 

You think?

My sources say that’s a strong guess. They think Lily and Alice were best friends in school. And they and their husbands were all in a group under Dumbledore.

I think that’s enough. I will say our mothers were friends, and I will ask Neville to ask his grandmother if he had a godmother or godfather. Anything more than that, and I think it’s basically lying.

Unfortunately, Harry had a point. She couldn’t fully remember how she’d drawn that conclusion.

Sorry, you’re right. Okay, just say you’re reaching out to him because you were told you were connected? And emphasise that it’s somewhat dangerous to talk about it. You can say someone was told by the wand-maker in Diagon Alley that you have to have them pick a wand that suits you.

Why not just send a short note with the wand?

This is really tricky. It may be we have to work this out the same way we did with Percy and his rat. I hate to lean on the Lovegoods so much, but they may be the only hope to find out when we can meet up with Neville. He probably doesn’t leave their house a lot.

Maybe you can toss it into his yard with a note. And maybe some sort of sheath to wear to hide it. Then it’s his choice if he wants to tell his grandmother.

We can’t get his wand for him, but fine about the note.

I just had a thought. Harry, it is dangerous if Neville tells anyone you are talking to him or writing to him.

Why are you repeating something I already know?

Now you can say you were told that.

Are all girls like this?

Maybe. The girls that want to get things done probably are. So the plan is for you to meet him and try to talk him into letting you buy him a wand. I will make sure you have plenty of money.

Aren’t you already borrowing too much money from your mother and father?

Well, yes. But this could be the last time, and they realise I am investing in my safety. It’s kind of gone beyond allowances at this point. And it’s very possible we can get money for you from Gringotts. I think I will ask the Lovegoods about Neville, you’ll tell me when the next time you can get away is,

That won’t work. We’ll be in school by the time we match up.

Okay, I ask the Lovegoods to help manoeuvre Neville to Diagon Alley, and we sneak you out no matter what.

And I get really punished.

Yes, you probably do. But it’s for a good cause.

I’m not sure you’re the best girlfriend in the world, you know. But I kind of get it. At least this time I am suffering for a good reason.

I really do care about you. Neville will be a good friend to have in the long run. If we can pull this off, he’ll owe you. Are you mad at me?

There was a very long pause with nothing written.

I am getting a funny feeling like it’s more important than I think to answer you carefully. Or something. No, I am not mad at you. It feels like you’re keeping more secrets, but also telling me more secrets. Maybe I am even glad I am not you, because we’re too young to be thinking about all this stuff. Are you trying to be like the Dursleys? I mean, they are why I can’t be a normal kid, but you are kind of being weird and mean to yourself. So, if you want to listen to your “boyfriend,” can you maybe try being a happy kid? You have great parents and plenty of food and nice clothes and stuff, but you borrow trouble, kind of. Can you promise me you’ll take a day off sometimes from all this danger and sad stuff?

I’ve created a monster, Hermione thought. When she had fantasised about saving Harry, it had been a lot nicer than having to deal with a real, independent Harry that didn’t always agree with her vision of how things would be.

I’m not sure, if I have to be honest. I mean, if I tried to relax, I would just be upset over what I wasn’t doing.

I’m not trying to be mean, Hermione. But you do sort of have a bit of a saving-everybody thing!

That reminded her of something, but it stayed just out of reach when she tried to recall it.

The rest of their conversation was lighter. Harry obviously wanted her to cheer up, and she didn’t want their interaction to end on a low note. They took turns asking each other twenty questions about their preferences in life. When Hermione signed off with “XXX” and “OOO”, she had to explain the ‘X’s were kisses and the ‘O’s were hugs. When Harry asked, she admitted those were important things to girls. Harry told her good night and sweet dreams, and said she should still take a day off now and then.

Luckily, simply asking the Lovegoods was enough, as Xenophilius knew Augusta somewhat. He sent her a letter saying they were concerned about using a family wand for Luna and were going to take it (and her) to Ollivander’s wandmaker’s to have it tested. Meanwhile, Pandora, who was related to Ollivander, would explain to him that Augusta would insist Neville use her son Frank’s wand, that Harry Potter would buy Neville whichever wand suited him, and that Neville could use his father’s wand to build up his magical strength. Augusta would come in at a set time, Ollivander would compare Frank Longbottom’s wand to others “to examine it,” and then Harry and Hermione would meet Neville, after Ollivander suggested he wait outside while he discussed the wand with his grandmother.

Hermione managed to animate a dummy just by waving a stick and thinking about it, a dummy wearing Harry’s clothes, after Petunia sent him to work in the garden. They took the Knight Bus to Diagon Alley. Ollivander slipped out for a second while Augusta and Neville discussed his legacy wand. Ollivander slipped Harry Neville’s new wand and a sheathe or holster for it, and Harry slipped him the money for it.

Finally, Neville was sent out, and they met him.

Harry was convinced by looking at him that Neville’s grandmother was bullying him, but Hermione told him it was just that he had a tough life for a kid, and his grandmother was doing her best. Harry had thought he saw the signs of a life like his, and in a way, he had. Neville seemed really shocked to be meeting the Boy-Who-Lived, and then further shocked when Harry told him the girl there was his “girlfriend,” Hermione. Harry guessed that Neville probably didn’t even know what that meant. It would probably be funny if he asked his grandmother. Also, he’d probably be really impressed at a ten-year-old having one when he got an explanation.

Then, of course, came the biggest shock of all when the Boy-Who-Lived gave him a wand and a carrier for it, and swore him to secrecy. He looked Neville in the eye and said, using a serious voice, “I have been told that it’s really dangerous for me if you blab about meeting me.”

Neville looked surprised, and perhaps a bit proud, to have a secret. Hermione was fairly convinced of her “you can’t detect magic in Diagon Alley” theory by now. She taught Neville the Lumos and Nox charms, just to prove to him that he could cast spells with his new wand. If worst came to worst, Neville could hide the wand and have them check Frank’s wand.

When Neville went back in, presumably to pick up Frank’s “examined” wand, they grabbed the Knight bus. When they got back to Privet Drive, there were no signs that the Dursleys had discovered the dummy in the garden wasn’t Harry. For various reasons, Harry was feeling a little guilty, so when Hermione kissed him on the cheek, he returned the favour.

It had been, on balance, a great day, Hermione decided. She would have to reflect on it for a while, in fact. But when she got home, her parents had a letter for her from Luna.

Chapter Text

When Pandora Lovegood thought about the very curious girl Hermione, it was mostly to chuckle about how eagerly she was, no doubt, pursuing her research. She and Xenophilius had already sketched out research questions on the Deathly Hallows, which was his Holy Grail of the last several years, and probably could do with a fresh set of younger eyes.

She vaguely recalled that Hermione was “A Friend,” and after taking several sensible precautions, she’d mostly forgotten her warnings, even though she was aware the girl had some kind of Seer qualities.

Unfortunately, perhaps, what her Arithmantic calculations were telling her was so big, it drove other considerations completely out of her mind. It wouldn’t do to mess around, but her heart skipped a beat when she realised a family tragedy -- really, The family tragedy -- might be undone by research she could carry out.

Selene could be saved from her awful fate, the man who abused her so terribly before her sad, lonely death could be stopped. Pandora was almost certain now, given her calculations, that he didn’t merely resemble Lucius Malfoy. He quite likely was him, which meant that she would only have to replicate whatever was allowing him to manipulate the Curio Shop to pursue Selene into the past.

She’d always felt a kinship to Selene, but she’d read her journal where she’d said a terrible tragedy would happen if she were to encounter a distant relative, one named “Pandora.” That they’d be distant in time as well as place had not, apparently, been revealed to the poor girl. Witches were only allowed to study at Hogwarts on half of the weekdays in Selene’s time, but she’d managed to teach herself what she needed to know. Ironically, Pandora would use her knowledge and Lucius Malfoy’s (If it was indeed him) magic to interfere.

She would prefer to have Xeno home, but he had to go to a magizoology conference. Most people didn’t realise that The Quibbler was credentialed as an international magizoology publication, so these events were required at least yearly. Xeno had discovered the common Snorcack, but after that, it had been variations on things like Bowtruckles or Nifflers that few others had the patience to find. He was usually allowed a few minutes after his presentation to have questions and answers on the crumple-horned Snorcack. Like Heliopaths, they were officially listed as dubious. Meanwhile, she might have trouble fitting her experiments in with watching Luna. In that light, it was a small comfort that Hermione and Harry Potter would be watching over her, too, on occasion, children though they might be.

It was speculative, could even risk a paradox, and was probably rather dangerous, but Pandora wasn’t thinking of that now. A promise she’d made to herself reading Selene’s journal when she was too young to see how impossible it was now was possible, and on top of that was the thrill of a challenge harder than anything in her past. Hermione Granger reminded Pandora Lovegood of herself. In full research mode, they were unstoppable.

Hermione and the dolls had a new “worst immediate enemy.” He was the fly in the ointment, no matter which direction you looked. You could not reform Hogwarts School of W&W because he ran the board. You could not get the law on your side because he ran the Ministry. And through the Ministry or directly, he ran the only press in the wizarding world aside from the Quibbler. He was Dumbledore’s “greater evil” justifying all the powerful positions he held. If Sirius Black died, his wife and son would probably inherit the Black family money.

In essence, Lucius Malfoy was the enemy, and Hermione couldn’t see anything she could do about him. In fact, her life wasn’t worth much if he found out she was investigating him. Which she was. Because the last two times she’d been to the Curio Shop, someone had eased out of the shadows then jumped back in as customers came and went. She’d made herself inconspicuous in Diagon Alley while trying to identify people from the books. She’d learned his profile and his appearance well. Lucius Malfoy was stalking Selene.

Chapter Text

When she arrived back home from visiting the Curio Shop, Hermione Granger realised her mood showed on her face. Her parents looked deeply concerned.

It hadn't been a productive visit, really. There were no new books, not even the phoney Harry Potter And His Charmed Life books or a book on advanced magic. She had bought such a book there, but her dolls had recommended it be given to Harry's dolls, and according to him, they were reading and taking notes in it non-stop.

She hadn't run into Aberforth Dumbledore, either. She didn't know a discreet way to visit the Hog's Head, being eleven years old. She would probably have to get even more indebted to the Lovegoods and have Xeno take her there with Luna. She went up and got her journal, then came down with it.

"I think I need to include Harry, if he's not being enslaved at the moment," she explained.

Then, another thought occurred to her, and she ran up and got Luna's letter. And Clumsy, the fastest writer. "She said she won't mind me dictating to her," was her further explanation.

Fortunately, Harry was in his room.

What's up?

Clumsy's writing down what I say, Harry. I'm talking with my parents because I saw something very disturbing at the shop today.

Hi there, Mr and Mrs Granger.

Hermione passed that on, and Clumsy wrote down their responses to Harry. Yet a third time, Hermione had a thought, and she was up and down the stairs again, this time bringing Plain under one arm and all four teacups stacked in the opposite hand.  

Harry, have we talked about the Malfoys? By the way, Plain will read what you write out loud.

You just said they were evil and I should avoid them at all costs.

Good, I guess. Anyway, Mr Malfoy was at the shop. He was watching from behind a tree the whole time I was there.

Watching you? Why didn't you tell the lady that works there?

Not me, her.

After a pause, Hermione added I did warn her, and she thanked me, but she didn't do anything. He started watching her before I got there, I think, and he only moved when she went into the basement. I think he was looking for where it was and how to open the entrance. Harry, she looked so frightened, but she didn't do or say anything, really.

"What's the connection to the letter, Honey?" Mrs Granger asked, suddenly.

Making a command decision, Hermione told Clumsy to take down what all three Grangers said, with their names written before each bit of speech. Since it was quicker, Clumsy used "Ian" and "Jean" instead of Mr or Mrs Granger. Then she put a teacup in front of her mother and father, and one next to her. She put the special cup in front of her, and it filled with the tea her mother had been steeping in the pot in the kitchen before Hermione came in. She poured it out into all three cups, and all three Grangers settled back, just a touch more at ease.

Harry, my mother just asked about a letter I got from Luna, and got too distracted to read.

This is why you need to relax, Hermione. It's not even helping your save the world project.

Can we discuss this later, Harry?

The whole boyfriend thing is your idea, Hermione, but doesn't it give me any privileges to get you to do the right thing and stay healthy? Fine. What about the letter?

Mr and Mrs Granger looked startled. *Good Grief, Harry* she thought, *Not only spilling the beans, but we're having our first couple's quarrel right in the sitting room!* then she shrugged it off.

Ian: I wanted to ask that, too, dear. Is there a connection there?

Her mother nodded in agreement.

Yes, I think so. I believe Selene, the girl at the curio shop, is related to Luna somehow. Whenever I mentioned her to the Lovegoods, I got put off, and they said very weird things about her and the shop both. At any rate, I am going to read the whole thing aloud, and Clumsy will transcribe it for Harry.

Dear Hermione:

I figured out you were "A Friend" and you were warning my mummy about something you "saw." Don't worry, I sometimes see things too, and I had a bad feeling about my mummy before you wrote. It went away for a while, but it's back.

My father is gone to a magical animals meeting, and she's back to experimenting with things she doesn't know well. She's not paying attention to what's going on around her. Before she got fired from the Ministry she was working with things like time and life that are really dangerous.

I got half the story about Selene from each parent. I am not supposed to tell anyone. Mummy is not supposed to experiment with dangerous new things, and she's not supposed to work alone, but she is, so I don't care anymore.

Selene Trelawney was my great-great-great grand-aunt, I think that's how it goes. When she was only sixteen, a man attacked her at the shop she was working at. He hurt her very bad, and she died. She knew it was coming. Seeing things sometimes runs in my family, on my mother's side. My father is very magically sensitive, so they were both excited when I came along. They're both very busy, so they decided only one girl was enough to care for.

Anyway, Selene knew it was her fate, so she didn't do anything about it. I bet she saw some bad things happen if she tried to escape, or the man who hurt her would find her anyway. It was a big family tragedy, because she was the best at seeing things since her grandmother Cassandra Trelawney. Mummy's branch of the family wasn't nearly as good at it. The man hurt her and did things I am too young to ask about, and he also used magic on her that's really, really bad.

Anyway, I am afraid mummy thinks she can fix it. And I think she's trying to fix it before Daddy gets home, because he would put a stop to it.

I am going to beg her to stop, but if it doesn't work, I really need your help. This is more important than the stuff about Harry's cloak or the other stuff they won't talk about. I am sure if we don't get help there will be no one to do research for. And soon.

Yours hopefully,

Luna Selene Lovegood

She'd already let the better part of a day go by.

You have to help her!

I want to, but I don't know how.

Jean: I hate to see our daughter involved in something we already know is dangerous.

Ian: At the very least, can Harry and her case the shop, and bring the dolls? Would they fight for the kids?

Marge is coming soon and the Dursleys need their slave.

No, they don't. We weren't making idle threats.

Mr Granger actually called the Dursleys right then. When Vernon answered, he identified himself and ordered him to give the phone to Petunia. Dursley blustered, but Ian simply said that if the Dursleys didn't want to die, together with his sister, he would give Petunia the phone now. Only he put bad language in front of 'phone." He explained to Petunia that people who killed magicless people like the Grangers and the Dursleys as a hobby were on the move, and they needed Harry's help with them, and furthermore, they had dirt on Marge, as well, in case the Dursleys were too stupid to recognise magical threats. Therefore, he said, a little less roughly, if they needed Harry, he was to be allowed to leave at a moment's notice, or the sky was going to fall on Number Four Privet Drive, and they wouldn't even need to wait for the Death Eaters. 

Oh my God, your dad's brilliant, Hermione. I think even if you're plotting to have us get married, it won't be all bad.

Harry!

Thank Clumsy for me, she took down everything your dad said.

Both of her parents were laughing now. That was a good sign, but she knew Harry's "boyfriend" remark would come back to haunt her, and there wouldn't be a long wait, either. Especially since he'd followed up with something even worse. Although Hermione was having to deal with things way beyond her years, she discovered that she still sighed like an 11-year-old girl.

Hey, by the way, Hermione, I don't understand almost anything the dolls are writing, but I remember they told me that terrible things happen to people who mess with time.

Hermione reflected on what she'd learned from the seven books. You shouldn't overlap yourself and meet up. You shouldn't change something you already experienced happening. Apparently, the books, or the curio shop, or some combination, were an exception. Maybe visions weren't in the same category as the observed past. She'd already made enough changes that she didn't regard anything in them as "the past," except the events that occurred before she got the books.

Also, there was still a big "why" as to her having them in the first place. Was it an attempt by Selene to protect herself? Or Pandora Lovegood? Was the shop itself reaching forward in time to enlist her help, and giving her the chance to help Harry as a reward? Or was she really mostly helping herself?

Admittedly, she was exhausted much of the time nowadays, but that was surely better than nearly being killed by a troll, again by a basilisk, again by dementors, again by a werewolf, again by a Roman arena-style "task," again in a fight with Voldemort and his terrorists at the Ministry, again at Mr Malfoy's house being tortured by Sirius Black's cousin, and having her neck and chest permanently scarred, and no doubt having post-traumatic stress syndrome the rest of her days. Worse, those days spent with Ron Weasley, whom she still utterly despised. Well, maybe he was at least a good father. Probably not.

Harry was waiting for an answer, and no doubt her parents, as well.

Harry, we need to involve Luna, but she can't do anything overt, just observe. It's not real to us, but to her, it's family history - set in stone. I think we have some wiggle room, because I am convinced the man who hurt her is Mr Malfoy, and he changed things in the first place. So if anything terrible happens, it's more likely they'll happen to him.

I am going to send Mrs Lovegood another letter, tonight. I am going to tell her what we're doing about the curio shop, and that her daughter is also foreseeing her death. If worst comes to worst, we could help Luna steal Pandora's notes, or something.

Won't Mr Malfoy see us if we start hanging around outside the shop?

Yes. We need your father's cloak, we need to sneak into Hogwarts, and into the headmaster's office. If need be, we need to go to the Hog's Head for advice. And even if not, we need to figure out how to get to Hogsmeade, because there are several ways into Hogwarts from there. We also need to steal your father's map back from Mr Filch. Luna can't fight Mr Malfoy, because we want him to have the bad results if we change what happened. But we can. We can even BE the terrible results.

Ian: We can get you near the shop without parking in sight of it.

Jean: And Hermione can have a phone. In fact, we're getting one for Luna and Harry, too. And can you find another journal for Luna? Before you say she'll need two, both you and Harry have servants who will happily copy from one to another. The Granger residence can be the hub.

Get an early night tonight, Hermione. We all know you could scheme all night, but I think that's enough for us to think about.

Harry was getting bossy, she thought, but reflected that it was all because he was genuinely concerned about her. She didn't feel reckless, but her family and Harry clearly felt that she was. Her mother's comment about servants brought her up short. Was she like the magical people who enslaved house-elves? Well, that was probably the wrong way to put it; the ones that took advantage of their weaknesses, but some of whom treated them in ways that made them happy?

She had made her dolls, neither Harry nor her had made his, though; presumably, hers were grateful just to exist, but were Harry's like house-elves? Then she remembered "If you want someone to help you, you have to help them first," and was reassured. Even her dolls would have a discussion about their status, she resolved. And freeing Dobby would have a prominent place on her to-do list.

Her parents let her write her note to Pandora Lovegood, and didn't object when she said she'd take the bus to the nearest owlery with it. But when she returned, there was a note from Harry (dutifully read out loud by Plain).

Sweet dreams, and I mean it, Hermione.  XXX OOO. 

As Plain recited the Xs and Os, her parents leaned forward.

"We should probably talk about your boyfriend situation, honey," her mother began.

Chapter Text

Harry was a handy boy at times.

He was getting closer to being a partner than he was, certainly. Isolated as he was, he was a reasonable handwritten cut-out. She was going to wend her way to Hogsmeade, to the one public owlery there, so there'd be no pattern of using Diagon Alley. This particular letter would be top secret. She had learned, with her parents' help, how to disguise herself. She had lifts in her shoes, and had practised striding in what would have been an embarrassing fashion before her sixth year.

She had fretted over the text so much, she'd nearly memorised it. Was she too minimal? Could she be too minimal? She had to convince as well as inform. But Flamel was possibly a busy man.

Dear Mr Flamel

Albus Dumbledore plans to lure Voldemort to Hogwarts using your stone. He also plans to throw Harry Potter, the last of the Potters, into a fight with him, alone and unaided. Voldemort is a necromancer, and he used necromancy to stay as a wraith, a ghost that can be reimbodied, and can use magic and possess people.

If you cooperate with Mr Dumbledore, it won't end well for you, Harry Potter, or even for him. I have Seen this.

Sincerely,

A Friend.

It hadn't been hard to floo from the Leaky Cauldron to the Three Broomsticks. She had worried that the spell she cast, called a glamour, might draw attention to her, but it did make her look older. That, and her non-magical disguise, should help a lot.

She had made casting around a corner in a busy Diagon Alley into a habit, but that raised the spectre of creating a pattern, and she didn't want to do that. She'd read up on the resistance movements in various fascistic countries both in Europe and the New World, and realised they needed the same mentality that spies had. The Malfoys and their ilk were probably worse than any existing such regimes, and nearly as bad as the Nazis had been.

I'm only eleven! she thought, with a certain sense of outrage. But of course, the Death Eaters would say that just made her more fun to do things to. She had made the choice to jump-start her involvement in grown-up games, to protect Harry, which was a noble cause, certainly.

And to win him over, she couldn't help but admit to herself. But she was thankful that that was pretty much out in the open with Harry. And he hadn't chased her away, either. It was a little galling to realise she actually saw Ginevra Weasley as a role model, but she did, to a degree. She seemed pretty shameless about going after what she wanted; still, you cannot argue with success.

She still couldn't see how Aberforth could even stand to be around his brother, to be honest, but she was beginning to understand the temptation the headmaster had succumbed to, to keep secrets as a reflex action. Keeping people such as Nicholas Flamel informed was a positive step away from temptation.

As she watched the owl wend its way towards the Flamels, she decided she would look into spells that could change the handwriting on a message. Then she could print it on a computer, transfer it to parchment, and create the handwriting. That meant that, at worst, undoing the spell would simply present printed material

That thought was followed by another: it was high time to plant the biggest seeds of all.

She had been disgruntled, of course, over failing at wandless switching. But now that she and Harry were ready, she should admit to herself that she hadn't planned everything well, at all. 

She hadn't even, she thought guiltily, killed a half dozen rats figuring out the correct dosages of the draught of "the living death" and the Wiggenwald potion. On the plus side, the rats that hadn't been killed by the draught hadn't suffocated even after a week in a pasteboard box. And there seemed to be a broad margin of error with Wiggenwald -- and that wouldn't even be her job, come to think of it. And murdering the poor beasts steeled her resolve to painlessly remove the left toe of her subject's right front paw. She had never realised that rat thumbs were smaller than pinkies, and recessed towards the wrist. The more you know, the less you know, she decided, with a sigh.

She was also pretty well covered, she thought, even if some investigator were to go to the pet shop she'd bought her rats at. She was just, after all, yet another girl with a snake. It was more usual for a boy to forego frozen rats for live ones, but not out of the question. The rats that gave their all had been left where stray cats prowled, and the survivors were left at a different pet shop.

She had certainly not given Harry Potter full disclosure on why they were doing this; she had told him, truthfully, that it was yet another thing she didn't want any wizards reading from him. She was already counting on him keeping calm and focusing on the right thoughts, and this was another situation, she admitted, where her telling the truth would make Harry bristle with anger and broadcast his thoughts to anyone with a smidgeon of mind-reading ability.

Nonetheless, he'd been a good sport, and they were now practised in synchronising mumbling the incantation, making imperceptible twitches that mimicked the gesture, and above all, willing the switch to happen. It was possible she'd now be able to do it alone under those conditions, but possible wouldn't do. She hoped she could somehow transfer this skill to something else useful. This was what adventures amounted to. You spent a month learning a skill you only needed once in your life. Hermione Granger, Rat Switcher.

She was used to meditating now, it sort of blurred between yoga, meditation, and some Occlumency exercises. She wondered if those would help her parents. She had decided to give them part-time instruction in everything you could do without a wand. It wasn't against the laws, such as there were, and more importantly, it didn't violate the secrecy statute.

Potions (she'd need to help), Runes (ditto), Arithmancy, History of Magic, the Muggle Studies joke course, Care of Magical Creatures, flying (was that like wanding, or did the brooms, like magic carpets probably did, fly on their own?) Divination ... what else was there? Astronomy! 

No, really, there were two courses where non-magicals couldn't make any headway except help coaching when memorising patterns and incantations: Transfiguration and Charms. And while it was illegal, if they were ever forced on the run, non-magicals could do blood rituals.

Well, that all assumed she'd somehow come into some money, and that would have to come from either Harry or Sirius Black. But she could hint by having them do things that cost money and then they might simply say it would be easier on everyone if she had money of her own, and there you go.

At that point, she could keep her parents mobile, and fully in touch with the magical world. She would also depend on hers and Harry's dolls, and probably on whatever charmed objects she could afford from Diagon Alley.

Meditation was the only time her brain didn't hum faster than she felt comfortable about. Even now, hiding in Diagon Alley with a physically disguised Harry Potter, both of them glamoured, both of them apparently looking at new brooms, and really eyeing Percy Weasley out of the corner of their eyes, it wouldn't slow down, let alone stop. She bore down and focused her thoughts. This was it, but as she'd told Harry, "we must not treat this as anything but another practice. Magic really doesn't respond that well to pressure, except on rare occasions. And we'll stand out less the more nonchalant we are. And if we fail, we'll likely just try again, so keep that in mind."

It was good advice, she mused, proudly. When they wandered away from the broom shop, Scabbers was in a sound-proofed, unbreakable box, and Percy Weasley was none the wiser. Hermione had picked an older rat that closely matched Pettigrew's appearance, and since rats only lived a couple of years in captivity, he might very well die or be too sick to be a pet before Percy could transfer him to Ronald. It was just as well; she had no truck with the youngest Weasley boy, but any eleven-year-old boy deserved a better pet than an old, sleepy, fat rat. If they had to meet the boy at all, which she would fight as much as she could, she would suggest fewer Marvin the Mad Muggle Comics and Chudley Cannons posters, and saving up for his own wand, first, if there was anything left in the family coffers, but also pass the suggestion to Sirius Black that he should anonymously get the annoying Dumbledore cats-paw an owl.

She thanked Harry with the hugs she'd apparently become famous -- or notorious -- for, according to the books. He had gotten more and more accustomed to them, and his eyes were smiling. They were both proud of themselves; Harry may not know the reasons for it, but it was clear this was their first mission, their first adventure together, and it had been, to quote her father when he thought she couldn't hear him, a piece of piss.

She had left him with the Lovegoods, and Pandora and Xeno had suggested she send him her usual way, so there wasn't a chance of the Ministry finding out she was allied with them. Thanks to their care, he was healthy, and would withstand being forcibly reverted and questioned.

Back to the Harry question. Wasn't that what she'd been pondering? Okay, get Harry into yoga, meditation and Occlumency. Tell him it was so she could tell him more. And what would be the grand prize? She would have the dolls copy out the first book, and give him the handwritten sheets. And going forward, she would do the same every year they had to go to Hogwarts. More than that would be too confusing. She could truthfully, if misleadingly, say the dolls had written it. And she could lie if pressed, though she would avoid it if she could, and say they preferred to tell her things in story form.

That night, she put a dosed Pettigrew into a plain pasteboard box she'd bought at Diagon Alley, magically protected against being crushed, but otherwise inconspicuous. The next day, she went in to Diagon Alley with a slightly different disguise and glamour, and she mailed it using the first owl she could reach. She didn't follow it with her eyes, but hustled on as if she was a typical busy Diagon shopper.

Most people destroyed the envelope, after all. And the Lovegoods had charmed it to high heavens not to be kept by anyone that was not the director of the DMLE. It would be put with the rest of the morning's documents on her desk, and since it would have no compulsion charms, and casting detection spells on it would not reveal anything once it arrived, Hermione was covered. That the envelope claimed it was super-sensitive evidence in an important case would make the director investigate rather than destroy it, she hoped. She felt that her note was adequate. It had been hard, even with the help of the Lovegoods, to cover enough yet not too much.

Director

The rat in this box is Peter Pettigrew. He is an animagus, and a strong wizard. He is currently dosed with the living death draught, and a drop or two of Wiggenwald is all that is needed to restore him. You must not let him escape. He was the keeper of the secret of the Fidelius Charm on the cottage in Godric's Hollow where he led Voldemort, and helped him with the wards so he could kill the Potters.

If you interrogate him, you will find that he framed Sirius Black, the heir of the Black family. This was done so certain parties would have access to Harry Potter, the last of the Potters, and so Lucius Malfoy, an unrepentant Death Eater, could use the Black family wealth to support the remaining Death Eaters.

Sirius Black is innocent; Crouch, Bagnold and Dumbledore illegally imprisoned him, and the current Minister of Magic helped. That's how far this goes.

We are agents of justice.

She had tried to make it as manly as possible. And to emphasize the families involved.

Chapter Text

In desperation, because things were piling up far faster than she could take in, let alone react to. That.

Hermione sent in her progress so far in her research on the Deathly Hallows. She included her "guesses" about the stone and the wand, and her information on Harry's cloak. She included her belief that taking a Hallow from a Peverell heir like Harry was a curse waiting to happen.

She admitted that research on Horcruxes would have to wait for Sirius Black to be free, but she hinted that she'd be able to prove their existence to him when the time came. She guessed they'd realise the Black family library would be needed.

Xeno had been so excited, he was going to come back early, in a few days. Even better, he'd sent coded messages to Pandora. And when you considered how a normal letter from Xeno went, Hermione thought, it was probably impossible to detect a coded message in there somewhere.

This had forced Pandora's hand, and she'd obviously decided to postpone her experiment involving time and space and mortal wounds. Luna was making a point of hanging on to her and being adorable, Hermione knew that because she wrote that in plain English. Hopefully, her mother would be able to resist the lure of dangerous magic until Xeno could countermand her or at least protect her. Hermione figured that not having only Luna there to help her mother was one of the reasons she'd died, after all.

Even better, Luna had done her own research, and now Hermione knew about what had happened to Selene Trelawney, all those generations ago.

Luna had invited her over when Pandora was out, and shown her a portrait she'd found of Selene before she was in her teens. It was eye-opening. She had glasses like Harry, and blonde hair and wide, somewhat bulging eyes like Luna, but otherwise, she was exactly like Hermione, pre-life-change. And that meant that the beauty she saw at the Curio Shop had had a life change of her own!

Her hair was, of course, bushy. Her teeth? Bucky. And being a Seer, loony went without saying.

She wondered if the next step wasn't to have Harry ask his dolls about her, but her time with Luna was short. Luna had written down some notes, and Hermione came home with them. She also felt renewed. Luna Lovegood had become a kind of little sister in the very short time she'd known her. After Harry Potter, she'd probably been the most abused child in the books, and even though Hermione kicked herself every day for being able to do so little, she felt that any time spent trying to help the Lovegoods was not time wasted.

Selene was my great-great-great-grand-auntie. Her name was Selene Luna kóri tis Ekoúmpas. Im copying it from Mamas notes.  It was in her time then that kóri tis Ekoúmpas women including Selenes sister started taking mens names like Trelawney. She used her sisters last name to hide that she was from the line of Cassandra -- Kassandra kóri tis Ekoúmpas of Troy, who actually went by Alexandra when she was brought to Greece.

Our family says by the time Cassandra was born the family divination was kind of weak. The Greeks claimed Apollo gave her a chance to be a python-ess in Troy and make a new Delfi but Priam Vanaks refused to let her so she and Troy were cursed. But they also said all her children died so I dont believe them.

I think really she was just not believed and us Lovegoods know what thats like. Still being a Seer in the modern world would make you a target for greedy people.

A lot about that curiosity shop is a mystery in plain site. I guess its like kings cross station. The non-magickal people know about it but its mostly hidden. There are exits that go to certain times and theyre limited.

Our familys heard of two. In the basement there is a connexion to Selenes time. In the storage room is a mail box that can get things from a future time. I think thats where you get your information because you havent shown any sign of having the inner eye open so youd know that better than us.

I dont know what will happen when the curio shop reaches that mail box time but maybe nothing. Maybe it will start sending out things from a mail box so they can arrive in the other one. Maybe therell be two way stations in the past instead of one. Its all pretty exciting dont you think?

The reason people like Mr Dumbledore buy things there is that it was said it occasionally gets things sent from other places where different things happened according to my mama. My father says its possible that it just got magickal rare goods over the cincheries and became a hub. So keep an open mind. You and Harry seem to be invited to be their customers thats a big deal!

Anyway Selene died when she was about the age you describe her as now. Mama says she went in to the basement to go home and someone followed her. I think it was one of the Malfoys probably Lucius. Theyre related to us Lovegoods and Trelawneys so maybe that let him do it. Anyway he hurt her before he killed her whoever he was. And it must be sex stuff because no one in the family will say what was done. He also robbed some pretty important stuff. Maybe he used some sort of ritual weapon, too. Selene never had anyone. I guess that makes your divination stronger? Anyway our guess is that after that it was a lot easier for the killer to lead everyone around by the nose and you know how much a Malfoy would want that.

Im not getting all sad but its really the family tragedy and thats what makes my mama so crazy. This is her only chance and shes the only person in the history of our family that can change things. I didnt want you thinking she was reckless or didnt care about me and my papa.

Mama thinks with the right kind of strong magic she could undo what the man who killed Selene did because it would be undoing him twisting time. Shes usually right but my father says shes not thinking at her best right now. Im doing my part by clinging to her and being as adorable as possible. Not ashamed she needs to remember we are as important as a family tragedy.

Warning Selene wont help just make her sad.

Please help us and good luck!

How on Earth? thought Hermione. As if I could not warn her! Well, she wouldn't make Selene sad, deliberately, but she was going to have to push a few boundaries to fix all these problems. As long as talking with Selene about certain things didn't mean she was banned from the shop. Okay, push boundaries an inch at a time. And maybe just convey to the curio shop-girl that she was on her side?

And, really, she wasn't yet ready to help, was she? Getting a small reprieve was a huge triumph, if you looked at it correctly.

Chapter Text

The prospect of the continuous presence of Lucius Malfoy, after everything Hermione and the dolls had read about him, spooked her.

She decided that whenever she or Harry went to the shop, they'd be disguised. She told her family that her correspondence with the Luna girl had convinced her Mr Malfoy was stalking the Curio Shop-girl with murderous intent.

Her father contemplated having his cousin who lived in Northern Ireland bring his pistol back and illegally lend it to him, but he wasn't practised with it, and it would, of course, get them all sorts of grave legal trouble, and perhaps worse, attention, if it had to be used.

The couple applied for two licenses to use short self-loading rifles. Because they desired rapid action, they were only allowed to own .22 rimfire calibre weapons, so Mr Granger decided on two Anschutz XIV carbine .22LRs.

They were short and light enough to have at least a sporting chance at swinging them up in response to a deadly attack by the wealthy Death-squadder. 

While Hermione continued to exercise, practice her wand-work, and maintain her football skills, the Grangers would grimly practice shooting. They'd taken old cushions and quilts and sound-proofed their basement, and at first had planned on using sandbags as a backstop, but were convinced by the sporting club Mr Granger had contacted to use a regulation steel one, which was rather expensive, but preserved the integrity of their basement wall.

They had already decided to forego both vacation and home improvements, and not to take any new patients, for the duration of what was shaping up to be a crisis.

After just one day, it became obvious that if Hermione was going to go to the shop any time soon, that one of the Grangers would have to have the rifle out and basically ready to raise to the window of the car, rest it there, aim slowly and carefully, and fire, since proficiency with a "whipped out" rifle was not going to come soon, and they'd almost certainly injure themselves rather than the criminal. Still, it was at least possible, and they could be moved quickly, and didn't have a strong kick.

Harry and Hermione had both had their hair tinted slightly auburn. In Harry's case, he'd also had to put up with Hermione curling his hair. "Now I thank goodness for having tea with your dolls, Hermione," he joked, "because it taught me that tagging along with you means very girly things!"

Meanwhile, Hermione had used a deep conditioner overnight, and then in the morning applied a home remedy from her grandmother. She used a paste of plain yoghurt and baking soda cut with a small amount of lemon juice. Combined, her frizzy hair became soft curls quite similar to Harry's hair.

She'd also considered the "Sleekeazy's Hair Potion and Scalp Treatment," but was worried it would leave some sort of magical trace she was able to only vaguely conceive of. If they didn't have to make many trips, it would be far cheaper than coloured contacts, after all. It was hard, being an eleven-year-old girl living under a hidden fascist aristocracy. She never knew, she reflected, if she was being too worried, or not enough.

Fortunately, it was sunny for a fall day in Britain, so they were both able to wear tinted glasses. If they could get access to some of Harry's money without alerting anyone (a big "if"), Hermione decided they'd look into prescription coloured contacts for Harry and non-prescription for her.

However, while Hermione worried about testing their disguises and testing the waters with Selene as they approached the shop, it turned out that right ahead of them they saw Aberforth Dumbledore. That person, Hermione told her parents, would keep them safer than anything she or they could come up with. Her parents were surprised to see that a member of the magical community was wearing normal, if somewhat old-fashioned outdoors gear, including a knapsack and Wellingtons. He wouldn't have been out of place, especially where he lived in the Highlands of Scotland, if you'd seen him out hiking or hunting.

When they entered the shop, Selene looked Hermione over from head to toe. Then she looked her in the eyes and shook her head. With Luna's warning in her head, she decided she would follow Aberforth's lead and simply treat the shop as a shop. The clerk had probably seen the desperation in Hermione's eyes to talk about her future, and rejected it.

Harry sidestepped the issue by thanking Selene for the dolls. The girl beamed at him and told him he was welcome, and just the sort that should have them.

The old wizard completed his shopping quickly. Then, as the Lovegoods had done before him, he suggested the Grangers and Harry join him at a nearby cafe to talk. They decided to walk over to a Pret a Manger that was only 3 blocks away via Great Turnstile. The thought that a Lucius Malfoy wouldn't be caught dead in a Muggle chain coffee shop made Hermione laugh. That ended when she remembered that Anton Dolokhov and Thornton -- no, Thorfinn -- Rowle had attacked the other Hermione and Harry and Ronald Weasley in a cafe, not a mile from where they were.

Selene brought out a covered birdcage from behind the counter when they were ready to leave. When Hermione and Harry got permission to peek inside, they saw a shallow stone bowl covered with what she now recognised were Elder Futhark runes. What looked like smoke or steam came off of it. It tended not to rise beyond a certain point, and definitely was not escaping the cage. What a clever way to disguise this, Hermione thought.

The price made Mr Granger jump. Mrs Granger sighed and said, "Thank goodness we hadn't planned on a big vacation this year." They didn't quibble, beyond that. Things had already gone well past birthdays and allowances. Hermione's eyes stayed wide, and she whispered to her parents that the shop was probably losing a considerable amount of money on the sale.

Mr Granger showed where Hermione got some of her intelligence. He opened the back of the car on the way, placed the cage carefully on the seat, and fastened the seatbelt around it. "Never put a budgie box in the boot, girl!" he said, with crinkled eyes and a broad grin. "So, I take it this thing is worth it?" he asked, and when Hermione nodded, he didn't belabour the point.

All of them made perfectly normal orders at the Pret a Manger, and Aberforth Dumbledore seemed quite at home. It was interesting, but also added to her opinion of Albus Dumbledore as, if not an evil overlord, at least a highly unreliable narrator, that his brother was friendly and polite to the Muggle staff. Where was the bitter hermit she'd read about?

All the boys ordered the "famous ham with cheese sandwich". Mrs Granger and Hermione settled for an egg salad with arugula. There were coffees all around, which excited ten-year-old Harry. Mr and Mrs Granger just rolled their eyes at each other.

After they'd had a chance to eat and drink a bit, Hermione noticed Aberforth's hand twitch slightly. He obviously noticed her noticing, and said, "if you will all be so good as not to raise your voices, we will likely not be overheard, or even unduly noted."

With that said, he pulled out an old journal and put on somewhat old-fashioned, but not Victorian, reading glasses. He glanced over the book, then turned to Hermione, and said, "Let us review."

Chapter Text

Hermione suddenly felt alert -- no, nervous. It must have shown, because she felt a pat on her leg from the side Harry was sitting at. This was not the time, but Hermione was quietly thrilled. The hero of her books had actually initiated contact with her! To comfort her, but still. She probably jerked her head a little, drawing her attention back to Mr Dumbledore. Her mother gave her a curious, concerned look.

"First," began Dumbledore, "I must agree with the Lovegoods. Your insight into the future, and into things somewhat hidden from others, while unexpected for any witch your age, is nonetheless not what those gifted in Divination call 'true Sight.' I hope no offence?" he continued, quirking an eyebrow. Hermione, with Harry's hand still resting on her leg in a comforting way, shook her head.

"Therefore, as you advance your curiously precocious plans, I think you are well-served paying close attention to what the young Lovegood girl tells you, lest you go adrift without knowing what you are doing." He paused until he saw Hermione nod.

"That may be difficult at the moment. Unless I miss my guess, both you and Miss Luna, and perhaps Mr Potter as well, are currently preoccupied with the safety of young Pandora and her relative, Selene Trelawney?" He barely paused to notice Hermione's eyes get wide before continuing, "As it should be, of course. In fact, I believe you are showing even greater maturity than I had observed before in shelving your ambitious long-term goals to deal with a present crisis."

He sighed, then. "My brother is, actually, quite admired by Pandora Lovegood, nee Trelawney. He encouraged her studies without, of course, ever paying heed to her safety or even her sanity. It was much the same with Xenophilius Lovegood, in fact. It is always a delicate balance, but if you can be useful to Albus, you find yourself driven to achieve beyond what you had believed possible -- the more useful, the more is expected of you. I think you have correctly surmised, however, that Mr Potter would not be useful in and of himself to Albus. He seems to be grooming him, in fact, to be some sort of sacrifice. He would not directly commit murder to invoke a dark ritual, of course, but he may have an insight that little ... no, young Harry here being removed by some other force -- a follower of the late Thomas Riddle, Jr, for instance, someone like young Lucius comes to mind -- would somehow aid him in one of his quests. Standing to the side while those around him perish or are imprisoned is one of Albus's trademarks."

"But back to the Lovegoods -- Pandora never left her Hogwarts days behind. She was not very popular, but that just gave her more time to expand her studies. But now, she has a husband and daughter, and no one around to really remind her of her responsibilities. And she is, of course, tempted by what may be her family's last chance to avert a tragedy. Miss Granger, you are aware of the perils of tampering with the events of history?" He asked, suddenly.

"All I read was that 'bad things happen to people who mess with time, sir," she responded. The thought sprang into her mind that Mr Dumbledore never corrected her for addressing him with formality and respect. She had Headmaster Dumbledore figured for someone who would be all informality but then would get you back if you didn't defer to him. Meanwhile, Aberforth would always level with you. One was a diplomat, the other was actually reliable.

"They do, indeed. And when one has the power and knowledge to overpower the events of the past, as Madame Lovegood has, then the bad things become catastrophic things. She might succeed, then crumble to dust. She might undo centuries of wizarding history and cease to exist because she was never born. Or the power involved might turn on her before she even interferes, which is what I suspect is the likeliest outcome."

Since Hermione knew that was exactly what had happened in the books, she nodded.

"Can you guess why she believes she might be the exception to the iron laws of time, Miss Granger?" Dumbledore continued.

"Because ... well ... I've thought about it ... I just have these stray thoughts, really." Hermione looked down at her hands and surreptitiously glanced at Harry's hand, still resting in a comforting way on the outside of her leg. Met with silence from the old ... bartender, I guess, or perhaps farmer? she continued. "Whoever it is that attacked Selene followed her into the past and changed what happened. So any badness should eventually fall on him. If Selene interferes only with him, any calamity should logically fall on him, not her for restoring the events before he intervened."

"Yes, exactly!" was Dumbledore's response. His eyes didn't quite "twinkle," but it nonetheless brought that description of his brother in the books to mind. "Yet, unfortunately, Mr Malfoy, if it indeed was him, and not an earlier or later individual who merely resembles him, carried out his interference in secret, whereas the effects have become entrenched in history, known by thousands of people by now. Each and every one of them contributing to the security of those events with a piece of their magic, to boot."

"What I am sure Madame Lovegood plans to do is add her power in a dangerous runic ritual to the 'push', if we can call it that, of the original events wherein Selene Trelawney survived her time working at the curiosity shop, pitting it against the second history Mr Malfoy established, and banking on her version winning out. Gathering the necessary power is what is complex; actually pitting it against the channels of history is what is dangerous."

Mr Granger met Dumbledore's eyes and, receiving a nod, began, "Speaking of pitting oneself against the odds, our daughter is burning the candle at both ends and sticking her neck out to a degree we can't bear."

"She is, indeed," answered the old wizard. She looked over at Hermione and gave her a long stare. Hermione felt both embarrassed and frustrated. "I know that look, young lady. Your nemesis had it, often," he continued.

"I will leave it to him to keep his allies and those he mentors in the dark. That, I think, is where you stand with me, as well as with Xenophilius and Pandora Lovegood, correct?"

Hermione nodded, and at the same time, tried to wipe any expression from her face.

"Does it not seem that too many in the world of magic you've thrust yourself into are curiously passive? I, for instance, put up with the slander of my elder brother. The way he puts it, boldly, to his sycophants is not altogether wrong. I didn't dispute him vigorously, nor did I act ashamed, for that would have been taking caution too far. And no one, not his friend Remus Lupin, not his favourite teachers, not his head of house, Arcturus, called Albus out for conniving with the corrupt Minister Bagnold and the ruthless and self-serving Director Crouch in sending poor young Sirius to the worst part of the worst prison on Earth, essentially on a whim, without even asking him a single question, and leaving him there to rot forever. Nor did I."

"And it goes further, does it not," he said, as everyone there hung on his words. Clearly, not only Hermione had snapped to attention. As she looked around, she could see that Harry ad her parents wore quite grim expressions.

"Albus would, I have not a doubt, justify the torment he imposed on young Harry here by saying that either he hid with his aunt and uncle, or he would have been unprotected against the followers of Voldemort who remained and, for the most part, were unaffected by the law even though they were the very worst sort of criminals, in no way better than the Knights of Walpurgis. Indeed, they were either the same people, who transferred their loyalty from Grindlewald to Voldemort in secret before anyone had heard of him, or they were their children or nephews or even grandchildren. There were several instances where bringing the full weight of what passes for the law to bear on them would have benefited Albus, directly or by benefiting his subordinates. In many cases, it did: there was a great overlap between such cases and the ones who did not escape punishment."

"Nonetheless, the ones that remained have never ceased their efforts to erode Albus' power and reputation, and to harm his followers. This raises the question as to why he did not, at least, insist on proper legal proceedings, and at most, get rid of Lucius Malfoy, and perhaps Misters Nott, Avery, and a few others the way he, Crouch and Bagnold got rid of Sirius Black: simply incarcerate them and take their wealth, so they cannot defend themselves or get out of Azkaban?"

"Take the case of your more immediate menace, young Mr Malfoy. Had Albus forced his way into a conviction of Lucius, his father Abraxas would have greatly inconvenienced him. He had evidence, not only of Albus' long-running affair with Grindlewald, of his material support for Grindlewald's rise to power, of his helping Grindlewald covertly assist the mad Muggle that ruled Germany -- and if a Minister of Magic informed the Muggle Prime Minister they were not only harbouring, but valorising, such a figure, what would their reaction be, I wonder? Worse, he had evidence that in the entire time before their duel, Dumbledore and Grindlewald were meeting covertly still. And they exchanged information. It would be up to an observer's judgement which gained the most from that exchange, but Abraxas' brief would have claimed that Dumbledore was on Grindlewald's side the entire time, still carrying on a Wizard's affair, until he double-crossed him after the German Muggle began to falter in his campaigns."

"Furthermore, all of us, myself included, had no love left for the Muggle world. Kendra, our mother, and I felt the destruction of Ariana's magical control most keenly, as her suffering face confronted us daily. Albus was, of course, angered greatly, and like the rest of us, he felt the somewhat unjust loss of our father, Percival, strongly. But in his case, additionally, there was the loss of status in having our family head in Azkaban, and for what eventually was his life."

"Because of this, Albus saw young Lucius as being more foolish than Abraxas, and perhaps Albus could make some concessions that would disadvantage Muggleborns, to which he was indifferent, and allow some Muggle-baiting, which was no more than they deserved. In exchange, he would let the pro-Voldemort side know, quietly, that he had protected them from the angry mob of wizards-on-the-street and what might have happened to them, otherwise. This is also the explanation as to why for so very many years he has allowed the worst pureblooded bigots the run of Hogwarts. In Harry's father's time, there were enough pureblooded wizards and people with social power whose children were victimised and harmed that his status was threatened by them. For that reason, he allowed their children to fight back in a quite limited way, and that established the "pranking" tradition at Hogwarts." The Voldemort faction was appeased, as the pureblooded bigots, who ran Slytherin completely, even in Horace Slughorn's tenure, almost never received detentions, and with the hiring of the Death Eater Severus Snape, never even came close to losing the House Cup. They saw that, not as a symbol of accomplishment, which it obviously was not, but as a symbol that they were the privileged and that everyone else was inferior in status. It also meant that the school experience of everyone else was tarnished by unfairness and petty harassment. I suspect, strongly, that many children of the dark faction and their families reconsidered what they would have to gain under Voldemort they didn't already have under Dumbledore, and that was part of my brother's plan. But it was to no avail -- simple fear, or in some cases, the appeal to sadism no one could hand-wave away and keep a reputation as a good wizard, drew them all into the Knights, which were eventually called "Death Eaters" for the same reason the Muggle fascists in Europe and Latin America called their killers similar names."

No one there wanted to interrupt. It was almost soul-crushing to hear, though it vindicated Hermione's first impressions, for the most part. The idea that there were even greater villains, like Voldemort or the Malfoys, that even Albus Dumbledore had to step around, carefully, simply made sense. She looked over at Harry, considering him. When you looked at it objectively, her parents were giving up a lot of their old life for her. And Harry had, literally, nothing left but her. If she could get Sirius Black freed, and reunite him with Remus Lupin, well, the magical world had given them no reason to love it, either. At what point should she just suggest cutting their losses? If she and Harry and Luna and their families left Britain to its own devices, at least they'd be able to grow up and see what happened between her and Harry.

"As for myself? When I pointed out that Albus was slandering me in several ways, colluding with the Malfoys in the process, I did not elaborate. One day, still fuming over his slanderous nonsense and the way it threatened our family's livelihood, I had just brought in enough money with odd enchanting jobs to keep us going for a few months. My mother and sister (you should know she was often lucid, and she tried to keep up a brave front) insisted I allow myself to have a drink at the Hog's Head Inn, of which I am now the proprietor. At that point, we assumed Albus wasn't coming back from the Continent any time soon. Once I was in my cups, a very attractive witch who, apparently, did not speak any English, cosied up to me, and with gestures, indicated we should retire to one of the upstairs rooms. I tossed the barkeep a galleon, and ascended. That said, something about her expression alarmed me, so when we were alone in the room, I cast spells to end any enchantments on her. Her blank expression seemed to indicate someone under the Imperius curse, and I was even worried about my safety, since I thought I heard men gathering, shuffling their feet just outside the door. To my amazement, I found her turned into -- or I should say, back into -- one of our goats! Albus at that point opened the door, forcefully. He hadn't quite gotten what he wanted, but it was bad enough. Elphias Doge and Daedelus Diggle, of course, were there, along with a couple of men he'd enlisted as witnesses. I disarmed him immediately, and cast prior incantato to reveal he'd just been doing transfiguration. Unfortunately, he'd anticipated that, as well, and had been amusing the customers with intricate spells turning beer steins into badgers, goblets into gryphons, scotch into snakes, and Edradour into eagles. Outnumbered three to one, I stalked out without saying anything. Albus confounded the goat into following me out."

Harry's eyes met Hermione's. She shrank back a bit at how very angry they were. She thought about it, and decided he was remembering the way the Dursleys operated. Albus was a good Dudley, she thought, on reflection. Like a brilliant Dudley. She shuddered.

"And as for calling him out over Sirius Black? There were several reasons. First, no one wanted to defend him if, as was likely, he was, in fact, guilty. It might even be an excuse others who weren't slipping through the cracks would invoke to somehow bribe their way through a mock trial. Second, Albus hid behind Crouch, as did Bagnold. You would have had to literally attack Crouch magically to even raise the issue. Third, Albus denied the Potters had left a will, and he managed to bury it so well it remains unread today. Fourth, and this is perhaps the point of this whole discussion, young Hermione."

He looked over his glasses at her. She found it oddly more comforting than intimidating.

"Albus cast the Fidelius Charm, you know. And it was listed in the will he was a witness to that the Secret Keeper was the boy Peter Pettigrew. Herein lies my brother's genius. He convinced the Potters that even having him know the identity of the Secret Keeper was a risk."

Hermione gasped. Harry looked over at her, confused. Her parents looked thoughtful.

"He had someone cast a second Fidelius, Harry," she guessed. "And what he hid was ..." she looked over at Aberforth for confirmation.

"Yes. It was the identity of the Secret Keeper. And, of course, with the missing knowledge of Peter Pettigrew as the Secret Keeper ..." Aberforth said, looking at Hermione expectantly.

"The knowledge of who kept the secret was gone, including in your parents' will, Harry," Hermione said, sadly. "It's the perfect crime."

The fury was back in Harry's eyes. Hermione hoped her new girlfriend status gave her a little leverage to channel Harry into non-destructive channels for his anger. She then tried very hard to remember what the dolls' briefing on the Fidelius Charm had included.

"When the Potters died, why didn't Dumbledore remember?" she wondered out loud.

"No one can say for certain he did not,  Miss Granger," was the reply, "However, giving Albus the benefit of the doubt, can you think of reasons why he should still be in the dark?"

"Wait a minute!" Hermione said, suddenly. "How do you know he's innocent -- Sirius Black, I mean -- if the secret's still secret? Doesn't that imply Albus Dumbledore knows, too?"

Aberforth laughed. "I wish it were that easy, though it is rather simple. If Albus insists young Sirius is guilty, I am morally certain he isn't. I have no special knowledge of anything but Albus' self-serving duplicity. So I didn't know for certain until you, with your arcane sources of information, confirmed it."

Bloody hell, Hermione thought. Back to square one. She forced herself to think. "If one of the Potters, or anyone else who died, was the Secret Keeper, everyone they'd told would become one, and it would probably get out. But it might not be anyone like that. It might just be a Dumbledore crony, misled just like the Potters. Even if it was someone that died, they might not have told anyone. Or none of the people they told want to come forward. So we don't know if he knows, or just suspects. We don't know who else knows."

"And there, in a nutshell, you have the situation," Aberforth said. His tone reminded Hermione of Mr Granger when she'd gotten the top grade in her year. "It is vital you know what you are going up against. And as for the Malfoy family, they are professionals at the skills that Albus is merely a talented amateur at."

"In that case, getting the Potters' will read is going to scupper him, won't it?"

"If it's not been destroyed, perhaps. It might simply be in his custody, with a note to himself that it must never be opened."

"That makes no sense," Hermione objected.

"Indeed, it makes all the sense in the world. It was not until you confirmed Sirius' innocence that I was even able to recall the existence of the will, a few minutes ago. I was one of the witnesses. Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, and Lily Potter insisted. After the suspicious deaths of Fabian and Gideon Prewett, who had challenged Albus repeatedly, and evidence that Marlene McKinnon might have been sacrificed to preserve Albus' spies in the Knights, only James Potter fully trusted Albus, and I was seen as a properly hostile counter-witness. It is even possible that the Potters themselves forgot their own last wills and testaments. The Fidelius is a tricky and unreliable form of security, but it is also very powerful. The upshot is that select people -- starting with Director Amelia Bones -- need to be convinced Peter Pettigrew was the Potters' Secret Keeper, and that will spread knowledge of the will. With that, if there is another copy of one of the wills, it may be found and opened."

"She probably already knows!" objected Hermione.

"I am very much afraid she does not," Aberforth retorted. "A second Fidelius would have removed the knowledge of the identity of the Potters' Secret Keeper from everyone but the second Keeper. Everyone. Including, therefore ..."

Normally, simply sitting in a cafe, periodically ordering more drinks and snacks, listening to an old man tell stories would have been an ordeal for all of them. But in this case, even Harry was fidgeting in his seat, not out of boredom, but excitement, like a male Hermione.  Dumbledore explained to them that a runic bracelet he was wearing could be rubbed to confound nearby Muggles into forgetting how long they'd been there without casting obvious spells. If anyone noticed a privacy spell -- and that spell only -- in a Muggle area, it would probably be praised, not condemned.

Meanwhile, while they were getting drinks refilled and snacks replaced around the table, Hermione had been pondering. "Peter Pettigrew! He had Peter Pettigrew's memory that he was the Secret Keeper removed!"

Aberforth's eyes twinkled, making him look a great deal like his older brother.

"But that wouldn't work at all," Hermione added. "No one would have been able to visit the Potters. And Voldemort would never have gotten through the charm to attack them."

Aberforth silently pulled a smaller pouch out of his bag. He dumped its contents on the table. In various handwritings was written "The Potters live at _____" and various guesses. Only one was correct. Hermione felt her cheek getting wet.

"And every step, every single step, would be seen as Albus checking and double-checking. As increased security for the Potters, not for himself. So he asked several friends of the Potters to write their guesses down. He didn't give Peter enough time to have more than a twinge when he accidentally wrote down the correct location. The others would have been prohibited from even guessing, and Albus hurried Peter along to the next guess. I say this because I, too, have studied the Fidelius Charm, and it's the only scenario that makes a whit of sense."

"But what about Voldemort?" Hermione objected.

"He had various members of his Order, including Pettigrew, show their slips to others. He made a copy of Pettigrew's slip. Naturally, it showed an incorrect address. He then had Peter show them the "top slip" of a pair which included the address. As they lifted it, they also saw the correct address under it. Then Peter requested they destroy the "secret," which they did. Finally, after the people he wished to know the secret were informed, he gave the slip he'd confiscated from Peter back to him, and had him read it. He told Peter he had plenty of time to memorise it (and confounded him not to be suspicious about it), and left him with it the day before Halloween, a significant day for wizards. Naturally, Pettigrew, already a Death Eater, kept it and showed it to Voldemort. He didn't know, still, that he was the Secret Keeper for the Potters. Thus, neither Voldemort nor the other Death Eaters knew, either. More insulation between Sirius Black and the truth. Albus probably confounded himself using a mirror. I can think of no other way not to have guessed Peter was the Secret Keeper. All he had to do was keep himself from recognising Pettigrew's handwriting on the slip that trial-and-error had shown was the correct one. And thus ..."

It was pretty clear Hermione was being tested, but to everyone's surprise, it was Harry Potter that responded. "No one knew!" he exclaimed. "Not Dumbledore, not Voldemort, not the Death Eaters, not the Potters, not even Sirius Black! Not even Peter!"

"Yes!" agreed Hermione, "Dumbledore (no offence, Mr Aberforth) just saw a slip he could use to lure Voldemort and the Potters into a confrontation. Pettigrew just saw the secret handed to him. Sirius Black was just glad he didn't know. Sirius Black ..."

"Mr Dumbledore, how did Sirius Black know to go after Pettigrew?" Harry asked. It was the logical question.

"At first? I think he merely suspected. It was someone, after all. That's why he went to Peter's house first. At some point, the preponderance of evidence overrode the Fidelius charm for him. The Black heir had always suspected Pettigrew more than anyone else, the attempts by Pettigrew, Fletcher and Dumbledore to cast suspicion on Remus Lupin had gone nowhere until the Fidelius on Peter's status confused people like Sirius. After all, no one told me of Peter's status. The Fidelius is not a god, it is not all-powerful."

He shifted his glasses on his nose. "If I may be allowed to speculate?" The rest nodded. "The precipitous haste with which young Sirius was prevented from asking questions was probably at Albus' instigation. We now can suspect there were magical reasons for that. It suited Bagnold -- the sooner rid of the issue, the better. It suited Crouch -- on to the next confrontation, and he hated the Black family for decades. It suited the Malfoys, who were angling their way into the Black family inheritance by the marriage of their scion Lucius to the youngest Black, Narcissa. After all, Sirius was a roadblock to several factions. And he was, more importantly, one of perhaps only two people who possibly knew who the Secret Keeper was."

"About that," asked Hermione. "Even if it was one of his, um, boyfriends, I guess? Why would they keep quiet about Sirius going to prison for nothing?"

"Two possibilities suggest themselves, Miss Granger," Aberforth said. "First, they are either just that loyal, or they believed that Sirius Black was guilty of everything else but being the Secret Keeper. And perhaps that he was sent by Voldemort to kill Pettigrew to cover the Death Eaters' tracks. But I think it's far more likely he found a powerful wizard who no one at all but Dumbledore would speak to, and who might be persuaded to take a vow of silence on the topic."

"There is no one like that, surely, or we'd have heard of them?" Hermione asked.

"That Nicholas Flamel guy you kept lecturing me about, would he do it?" Harry asked.

"Well," Aberforth interjected, "you have heard of him. We mentioned him in this very discussion."

Hermione looked at her parents. "Well, honey, I don't know how to evaluate wizards, but isn't that Grindlewolf or whatever his name is a really powerful wizard? And didn't you say Dumbledore had him in solitary confinement in some fortress he controls?" Mrs Granger asked.

It was like someone threw a bucket of cold water over Harry and Hermione.

"Indeed," said Aberforth, with a nod, giving an approving look at Hermione's mother. "I am morally certain Gellert was the one who cast the second Fidelius on the identity of the Potters' Secret Keeper."

At that, Aberforth fished a large pile of pound notes out and left them on the table. "I will use the facilities, I hope you don't mind settling up?" he asked, and didn't stay to hear their answer.

When he returned, they decided to continue the discussion with the Lovegoods involved, and at the Granger residence. Aberforth was competent at disguising himself as a Muggle, and with Pandora's help, would be able to bully Xenophilius into not standing out, he explained. Fortunately, the Grangers had a guest room and another room that was often used that way, as Aberforth believed their discussion would go into the night.

Chapter Text

On the way to the Granger home, they stopped by Privet Drive. Only Mrs Granger got out. She and her husband had threatened all they were going to for the time being.

As she'd guessed, when Mr Dursley saw who it was, he let Petunia deal with her. His desire to protect his family lost out to his reflexive response of letting his wife deal with freakish society. She guessed Petunia had made it clear to him that the Grangers were loyal to the freaks, not to normal folk like the Dursleys. Still, for both Petunia and Vernon it was much better dealing with a fellow non-freak.

Mrs Granger explained quietly that her family and some allies were trying to prevent other magical people associated with either the wizard that killed Petunia's sister or the old man who'd left Harry Potter on their doorstep from bothering them. She gently suggested that not abusing Petunia's nephew was a small price to pay for that. She then told them she was merely there to collect a box of magical things Harry needed. With that, she marched up to the room on the second floor and brought the box with the dolls back with her.

When they got back to the Granger home, the Lovegood family met them there. They set off for "The Ancient Priors" nearby. "I believe that's where Solomon's is," Mr Granger said. He told Hermione it was almost certainly the most famous structure in Crawley, if not West Sussex. The "West Sussex" part made Mrs Granger roll her eyes.

When they arrived at their destination, there was a sign saying Solomon's had closed. One part of the building was seemingly being prepped for office space. Another part had an article on the door saying the estate agent who owned the building was trying to sell space to the ASK chain.

The Grangers were, however, veterans of this sort of thing after all they'd seen in recent months. They all looked at their magical companions for instructions. And they were not let down.

Mr Lovegood gave a curious series of knocks on the office door, and when the door swung open by itself, they all filed in. Another set of knocks got them into a quite old-fashioned tea room. As they entered, Hermione heard a voice say, « Ç'est un conseil magique de guerre! ».

Already sitting at the table they approached were Ms Malabul and Ms DuCharme.

Also present was a man she didn't recognize. He looked like he'd been through hell. With a sudden jolt, she realised who this might be. At long last, she was going to meet Sirius Black.

They had never been shooed out of the Ancient Priors. Apparently, the magical tea shop ran as late as it was required to. Hermione was not just tired from the late hour, she was emotionally exhausted. And when they got to the Grangers' home, things got interesting again. In the end, her teachers got one guest room, The Lovegoods got another,  Harry, Hermione and Luna were on sleeping bags on her floor, and Aberforth and their surprise guest got the last room. Two had been converted to offices for each of the Grangers, and Mr Granger also had a den. Hermione's estimate of the house sizes was a bit off, though it was true the Grangers' home was half again as large as Number Four Privet Drive, and far more "detached." And even though the cupboard Harry lived in was indeed as tiny as she'd pictured it being.

Hermione really would have preferred to have Harry to herself. She pondered over whether her parents weren't secretly angling that she not achieve that. I'm eleven! she thought, outraged at the notion, and Harry's still ten! Then again, she was speculating. It was unfair to get mad at her parents for what she imagined they thought. She tried to look on the bright side:

This is a bona fide sleepover,she thought.

Chapter Text

It was an irritation to Amandine and Pamela that their school,  l'Académie Supérieure de Sorcellerie, which had located itself in the 16th arrondissement¹, had taken over an ancient girls' school in Wales atop Mt Snowdon, and forced students who wished to be magical educators to go there to practice. It was particularly irritating as Mlle Jollidodue's sister, Salmonella, was the headmistress there, and pretending to be her twin, to boot. Apparently, it was a diplomatic solution to their constant sibling rivalry, and Académie Supérieure students were forbidden to enlighten the locals. Over the course of her education, Amandine had largely lost her French accent for a Welsh accent when speaking English, unlike Pamela. People in Magical Britain assumed she'd brought her French girlfriend over, and considered it daring of her.

Since when the wine is drawn, it must be drunk, they stayed in Britain and quickly became accredited in non-magical education. They planned to teach a few years and when they were veterans, move back and teach at either the main school created by Hermione Jollidodue² or the other women's academy in France, Beauxbatons. The latter was planning to admit boys in the near future, so they deliberately chose to teach at a co-educational non-magical school. To their surprise, they both richly enjoyed teaching there, and one of the students, in addition to being a prodigy in all her subjects, was obviously a powerful witch!

When Amandine found out that little Hermione Granger had been listening to her first-year conversation with the Headmistress, she was chagrinée. Later, she and Pamela observed the girl’s radical self-transformation in her sixth year. The ten-year-old had stopped letting life pummel her, which was all to the good.

But that wasn’t all, not by miles. Right there in her classes, she was blatantly using a BST (boule souviens-toi-de-tout ) as some sort of alarm. Whoever had given her a “Rememberall,” as they were called here in England, had clearly not informed her that even for a child, it was expressly forbidden by le SDS to display an obvious magical object in front of non-magical.

Then again, in her innocence, the girl, who probably knew nothing about the Statute, to begin with, wasn't actually drawing attention to herself. Her classmates and teachers were used to her being precocious and eccentric, and knew her parents could afford to buy her exotic toys.

Nonetheless, when Hermione turned eleven, and presumably had been warned about such things by the teachers of the allegedly prestigious boarding school in Scotland, Amandine told her not to bring the ball to class, as "it seems to be distracting you, unfortunately." Luckily, the girl looked disappointed instead of suspicious. If she hadn't been distracted, she would have probably been suspicious that Amandine never asked her about the smoky red ball, ironically.

They decided the time to confront her about the magical world would be when the British public's hero, little Harry Potter, got his letter, in about a year. They would give her moral support for what would probably be a turbulent year, with a young celebrity being in her age group and perhaps even in one of their Houses together.

That plan flew out the window when their bell rang. At the door was an old man wearing a nice suit who resembled the headmaster of Hogwarts Academy. Behind him was a woman who looked like some sort of magical official, with a black dog on a leash that, to their trained eye, seemed both magical and intelligent.

"There's really no time to waste, ladies," the man began, abruptly. "We'd like you to come along with us, as quickly as you can. We're planning how to help Hermione Granger against some rather deadly enemies."

Chapter Text

Hermione's Timeline

Early-to-mid 1980s
Hermione Granger has strange events happen to her, which she's not old enough to understand. Her toys float around and when she's upset, she can break things without touching them. When she's alone, she can make a doll move around as if it were alive. Her parents decide it's a poltergeist, though they're unsure if such things are ghosts or a manifestation of ESP.

July 1986
Hermione hears her teachers agreeing to have her skip a grade, but also admitting she's plain, clumsy, shy, and friendless, and people can't stand her know-it-all personality. She creates an earthquake in her house, brings her dolls to life and enchants her teapot to fill itself from the family pot downstairs.

July 1988
Hermione, already aware she has special powers, perhaps due to a poltergeist, reads about the magicians in Steinbeck's King Arthur book, and identifies with their "pitiable" condition.

Saturday, September 1 1990
Hermione visits The Old Curiosity Shop for the first time and is shocked and impressed enough she works it into her next history term paper.

Monday and Tuesday, September 17-18 1990
Hermione seeks to solicit Happy Birthdays but only gets four.

Tuesday, September 18 1990
Hermione re-visits the Curio Shop and is gifted seven books, apparently from the future, and written about her! She and her dolls give the books a once-over.

Wednesday, September 19 1990
Hermione's 11th birthday. She and her family take the day off and go shopping in Diagon Alley. Later, they stop by the Curio Shop, which is shuttered and dusty as if closed for years. Hermione sits on a box that turns out to be another gift from the Curio Shop, containing three additional living dolls. When they arrive home, the Grangers encounter Deputy Headmistress McGonagall of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Thursday, September 20 1990
Hermione accumulates belated Happy Birthdays, eventually getting more than she'd hoped to. Since her dolls are draining her magic by reading her books, she faints in class after playing football during playtime break and is banned from participating until she gets a doctor's approval slip.

Friday, September 21 1990
Hermione has the dolls continue taking notes, and skims a few chapters herself. She begins preparing lists of questions and a tentative to-do list.

Saturday - Friday, September 22-28 1990
Hermione's stamina recovers and she is able to attend school while the dolls take notes. She resolves to save Pandora Lovegood, Sirius Black, and Harry Potter - in that order of urgency. She sends Harry an anonymous letter that liberally quotes Rubeus Hagrid from the first book. The Grangers find Ottery St Catchpole, and Hermione makes progress with the Curio Shop dolls. All her dolls together write a letter to the Lovegoods, which Hermione mails. Harry Potter receives his anonymous letter and is confused. Nonetheless, he tries magic with a toy wand abandoned by Dudley and manages to conjure hundreds of rabbits, unknown to him, while trying to pull a rabbit out of a top hat.

Saturday, September 29, 1990
Hermione has her first Quidditch practice. Her uncle has quickly repurposed part of his rope line area, since it's somewhat off-season.

Friday, October 5 1990
Harry is invited to the Grangers for tea with Hermione. Harry watches Hermione's recently made Quidditch video and meets the dolls, whom he finds terrifying. Hermione gives him a linked journal so they can message each other.

Tuesday, October 9 1990
The Grangers confront the Dursleys, and successfully intimidate them. Harry is moved out of the cupboard under the stairs up into Dudley's 2nd bedroom. Hermione gifts the three Curio Shop dolls to Harry, since they've apparently bonded with him, despite his fear of them. They travel to the Curio Shop, where the shop girl sells them Sirius Black's communication mirror. Hermione tries calling Moony, who refuses to answer. They encounter what they believe to be Albus Dumbledore, but turns out to be his brother, Aberforth, who promises not to say anything about either of them to the headmaster. Selene gifts Hermione yet again - this time with a necklace that prevents Legilimency. Aberforth Confounds Harry's memories so that if Dumbledore reads his mind, he won't know about the Curio Shop or their meeting with Aberforth. Aberforth tells them about Albus Dumbledore's lifelong history of villainy, but warns that there are far worse wizards out there, and not all of them are obvious. Harry and the Grangers meet the Lovegoods. Pandora and Xenophilius simulate the One Ring from the Lord of the Rings as a prank on Hermione. Hermione agrees to do research for the Lovegoods in exchange for their aid. Harry finds out Hermione already has a crush on him, and tentatively agrees to be her boyfriend, as long as no kissing is involved. The Lovegoods say she can't even mention their great-great-great-great aunt, Selene, as the time paradoxes would endanger everyone, especially the Lovegood family.

Wednesday-Friday, October 10-12 1990
Hermione finishes reading the first book, skims the second book, makes more lists, and practices Quidditch in a reduced way in her back garden. She also practices her switching spell, at first with mixed results. She follows the Dumbledore and Ron Weasley threads through all seven books to a degree, and reconfirms that they are both sinister and false. She also reconfirms that, by requiring her to research for them, the Lovegoods are also teaching her, in a way that respects her dignity.

Saturday, October 13, 1990
Harry and Hermione conference via their journals. She tells him that if he contacts Neville, and he tells anyone, that it would be very dangerous for Harry. Since they already agreed on that, Harry asks her why she's reiterating a known fact. She says, so Harry can honestly say he was told that. Harry says that shows girls are devious. Hermione receives a letter from Luna saying her mother is back doing dangerous things, and relating that her goal is undoing Lucius Malfoy's murder of Selene in the distant past, the Lovegood family tragedy.

Sunday, October 14, 1990
Harry and Hermione successfully, wandlessly, switch Peter "Scabbers" Pettigrew with a shop rat (mutilated for the cause). They also succeed in getting Neville a new wand. They send Pettigrew and a note proclaiming Sirius Black's innocence to DMLE head Amelia Bones. They also send a warning letter about Dumbledore and the Philosopher's Stone to Nicholas Flamel. Upon receipt of Pettigrew and the note, Amelia Bones gets Sirius Black out of Azkaban and confines him to house arrest at 12 Grimmauld Place.

Tuesday, October 16, 1990
Discovering that the most menacing enemy they have in the wizarding world, Lucius Malfoy, is already casing the Curio Shop (preparing for his trip to the past to attack Selene), Hermione's father gets a license to buy a self-loading hunting rifle. He immediately sets up a shooting area in the basement. Both Grangers practice shooting every night going forward.

Wednesday, October 17, 1990
Aberforth Dumbledore, Amelia Bones, and a black dog appear at the flat of two witches, Amandine Malabul and Pamela DuCharme, and they are invited to a meeting of people who are working together to protect Hermione Granger from a great danger she's stirred up against herself and her friend, Harry Potter. The Grangers and Harry return to the Curio Shop, where they meet up with Aberforth Dumbledore again. They go out for coffee and food, and Aberforth explains how Dumbledore cast the Fidelius Charm for Godric's Hollow and yet told the truth when he said he didn't know who the Secret Keeper was. He also explains why neither Albus Dumbledore nor himself openly confront enemies like Lucius Malfoy, and why he put up with Albus' abuse. They all travel to a secret magical tea shop at the Ancient Priors in Crawley. There, they meet up with the Lovegoods - and, to Hermione's shocked surprise, not only Sirius Black, in the flesh, not only Amelia Bones, but her two favourite teachers, Ms Malabul and Ms DuCharme - they're witches! [Details of the conference and what they discussed and decided will be filled in in the next few chapters]. Afterwards, everyone stays overnight at the Grangers' house, and Harry sleeps in Hermione's room, which makes her very happy.

Chapter Text

The Council of Xeno

Hermione didn’t have time to catch her breath before she heard a voice saying, “ “I am Xenophilius and it is my honour to welcome you to The Tea-shop in the Ancient Priors, Hermione daughter of Victor and Jane. Please, join us.”

Surprisingly, it seemed Mr Lovegood was in charge of this meeting, which indeed reminded Hermione of the Council of Elrond, the first part of which Mr Lovegood was paraphrasing. Just call me Frodoette, I suppose, she thought bemusedly. Or perhaps I am to be Samantha to Harry’s Ring-bearer.

The man in question noticed that she was perplexed over his role, and grinned.

“You are, Miss Granger, after all working for us, are you not?” he asked.

She stammered out that she guessed she might be. I certainly never looked at it that way, she continued in her mind.

“And my dear wife here won’t be able to participate when certain topics arise,” he added, lowering his voice over the words “certain topics” as he did so.

Mrs Lovegood nodded. “In fact,” she said, “I’ve been hexed - “

“Charmed,” Mr Lovegood interrupted.

“Yes, well, charmed,” she continued, “so that I cannot hear anyone talking about them.”

“For that reason,” said Mr Lovegood, “I’ll try to keep us all talking about all the other topics that are of almost equal urgency. After that, my dear wife will go ahead to the Grangers’ home and make things ready.

Hermione probably looked surprised at that, as well.

“While it is important and commendable that you and your parents communicate extremely well, they don’t necessarily tell you everything they discuss with others. In this case, Mr and Mrs Granger offered us a place in their home this evening - or should I say, what will be this late night - so as to allow our discussion with them to continue past this meeting, if needed, while we were wending our way here,” Mr Lovegood told her.

“You’ve intimidated the Dursleys enough,” Mrs Lovegood added, “that the other guest of honour will be able to join you and stay overnight. And it will be salutary that our daughter mingle with future movers and shakers such as yourself and young Harry Potter.”

Whoever had planned where everyone would sit had correctly sussed that being between the Grangers was the most comforting place for Harry and Hermione. Then again, Luna Lovegood was seated next to her mother, so it was probably obvious, if looked at objectively.

Mr Dumbledore sat next to Victor, and Ms Malabul sat next to Jane.

After Hermione and Harry had sat down, Hermione whipped around and asked Ms Malabul, “Vous êtes tous les deux des sorcières ?”

It was Ms DuCharme that answered her: “Ouai, c'est pourquoi nous avons remarqué que tu utilises ouvertement une boule souviens-toi-de-tout dans ta classe non magique, ma chère.”

“Oh,” said Hermione, a bit shame-faced. “They’re witches, and I didn’t know,”she whispered to Harry, “and Ms DuCharme said that’s why they noticed I was using a magical object in school in front of all my non-magical classmates.”

Harry, who had been looking a bit tired already, perked up and laughed at that. Well, at least her humiliation was doing some good.

“Ms DuCharme is the one with the glasses?” Harry asked, following it up before she could reply with, “don’t they speak any English?”

Hermione assured him that he was right about which one was Ms DuCharme, and added that she was in the habit of practicing her French with her two teachers that spoke it as their native tongue. That said, they both understood English perfectly, though Ms DuCharme didn’t much like speaking it.

“What does she teach?” Harry asked.

“English,” Hermione said.

With that, she got Harry to laugh for the second time that night.

“She’s a stickler for proper grammar, too,” she added. “She says if French babies can master a complex language like French, then older British children should be able to be flawless in their much simpler language, which has only a rudimentary concept of grammar to begin with.”

Their whispering was interrupted when Mr Lovegood said, “Harry and Hermione, I am sure you are familiar with everyone here except the surprising guest in the opposite corner to Mr Dumbledore. His name is Sirius Black, and he’s Harry Potter’s godfather.”

His godfather! What the hell?? thought Harry. He looked the man over carefully. Harry’d had what he was growing to consider a hard life so far, but clearly, this man had him beat. He was as thin as a scarecrow, although better dressed. His hair had been cut short but was still rather untidy. His face was care-worn and his grey eyes were very sad.

“Hello, Harry,” the man said, in a somewhat hoarse, quiet voice. “I have just gotten out of a terrible prison, worse than Devil’s Island, if you have heard of that. I’m still rather shaky, but I came here because I am one of the few people who are connected to your early life that won’t stonewall us or prevaricate if certain people demand it. I’m sorry I wasn’t there after your parents were killed, Harry, but I am dedicated to helping you in any way I can, as best I can.”

“Mr Black will be invaluable as a source of information for us, in particular about you, Harry,” Aberforth Dumbledore spoke up and said.

“And we,” Ms Malabul said, suddenly, “Can and will do the same for Hermione.”

Surprisingly, Ms DuCharme turned to the Grangers and added, in English: “We know what she’s like after she leaves your house, better than anyone else, and we’ll share what we’ve seen and what we think.”

“My wife has agreed to halt the more dangerous parts of her work, for a short while, since we’re making progress on certain topics faster than her risk-taking would move her forward.,” Mr Lovegood said.  “Thus, Ms Granger, you can, for a bit, be at peace in your mind over her.”

It was a good thing he said that, as Mrs Lovegood had actually started to shake and looked very pale. It was probably, Hermione guessed, that they were talking too close to “certain topics.”

They were interrupted by a knock on the door, and Mr Lovegood called out, “Enter.”

A woman with auburn hair with some streaks of grey, and wearing what looked like an old-fashioned monocle came in and sat near Sirius Black. Hermione could not place her, but then again, the books had mostly concerned themselves with those her age and a little older or younger, so she could be an important character, for all she knew.

“This is Madame Amelia Bones, the chief law enforcer of the witches and wizards of Great Britain,” Mr Lovegood announced. “The two children that aren’t my daughter are Harry Potter and Hermione Granger. You may or may not have had some contact with them, Madame Bones.”

Madame Bones didn’t say anything to that, but Hermione could see her well enough to notice her eyebrow rose up at hearing Mr Lovegood’s ambiguous statement.

“Madame Bones, there are certain topics that haven’t concerned you, and may never concern you, I pray it’s so, that we cannot discuss yet, so if our discussion veers over there, and we all clam up, please accept that it’s not necessarily our choice to do so.”

“But that,” he continued, leads nicely into our first discussable topic: How to keep the attention of “certain people” off of Harry and Hermione. The best person to speak to that is Aberforth Dumbledore, so I yield the floor to him.”

Mr Dumbledore thanked Mr Lovegood, then began: “Albus Dumbledore will never take his attention off of young Harry Potter; the best we can do is to use misdirection and masks so that he finds being overly intrusive to be boring and perhaps pointless.”

“As for Ms Granger, she’s intimately connected to efforts to improve the lot of young Harry, and I have taken some steps to help her stay away from excessive scrutiny. While the time is too little to train him in Occlumency, what I will do if he visits weekly should suffice to keep all but the most determined Legilimency out of those thoughts it would be best if Harry concealed.”

“Ms Granger bears a charm against Legilimency, though for obvious reasons it would be a catastrophe if it were needed and displayed openly,” he said. “She has a fine mind, and it is possible her well-ordered thoughts would explain that it’s hard for passive Legilimency to obtain her surface thoughts.”

At that, he got an expression on his face that reminded Hermione of what was written about the other Dumbledore. He was clearly amused, and it would not be out of place to say his eyes twinkled a little. Hermione had managed to find a picture of Albus Dumbledore in old copies of the Daily Prophet, and the two did look alike, but their bearing and expressions seemed miles apart.

"I imagine I look a bit like my brother at this moment?" Hermione heard, and it took her a moment to realise it was directed at her. "Our ability to suddenly find humour in our daily lives is a gift we inherited from our unfortunate father, Percival. He was quick to laugh, quick to cry, quick to rage. Quick to love, and quick to hate. Any moderation we acquired was from our mother, Kendra. As to what amused me?"

"Now that all have met all, and we are met over very serious matters, does anyone object to hearing Xenophilius Lovegood here give us a summary of the situation in the wizarding world? Madame Bones, for instance, knows her bailiwick, and I know my goats, but perhaps a journalist can see the broad picture best, at times."

Most there nodded, and no one objected.

"With that, then, let us formally begin the Council of Xeno," he said, eyes still showing his amusement. 

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

A puzzled-looking Sirius Black spoke for many there when he raised his hand as if he were still at Hogwarts. In fairness, Hermione thought, he was only a couple of years out before time froze for him, poor thing.

"I thought Miss Granger's parents were called Ian and Jean," he began. Also, how were you buying Percy's rat from Ron after you'd already sent it to the Lovegoods, and they'd already sent Wormy along to the DMLE?"

"I told everyone at school that my name was Jean, not Jane Austen," said Mrs Granger, a bit embarrassed. "And I went with that, going forward. It was close enough."

"I had no such excuse," added Mr Granger, "but, honestly, when your name is Victor-Marie Hugo Granger, unless you want yourself locked in your locker or your head pushed into the WC, you had better find a handle. I just told my mates, what I had of them, to call me 'Ian.' It was as good a name as any other."

"Normally, we're called Dr Granger," Mrs Granger said, "and when people are on a first-name basis, that's when we haul out 'Jean' and 'Ian.'" 

"But our names did bring us together, so there's that. Otherwise, I think we'd still be burning with resentment at our parents," Mr Granger finished.

"The kids sent us two rats," explained Pandora. Her eyes were dancing with merriment. Hermione had seen what pranksters the Lovegoods were, so was unsurprised.

"They switched out Percy's rat and sent it to Luna.  But the old rat they swapped in got sick, the pet shop said it was dying of old age. When they were trying to figure out how to afford an owl, Harry mentioned that a friend of his, Luna, their neighbour, was good at healing rats. A rat that had lived 10 years so far was a fascinating creature and she'd nurse it back to health and Harry would buy it from him for enough galleons to get a small owl. Since Percy had just given Ron the rat, that meant that he had enough to buy a Scops owl. Ginevra complained, so she got to say that it was partly her pet, too, and she jumped the gun and named it 'Pigidgeon,' much to Ron's chagrin. But Ron still has dibs on the owl, so, along with Erroll, the family owl, and Hermes, which they just got for Percy, Ron, and Ginny somewhat, now had Pig. It made a great deal of sense, given that Ginevra was going to be on her own for a year."

"So, that's how we ended up both switching and buying the rat," Hermione said. "I would have felt guilty depriving Ronald of a pet that he would have otherwise gotten, even though he was a disgusting Death Eater traitor sharing a bed with an eleven-year-old boy." Out of instinct, she looked at Harry. His expression was, to sum up, Now I remember why she said she wasn't skilled with people. 'Oh well,' she thought.

"It's improved Ginny's mood a lot," Luna Lovegood piped up.  "Also, my parents pressed the Weasleys very hard to allow me to visit Ginevra and have her visit, until they gave in. Hermione told us all it was important not to let her become isolated and depressed this year."

Harry spoke up. "It's making a short story long, but the gist is, we managed to score points with Ronald Weasley over the rat and owl, and with Neville Longbottom over sneaking him in and out and getting him a new wand. And we helped Ginny. Which probably settled the raging Saving People spirit possessing my girlfriend."

Sirius smiled. Not only at his questions being answered but at Harry's last word. He looked over at Prongs. He looked so solid, so real and alive, even though he also gave Sirius the chills. James, too, looked pleased and proud. Surprisingly, when he looked over at Lily, she had the same expression. They can't be around for him, he realised. Only I and Hermione and anyone we enlist can. He was on her side from now on, that was a given.

Chapter Text

Percy Dumbledore was on his way to meet Kendra Trelawney.

Back before his world was shattered (hers even more so, to be fair) he'd often talked to her, the much younger sister of Selene Trelawney. She didn't detect the future and hidden things like her sister ... like her sister had. That said, she was very intuitive. And Percy knew that she could be relied on to give him his cue one way or the other.

Kendra lived in the tiny family home of the Trelawneys. They were in a Muggle area, and blended in. They lit only with whale-oil lamps in their rooms and limelight - quite a luxury in contrast - in the dining room. Not every day, but there had been informal conferences there, and it was as much a meeting room as a dining room.

Where Selene had been light, Kendra was dark. Selene was gregarious and Kendra was quiet. Being around Kendra had taught Percy to pick up on body language and subtle shifts in expression.

When he used the knocker, she was already at the door. Her expression struck him as ... well, resigned. If she knew what he was about, that should have wounded his pride. Instead, it simply reinforced his feeling that few to no others besides Kendra would be able to understand his lingering, persistent sorrow. He couldn't remember the last time he'd felt healthy, energetic, optimistic. Or, don't lie to yourself, man! he could remember quite well. He corralled his meandering thoughts and went inside.

It wasn't uncommon for wizards and witches to blend in with Muggles. There had been an explosion of Muggle inventions in the British Empire, and magical items just looked like crackpot gadgets. Coinciding with that, however, was an increasing separation. This Victorian era was probably the last time there would be cultural overlap between the magical and non-magical British societies. Percy's father had proclaimed that, unless he missed his guess, that meant the British magical world might never leave the Victorian era, no matter how far the Muggles progressed.

"At some point," he'd told his sons, "the Muggles' science and technology will be able to do much of what we depend on magic for, and when that happens, we'll regret our short-sighted leadership and whimsical laws. But I won't be around to see it, and with any luck, neither will you."

As long as a Dumbledore scion put the family's magic first, it would not fail them, he'd often told them. It had been cold comfort, but that was marginally better than none at all.

Percy wasn't a dab hand at sketching, but he'd been highly motivated to preserve the image of the blonde, arrogant ponce that the family magic drew from Selene's dead eyes. Eyes filled with horror and despair. He'd had a friend of Selene's copy his drawing and speculate on how the man would look from various aspects. He'd taken his original sketch and laminated it with Muggle cellulose acetate.

"It's what she predicted, and what she'd want," was what Kendra eventually told him. Percy winced. He raged against Fate, and that included Selene's predictions. Many Muggle men of science felt the universe was a clockwork, and that men, even wizards, of the ones aware of such things, were merely automatons whose brains caused them to claim they had choices. That grim outlook was one he'd fight. It had only done him dirty.

But Kendra wasn't Fate, she was Selene's little sister. And she was good, and kind, and sweet. And she shared his grief. They could, he decided, make a go of it on that basis.

That the killer of his aunt Selene had been a Malfoy was a certainty, Abe knew. He strongly suspected it was the Lucius brat, but Abraxas had the same foul habits and attitude, and he'd made the grievous error of going into an isolated Muggle area for some "baiting," which was the vile Wizarding British name for rape, torture and murder, with only two associates. Abe had tracked them, killed his two companions silently, transfiguring and vanishing their bodies as he strode forward, then stunned Abraxas and apparated with him to this quarry.

Abe, no more than anyone else, understood the laws of Time. It could well be that he couldn't prevent whichever Malfoy was going to savage Selene from carrying out his grim work. But by that same rationale, Abraxas had played his part.

His brother already represented Abe as a thug. He may as well have the game as have the name. And it was still true that Albus couldn't use their family magic, however much he'd excelled at everyone else's.

He looked again at the faded, yellowed sketch before folding it along the cracking creases and gently placing it in his shirt pocket.

Abraxas Malfoy was about to have a very long night. Fortunately for him, it was going to be the last one, though.

Chapter Text

It wasn't just excitement that made it a bit hard for Hermione to sleep. Having Harry and Luna in her room was interesting, and made her think furiously. But it had to be admitted that she, Harry and Luna had all fallen asleep at various points in the conference (which had, after all, run into the wee hours of the morning). So she'd had at least a nap.

She decided she wouldn't mention any specifics about the young woman who ran the Curio Shop. It had been impressed on her thoroughly that that was amazingly dangerous, to everyone, but especially to the Lovegoods.

As they whispered and muttered amongst themselves, the three children hammered out a picture of their situation: they were involved in a clandestine war that had to be kept from the eyes and ears of the dark wizard Voldemort, the not-so-good wizard Dumbledore, and the Ministry of Magic - and any and all supporters of those three factions.

Their enemy for now was Lucius Malfoy, who had his finger in every pie in the society.

Before, Hermione had solely had her parents to rely on. Well, and the dolls, she should say. Though even the dolls were unclear as to whether that meant relying on herself, and to what degree it meant that.

Now, however, she had a large group behind her. It might be true that there was now a Hermione Granger faction. The world would never know about that faction if it did its job right, she decided.

Her teachers, Harry's godfather, his parents (though "not too often, dear!" as Lily Potter said, and "not for very long periods at all," as James Potter had added), her parents, the Lovegoods, Aberforth Dumbledore - they were a formidable crew. Hermione's job, so to speak, was to continue doing research for the Lovegoods, and to dribble out visions of the future when her gut instinct said she should, and to the degree she felt was required.

Fortunately for Hermione, Luna was a little sleepier, being the youngest. She also seemed to realise Hermione wanted to discuss "the forbidden topic" with Harry in whispers. She turned away a bit, and Hermione coaxed Harry into moving closer to her.

"We aren't just at war physically or even magically, Harry. If I understand what Mr Dumbledore and the Lovegoods said, when you try to change time, even to change it back, you're pitting the magic of everyone who believes in the current time against yours. So you have to have some great source of power, and you have to have some way to focus it. The scary part is that Mrs Lovegood has both, though her power's probably not that likely to be enough."

"So, we're the ones changing time now?" Harry whispered, confused.

"Probably. Unless we can stop Mr Malfoy. I mean, that's the goal. Just saying, if something weird happens, it could be Time reasserting itself. But once he goes back, we're probably through. That will make it impossible for us to help, just like it's sort of impossible for Mrs Lovegood to."

"Why aren't you more scared that what people believe about time makes the world change?"

"I'm plenty scared. I've been scared witless since I realized Voldemort and the pure-bloods and the Death Eaters were real. I used to think if you lived in a civilized nation, you had no real reason to fear groups like that."

"I can see Dudley growing up to be a witch-burner, to be honest. He'd enjoy it, and society would praise him while he worked."

"People like Mr Malfoy are reckless. There's no concern there whatsoever about the whole world. Just what they feel like doing at the moment, and it's usually something vile."

"Could you..." he paused. "Could you kill someone like Lucius Malfoy?"

"That's not our job, that's not in the plan. If you mean, if he was trying to kill us? Me or you? Yeah."

"Same here," whispered Harry, after a long time thinking about it.

"It'll probably be your godfather, and maybe Mr Lovegood, and maybe my parents, and Mr Dumbledore, you know."

"It's weird thinking about that."

"What, Harry?"

"Parents. Parents that would go out and rid the world of a guy because he's a threat to you."

"You had parents like that, Harry. That's exactly what they did. It's just, he found a way back to the world. And don't forget .."

She could feel him waiting.

"You still have one parent like that left. Mr Black would do anything to help you. He lost your parents, he lost the friend that betrayed them, he hates most of his family, his other best friend would rat us out to Albus Dumbledore. You're all he has left."

"That's kind of grim. That's kind of a grim reason to be a parent."

"There are ..." Hermione couldn't help but yawn. "There are worse reasons,." 

She thought about the notes her dolls had made about Tom Riddle. Then she decided those weren't the thoughts she was going to sleep on.

"I'm glad you're here. A year ago, I was pretty sad. I was so alone, and I got sick of it, and this year I made a vow, I made a vow I was going to change my life! And just look!" she whispered a bit loudly. Hopefully not waking Luna.

Harry reached up and brushed her hand. "Just look," he concurred. He relaxed back into his sleeping sack with a mumbled "Sweet dreams, Hermione."

So as not to wake him, when she answered "Sweet dreams, Harry," no one heard her but herself and her dolls.

Chapter Text

As fate would have it, Hermione wasn't sleeping long. Her mind began to whirl again. Had she made the right choice? Had she been railroaded?

After Mrs Lovegood left, bringing her daughter and Hermione’s mother along, someone truly surprising, at least to Hermione, because Harry had to be filled in quietly by her a few minutes later, arrived.

It was honestly a bit like having Da Vinci come through the entrance.

This is no ordinary tea shop, she mused.

Even before greeting everyone there, a man who perfectly matched his depiction in the Britannica went over to talk with her teachers. He was French, which made sense.

”That’s a very old, legendary even, person, if he is who he looks to be, Harry.”

”And?”

”He’s hundreds of years old, I meant to say.”

”Is that normal for magic?”

”No, not at all. And he’s so famous he’s in non-magical encyclopedias and things. But his immortality and even his life are listed as being myths.”

”Ohhhh ‘Kay.”

”He’s Nicholas Flamel, and another thing he can do, that magic usually can’t, is permanently change one kind of matter into another.”

”Like, ummm, water into wine?”

”Well … yes, I suppose. But normal magicals can do that too, it just doesn’t stay. It won’t affect you with the alcohol except like being hypnotized.”

”And this Fllummel guy could make wine-water that gets people drunk?”

”Flah-mell,” she corrected absent-mindedly. “It’s a pity, if I’m right about him, that his wife Perenelle isn’t here, too. She hasn’t been seen in public even longer than Nicholas Flamel, if the book I bought at Flourish and Blotts is right. Though it’s extremely strange and a little off-putting that he’s here. I’m trying to control some of this process, and this is one more very intimidating person.”

”Face it, Hermione, we … WE ARE KIDS.”

Hermione turned red, she could feel it in her cheeks.

After a pause, she said, “Fine. You’re right.”

”What’s going on is you don’t trust anyone but you to take care of me, right? It’s so weird, I should be the one that’s that way. *oh, damn.* Alright, we are learning to work this stuff out, right?”

The still-embarrassed Hermione nodded weakly.

”When I was learning not to trust adults, I still wished someone - anyone - would come along to help me. I wished that every day. Eventually, I got you, but my point is, you’re new to this not-trusting-anyone life. It doesn’t work unless you are willing to trust the best candidates you run into.”

As if that was his cue, the old man wended his way towards Harry and Hermione.

«Bonjour les enfants ! Jeune mademoiselle, te ai-je entendu dire tu souhaites rencontrer mon épouse ?» he asked, in a trembly voice.

«Ma Perenelle, elle est déjà chez toi,» he continued, before Hermione could muster a response.

Harry looked at Hermione out of the corners of his eyes.

«C'est un honneur, Maître Flamel. Je... j'ai hâte d'y être,» she finally squeaked out.

Without further ado, he gave her an approving nod and went back to Mme Malabul and Mme Duchamp.

”She’s already at my house!” Hermione told Harry, in amazement.

”Can you translate for me?” Harry wondered.

”Well, I can, sometimes, to a degree. But I am sure the Lovegoods can do a better job.”

“But do they have the time?” Harry persisted.

”No, but it’s the Flamels. This is something you’ll be able to tell your great-grandchildren about, and even they will go ‘OH WOW!’ Harry.”

Harry rolled his eyes. “Fine, fine.”

Sure enough, after Mr Lovegood spoke and introduced the ancient alchemist, the man spoke a few sentences, handed a bundle of scrolls to Hermione’s teachers, and slowly exited, not turning back at all.

Mr Lovegood explained that Nicholas Flamel had said the children needed to be taught by him and Perenelle in France at some point after the current crisis was resolved.

Hermione noted that everyone nodded at that. I guess consulting us simply isn’t even on the map, she concluded. One look at Harry’s face indicated he agreed with her, but she just shook her head. It could wait.

Mr Lovegoood addressed them directly: “Harry and Hermione, you would be meeting at a special area reserved for the Flamels at Beuxbatons Academy of Magic. There’s nothing you need to do to prepare, so put it out of your minds for now.”

Now that Luna and Pandora were gone, there were no more constraints on discussing the Curio Shop. It turned out that Aberforth and most of the others believed that the attack, the main attack, was imminent. Lucius Malory had missed the September Solstice already, but every day past that was less auspicious for changing the past.

Instead of discouraging her parents from bringing “Muggle” weapons to a stake-out of the shop, they were encouraged to bring everything they had, as well as food and water. He’s arranged to confound the staff of the nearby cafe to let them use their facilities on demand without asking any questions.

More ominously, it became clear that Harry and Hermione would be used as bait after a certain point, to draw out Malfoy and what turned out to be an extensive crew.

I should have realised that. It’’s one of the most craven cowards in the books, after all, Hermione berated herself.

Harry’s eyes went wide and he shook his head over and over on hearing that.

He’s so unlike the Harry Potter in the books! She thought, perhaps a bit disloyally. What on Earth changed?

Well. He was still ten years old. And the biggest changes were all down to Hermione herself. So.

”It’s going to be for the best for our long-term safety, I think. I’m far more worried for all the others.”

She said that with such confidence that it actually mollified Harry.

After all, they’d have their own extensive crew. Her teachers, Sirius (who was going to borrow Harry’s ring), Aberforth, Xeno, the third-year Defense professor from the book she’d just begun reading in the intensive fashion, a werewolf, hence very strong. And, apparently, not unfamiliar with rifles, and her parents had spares.

After things had fallen out as they would, a friend of Harry’s family named Amelia Bones would be on the site with the magical equivalent of police. Unfortunately, it would be illegal for her to be fully informed before then and keep the knowledge to herself. And any legal avenues against Malory had already been foreclosed via bribery and corruption.

Then came a part that was more ominous than the “bait” thing, if possible:

Mrs Lovegood was going to work with the Flamels and try to directly oppose Mallory from the Rook using pure time magic and guided by her Seer gifts. The very thing that had killed her in the books. Well, but with help. Xeno would have one of the Lovegoods' "Palantirs" in his blind near the shop. It was the least awful choice - the safest time for the compulsion to undo the family tragedy to overcome Pandora.

Just as a precaution, Mr Lovegood said, Hermione's teachers would whisk them to France on the morrow and buy them both wands with no Ministry trace or recognized signature pattern. It was, Hermione realised, finally coming to an end - this briefing for an upcoming magical and perhaps military conflict.

If this works, the Death Squads are stymied. I'm safer, Harry's safer, my parents, hopefully, Luna and her mom are safer, Hermione thought. Sometimes turning your head and praying for it to all go away isn't the safe option.

Some of the stress she'd felt must have been on her face still, as Harry didn't say anything further, just held her hand.

When they arrived at the Granger home, sure enough, an old woman with great strength of posture and dignity was there with Nicholas Flamel. Most of those who'd been at the "Council" had accompanied them home, including her teachers and Sirius Black. Only Mr Dumbledore had gone home.

Hermione was so tongue-tied it was an even contest between her command of French and her shyness that led her to stammer at Perenelle Flamel, who smiled and told her in slow and careful French that they could discuss everything later that morning after the children got some of their needed sleep.

And that was the cue for her mother to usher Harry, Hermione and Luna into her room. After chattering away for about a half an hour, Harry and Luna fell asleep; Hermione thought she was doing so, but now she was wide awake again. She must have rustled more than she thought. Or Harry is just that good at picking up noises from other people - as a matter of personal safety.

She heard a faint sight,

Harry was shuffling towards her, then stopped. She then heard two children shuffle towards her bed (it was quite dark in her room). She felt Harry's familiar presence open her coverlet and slip next to her on the side next to the wall. Why he did so was a puzzle, as it meant he had to step over her. Then that was answered as another person crawled in on the side away from the wall. Of all the nerve!

The worst part was that it worked, and Hermione actually slept right away until Harry woke her for breakfast.