The Vanishing Glass
Eight year old Hermione Granger stood on her classmate's doorstep, craning her head around the decorative bushes in the front garden that blocked her view to the street. Her bushy brown hair was tied back with an elastic against the light drizzle of early autumn rain. With a rush of relief, she saw her parents car, two houses down, and she grabbed up the small suitcase sitting at her feet and rushed down the sidewalk to meet the car as it pulled up to the curb.
Climbing into the back seat, Hermione said, "Thanks Dad, sorry Mum."
"What is it you're sorry for Dear?" Her mother asked, turning slightly in the front seat trying to make eye contact with her daughter.
"For not being able to stay for the whole slumber party." Hermione addressed her fingers, interlocked and lying neatly in her lap.
"At least you tried," said her father, reassuringly, as he looked for oncoming traffic, then pulled back out onto the street.
"What happened, Hermione?"
With a deep sigh, Hermione lifted her head and met her mothers gaze. "They were talking about unicorns."
Her mother lifted her eyebrows and stole a quick glance at her husband. "I'm sorry?"
"They were talking about unicorns as if they're real. And they wouldn't listen to me when I said that they weren't."
Without comment, or judgment, her mother turned back around in the seat and faced the road ahead. When they'd received Hermione's phone call requesting to be picked up from the class mate's slumber party, she had thought it might be something like this.
"So they just stopped talking to me." Hermione continued. "And then I thought it was probably best if I came home." Hermione finished, knowing justification wasn't exactly necessary, but wanting her parents to understand all the same.
"Well," said her father, glancing quickly in the rear view mirror and making eye contact with his young daughter, "I for one am quite glad you'll be at home this evening…" He paused for effect, and continued once Hermione had lifted her chin just a bit and he knew he had gained her attention. "I bought something, and I wasn't looking forward to having to wait until tomorrow to open it." He smiled and met her eyes again.
"Darling…" Hermione's mother placed a hand on her husbands arm.
"What is it?" Hermione asked intrigued.
"A magic kit!"
"A what?"
"A magic kit! You know, card tricks, rope tricks, making things vanish."
"Dad, things don't vanish, they have to go somewhere. Up the magician's sleeve, under the table, into a secret panel in a hat…" Hermione rolled her eyes and sounded a bit exasperated with her father.
"That's why it's called magic, Hermione." Her father said with a smile in his eyes that met hers once again in the rear view mirror.
They arrived home not much later, and Hermione's mother took her small suitcase upstairs while her father led Hermione straight to the kitchen. There it was, sitting on the kitchen table, a brand new box of magic tricks.
On the front of the box there was a picture of a young boy with brown hair, holding in one hand a top hat and in the other he held a black wand with a white tip as if he had just used the wand to tap the top hat. Gold and silver painted stars were strewn about the box top, looking like they had just erupted from the tip of the wand. And bright yellow lettering exclaimed, AMAZE YOUR FRIENDS! and HAVE FUN AT PARTIES!
Well, Hermione thought to herself, at least there were no unicorns.
"Now we'll get to it!" Her father exclaimed. Anticipation filled his voice and he rubbed his hangs together excitedly. With a playfully conspiratorial quick look across the table to Hermione, he lifted the lid off the new box of magic tricks.
Hermione couldn't help herself; she stepped up next to her father and peered into the box just as her mother entered the kitchen.
"Well, what do you think?" her mother asked as she crossed to the sink, filling up the kettle and putting it on the stove to boil.
"Might be fun," Hermione answered, trying to muster her enthusiasm. She reached for the little instruction booklet, but her father grabbed it up first. Instead, she tugged the wand out of the thin plastic encasement that rested in the bottom half of the box. It looked exactly like the one the boy on the front of the box held, about six inches long, entirely black expect for the white tip. Hermione had seen something like this used by a magician she'd watched on television.
"We'll need a glass of water please dear," Hermione's father said to her mother, glancing over his shoulder to where she stood by the stove. Her mother was just taking mugs from the cabinet, so she took down a glass as well.
Hermione had set the wand down on the table and investigated the bits and pieces of the kit further. "What's this one Dad?" she asked, pulling up a legenth of rope. Her father glanced to see what she was holding, and then set about finding the instructions in the booklet.
"Here it is," he said, pointing a finger at the short paragraph, and read aloud. "Tie a knot at one end of a rope and hold the knotted end. Put your hand around the other end and wave it around, chanting magic words. Drop the knotted end of the rope with a flourish so it looks like you magically knotted the rope." He raised a disappointed eyebrow at the booklet. "Well, maybe another."
Hermione and her mother glanced at each other with similar appreciative grins.
"Your water dear," Hermione's mother held out the full glass.
"What? Oh! Yes!" Her father flipped through the pages of the booklet back to the beginning and began to read again. "Oh," he said disappointedly after a moment "This one uses bits of torn up nappies."
"What?" Hermione asked amused.
"Yes," he said, reading again, "you tear up the nappies and stuff the absorbent parts in the hat, so when you pour the glass of water into the hat, the water disappears."
"Well, we haven't had any nappies for several years now." Hermione's mother smiled at her, setting the glass of water down next to the box. The kettle began to shriek.
"You're supposed to use nappies to make the water disappear?" Hermione rolled her eyes, "that's some magic trick!" Grabbing up the wand from the table she flourished it about excessively, "All you really need to do," she continued, playful sarcasm in her voice, as she looked toward her parents. Her mother was pouring boiling water into the three mugs and her father was leaning up against the kitchen counter, still engrossed in the instruction book. "Is say Abracadabra! Water glass, I command you to vanish!" Hermione taped the wand on the edge of the glass. There was a small, tinkling pop.
She glanced back toward the glass thinking she had perhaps cracked it as she'd taped the wand, but it wasn't there.
"What did you say dear?" Her mother turned around holding a tray with the mugs and a plate of cookies. Not waiting for an answer, she continued. "Come along now, let's have a little snack and watch some television before bed, shall we?" She left the kitchen, and headed into the living room.
"Right," said Hermione's father, tossing the instruction booklet back into the box. "Sorry Hermione, I really thought it would be… Well, you're mother's right, lets have a cookie or two." And with that, he headed for the living room as well.
Neither seemed find it odd that Hermione stood, as if frozen to the spot, staring at the empty place the glass of water had just been.
The End
A/N: Thank you for reading. Please check back for my next story, The Letters from No One