4. Revelations

Alex was calm again the following day. He actually apologised when Hermione entered his room.

"I'm sorry for shouting at you yesterday. This is all so... overwhelming. At least the medicines work, I feel numb once again." He smiled sadly.

Hermione returned the smile, holding her tears back. "I understand. Don't worry. I told you, I'm here to help."

"But... who are you? The doctors claim you are my cousin but, obviously, you're not", he asked.

"I know. I had to give a fake name so they would let me see you. I'm sorry for that. But, believe me, what I have to tell you is worth it." She opened her bag and handed him a small business card. Alex read it aloud.

"Hermione Granger, journalist. So that's what is it about. You are writing a piece on the fire, you want an interview of the depressed man who lost his sister, and his home and... well, everything."

"No. Far from that." She smiled mischievously, like she had seen Fred and George do so many times and leaned towards him. "Alex, do you believe in magic?" she whispered.

I just looked at her. I didn't know what to say. She was a total stranger and yet I still thought I could trust her. "Yes", I whispered. Still smiling, Hermione took a thin, long piece of wood from her bag. Could this be a wand? She tapped her business card with the stick's end. Suddendly, it changed. It now wrote Hermione Granger, Muggle Liaison Office, Ministry of Magic, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

I was looking at the card blankly. My mind had simply stopped.

Hermione leaned closer to me again. "Alex, have you read the Harry Potter book series?" I nodded. "Well, everything is true. J.K. Rowling had a special licence from the Ministry to publish the true story of Voldemord's defeat disguised as a childrens' story, but that's not the point now.

"The point is that we have been observing you for some time now. You are a wizard, Alex."

All right. Something was way wrong here. It couldn't be possible for a book character to come into my hospital room and tell me all those mad things, was it? It was obvious that my mind had gone wild. Which shouldn't surprise me, of course. I was already loosing it being poor and unemployed, owing money to water, power and telephone companies and fearing that any day now I would be called for military service, and, of course, being depressed. It was only rational to loose it utterly and completely when my sister, my only living relative, died in a fire that also destroyed our family flat.

"Alex, are you with me?" I heard the familiar voice next to me.

"I'm with you all right" I said. "Only I don't know whether the two of us are with reality any more." I mean, if I saw Hermione Granger in my hospital room I could very well see David Tennant wearing the Doctor's brown suit and red sneakers, couldn't I? With Donna Noble, please, I prefer her to Rose. "I think I've lost it, gone bonkers, somebody lock me up, please!"

Hermione giggled. "'Bonkers', Ron says that a lot."

So does Russell T. Davies, I thought, but kept it to myself. "So, if I am to believe in this hallucination, you are one of the three main characters of a fiction book telling me the world of the book is real and I'm a part of it." One eyebrow higher that the other.

"Well... I know how it sounds" (good for you, I thought) "but I can prove it. My card was just an example. But if you don't mind, we need some privacy first." She took her wand off her bag again and waved it, closing the door and the window grilles. "Silencio" she added so that no one could hear us.

"All right. Here's the deal. My superior in the muggle liaison office noticed unusual magical activity from your flat in Thessaloniki, Greece. He assigned me to make a little research to find what was going on. I found out that you come from a wizarding family and were, in fact, registered as wizard from your birth until the winter of 1983. What happened then, by the way?"

"My grandmother passed away from a heart attack. I was four years old playing with my toys by her bed when her sister entered the room and started crying, seeing her blank eyes. I hadn't even noticed until then." My eyes were wet. So were hers.

"I'm sorry" she said. "So, the shock of your grandmother's death probably shut down the part of your brain where magic exists. A few months ago that part started coming to life again. Did anything happen?"

I explained briefly my financial and psychological status and the small rituals I had tried in order to ameliorate things.

"Oh, that must be it then. By the way, you'll be glad to know you have quite a large fortune in Britain, gold and a house – Gringotts informed me two nights ago. Anyway, I came in Thessaloniki to talk with you about all this, but couldn't find the nerve to approach you." She tensed a little. "I was following you around the other night, when you reached home and... and you saw the fire. And then I saw you disapparate and return a few moments later with your sister in your arms."

I looked up at her, not saying a word. She continued. "I took a taxi to the hospital while talking to Kingsley on the phone —there is no floo network here, you see— and the rest is history" she said with a nervous chuckle.

While trying to deal with all this, an odd question came to my mind. "Why you? I mean, why Britain? Why didn't the greek ministry deal with it?"

"There is no greek ministry of magic. Greek wizard and witches are very few and either live abroad or prefer to live as muggles. The UK had taken the task of helping the greek government form a ministry here after World War II, but this never happened. So, all magical activity in Greece falls under our jurisdiction."

"Oh, I see."

We stayed silent for a while.

"So, what happens now?" I asked.

She explained me her plan. It seemed good and I had nothing better to do. So, I said yes.