Braces
Note: This story was inspired by watching Harry Potter and the Philophoser's Stone where Marcus Flint was portrayed with a terrible overbite. I based his age on the HP-Lexicon where it says he attended Hogwarts from 1986 - 1994 because he had to redo a year.
July 17th 1994
Hermione Granger put the receiver down, sighing. Why would people always wait until the last half hour of surgery before phoning their dentists with persistent tooth ache? And rail and wail when one couldn't take them on today?
Hermione had agreed to relieve her parent's receptionist because her son's school had phoned, the boy had taken ill. So far - besides this last call - everything had gone well and the teen thought of sneaking a look into her History of Magic book for fourth year when the door opened and the last patient for today came in.
A gangly young man, vaguely familiar, entered. From the log Hermione knew that he was here about braces, though the name - Marcus Ferrars – meant nothing to her. The older man accompanying him was known to her, although in a vastly different setting. Professor Snape was wearing sneakers, jeans, a dark green shirt and a scruffed leather jacket, hair tied back in a queue.
Then it came to her! The patient was Marcus Flint. The Slytherin Quidditch captain had only sat his NEWTs this May because he had had to redo his sixth year. The Potions Master seemed surprised to see Hermione behind the desk.
"Good afternoon, sir, Marcus. My parents will be out in a moment. Normally I would give you a questionnaire about Marcus' previous medical history and possible allergies but I am unsure whether this makes sense with a wizard."
"Quite, Miss Granger. That is where I come in. I will ask your parents about any substances they will be using. A small risk remains, which is why Madam Pomfrey is on stand-by."
Marcus Flint, who had reddened with anger upon seeing Hermione, went pale with this words.
Mrs Granger came into the reception area and welcomed the professor and the young man into the treatment room. Hermione locked the front door and then entered as well, keeping unobtrusively in the background. She considered how frightening the whole situation must be for a pure-blood wizard.
Snape was explaining the situation to her parents. Marcus' overbite was the cause of a stray Dark hex in his early childhood which was why it could not be treated with magic. When the professor started to discuss the ingredients of the paste used for the dental cast Hermione decided to intervene. She beckoned Marcus over. The young man swaggered to her side of the room, trying to keep his scowl in place while clearly terrified.
"Marcus, may I still call you by your first name?"
He nodded.
"I could show your how it is done generally. That will save time later.
Marcus shrugged his shoulders.
"I s'pose."
She showed her former school mate the chair, the remote-control for it, the headlamps. She let him smell the paste for the cast and let him touch a model of teeth with a brace on it. After he'd relaxed she even showed him drills, joking about the horrors Muggles had to endure at a dentist.
When Mr Granger signalled Marcus to sit down, his eyes sought Hermione's.
"Don't worry, Marcus, I will explain every step."
The whole procedure went quicker than expected and after half an hour Hermione went outside to the reception area again to make another appointment with Professor Snape. While her father showed a computergenerated 3D-picture to Marcus the Potions Master spoke in a low voice.
"Miss Granger, I trust you won't tell anyone about Mr Flint's visit here, particularly not your friends. He is training as a dragon handler in New Zealand, his family won't even know about his Muggle braces. You can imagine that for a young man of his upbringing and disposition positive interaction with Muggles and Muggle technology might make a vital difference in his life."
"Of course, sir."
After they'd gone Hermione looked up Marcus' file. Professor Snape was put down as contact, with a mobile number. The teen briefly wondered where he would go to charge it or whether he'd managed to find a way to do so magically (something she had tried with her CD-player for years).
A withdrawal order was also there, from Professor Snape's account with Nat West in a small mill town near Little Whinging. Hermione knew about the conversion rate from gallons to pounds - Snape was at least spending two months of his salary on his former pupil's teeth.
May 11th 1998
At first glance he looked like Charlie Weasley minus the red hair but even if he'd grown another three inches and was rather tanned Hermione recognised Marcus Flint when he approached her after Snape's funeral. She offered her condolences and he asked after her parents.
More than fifteen years later Hermione Weasley would owl Marcus Flint for his permission to include the story of his braces in her book about VW2.
Fin