Chapter 14 – Show Me Some Magic
Mrs. Granger had been thoroughly impressed by his ability to eat a large breakfast the day before and seemed quite keen to fuss over him today. Sage was wholly unused to that kind of attention.
"It is your compliments," Hermione whispered in his ear. "She'll make you bust if you keep on."
"I don't think that's possible," he replied with a grin. He should look like some sort of hugely muscled beast for how much he ate, but he had a very demanding metabolism that left him lanky. "Magi need lots of fuel, I think."
"Pfft."
"What are you two whispering about. Did Scott burn the toast?" Mrs. Granger craned her head to eye her husband, with a cheeky grin.
"His toast is impeccable," Sage replied.
"Ha! Good man," Mr. Granger said, buttered knife in hand. Besides, the toaster made the toast. It wasn't difficult to check the dial. Women.
Though Sage could not confess it, he also held some fascination in watching a witch-in-hiding cooking with Muggle gusto. They were very good at their act. By Mr. Granger's thinly veiled amusement while making the toast, Sage thought his observations were noted.
"We were whispering about me changing my hair," Sage said smoothly.
"Changing your hair? Is that easy for you to do?" Mrs. Granger asked, sitting down with some more plates of food.
They are very committed to this act. "Yes, anything on me is easier than changing other things in many ways, but most of Transfiguration comes quite naturally to me."
If they asked him the questions, he could not be at fault for anything which was said that made Hermione suspicious…At least, he would feel guiltless over it.
Innocently, he asked, "The Ministry cannot trace my sort of magic. It was totally uncontrolled when I was small, and I had to learn to use it earlier than eleven, and I could not go to school, so…no trace…would you like to see?"
Hermione wanted to say that she liked his hair longer. Since he didn't spend his days around potions, his was rather soft. But, she also remembered how he had changed his hair when he had first arrived in 3rd year too.
"You should have changed it last night for the concert. You could have made it spiky and purple or something."
"Purple!" Sage said, with a laugh. "Don't think so."
"Go on then," Mr. Granger put in to the conversation between forkfuls.
There was some place where Sage felt a bit of guilt for playing into their act, because he very well knew that his magic would be far more startling to a wizard more than a Muggle.
Muggles did not know well enough how rare his abilities were. Magic was magic to them.
"Right then." He closed his eyes. He'd done it in front of a classroom full of people 3rd year. It should be cake now. It took him but a moment to get a good visualization and without even a hand movement or sound his hair went from long enough to tied back to tousled on the top and tight on the sides. Just for effect, he gave it a highlight.
And there was the fork drop.
Sage opened his eyes.
Mr. Granger was mid-choke, reaching for his cup. Mrs. Granger was entirely wide-eyed.
Hermione just giggled.
Just giggled, none-the-wiser.
"I like it," she complimented, entirely unaware that her Muggle parents were far too astute about magic for proper Muggles!
"It suits you," her mum said.
"I always used to think of wizards having long hair," Mr. Granger mused. "Like it was somehow connected to their power."
"Like that chap from the biblical stories," Mrs Granger added.
They both laughed. Hermione did too.
Sage returned to his scramble and impeccable toast, his grand efforts at surreptitious revelation failing utterly. They really are quite good at this act. But they reacted. Hermione is probably too Muggle to get their reactions were strange for Muggles…
That was certainly difficult to wrap his mind around, but he did not have any opportunities to try again. They were off on a day of museums.
One thing was certain, he was not flying in any airplanes anytime soon.
And if the science museum was any indication, Muggles were really a bit scary and had quite a number of things that mimicked magical things. Somehow, they did it with Maths...
Finally back home, Sage answered the grilling about all of their activities. He did not feel need to leave much out; mostly the snogging that had been sneaked - which he was quite sure his uncle assumed and wished no details - and the specifics of his musical purchases. Just the specifics. He did not truly understand the exchange rate of Muggle money, so he had little idea just how obvious his profligate spending was going to be.
When the only bit left to say was the bit about his girlfriend being totally different than appearances, he was not quite sure how to bring it up. After their fiasco dinner conversation between Jussac and Draco, it seemed even more odd that she was not Muggleborn.
He must have had a look of concentration on his face as he sipped his tea.
"You might as well tell me what is wrong. It is as if you are screaming it incoherently in the background," Severus said, once they boy finished telling him about what they had done during his trip. He could always tell when Sage had a hitch, and he could tell there was something the boy wanted to say but was holding back.
He did not venture a thought that perhaps it did not go well. Sage was not always the most socially adept. A polite surface was one thing, but he had not been around other people much at all before two years prior.
"Hermione is not Muggleborn," Sage stated, finally, interrupting his speculations.
"Whoever said that I actually thought she really was, I wonder?" There was an easy roll to the elder man's reply as his eyebrow quirked up slowly.
"You knew?"
Almost as if slightly bored, Severus replied, "I am somewhat surprised you did not but was obviously not going to tell you of my suspicion."
Sage contemplated this, chewing slowly, with a frown on his face, as if unsure if his uncle having withheld that information was some sort of violation of trust.
"Her father asked me not to tell her…there is some sort of Fidelus in place…" Sage said.
"And if they have not told her in this many years, especially after her Hogwart's letter, that surprises you too?"
Heaving something of an annoyed sigh, which earned him a look, Sage said, "I do not think that is right."
"It has nothing to do with right or wrong. It is not your choice to make." It was clearly not the answer the boy wished to hear. "What she will want is to know who her family is, and that, I assume, might be the issue of concern to the Grangers."
"But she's proud of being Muggleborn. It's like a huge piece of who she feels she is as a witch, Uncle. You don't think it's wrong to let her make that a cornerstone of her wizarding life when it's bullshit?" He threw up a hand.
"Language." He paused and then added, "I do hope you were not issuing profanities left and right on your trip?"
"Sorry, sir." Sage rolled his own eyes about his language on the trip, "No, sir, of course not." He did know how to behave. He just might not always employ it in the privacy of home…
"Without knowing the circumstances you cannot make a value judgment of right and wrong, Sage. You only know one small section of the impact to Miss Granger and nothing about anything else. I assume they did not tell you such things?"
"Well, no, they didn't."
"Trust me when I say that there are a plethora of viable reasons for such a cruel deception that even you would find acceptable if you could fathom them." Sage, meanwhile, probably just thought it was cowardly. He had seen and known very little in the grand scheme of life, which gave the elder a much wider imagination of possibilities. Acceptable possibilities.
"But they've made me party to the lie now, and Hermione is going to flip on me if she finds out I knew and did not say."
Severus eyed his nephew strongly. This was the reason why teenaged wizards were so dangerous. They had brains and could use them exceedingly well with proper training, but they naturally lacked all the impulse control, forbearance, and future-perspective-taking of an adult. They could not think things through properly.
"And I know that you are not so very selfish and foolish as to worry about the impact of concealing a truth, which is not your lie I might add, on your relationship with Miss Granger when her very life might be protected by it."
And he knew by the way the boy's eyebrows both went up and he stared at him, that Sage clearly had not thought that entire thing through. Because his concern over being party to a lie was somewhat minuscule in the grand scheme of things. As was losing one's relationship in comparison to losing one's life.
"I mean…no, sir, I'm not…That's why I agreed not to say anything." In the immediate future. But he left that bit out. "But she already runs about after Potter and Weasley, and that lot, and I don't see that changing."
"There are dangers worse than being idiotic Gryffindors who run foolishly at danger and plan secondarily."
"Yes, sir. I know that."
"Then the problem is simply that concealing it makes you feel guilty because you care for her, so I'll remove your feelings of guilt over keeping your silence. If and when she ever finds out, you can tell her that I forbid you to say anything."
That did not impress the boy. He added, "By the time such things come out, you may not even be together, you realize?"
That really did not impress the boy.
"Maybe…Will you talk to her parents, sir?" Sage asked.
"About the Fidelus?" Severus asked, a bit incredulously.
"Sir, her parents have no idea what she has been up to in our world other than school with the Great Safe Albus Dumbledore! They did not know any of those things she got into with Potter. She must have been giving them a watered down version."
"And you told them, and you aren't worried about Miss Granger finding out about that?" he snorted. Then he chortled and shook his head with disbelief. Teenagers.
Sage's blue eyes were circled by considerable white they got so large. "Oh! Oh, shit!"
Severus thumped his nephew's head with his Potions Quarterly and said with less patience, "Langauge!"
Sage glared.
His uncle thumped him with the journal again for good measure. He hadn't even seen his band and concert t-shirts yet.
AN - Thanks so much for the reviews, favorites, and follows!
JustStuckInABook - Thanks so much for saying I blend the plot in seamlessly! What a compliment :D I hope I continue to amuse during your quarantine! If you like this fic, you'd probably like my other two: Cursed Escape and God of the Underworld. Check them out, let me know what you think!
Duj - What do you think Hermione will think of him busting her out for not telling the whole truth about her school debacles?
