summer

Summer

The Gatwick Airport reception desk was surrounded by throngs of people, vast crowds milling and bustling as they swarmed as one towards the attendants, the drone of noise reaching fever pitch as news of the latest delays spread like a house fire.

A newsstand stood in one corner, where a balding man stood screaming the latest headlines, scattering the people around him. A long, low bar was strung across the far wall, steaming food on top each of the nearby tables. And between the shops, which sold everything one might need on a holiday except for the bare essentials, were the notice boards, swamped by row upon row of information on the upcoming arrivals and departures.

All but one of these rows was neat and ordered, the edges of the papers lined with a clinical precision, the ink clear and bold. They stretched across the wall from top to bottom, covering every inch.

Almost every inch. On the forth row from the bottom, seven spaces in, there was a gap, the exact size of the other papers. There was no sign of anything ever having been there: no pin stuck in the board with a tatter of paper stuck around the edge; no torn, crumpled notice trampled to the floor beneath.

No one bothered to ask why there was a gap on the noticeboard. Amongst the frenzied hustle of the airport, no one had the time or the inclination to bother.

But at twenty-to-eleven, one warm Monday morning in July, a girl of about thirteen stood at the foot of the noticeboard, staring quizzically up at the gap. Her bushy hair swung like a pendulum down her back as she turned and made her way towards the reception.

Thirty minutes later, Hermione Granger and her parents hurried out onto the concrete pavilion beside the runways, sackfuls of luggage trailing behind them. Gigantic shapes of polished white roared across the sky, gleaming as their paintwork met the molten gold of the sun.

'Are you sure about this, dear?' Mrs. Granger muttered anxiously.

'Of course she is,' Hermione's father cut in, sighing tiredly. 'Why would she want us to pay the full price when she can get us there at a discount - and in half the time?'

'Because she could get in trouble if - '

'She's a witch, dear. You know that. Nobody's going to catch us.'

Before Hermione and her mother could catch their breaths, Mr. Granger scooped up his luggage and resumed the march, his loping strides thudding against the smooth concrete.

'Where did you say the runway was, dear?'

Hermione dropped her bags, extending an arm and pointing a thin finger, nodding towards their destination. Except there was nothing there. The runways ended just metres from where they were standing; the towering buildings, rising to break the cloudless sky, were thinning out to make way for rickety wooden storage sheds.

Her father nodded. 'Right, then off we go.'

The wind from a speeding plain whipped Hermione's ponytail around her face as she marched on, sending strands of hair billowing like flame into her eyes. Her father was some distance ahead; he always walked in front, leaving Hermione and her mother trailing behind.

As though they had popped a giant, invisible bubble, the air around them twisted and crackled. Hermione's vision rippled, the colours fading to faint smears before resolving a moment later to perfect clarity; and a slight tingle ran down her spine as she felt the magical barrier around Runway Twelve and Nine Fourteenths break.

Her father blinked. She saw it in the corner of her eye, the slight sense of discomfort that shone vividly against his taciturn features, just for a second – before he spun on his heel and continued on his way.

But now, the vast, empty space that sprawled in all directions ahead of them was no longer empty.

The biggest, grandest plane that Hermione had ever seen lay waiting, its body fashioned from what looked like shining glass, wrapped in beads of gold from the low sun. Even after everything that she had seen in the two or so years she'd been practising as a witch, she found her mouth hanging open.

'All aboard, all aboard. Flight 70A will be departing shortly. Flight 70A will be departing shortly. All aboard…'

Hermione took her mother's hand and dragged her forward, letting the suitcases drag with a granite scratch over the ground. Suddenly, a strange, blue glow suffused them; pulling them away from the family's grip and making them leap and dance in the air, before flinging them towards the aircraft. A hatch in the side opened just in time, leaving the luggage to land in a perfect pile amongst the other cases inside

The next ten minutes sped by.

They were sitting in a row inside the glass airplane, watching through narrowed eyes as the craft shimmered in the glow of the sun, a million pinpricks of light streaming over the curved, transparent surfaces. Clouds whooshed by underneath, smears of white shredded into tiny shrouds by the wings of the plane.

Hermione, the star pupil of her House, Gryffindor, if not of all Hogwarts, allowed her thoughts to drift as slanted beams of light flickered across her face. After the dangers she had faced during the year, it felt good to be leaving everything behind, speeding away to a new country, to a grand city packed with sights that she had always dreamed of seeing.

She sat back, resting her head against her cushioned seat, closing her eyes and letting the warmth play over her. A few things, she would miss: Harry and Ron, she would especially look forward to catching up with. But her time at Hogwarts had had her so absorbed that she had almost forgotten what it was like to be back amongst Muggles. Back with her parents.

'The man's coming along, dear,' muttered Mr. Granger, no doubt glad to be given any excuse to take his eyes away from what could only tentatively be labelled as the floor.

'Dad - '

'Do you want us to get caught?'

Her mother touched her father gently on the arm. 'Maybe we should have just picked the… the Muggle flight.'

'Don't be ridiculous. Hermione doesn't mind putting herself out for her family, not after all that's done for her. Do you, sweet?'

Dutifully but resignedly, she shook her head. 'No.'

The steward strode down the aisle, his footsteps tapping against the glass, leaning over and muttering to each passenger in turn. He waved a short, black wand at the people who showed interest in his trade, smiling and holding his hand out for payment as food and drink appeared in the trays in front of their seats.

At last, he reached the Grangers. Hermione's father nearly ordered a coke, before interrupted and asked for the nearest magical equivalent. The steward stepped back as a cup popped into existence, containing what looked like a sprinkling of fine powder.

Mr. Granger's eyes widened ever so slightly.

'It's a new mixture, sir. Drogo's Root. Stops the stuff from getting airsick.'

Mr. Granger's eyes widened further.

Hermione felt her heat beat faster. She erupted in a coughing fit, glancing over at the cup as she bent at the chest, whispering a faint incantation between her chokes.

The powder glowed a bright, fiery red, crackling as it sparkled and slowly faded into a dull liquid.

'Is your daughter all right?' The steward leant over, concern deepening the lines in his forehead. A passenger across the aisle, a youngish woman with, short black hair settling in curls around her neck, was also watching Hermione, also visibly concerned.

Trying not to stop coughing too suddenly, Hermione straightened up. She desperately tried to force the steward's attention away, pushing money into his hand and mumbling that she was fine, and that neither she nor mother wanted any further refreshments.

Shaking his head in bemusement, the steward walked on, scratching at his greying tufts of hair.

Once he was out of earshot, Mrs. Granger turned to her husband.

'You were lucky then, you were! Nearly caught you out, he did. Fancy a proper wizard not knowing how to mix an in-flight drink. It's probably child's-play, even for someone of Hermione's age!' She gave her daughter a reassuring hug. 'You did very well, dear. I'm sorry we even tried to get onboard this thing.'

'I'm not,' muttered her father. 'Do you have any idea how much her books for next year are likely to cost? Do you? It's just as well she can save us a bit of money every now and then. If she's really as good as her teachers are saying, she shouldn't need to make such an exhibition to cover a simple spell like that anyway…'

Hermione let her thoughts reclaim her, deciding that thinking to herself was far easier than facing her father, especially when he was in one of those moods.

She felt a pang of anger tug at her. Here she was, jetting off to the place of her dreams in a glass airplane, surrounded almost entirely by her own sort. All whilst Harry was stuck at home with the Dursleys, too afraid even to mention magic. And she, Hermione, was feeling self-pity.

Her parents accepted her for what she was. They let her practise; let her do what she must to get the grades. Her father especially encouraged her, pushed her even, made sure she was living up to her potential. Hermione knew her friends teased her about her success – but her parents, her father in particular, looked so happy whenever she had done well. She should be thankful that she wasn't locked away each summer, barred from her interests.

'Light my cigar, would you dear,' she felt a hushed voice whisper in her ear.

The low hum of the spells required to keep the aircraft flying sung to her in low, dulcet tones, throbbing gently through her body. She shut out the noise around her and curled up against the soft, cushioned chair.

Before she knew it, she was fast asleep.

Flight 90A glided effortlessly through the endless blue void, patches of green and brown speeding by underneath so fast that the countryside blurred into oily smudges of colour. The fields gave way to a gentle blue, the caps of the waves glistening as the sunlight rolled over them. The golden light washing over the passengers grew stronger as the plane flew further south, until, at last, they once again saw the reassuring shades of land whirr by and could see that they had almost reached their destination.

Hermione awoke to her father nudging her arm. 'We're minutes away from Paris, dear.'

She yawned, the distant moan of the vehicle sapping her strength. She stretched her arms as she rose to a proper sitting position, her heart starting to beat gradually faster as she realised that, in less than half-an-hours time, she would be in Paris.

The dark-haired woman sitting across the aisle smiled at Hermione as she rubbed at her bleary eyes.

Suddenly, the nose of the plane dipped, making Hermione's stomach lurch. She struggled to remain in her seat as the craft plunged downwards, the air around her shimmering as the light streamed off the glass curves, the ground rising at an alarming speed. Mr. Granger looked terrified, fear scrawled all over his face.

Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, the turbulence vanished. The magic coursing through the engines sighed as it slowly dissipated, letting the aircraft rumble to a gradual halt on the Parisian Runway.

Ten minutes later, they had jumped from the plane and made their way back through the bubble shrouding the magical runway. They made their way across the huge, concrete runways - which looked to Hermione disappointingly similar to the ones back in England – and over to the baggage collection desk, Mr. Granger whispering to Hermione that, seeing as there was a wizard airline, it was ridiculous that there was no similar, three-times-as-fast reception desk. Hermione nodded, leaving it to her mother to point out that they shouldn't really have been using the wizard airline in the first place, and that their daughter could have sacrificed her career for them.

Before Mr. Granger could reply, the intercom buzzed with static, a crackly voice announcing that their luggage was ready for collection.

Hermione's father grunted as he hauled their largest suitcase out from the pile around the conveyor belt. Beads of sweat appeared around his forehead as he tightened his grip on the handle, the strap digging into his skin. 'Thank God,' he whispered to Hermione, 'you'll be able to make this lighter for me once we've left the airport. I feel sorry for those poor saps without witches for daughters.'

She nodded again. Mentioning the Ministry of Magic to her father for the thousand-and-oneth time obviously wasn't going to make any difference.

With that, they began their journey out of the airport and onto the streets of Paris. The wide, electric doors opened with a hiss as they let them out, allowing the warmth of the sun to shine down on them and light the broad, bustling street.

The woman from the airplane watched them leave. She drew a mobile phone from her pocket and started to talk.