Hermione bit her lower lip in anxiety as she waited for the return of the Hogsmeade postal worker. Somewhere in the pit of her stomach, a slight twinge of uncertainty was caused by what was waiting for her here. What if nothing was here? No, she must remain positive until the proof said otherwise. However, a small voice wondered if nothing was there, what should she do next?
What irked her more than the slow clerk was that she waited here alone. Harry and Ginny were probably having a romantic reunion in the corner of the Great Hall or up in the Gryffindor dormitory by now. Hermione had even walked from the school to Hogsmeade with the hand holding couple of Luna and Neville (of all people) because they didn’t want her to walk to the village alone with the possibly of Death Eaters lurking in the forest. However, Ron couldn’t be bothered to come with her to do this. He couldn’t understand why this couldn’t wait till later. How could he not understand something so elemental about her and who she was?
As she tried to move beyond her frustration with Ron’s insensitivity, she thought back to the day almost a year ago when she had tampered with her parent’s minds. For a brief second, she wondered if the compulsion she had planted with her mother had been strong enough or lasted long enough to still be in place.
On the first of every month, her mother, without thinking, would take an envelope and place her Australian address in the top corner. After securing the return address, she would address the envelope with the following:
She had not told either Harry or Ron about her secret method of tracking her parent’s current location. She had not been afraid that under torture they might give up the location of her Muggle family. The reason she had not told them was that she would have been mortified by their reactions to the pseudonym that she had devised.
She had chosen the name after long deliberation. Any letter directed to a witch named Hermione would have triggered an immediate investigation by Death Eaters, so she used the initial H with her middle name and chosen Weasley as the surname for a number of very logical reasons. First, there were hundreds of Weasleys in the magical world. But, secondly, she had really her chose it almost like a prayer —a hope – to what she had hoped Ron and her would someday become.
If Harry found out about the name business, he would have teased her when Ron wasn’t around. He would have pulled faces or made knowing looks when she and Ron were having one of their ‘discussions’. He would have also seen everything through the lens of that knowledge.
If Ron had found out, he would have been so smug that she might have had to erase the memory of it just to live with him.
–Where’s the damn man gone to?†she thought. –I could have flown to Australia by now!†She swallowed.
Ron had the love of the rest of his family to support him. Harry had Ginny to love him and the whole wizarding world ready to worship him. She would never be complete without finding her parents and giving them back their lives.
London – Early evening Wednesday, September 19th, 1990
She closed her eyes and thought hard. –Come to me.†The large, brown leather bound book remained motionless on the long, pale pine table in front of the couch. She opened her eyes to a bare squint and tried again. –I really need my book.†It stubbornly remained on the table.
She turned her head to the left and, as she thought about it an idea came to her. She closed her eyes and pictured in great detail an image of the large book sliding slowly across the table and jumping into her hands. Nothing happened to the location of the book. Again, she imagined the book’s progress as she mouthed the words, –Come to me.â€
The young girl sighed and pushed a lock of her curly brown hair out of her eyes. Hermione Granger decided she had wasted enough time on this little experiment and slid off the black leather couch, stepped over the shoes she had slipped out of earlier, and reached over to pick up the office copy of her favourite book in the whole world: Lewis Carroll’s ‘Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There.’ She pulled the book up to her chest and while securing its position with her right arm, she reached with her left to also pick up a spiral notebook that had rested next to the large novel.
Stepping over her shoes again, she slipped into her normal reading position. Her legs were curled up almost under her and she leaned into the corner of the couch with the book supported by her lap and the arm rest of the couch. The notebook was dropped near her left in case she needed it. Her lithe fingers reached over to where the inch wide, pale yellow slip of cardboard marked the page in the book where she had ceased her reading on Monday.
She had left off with the Jabberwocky. The poem both mystified and frustrated her. It made no sense, yet it made perfect sense. When she had first read it years ago, it had seemed to her like a riddle that she should be able to solve, if she only worked hard enough at it.
–Hermione,†called a familiar voice.
–Yes, Mum,†she replied without looking up to see her mother.
As she spoke through the little window in between the business office and the waiting room, where Hermione was the voice sounded a bit muffled.
–It seems like we’ll have to drill out the cavity and replace the whole filling. Your father and I think it will only be another half hour or so. After we’re done, we’ll get to your grandparent’s flat. I mean, they are not going to start the party without the birthday girl.†And with that lame reassurance, she heard her mother proceed from the office back into the examination room and shut the door. Hermione was alone again.
Hermione looked at the closed door and knew she would be lucky if it would take an hour. They always underestimated the time their procedures would take. How many meals had gotten cold as she sat at the table waiting for one of her parents to arrive? How many piano recitals had her grandmother been the only person she knew in the audience? She didn’t want to count; the total would have only depressed her.
She really didn’t mind being alone again. She was used to it. She had no brothers or sisters and only two cousins, both on her father’s side of the family, who were much older than she was. Patrick Granger, who she had only met once, was an Ensign in the Royal Navy somewhere at sea. Michelle Granger was reading law at Queen Mary’s in London. She had a vague memory of attending a graduation for her cousin. When she had tried to congratulate her cousin, she got a pat on the cheek and a dismissive smile from the older girl.
When her school day was over, Hermione would take the tube to the exit near the office and walk the two blocks by herself. Sophie, a harried part-time college student and receptionist, was her only constant companion. When she would arrive, Sophie would let her in the back office where Hermione would do her home work and readings as Sophie called patients back to the rooms, scheduled future appointments, processed government forms, and took payments when the treatments were done. However, Sophie went home at five, leaving Hermione alone in the office. When the last patient was taken back, Hermione would take over the entire waiting room. After tidying up the area, straightening magazines, and emptying the dust bins into a black plastic sack, Hermione would pull out a small metal step from under the corner of the couch. Using the step, she would reach up and bring the book down from off of the shelf.
Returning her concentration to the poem, she looked at the first line. The second word was a nonsense word and it had been the reason she spent her free period in the library searching The Oxford Dictionary for similar words to bryllyg. She had found none.
Hermione picked up the spiral notebook and wrote the word down with a yellow pencil. As she wrote the second ‘y’, something odd struck her. She had left all of her pencils in a sealed compartment in her book bag when she had sat down. She squinted at the bag at the far end of the table and saw the zipper of the compartment was un-zipped and two pencils were half out of their resting place.
It had happened again! Just like last week when the book had floated down from the book shelf in the office and into her hands. Hermione’s first thought was to rush into the room where her parents were and tell them everything that had happened. The thought melted like snow on warm ground. They would think she was just an attention seeking little girl. After all, pencils do not open sealed compartments; books do not jump off of shelves and fly across rooms to the person who needs them.
She sighed unable to figure out the proper thing to do. Deciding not bothering the adults was best, she looked back down at the word she had just written and noticed that she had not copied the word correctly. She blinked and felt her head jerk back in surprise. How could she have made such an elementary mistake? The way she had written the second and third letters the ‘r’ extended over the top of the ‘y’ forming a little triangle with a tail. She knew what she wrote looked familiar to her, but she could not remember ever seeing it before.
In the distance, Hermione realized that the drilling had stopped on her parent’s patient. The filling would soon occur and maybe they would get to her party before the ice cream melted or it was time for her grandparents to go to bed. She sighed and focused again on the page and the inexplicably familiar symbol.
As she concentrated on the page, she noticed a rhythmic tapping to her right. Thinking it was probably the old pipes in the office building she leaned forward and looked around to find the source of the sounds. She was surprised to see a large bird on the window sill, pecking the window with its beak. The oddity of the bird at the window was so interesting that the Jabberwocky was totally forgotten. She walked over to the window and tried to lift it, but she could not get it to budge. She tried a second time, but the window didn’t move.
Peering through the window, she noted that the mottled-brown colored bird held a letter in its raised right claw. How could an owl steal a letter from someone’s post? Hermione could feel that the bird was as frustrated as she was about the sealed window. She thought about the Alice stories about the cakes and doors and tables. How sometimes the answers were as much intuition as just facts? She had an answer, but it couldn’t work. Could it?
She had nothing to lose. Looking the owl in the face, she pointed toward the front door of the little medical building. The owl turned the way she pointed and returned to look at her with the left eye and then the right one as if it was trying to comprehend her strange movements. Hermione wondered about just how intelligent owls really were.
She repeated her hand gesture and walked toward the door. The owl flitted from one window sill to another trying to keep her in sight. Hermione undid the automatic locking lever and opened the waiting room door into the hall. She slid halfway through the door, keeping the bird in sight. The bird sat there, making small little twitching movements with its head.
She closed the door and ran quickly down the hallway to the stairwell. Taking the stairs at a too fast pace for normal, she ran to the outside door. Sitting on the stoop was the owl with the letter still attached to it. As she started to open the door, she paused.
What if opening the door scared the bird away? What if it attacked her? What if it flew into the building and she got into trouble for letting the bird inside?
She bent down and waved at the owl. The bird’s head just focused on her and lifted its leg. As she straightened up, Hermione saw her own reflection in the glass door between her and the owl. A strange thought flashed across her mind; was she now Alice and the brown owl her white rabbit? Would the bird declare it was late and enter a hole which would swallow her if she went through this looking glass? With those thoughts, she could not not open the door for the bird. She pushed on the grey metal handle and stepped through the door into the cool early evening. The owl remained where it had been standing with its lettered leg raised.
Feeling very much like a character in her story, she did what Alice would have done and in a polite voice said, –Hello, Mr. Owl. Is your letter for me?â€
As strange as it should have been, at that moment, it all seemed quite logical; the owl nodded its head as if English was its native tongue. Dropping onto her knees upon the rubber mat on the stoop, Hermione bent down to get a closer look at the letter. The address, which was written in very narrow, upwardly slanting writing, read:
Hermione gasped. She looked across the street. Only some person in the big medical complex across the street with a spyglass would have known where she had been sitting and what she had been doing. The owl made a clicking noise with its beak as if it was tired of its waiting.
Again feeling ever so Alice-like, she bowed her head and said to the owl, –Sorry, I was just looking to see who the letter was for.â€
Just as she finished her explanation, she noticed a large, Asian woman dressed in nurse’s scrubs staring at her having a conversation with the bird. It wasn’t until the woman noticed Hermione looking at her that she resumed walking toward the underground’s entrance just up the street. Hermione undid the letter, and she stood to get back to the safety of her parents office.
However, just before she opened the door, she spoke to the bird one last time. –Thank you for delivering the letter. Good bye.†She waved to the owl and as if it that was what it had been waiting on, the bird took flight into the London streetlamp lit twilight.
Mesmerized by the whole conversation with the owl, she forgot to open the letter until she was at the door that would bring her back into her parent’s office suite.
As she entered the door before she could even open the letter, the examination room door opened up and the area was flooded with light. Her mother and father were talking to an old man who seemed to be putting on an overcoat. Hermione rushed over to slip her shoes on because her being bare foot always annoyed her mother. As the door from the business office to the waiting room opened, Hermione rushed to her parents to tell them about the adventure with the strange owl and the letter. However, after only three steps toward her parents, she froze.
The patient was an elderly man with a long, white beard that could maybe lie on his lap as he sat. Hermione stood there in mid-stride with the letter extended.
A smile came to the patient’s wrinkled face as he said, –I see that my letter got here. Did you have any trouble getting it, my dear?â€
She did not move. The fact that the man with the missing filling claimed to have sent her the letter did not make sense at all. The old man walked passed Hermione, who seemed to have turned from a girl to a statue, and bent over to read the title of the book which lay closed on the table.
–Through the Looking Glass. I remember when I met Mr. Dodgson. Of course, he was very old and I was fairly young. He was a most fascinating man and it is a cracking good tale. Are you reading it for the first time?â€
The voice of the strange old man was full of both caring and curiosity. The way he spoke made Hermione nearly trust the obviously crazy man. She turned toward the stranger and with a soft, differential voice said, –Excuse me, sir, but you could have not met Lewis Carroll, he has been dead for almost a hundred years.â€
–Hermione,†warned her father, who never liked conflict in any form.
She would not be dissuaded from her correction of the old man. However, when she turned from her father back to the old man, she found him sitting on the couch with the book closed upon his lap. How could such an old man be so nimble and quiet?
She started to speak, but he beat her to it. –I see you have not opened my letter yet. I think it would be best if you did. After you open it, read the outside letter to your wonderful parents, then I will let you explain to me all of my numerous shortcomings.†The old man ended with a smile that Father Christmas would envy.
The letter! She had forgotten about the letter. She turned to her parents and explained about the owl and meeting it outside.
Her mom pursed her lips and gave her a look of disbelief. –Hermione, how many times have we told you to stay in here no matter what!? And a letter delivering owl I think that book may have confused you. Perhaps, you fell asleep and dreamed the bird.â€
The stranger came to Hermione’s support. –Oh, no, the letter was definitely delivered by owl. All Hogwarts post is delivered that way. It’s in our bylaws, you know.â€
Hermione saw her parents look at each other. Clearly, they were now more worried about the old man’s sanity than they were their daughters.
–My dear child, read to you parents the entire envelope. And then open it and we will discuss the missives that are inside.â€
Hermione, surrounded by her parents, read the letter telling her about an invitation to attend Hogwarts. As she read, tingles ran up and down her spine, and she felt her parents move closer to her then she could remember them being.
Her parents stepped away from Hermione and began to whisper. Hermione turned to find the old man reading her book. She was a witch? The book and the pencils were magic?
She felt a tender touch on her shoulder. Hermione turned to find her mother with a nervous but reassuring smile. –Well, it seems that you are about to go on an adventure of a lifetime†said her mum softly in her ear. –And Hermione, if the new adventure gets too much for you, there will always be a room waiting for you to come home to.â€
Ministry of Magic Department of Magical Transportation - Day after Battle of Hogwarts
Hermione sat in the crowded room awaiting her turn. As the news about the fall of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named spread across Britain, family members of those who had fled the country to escape his reign of terror were trying to arrange magical passage to bring their loved ones back.
At first, as she stared down at the envelope she held in her hands, she did not notice someone standing next to the empty chair to her right. She eventually noticed the scuffed brown shoes and looked up.
–Is this chair taken?†asked Ron in a very tentative voice. He stood slightly hunched over and standing at an angle like he was ready to duck a punch or flee from a drawn wand.
–Depends on who wants to sit there? Anyone I know?†She hoped the tone would prick Ron’s hard head and skin. She saw his head drop and instantly regretted the harshness of the comment. –Sit, if you must.â€
He did not move to take the chair. –If you don’t want to talk with me, I… I mean, I came here willing to go where ever you need or want me to go. I mean--†Ron stammered with a voice full of shame.
–Please, sit and be quiet until you figure out what you do mean.†The edge was still there, but it was softer in tone.
Ron, moving his ratty rucksack between his legs, plopped heavily down on the chair next to her. He leaned over with his elbows resting on his dungaree-clad thighs and began picking at a frayed string from his worn rucksack. She eyed him and waited. The next step was his and he had to know that.
Working his mouth like he was trying to form the words before saying them, he turned toward her and leaned in so he could whisper. –I’m sorry. I was tired and hungry. I was worried about my mum and George and I forgot…I mean…I was so messed up and it looked to me like you were deserting me to run off to be with someone else again.â€
–I didn’t run off, you did! I stayed the course.†She shook her head. She had rehearsed what she would say to him when they met and this was not angry enough nor was it romantic enough to match what she wanted.
They both sat in silence for a couple of minutes. Hermione stared at a travel poster and Ron looked down at the string. She knew that Ron couldn’t long stand her disapproval or silence, but she would not make this easy on him. They had traveled for almost a year and seen both the best and worst sides of each other. And in all of that time, all that had happened between them were a couple of quick kisses. Had the kisses and emotions she’d felt been ones of relief or a need to feel alive in the midst of all of the destruction? She was no longer certain herself. But she needed to hear what it all meant to him, from him. The silence stretched as he resumed twisting the loose thread.
She broke. –And how did you know I’d be here?â€
Still twisting the string, he said. –Well, after you got to the Post Office, Luna sent her mad rabbit Patronus to Hogwarts to find me. Luna started telling about how you were fighting back tears and how you were worried about your parents. And how could I not see that I had to be with you? If you’ve never heard Luna yell, it becomes quite shrill after a bit. Well, the whole Great Hall heard her. Mum gave me one of her ‘Oh, Ronnie’ looks and then Ginny lit into me, questioning if I really cared about you.â€
–And?†Hermione asked. The interruption just blurted out. She could feel the tears welling up inside of her. She was not going to give in to them.
Ron abandoned the string and looked into her face. Hermione fought to lock his eyes. She had to know. Ron’s mouth fished for words again and suddenly that smile that sometimes infuriated her and other times lit up her heart sprang forth.
–Well, you’re going to Australia to find you parents with or without me. And I couldn’t have some Aussie bloke give the woman I love a potion and convince her to stay down there, could I?’ Ron reached over to take her hand and leaned over to kiss her on the cheek, she turned so their lips met.
Just as she was about to drop her guard, a voice filled the room.
–Hermione Granger, transport to Sidney. Report to desk number two.â€
Pulling back, Hermione leaned forward to lightly touch her forehead to his. She then straightened up and began to rise from her seat.
Ron picked up his and Hermione’s rucksacks and followed her to the pudgy man behind desk under the number two. In a plastic tub in the middle of his desk was their portkey to Australia. The portkey was a soiled rubber doll in the shape of a white rabbit with a giant pocket watch in his hand.
Hermione had to smile. Once again, she was Alice on the adventure of a lifetime. However, on this adventure, she would not be alone.