Hi, right now, here in Italy it's 2.30 am; I can't sleep, so I publish one of my old stories, still full of interlanguage mistakes or whatever. Hope you can enjoy it anyway.

PS I'm still searching for a stable beta…


A children's book

Din, don. The harp's clink on the door plays joyful while the last customer leaves the shop. The woman behind the bench keeps, peacefully, some sheet in a drawer. The square glasses fall on her nose, letting show a pair of bright and sweet eyes. She glances out of the window; it's getting dark – the big cuckoo clock over her head marks some time past eight. She let run her glance between the shelves - she notes with a little disappointment that the bracket with the last 'exclusive popular idea' by Lavander Brown is unusually vacant: tomorrow she's going to fill it up again.

She leaves her position to go check the other room. And here she finds her: Hermione Granger. She's seen her growing up under her eyes, Hermione Granger. She's seen her laughing and pouting, as appropriate, with Harry Potter and Ronald Weasley. She's seen her opening wide her eyes and mouth while she was walking into that door for the first time, making that harp clinking: eleven years ago.

She's a heroine now. But she comes back every week, looking for "something new to have a look around." At the moment, she's leafing, wroth, through a Muggle volume, while holding another pair of them under her arm.

It's always the same Muggle book: a children's book – a boy with glasses on the cover. Probably she has take it hundreds of times, and hundreds of times she has stayed here, watching it, passing her fingers through the pages, reading those oh-so-familiar names; and then closing it rapidly. She does it, since they introduced that Muggle thing, every time she walks into the bookshop.

"Miss Granger, I wouldn't bother you, but I'd have to close the store. Sorry" she reminds her, jovial, laying a hand on her shoulder.

The girl shakes herself, like going out of trance; then she addresses the woman with a smile which seems to ask forgiveness. "I'm sorry, I was trying to understand if…" she trails off, avoiding to continue. She rests the book on its shelf. "Anyway, I would like to take those." She takes the two books she's got under her arm: New frontiers of Trasfiguration by Minerva McGonagall and Hogwarts, a new history by Doreus Fletcher.

"Sure" she nods and begins to go to the cash desk, but she can't help to give glances between Miss Granger's perplexed expression and that red and blue paperback.

"Miss Granger, can I ask you something?" The girl consents and the woman choose to continue. "Why don't you buy it? It's obvious you would like to read it."

"I'm not sure it's in my taste. It's a Muggle children's book, isn't it?" She shakes her head, but she doesn't believe it one second.

"You know better than me that it's not like that."


She puts calmly the book on her lap, while she's watching it with a strange veneration. She can't hold back her tears and she doesn't even want to dry them.

"What do you read?" Ron's question comes muffled.

"Nothing, just a children's book."