Echoes of Summer
Chapter one; A new year, a new girl
She woke up slowly, bit by bit becoming aware of her existence after leaving the world of dreams behind. Still the night's velvety curtains gently caressed her mind, beckoning it to stay in the unconscious lands for a little longer.
'Maybe just… a few more minutes…'
Hermione yawned and pulled the warm blanket closer around her. So soft…
Her lips curled into a smile as the memory of her dreams surfaced into her increasingly awake brain. It had been sweet, and warm… somebody's smile and arms encircling her waist. Not quite a bad start of the day.
The day…
Her eyes shot open. The clock on her bed table blinked its 5.34, in guilty silence. The alarm had chosen the first day of school to not work for the first time in its existence.
"Augh!"
Hermione flung the covers aside and leapt out of bed, pausing only to pull the blanket away from the protesting Crookshanks, who's sleep at the end of the bed got cut short by his owner's outburst.
As she bounced towards the bathroom, she heard sleepy, confused murmurs from her parent's bedroom. Though feeling a little guilty for waking them up earlier than usual, Hermione knew that they would understand.
This was not any "first day of school", after all. It was the first day of school in her last year at Hogwarts. So many last minute things to prepare, so little time… she had to get ready!
Hermione quickly splashed water into her face and then grabbed the tube of toothpaste and toothbrush from the shelf on the wall. While brushing her teeth she grabbed a hold of the hairbrush and proceeded to untangle her hair. Good thing she was a woman and thus had decent capacity for doing two things simultaneously. Too bad she was so stressed that a few very important details avoided detection.
The bigger brush easily glided through her hair, meeting surprisingly little resistance. Hermione only felt grateful about that, and soon put the hairbrush down. She hurriedly rinsed her mouth and then scurried downstairs into the kitchen. Still in her pyjamas, she ran around like a whirlwind which had suddenly decided to make breakfast. Plates, forks, knives and cups landed on the table, just barely avoiding smashing each other in Hermione's fury to get ready.
Once she had loaded four slices of bread in the toaster and the pot of water was on the stove, she dashed back upstairs to get dressed.
"Morning, dad!" she said upon passing him in the corridor.
"Mhpshgruh…" Mr. Granger yawned, scratching his hair as he headed towards the bathroom.
The human brain works slowly when suddenly awakened. Not before he picked up his toothbrush did the dentist react. He blinked several times, trying to put the pieces of information together into a proper picture.
Meanwhile, Hermione tore off her pink silk pyjama with reading, thoughtful teddy bears on and dove at her closet. She had packed almost everything already, but left the things she planned on wearing on the train behind for this occasion. A black bra soon covered her budding breasts, and she changed her white knickers for a purple pair with black laces within seconds. Never did she have time to notice the uncharacteristically stunned stare she received from Crookshanks.
Just as she pulled on a red, tight t-shirt, her father poked his head inside the room.
"Uh… Hermione?" he said.
"Sorry dad, I have to get dressed now…" she replied while sticking her left leg into the depths of a pair of jeans.
"It's… really important, sweetheart…"
The blank tone of his voice caught her attention and she looked up. Absentmindedly she began buttoning the jeans, only to realize that something was askew. The waistline of the trousers seemed to have shrunk from yesterday when she did a quadruple check to make sure they were still her size and thus would not cause her any trouble this morning.
She paused and looked down at herself.
"Wha-"
Mrs. Granger chose that moment to stumble inside her daughter's room, despite her sleepiness curious about what all the commotion was about. She froze, jerking completely awake as she saw Hermione.
"Oh my… what…?" she stuttered.
Without being able to say a single word, Hermione staggered past her shocked parents and back into the bathroom. There, she for the first time looked into the mirror properly.
She had changed over the night.
Her once bushy, playful hair now fell straight down her shoulders in a copper coloured waterfall of thin threads, embracing her head and creating a thin frame for her face. The first confused thought surfacing was that it looked like her head had shrunk.
But that was not all that the mirror unveiled. Hermione had gained curves in all the right places, going from a seventeen year old teenage girl into a seventeen year old woman. A sexy woman too, one of the last working parts of her brain had to admit.
Hermione slowly reached up and rubbed her eyes.
It did not change a thing. The same image stared back at her with just as much confusion as before.
She took in a deep breath, and screamed from the top of her lungs.
'-'
Ten minutes later she had stopped hyperventilating, but her teeth still chattered and she refused to crawl out of the blanket she had swept around herself in the first few minutes of shocked daze. On top of that, her left arm was turning red from all the pinching.
'This must be a dream, this must be a dream, pleasethismustbeadream…'
She pinched herself again. The now alarmingly tender skin and flesh throbbed with pain, and it did not help this time either. She remained assured that it was, in fact, not a dream.
She could hear Crookshanks slink around outside of her soft cavern, and felt his soft little body press against its walls now and then. He was obviously worried, but his worried touches did little to help. They only reminded her of how utterly alien she felt.
"Sweetheart…"
Mrs. Granger kneeled in front of the heap of cloth lying on her daughter's floor.
"Sweetheart, are you sure you haven't used any magic that might have caused this?" the woman softly asked.
"Yes!" Hermione's muffled voice replied from the depths of the blanket, "I haven't done anything, mom… not anything!"
Mrs. Granger bit her lower lip, trying to think of a way to deal with this situation. Truth to be told she never really believed that her daughter would bring something like this upon herself even by accident – by now Hermione was far too skilled and experienced to do faulty experiments. Not to mention that she would never break the rule forbidding her to use magic out of school – though that rule had been made more lenient in these dangerous days.
"Uh…"
Scratching his head, Mr. Granger stepped into the room.
"Hermione…" he started, "I'm sorry, but… we have to leave for King's Cross soon."
'I can't go to school like this! No!'
Hermione's first reaction was a panicked wish to hide deeper under the blanket. But as the reality of the situation began its march into her skull, her rational side finally managed to wrestle the shock into the ground.
She had to go. Once she returned to the wizarding world, somebody would be able to help. Dumbledore or Madame Pomfrey would surely have some solution, since this change by no possible logic could be natural. Why somebody would… err… enhance her, Hermione still worked on figuring out, however. Now that she was calmer, she could even think clearly about it.
Why would anyone do something like this except for twisted humour? Though what had happened to her was a horrifying shock, it hardly seemed dangerous… was it a cruel practical joke?
She frowned.
Joke?
'Maybe Fred and George… yes! That has to be it!'
This would be just like them, after all.
The idea that the twins could be behind the whole spectacle calmed her, enough to make her stand up. With or without proof, the possibility made sense and was thereby enough to offer her comfort for the time being.
At least until she lost balance and swayed. Her mother, who also had gotten to her feet, luckily managed to catch Hermione's arm and save her from falling.
Hermione gave her breasts a dark scowl. The added weight was far more than she was used to, and it disrupted her movements. She could not for the life of her understand how she had failed to notice it earlier, despite being in a prepare-for-going-to-Hogwarts panic.
Sighing in annoyance, she – carefully – dropped the blanket on the bed and tried to smile at her parents, whom both watched her with great concern.
"I'll talk to the school nurse as soon as I get to Hogwarts," Hermione said, "I'm sure she'll be able to help."
The sight of relief flowing into her parents' features made her feel even more secure, and the smile widened.
"Very well then," her mother said and squeezed Hermione's shoulders, "let's hurry up and have breakfast so that you can have this mended as soon as possible."
"All right-"
Life works in mysterious ways for characters in a story. Often, one strange event will overlap another, but normally they get to have a small breather in between.
No such luck today.
There was a knock on the window.
For some reason Hermione felt Certain Doom gather around her as she turned around – nearly loosing her balance again – and saw a greyish owl blink at her from the window sill. It held an envelope in its beak.
Crookshanks gave an excellent proof of a cat's sixth sense by hissing and burying his claws in the carpet.
Not without suspicion, Hermione hurried over to the window. She accidentally hit her hip bone on her desk and gasped in pain, biting back a frustrated snarl. Rubbing her overgrown and bruised side she clawed at the bolts keeping the window closed and opened it. The owl fluttered inside and landed on the backrest of the chair by her desk. The envelope fell onto the pillow beneath.
"Are you all right, Hermione?" her father worriedly asked, hurrying over to her together with his wife.
"Yes… ow…"
Hermione picked up the letter. It wore the Hogwarts' insignia.
In the fourth dimension, Certain Doom smirked.
"What in the world…"
Hermione opened the envelope and pulled out the letter inside.
Dear Miss Granger,
I am pleased to announce that due to series of interesting events, you have in the last minute been chosen as Head Girl of Hogwarts. Congratulations, and please, do come to my office at the first chance you have, so that I can congratulate you personally and inform you on the details of your new duties.
Sincerely,
Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, member in good standing of the International Confederation of Wizards, Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot and Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
Hermione read the letter a couple of times, imitating the owl's blinks as she went.
What had that been about a "not quite a bad start of the day" earlier? Even counting the time when she turned herself into a catgirl, this day went down in history as the weirdest of her life.
So far. She had a very bad feeling about this convoluted start of the new year.
