1940

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The Christmas holidays came and went, and where Hermione had expected to be buoyed up by seasonal cheer and merrymaking, she was left dispirited. But she was not left entirely hopeless.

She had problems, but she could solve them. It was only a matter of putting in the work.

She had discovered how much work was required, and was, she privately acknowledged, glad that it was being put in the capable hands of an adult professional. She was proud of her academic talents, which were matched only by Tom's, but she, at thirteen years old, knew that it wasn't possible to do everything on her own. So she delegated, one thing she knew Tom had difficulty doing, if he could do it at all.

Hermione was an excellent researcher; information synthesis—her ability to find and devour as many books as possible and combine everything into one central idea—was her greatest talent. Tom, in comparison, was inferior to her in this regard: when he read a book and found an idea he liked, he latched onto it and didn't bother looking into alternatives unless she shoved them into his face and proved empirically that they were better.

Tom's greatest talent, on the other hand, was being an autodidact. He didn't need teachers. Given a few textbooks and enough time, he could teach himself everything the Hogwarts curriculum had to offer—although his method was only a more refined form of trial-and-error, and self-taught learning would take slightly longer than Hogwarts' seven year educational programme. That, he'd said, was one of the reasons why he bothered going to class.

(There was nothing, he also said, that was at all challenging about the Second Year syllabus.)

And both of them were in possession of an excellent memory.

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To H. Granger,

The Alternating Ravelin was never intended by Iannis Laskaris to be a comprehensive warding system. It is a defensive foundation, although fallen out of use since the nineteenth century, which enjoyed popularity as a more coherent variant of Bachmeier's Pentagonal Circumscriptum. Laskaris intended that it be combined with a secondary ward layer: either with a supplementary defense, or a contingency offense.

It is highly advised against casting it on your property without trained supervision, unless you possess experience with layered warding. Bachmeier's Principles of Magical Fortification (J. Karel Hentschel Verlag; 1862) is often recommended as a beginner's manual on warding architecture and its fundamentals...

Yours sincerely,

S. Pacek.
Wardmaster, baccalaureus 1937;
Prague Institute of Arcane Sciences.

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The day Hermione had gotten her Hogwarts letter, she was told that Hogwarts was the best school of magic in the British Isles. It had the best instructors, the best library, and a thousand year history of teaching magic. She was won over by this; secondary education at Donwell Girls' Preparatory was nothing in comparison. What had they to offer that Hogwarts couldn't? Emergency first-aid training? Typist training, secretarial skills, and book-keeping?

That Donwell Prep didn't offer classes in homemaking skills had been a point in its favour, back when the eight-year-old Hermione had been narrowing down her list of future schooling options.

Hermione wouldn't ever scorn the women of the middle classes who found employment opportunities that their preceding generations would never have been offered. She was glad—she was proud—that the modern woman could find success and independence outside of the home. But she couldn't help but recognise that there was a large gulf between holding a respectable position as the manager of an office steno pool... and being a witch.

Once she'd gone to Hogwarts, she had been told that Hogwarts was the best school of magic in the whole world. She treated this statement with some scepticism, because it had been said by her classmates and not by Professor Dumbledore, and Tom was correct (but not very nice) in observing that the majority of the students in their year would never end up becoming the next Merlin.

And it was now that she had received a letter from a trained adult wizard that she was confronted by the fact that Hogwarts, for all its prestige, history, and reputation, did not teach everything about magic, not even in its senior year elective courses.

(Of course, she had some awareness of this already, with that grudge Tom held against Professor Dumbledore for "hoarding" information until he believed Tom was old enough for it. Or until Dumbledore "deemed him worthy", as Tom called it, muttering under his breath about tests of character and whether or not Dumbledore was one of those misguided old men who believed pulling swords out of stones was a signifier of worthiness.

But that was a different, and entirely justified, matter. She didn't want Tom to have that information either, for the sake of his best interests.)

Basic wards were taught in N.E.W.T. years for those students who'd taken their O.W.L.s in Arithmancy and Runes, but it didn't involve anything close to the technical detail of which Mr. S. Pacek wrote. These were wards similar to the ones the prefect, Devina Holbrook, had mentioned: simple Muggle repelling or noise silencing wards. A Hogwarts graduate could cast them, and they would last anywhere from the better part of a day to over a month, and that was good enough for most wizards and witches in their everyday life. But only a fraction of Hogwarts students taking their O.W.L.S. took them for Arithmancy or Runes compared to the more popular subjects like Care of Magical Creatures or Divination, so the number of potential wardmasters Hogwarts turned out over the years was disappointingly small.

It was the same for magical artists and artificers—wizarding artists who painted magical portraits or wove magical tapestries, and craftsmen who built useful inventions like Vanishing Cabinets or enchanted printing presses.

Upon asking the portraits in the corridors of Hogwarts, Hermione discovered that for the last three hundred or so years, most of the magical paintings in Wizarding Britain had been created by Italian and French artists. These artists rotated from manor house to manor house, painting members of the most prominent British families, in a very strange reversal of the traditional gentleman of quality's Grand Tour.

"Oh, my darling girl," said one simpering witch, shaking her head in sorrow. Her powdered white curls, piled high atop her head, swayed dangerously. "Some of us would have preferred an Englishman artist, one who knew us personally, so to get the mannerisms as exact as they were in life. But the Italians, oh! And the Frenchmen! They knew the difference between décolleté and déshabillé, and that was what really mattered to me. I certainly don't regret choosing my dear Claudio or sweet-spoken Laurent if my only other choice was dreary old Mr. Bingham. I'd much rather be preserved for posterity with this—" she patted the lace tippet pinned over her bodice, "—being accurate than anything else."

"Hear, hear," said the old, whiskered wizard in the frame on the opposite side of the corridor. He stroked his moustaches and winked at the witch. The background of his painting was a small, windowless room with nothing but a single desk and a candle.

The white-haired witch giggled and fanned herself.

Hermione felt vaguely unclean by the time she left the portrait gallery.

The interrogations confirmed that qualifications issued from magical schools other than Hogwarts were considered valid and good. Although, one wizard advised her, when explaining what she wanted she should be sure to speak as slowly and clearly as possible—and as loudly, too, which made Hermione scratch her head; they might be foreign, but they weren't deaf. She was told that whilst they were skilled workers, it had to be taken into account that they weren't proper Englishmen.

As much as she was tempted to, Hermione didn't remind them that Hogwarts, and therefore their portraits, were currently residing somewhere in the Scottish highlands. Considering that wizards had difficulty assimilating any modern developments that came after the International Statute of Secrecy, which was put into effect a decade or so before Scotland joined the Union, doing so would likely be poking a factional beehive. (And telling them that Ireland had left the Union a decade or so ago would be like throwing a hand grenade into said beehive.)

Later that week, Hermione confronted Tom about the things she'd learned about the quality of a Hogwarts education.

She knew that Tom refused to subscribe to one of the mainstay tenets of Common Decency, which was, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all". But his honesty came in useful at times. In those situations, he made for a good sounding board for working out problems, so long as Hermione remembered to do the exact opposite of whatever actions he suggested.

Hermione hadn't spent a great deal of time outside the castle, not since they'd taken Flying Classes in First Year and she'd done a few circles of the grounds with the rest of the group. There wasn't much to look at outside: a Lake and a rocky shoreline and a boathouse that was kept locked except for the one day of the year where the newest batch of First Years were given their first impression of Hogwarts. There was a Groundskeeper's hut by the Forbidden Forest they weren't allowed to explore, a grassy sward by the greenhouses and kitchen gardens, and a Quidditch pitch and adjoining changing rooms. She had gone to one Quidditch match last year, Ravenclaw versus Slytherin, and it hadn't impressed her. She hadn't gone back, and neither had Tom.

"It seems like the primary goal of Hogwarts is turning out well-rounded students," Hermione remarked, ambling along a colonnaded gallery by the Eastern Courtyard. It was a rare fine day in late winter, and for once she'd asked Tom to meet her outside instead of in a musty old classroom in the dungeons. It was still freezing cold, but the sun had revealed itself for the first time in months.

She'd noticed that her skin had paled from being indoors all autumn and winter, but it hadn't yet reached the translucent heights of Tom's skin—he was as fair as a princess. She knew that if she pointed it out, Tom would make a sarcastic retort dripping with either arrogance or anger. Sometimes she could flip a coin with how predictable he was.

"By 'well-rounded', you must mean 'basic'," Tom corrected her. His breath puffed out in a misty white cloud with every word. "And by 'students', let me direct you toward a more accurate term: 'Lowest Common Denominator'."

"You know that we can argue semantics all day without getting anywhere," said Hermione, "but I think the bigger problem is that Hogwarts prepares students for employment in the wizarding community, but due to the size of the community, there isn't a wide range of positions to choose from."

"As far as I see it, there is a tiered ranking of common wizarding employment," Tom said, slowing a bit to allow Hermione to catch up to his longer strides. He was wearing the new winter cloak he'd gotten for Christmas, and it swished by his ankles in a manner that he no doubt deemed appropriately dramatic. To Hermione, wearing wizarding cloaks felt like having a blanket tied around her throat. She preferred coats. At least when you wore one, you wouldn't trip on your own hem going up the stairs.

(She kept waiting for Tom to slip on a combination of icy stairs and long cloak, but he never did.)

"The top tier of jobs after completing Hogwarts includes any position in the Ministry of Magic, St. Mungo's, or joining professional Quidditch. The first-string team is best, but no one will look down on a player fresh out of school making the reserves," said Tom. He held up a hand as Hermione's mouth opened to argue; neither of them thought very much of the most popular wizarding sporting pastime, and to consider it top tier was, to them, sheer absurdity. "These are what the Hogwarts authorities, or Professor Slughorn at least—and most people count him a good judge of these things—consider good, well-paying occupations for school leavers. And it's," he added, as if the words left a bad taste in his mouth, "socially respectable."

"The middle tier," Tom continued, "is shop work. Manning a counter in Diagon Alley, clerking in the back, or filling orders at an apothecary or haberdashery. It wouldn't be so bad if the shop work came with an apprenticeship with one of the better proprietors, but how often does someone like Ollivander offer one to those outside his immediate family? The positions at Gringotts Bank are also considered second tier even though I hear the pay is on a level or higher than what the Ministry's offering, but everyone knows that the place is run by goblins, and that's nowhere near as respectable as working for proper wizards and witches.

"The last and least tier—and I must profess I agree with Slughorn on this count—is magical menial labour," said Tom with a sniff of disdain. "Farming and harvesting potions ingredients, dissecting salamanders and lionfish for parts, or breeding and raising magical creatures. Half of it's work you can't even use a wand for, because of the ridiculous special requirements like 'cut by a silver knife by the light of a sickle moon', or 'plucked in a maiden's palm on the first day of spring'. Nevertheless, it's work even the meanest halfwit can do, with or without a single N.E.W.T."

"It seems almost... mediaeval," said Hermione. "It's not so surprising, is it? Wizarding Britain has the population of a mediaeval town, and in those times, most people whose families owned a business went into that business. Sons of bakers became bakers, blacksmiths trained blacksmiths. And the local lords—they must be the old families." Hermione paused for a few seconds in thought, then went on, "I couldn't place them in the tier system, but it's because they don't have a place there, do they? Employment is optional for them."

"The benefits of generational wealth," said Tom bitterly. His nostrils flared and Hermione could see where a thin stream of white mist escaped from between his clenched teeth. He stopped in the middle of the walkway and peered through the gaps in between the columns, down to the craggy shelf of rock below. "I don't want to be part of that tier system, Hermione. Can you imagine me bowing and scraping to another man for the sake of my daily bread? I can't. I think I'd rather starve. I've never been much of a conformist, as I'm sure you already know. And I don't have any intention of starting—right now, or five years from now, or ever, really."

"What are you going to do, then?" Hermione asked. She refrained from mentioning that the 'bowing and scraping' would merely be a natural extension of his Good Boy pretense, which he appeared to have no trouble employing when it suited him.

She was also developing suspicions of Tom Riddle's harbouring Socialist sympathies. His rhetoric was not exactly original; she'd heard it before, in the context of labourers redistributing power to abolish an oppressive class system. But Tom, she imagined, if he had read the pamphlets they gave away on street corners and left inside public telephone boxes, dreamt of redistributing power in order to give it all to himself. (And he would never discount the usefulness of an eager pool of labourers, especially one that could be swayed by a rousing speech or two.)

"You'd never take a Muggle job as a bank teller or a land steward. I can't think of anything that would circumvent the system, unless, after Hogwarts, you plan not to go into employment altogether. Furthering your education—a formal apprenticeship or studying for a Mastery on your own?" If anyone could master a magical discipline by themselves, it was Tom. "All you'd need to do is create an original masterwork invention and have it evaluated by an established Master."

Original inventions sometimes required dangerous experimentation; Masters were sought out for apprenticeships for this reason, particularly the prolific ones who had been involved in the creation of famous inventions. The modern racing broomstick, the Trace, Omnioculars, the Pensieve. But she hoped—hoped—that by the time Tom left Hogwarts, he would have learned how to be more responsible.

"It doesn't matter what I do, as long as I can earn my own living with it," Tom said, with a careless shrug.

"You haven't figured it out yet, have you?"

"And you've figured out what you plan to do?" Tom turned the question back on her, without giving an answer of his own.

"Before I knew about magic, I'd have liked to study medicine," said Hermione, taking a few steps closer to the edge of the parapet. It was a long way down to the rocks and the frozen crust of the Lake below. "My father still has his old contacts from his army days in the Royal Medical Corps. I'd hate to be beholden to nepotism, but it wouldn't be strictly nepotism, would it? It would only get my foot in the door, and give me the equal standing I'd have gotten on my own merits had I been born a boy and not a girl. I thought it was something that would allow me to do the most good—to prove what young ladies were capable of, to help the next generation of career women, like the VAD nurses did in the Great War before I was born."

She raised her chilled fingers to her lips and blew on them. There was a spell she'd read about in a book, one that created a portable fuel-less fire. It would have been very useful right now if she had learned to cast it.

"But after I found out that I was a witch, I also found that no one here cares about women's suffrage or advancing the rights of women in work," Hermione continued. It was one of the first things she'd asked about the wizarding world, and a deciding factor in her acceptance of magical society. She liked this part of being a citizen of two nations, but there were other parts she wasn't so keen on. "That doesn't mean the wizarding world is perfect, though: there are still inequalities—just not the same ones as in the Muggle world. So I figured that making changes for the betterment of Magical Britain would be more effective as a Ministry bureaucrat than as a St. Mungo's Healer."

Tom leaned against a column, and Hermione saw his shoulders shaking. She realised after a brief moment that he was silently laughing.

"I can't say," Tom bit out, wiping his eyes, "that the chinless inbreds would be much pleased with the prospect of the Minister for Magic being a Muggleborn—and there has never been a Muggleborn Minister—let alone one who would lecture them on the principles of common decency."

"I never said anything about being the Minister for Magic!"

"Why else would one bother working for the Ministry?"

"To restructure unfair policies?" Hermione said snippily. "Working up through the Department of Magical Transportation would eventually let me install a Floo connection in the houses of registered Muggle guardians, like my parents. Then we wouldn't have to drive over thirty miles to get to Diagon Alley. And we live in the Greater London area; every Muggleborn family living outside the Home Counties is stuck in a sorrier situation than ours."

"Yes," said Tom, his eyes flashing, "but you could do all that and more as the Minister."

"But would the 'chinless inbreds', as you call them, even let me be Minister?"

"The delightful thing about inbreeding," Tom said in a low voice, pushing away from the column to step closer to Hermione, "is that it has not only rendered them chinless, but spineless, too."

The white plume of his breath wafted over her face, carried by a gust of icy wind. A few windblown curls of hair had fallen over his brows, shadowing his dark eyes. His lips curled up in the corners, in an expression of amusement that was more mocking than anything else.

Skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood, Hermione recalled. But he doesn't look at all like a princess.

"I don't know what that's supposed to mean," said Hermione, fidgeting nervously.

"It means, Hermione," Tom said, his eyes half-lidded, "that if you ever run for Minister, you'll have my vote."

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It was only when Hermione had returned to her dormitory that she realised that Tom hadn't given her a proper answer about what he wanted to do in regards to his plans post-Hogwarts.

She kicked off her shoes and fell face-first onto her bed with a groan. If there was anyone who was perfect for the life of a career politician, it would be Tom Riddle. He could counterfeit the perfect politician's demeanour; when he wanted to, he could speak with the right touches of confidence and sincerity to make crusty old men reconsider their positions, when before their beliefs had been fossilised from the turn of the century. He possessed a certain persuasive manner that, in a decade and a half's time, would let him rival a seasoned Parliamentarian. Tom's only flaw would be his lack of genuine concern for social progress; in that, he resembled the quintessential politician. In the realistic view of things, how many politicians actually cared about advancing the rights of the ill-treated and downtrodden?

Did it even matter that they didn't care or understand, as long as they supported the ideals of social progress in the end? Many noteworthy Liberal politicians had been alumni of the Old Boys' institutions, were descended from peers of the realm or held titles of their own, and had never lived the life of a working mother, but that didn't stop them from wanting to improve universal working conditions...

"Hermione?"

A voice interrupted Hermione's sequence of thoughts.

Hermione lifted her face from the pillow. "Yes?"

"Your owl brought your mail while you were out." The voice came from one of her dorm mates, Siobhan Kilmuir. She was a girl of reserved disposition, whose hair was so blonde that her eyelashes and brows were nearly invisible. "Here."

Siobhan approached Hermione's bed and dropped an envelope on the blue quilted covers.

Hermione picked it up, then turned it around to inspect the wax seal. It was a deep maroon, and pressed with the design of a turret or castle tower with two swords crossed at its base. The wardmaster who'd seen the ad she'd placed in The Daily Prophet had sent her a reply.

"Where did you buy your owl from?" Siobhan asked, sitting down on her bed. "My mum's owl only delivers during breakfast. If I want to check for mail myself, I have to walk all the way up to the owlery. Yours is trained really well if it knows how to deliver right to your room."

"Oh," Hermione said distractedly, sliding her thumb under the seal and peeling off the wax, "Tom trained my owl during the summer."

Gilles was used to running deliveries in the mornings and evenings, and knew to wait quietly on a windowsill until his recipient had collected their mail or written a reply. She hadn't known that all owls weren't like that, but she did know that Tom had proven to have a remarkable way with animals. Gilles didn't drop parcels from twelve feet above the table and splash everyone in the vicinity with milk and hot porridge. He didn't steal bacon or sausage links right off the plate, as she'd seen from the owls belonging to other students. And he never left dead animals or other wastes on her window ledge at home; her mother would never have allowed a pet if Hermione needed to climb a ladder to clean up after it.

"Tom?" Siobhan frowned. "Tom Riddle?"

"Yes, that Tom Riddle."

"You should be careful with him," said Siobhan, shifting uncomfortably.

"Why?" Hermione inquired, looking up from the letter.

"I heard people saying that he cheats on homework."

"What!" Hermione's eyes narrowed. "Where did you hear that?"

"It's got to be true, hasn't it?" said Siobhan. "Riddle gets the best marks out of anyone in our year. If he was a Ravenclaw, no one would think anything about it—but he's a Slytherin. They say Slytherins would do all sorts of things for a good mark."

"No one said that Slytherins couldn't be clever," said Hermione, setting her letter down so she didn't crush it with her fist, "or Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors too, for that matter." She remembered that she had almost been Sorted into Gryffindor. "Anyway, I was told that the Hat offered to Sort Riddle into Ravenclaw, and he borrows books from our Common Room library now and then. Without needing help with the door puzzle, or getting kicked out by Holbrook and the rest of the prefects. Who told you these things?"

Siobhan pressed her lips into a thin line, and unable to meet Hermione's glare, blinked and shuffled her feet. "Antonella Everard and Evandina Chuffley in the Second Floor girls' loo. I heard them talking about him from the stalls."

"They're liars," said Hermione firmly. "I think they're just upset that a student who isn't of 'proper wizarding stock' keeps beating them in the academic rankings."

"But neither Everard nor Chuffley are part of the Sacred Twenty-Eight..." Siobhan trailed off. "I've never heard them say the, um, you know," her voice dropped to a whisper, "the m-word."

"You don't need to use language like that to be a nasty person. I know that Everard once said I had the looks of a deformed beaver behind my back, and you're taking them at their word?" Hermione gritted her teeth. She didn't care much if she was called a know-it-all, but she hated it when girls undermined other girls by insulting their looks, as if appearance was in any way an indication of an individual's character or intellect. And she absolutely detested anyone who implied that a girl had to devalue her intelligence to be considered likeable. "Besides, we're in Defense and Transfiguration with the Slytherins. You've seen Riddle's wandwork. Do you think he needs to cheat?"

Siobhan shook her head. "I always thought Everard and Chuffley were alright. I know their families; they don't hold with Muggle baiting. They're a far cry from the families who want to legalise Muggle hunting."

Hermione was horrified. "There are wizards who want to hunt Muggles?!"

Siobhan flushed a dark red. "It's been illegal for centuries. It's not something anyone talks about in company, and the only people who do are two hundred years old and from certain families. No one would pay any attention to them but for the fact that they have vaults full of gold people are hoping to inherit, when they finally give it up and drop off the twig. Everard and Chuffley are decent families compared to those ones."

She scratched her nose, then added, "It might be rude of them to say people like you and Riddle aren't of proper wizarding stock, but at least they'll never deny that you're both wizards. They'd never say that, not even in private."

Small blessings, thought Hermione.

"Siobhan," she spoke in an assertive voice, "the next time you hear them talking about Riddle in the loo, you should tell them to report it directly to their Head of House. Cheating is a serious accusation, and they ought to let Professor Slughorn sort it out. See what they say about that."

Siobhan nodded. "That's a sensible idea. I don't know why they didn't bring the proof to a professor instead of gossiping about it... Merlin, unless they really were spinning stories about him."

"If you still think Riddle is a cheat, you should keep an eye on him in Transfiguration. You can see for yourself what kind of wizard he is," said Hermione. "Professor Dumbledore wouldn't allow anything but honest work in his class."

Hermione soon turned back to her letter and Siobhan her Potions textbook. It was later that night when Hermione was writing to her mother that she realised she had automatically jumped up to defend Tom Riddle from a perfectly legitimate complaint. She was a proponent of fair treatment to all, but it had taken hearing about gossip from a girls' loo to spur Hermione into a visceral reaction, into an instant defense of Tom's character.

But Tom had done what he had been accused of. He had cheated on homework. It just wasn't his own.

("I enabled cheating," Tom would say. "There's a difference.")

She hadn't changed her moral stance on cheating. She didn't like it, whether it was cheating or helping others cheat... But she liked being called offensive names behind her back even less. She wasn't fond of the idea of picking a side—it seemed as if she was condoning the actions of one side while condemning the other—but if she had to pick one, then she would choose the side that wouldn't speak of her as Antonella Everard did.

Tom Riddle was academically dishonest, a cheater or enabler or whatever name he called himself, but the fact of the matter was that he never called her names.

Would he have done the same thing for me? Hermione wondered. Would he have defended me against one of his dorm mates?

She had an inkling of what families Siobhan had referred to, the ones with the old names and the heavily-laden vaults. The Sacred Twenty-Eight, a genealogical handbook similar to Burke's Peerage, which had first been published over a hundred years before its wizarding equivalent. Hermione was sceptical of both of them. She bought and saved a newspaper every time she saw T.M. Riddle commended for his yearly academic rankings in the school notices section. She could only imagine what wealthy families did when they saw their names printed in a fancy book, and how an opportunistic publisher could see the profit in indulging their misplaced vanity.

I don't know what he'd do had the situation been reversed. I know he doesn't think of us as friends; every instance where I've heard him use the word "friend", it was spoken with contempt. The conventional expectations of friendship—or what I believe they should entail—don't exactly apply to him.

I know he has standards, Hermione concluded. They're not the same as mine, but we've known one another long enough that he is fully aware there are things that I consider acceptable and things I don't.

It was easier for her to focus on less complicated, more concrete things. She had problems of her own to manage, ones she could understand and find a way to solve, because there was a solution to be found. Unlike whatever strange, convoluted relationship, this lopsided friendship—she couldn't think of any better name to call it—she had with Tom.

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Dear Mum,

You've written before about the state of London and the war and what to do when term finishes. It's also been on my mind since the start of the year, ever since I was told that the school is firm on not extending its boarding policy into the summer holidays. Instead of going with the St. John's group to Northamptonshire for July and August, I've found a way for us to stay safe in London. And it will mean that you won't have to use the public shelters anymore; I know you and Dad don't like how crowded and noisy they get, especially when someone starts a panic over food or water. All we'd need to do is clear out our cellar and let a wizard in to ward it.

I've been saving all year, and I know it'll be dearer than I'd expected it to be, but I found a wardmaster who can do the job, without the Ministry of Magic being any the wiser. His name is Mr. Sigismund Pacek and I've included his qualifications in the attachment. I'm told that his alma mater, Durmstrang, is the Hogwarts of Scandinavia and the Slavic states, and the institution that issued his Mastery specialises in magical architecture and construction. He quotes £30 a day for his fees, and I know it's quite a lot, but he says his wards can hold up for ten years at least with minimal maintenance. And he can do other things than just wards—he said he can cast an Undetectable Extension Charm, which, according to A Practical Approach to Advanced Spellcasting, is a spell that expands the dimensions...

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The days of spring grew warmer and the moments of stolen sunshine less intermittent. Every morning when Hermione looked out of her dormitory window, she could tell that the Lake was a different colour as the thick crust of its icy surface melted, darkening from a bright, glacial white to grey and finally to a deep and fathomless black.

Hermione spent more of her weekend hours walking around the grounds with Tom, and every time they heard the bells in the clocktower ring, they stopped to listen. Or rather, she would stop, and he would tap his foot impatiently waiting for her to catch up—he was a faster walker with longer legs, and wanted to get back indoors as soon as he could. But she noted that his hands were shoved into his trouser pockets, and she saw the bob of his larynx as he swallowed and looked aside to study the masonry on the walkway or the heathered hills in the far distance. It betrayed his inner misgivings, and proved that he was not so unaffected as he wished himself to appear; it proved that she was not the only one affected by the creeping touch of apprehension.

She counted down the days until the end of term, but unlike her dorm mates, and unlike the Hermione of the previous year, she wasn't anxiously fretting over how much time she had left to study before the final exams came around.

Well, that wasn't quite true.

She still cared about getting Outstandings in every subject, about picking the right electives for Third Year, and ensuring she was getting the most out of her magical education; she was acutely aware that she'd chosen Hogwarts at the cost of attending Muggle university and becoming the future Dr. Granger. School marks and class rankings and the tranquil pace of life within the halls of Hogwarts, as much as she appreciated the distraction, paled in comparison to the danger that lay outside.

Gilles was getting more than his fair share of outdoor exercise, too. Almost every other day he flew to London and back, bringing letters from home and copies of The Times or The Evening Standard.

It had been quiet for most of the months of spring, and the British people, as Hermione's mother wrote, were slowly becoming accustomed to the idea of shopping with ration books and living with less. The wizarding market, however, had just as much beef and chocolate for sale as they had the previous summer, so Mum and Dad didn't have to adjust their lifestyles too much. They knew it was preferable if they made some sort of contribution in the name of national solidarity, so instead of serving a cut of meat on the dinner table every evening, they had it five times a week. The average Briton who lacked access to the wizarding market (or a crooked butcher) could only afford meat two days out of the week.

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My dearest Hermione,

Mr. Pacek came calling this afternoon to take the measurements of our cellar. We found him to be very professional, well-spoken, a gracious guest, and an excellent young man in all respects. We hadn't even suspected him to be a wizard at first; he arrived at our doorstep in worsted wool, briefcase in hand and nothing about him gave him away. I've found that one can usually tell wizards apart—their hats aren't quite right for the time or season, their buttons are sewn reverse of what they should be, or they are wearing slippers instead of proper shoes.

He stayed for tea and had some rather fascinating news to share: he'd left the Continent because there is a rabble rouser who has taken over several Ministries, and Mr. Pacek disagrees vehemently with some of his policies. It appears that the new Grand Minister has been recruiting heavily among the students, present and former, of Durmstrang—which happens to be both his and Mr. Pacek's wizarding alma mater. Mr. Pacek states that he was offered very little work outside of working for this Mr. Grindelwald, a Hungarian national of German descent, and therefore chose to seek his fortunes abroad. He is lucky in this, he says, because just last week the Norwegian Magical Assembly was attacked, and Durmstrang will likely be under siege soon, so anyone who hasn't emigrated or capitulated may be put under arrest.

Hermione, it appears that the magical world is facing its own set of troubles...

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She showed Tom the letter when they were studying for their last exam of the school term. The library was always busy at this time of the year, so they'd agreed to wake up early and reserve seats as soon as the library opened its doors at eight in the morning. By mid-morning, it would have been impossible to get a table, and if any spots opened up, the older students would have had the clout to snatch them up first. It helped that they could store muffins in Tom's stasis charmed lunchbox; they weren't supposed to eat in the library, but if they sat in a nook at the very back, they wouldn't be seen. Besides, the muffins were so delicious when they were kept piping hot, and it wasn't difficult to look up a cleaning charm to take care of the crumbs.

"'Rabble rouser'?" said Tom, skimming the bottom of the page. He snorted. "That's putting it very lightly. This Minister Grindelwald is an honest-to-goodness Dark Lord."

"What!" cried Hermione, and instantly her hands covered her mouth and she sent furtive glances to either side for any sign of a librarian on the prowl. "How?"

"By killing, subjugating, and terrorising a bunch of people, obviously," said Tom, with a quirk of his eyebrow. "How else do you think one earns the title of 'Dark Lord'? Certainly not by a majority vote of adult citizens."

"How do you know this, I mean?" asked Hermione, trying again. "I haven't seen it in The Daily Prophet."

Hermione was the undisputed first in History of Magic. In every other class—other than Astronomy—it was a great struggle to match Tom in practical demonstrations and theoretical knowledge. It was a class that involved lots of reading books and essay writing, the longer the better: everything Hermione excelled at, as much as it bored Tom in equal measure. She'd once heard him complain that he'd rather make history, or write it himself, than listen to some desiccated old professor mumble reasons at them for why goblins didn't deserve to live.

She'd read about Dark Lords, of course, and the worst ones were such pivotal points in wizarding history that she'd expected to see the signs if another one was in the early stages of making an appearance. It must be in the same fashion as volcanoes, she'd thought. The ground rumbled, and one could spot the smoke, smell the sulphur, see the animals abandon their homes days or even weeks before the volcano itself erupted. Hermione read The Daily Prophet on a regular basis now. Not as religiously as the other students did—only the most important news and official announcements—and had seen no indication of unusual occurrences in the wizarding world.

But she wasn't surprised, now that she thought about it. How often did the Prophet report on anything outside of the British Isles? Even Irish news tended to be overlooked, outside of articles about Quidditch matches played in the Ballycastle team's pitch, which was located in Ulster.

"The boys in my dorm have talked about it," said Tom. "But they're idiots. They don't know anything important; they've only ever repeated things their fathers have said."

"What have they said? Should I tell my Mum?" Hermione asked. Her mother had expressed worries about the safety of Wizarding Britain. A warded cellar would be safe from conventional air raids and artillery, but it wouldn't serve as permanent protection against any group of determined and well-trained wizards. "She's wanted to evacuate the family to the countryside for months."

"This bit about Durmstrang being Grindelwald's alma mater is incorrect," said Tom. "Nott said he attended last century, but didn't graduate, as he was expelled in his final year for..." Tom paused, the curl of his lip showing the barest hint of a scowl, "dangerous magical experimentation."

Hermione's expression was triumphant, but Tom ignored it with a blithe wave of his hand.

"And Grindelwald and his people don't care about blood status, apparently," continued Tom. "Not as much as the Twenty-Eight do, at least—otherwise he'd have many more Slytherin supporters in my Common Room. And he's not interested in Britain for now. It looks like they're going after Norway and consolidating their hold in Scandinavia." He tilted his head and ran a finger down the crease in the paper where the letter had been folded into crisp thirds. "It's interesting that the Norwegian Ministry was attacked only weeks after Norway was invaded by the German Muggles. Something has got to be rotten in the state of Denmark..."

"Denmark was invaded a month or so ago," Hermione offered. "The London papers say they're under German occupation."

Tom nodded. "The Muggles are more worried about war than the wizards, as they ought to be. No Muggle government has anything equivalent to the importance our world places on protecting magical society and its members. In fact, the International Statute of Secrecy never mentions blood status at all. It only ever refers to 'magical persons and beings'."

"We're Muggles for three months of the year," observed Hermione. "I wonder if we should do anything, contribute in some way..."

"I hate living like a Muggle, and I hate the Muggle war even more, but we've no obligation to do anything about it. We aren't Muggles. And before you make any suggestions, you should know that I refuse to go on any door-to-door salvage drives," said Tom. He set down the letter onto the table, carefully tucking it back into its envelope. "The best course of action is to cross our fingers and hope that Grindelwald is still at large by the time we're out of Hogwarts."

Hermione sent him a disapproving glare. "Why would you ever wish for that?"

"How easy do you think it is to get an Order of Merlin in peacetime, Hermione?" said Tom in a bland voice. "It would solve all those pesky issues with our future careers, wouldn't it?"