"You blew up your aunt?!" Hermione shrieked in horror, as Harry recounted his story. Her friend frowned.
"Not... technically. She isn't my aunt," Hermione rolled her eyes at his weak defense.
"It doesn't matter if she were Merlin. You don't go around turning people into living balloons!"
"Come on, 'Mione," Ron groaned, his swallowing a large mouthful of his food. "You can't say you've never let your accidental magic get the better of you. One time, I turned Fred into a skunk because he put a spider on my bed. A spider! He smelled for days!"
Hermione searched for a reply. "Well, I guess... there was this one time..." she trailed off, refusing to tell her embarrassing story as a blush rose to her features.
"What?" Ron asked curiously.
"It's nothing, Ronald. Drop it."
Harry frowned. "Hermione, we've told you about our accidental magic. Why don't you tell us about yours?"
She sputtered incoherently, unable to spin an excuse to get out of this story. "F-fine." She breathed in deeply and recounted the story of herself and her least favourite relative.
"I was ten at the time. I didn't know about magic yet. We were having the annual Granger family reunion."
Young Hermione never liked the reunion. There were her younger cousins and their sticky fingers, always trying to get at her books. Her drunken aunts and uncles whom dumped all of the younger children on her as she was the eldest. The second eldest, Alyssa, was a couple of months behind her, recently turning ten years of age. Alyssa hated Hermione.
Hermione wasn't a hundred percent sure as to why. Though Hermione was smarter than the average adult, her hair was a rat's nest and her front teeth large.
"Hermy!" she quietly groaned as the three year old Michael ran to her. "Story! Story, story, story!" the other children soon joined in. It was a true godsend that her imagination was particularly active because these children wanted original tales none had heard before.
She narrowed her eyes, and scanned the room, grinning when she saw a painting. "You see that portrait? That's not any old picture. It was painted by the queen of the faeries! That little house doesn't belong to a beggar. It's really enormous and has over a thousand rooms, and it is the royal family's castle!" Hermione heard Alyssa scoff, so she turned to the younger girl. "Yes, cousin dearest?" she asked, her voice sickly sweet.
"It's quite evil of you to lie to the children, Hermione," Alyssa said, a fake look of concern on her face. "We should tell the truth. Do you wanna know the real story, guys?" the children nodded excitedly.
"What are you doing, Alyssa?" Hermione inquired. Her cousin was up to something.
"Being a good person," Hermione rolled her eyes. This girl was truly naive if she thought Hermione cared. Oh well. She could read her books now. Hermione sat and opened an adult's encyclopedia on the human body when Alyssa began to speak.
"In that house lives thousand of evil pixies, and underground, they have a dungeon!" Hermione narrowed her eyes. What was Alyssa up to? "And in that dungeon, they put all of the bold children! And I hear, that every year around this time they come hear, eager to get their grubby fingers on the dirty little boys and prissy princesses." Little Terra shrieked, her princess tiara falling from her head. Michael rubbed his face, coming back with a smudge of dirt on his fingers. He looked at Alyssa in terror.
Hermione closed her book slowly. "That's enough, Alyssa. Stop scaring them."
"Shut up, Hermione! I'm the favourite. Not you!" she rolled her eyes. "Anyhow, do you know what they do to those children?" they shook their heads fearfully. "They cut you up and feed your meat to the evil daemon. And her name..." she glanced around and smirked. "Hermione. Run, everyone! Or else she'll kill you." This girl annoyed her so much. But, the children took their untrustworthy cousin's words to heart. Terra hid behind a chair, Michael grabbed an umbrella and pointed it at Hermione in fear and Emily hid behind Alyssa, clutching her leg in fear.
"Stop this nonsense, Alyssa. Everyone, she's only joking-" Hermione was cut off as John and Jack started to throw pillows at her. "Will you stop it?!" she exploded. "Alyssa! Stop making me out to be an evil siren, you witch!" Hermione glared at her fiercely.
"Me, a witch?! You are an evil siren, Hermione. All the adults love you. You should hear my mum! Hermione can do this, Hermione can do that! You can't do anything! Because you're stupid and weak!" Alyssa angrily grabbed the umbrella from Michael, kicking Emily away. "I'm sick and tired of you! Why don't you just die!" she looked ready to throw the umbrella, javelin style, when Hermione's anger exploded around her.
She screamed, and the next thing she knew, Alyssa was smaller than Terra's barbie doll. "What?! What is this? You did this, Hermione." Alyssa sounded like a mouse.
Hermione wondered what it would be like to step on her cousin. She looked at her and raised her foot-
"Woah, woah! You killed her?!" Ron's eyes widened, interrupting her recount.
"No! Don't be ridiculous, Ronald. I scared her. I then decided to be mean, and took of my socks."
"Why? asked Harry, containing a laugh at the absurdity.
"I actually don't remember my reasoning. I just put my foot on her legs and taunted her a bit. Then, I heard my mum come in and she was normal again. Honestly, I had thought I was dreaming. Until we found out about Hogwarts, of course."
"Is she not traumatized?" Ron asked, shivering at the idea of that happening to himself.
"I don't even think she remembers. But... that's not all. Alyssa found a way to escape from me, and I had to spend ages looking for her. And it wasn't easy. I found her eventually, though."
"Where was she?" Hermione grinned at him.
She opened the bathroom door, only to hear screaming from inside. The incessant screaming came from a person not even a twelfth of Hermione's body. Of course, she found nothing outside in the sink area. So, she pushed in a stall door where the noise seemed to come from the most and saw Alyssa underneath a toilet, backing away from a money spider. Hermione laughed and picked up the poor insect, placing it on the toilet seat.
She took Alyssa's little arm and brought her to the lounge, where she'd eventually become human size again.
"You can't blame her for being afraid of a spider, Mione. They're terrifying!" she smiled at Ron.
"And, you can't blame me for turning Aunt Marge into a balloon!" grinned Harry.
"I was three years younger than you," Hermione argued, the three friends falling into a light banter as they ate their dinner, laughing heartily.
She grinned at her friends, and maybe -just maybe- she didn't have to be so embarrassed over the accident.
But, even though Alyssa may not have remembered turning tiny, Hermione did remember Alyssa losing all of her clothes when she became normal again. Good thing the youngsters had all been put asleep, but Alyssa had been mortified at her state. And in a sense of family loyalty, Hermione did not divulge the after events of the shrink-ening, hoping that one day her cousin might do the same, knowing her hopes were in vain.
You really couldn't get anywhere with a person whom scared children with stories of Pixies. If you were to traumatize them, at least use an ogre or something remotely scary!