A further installment in Hermione's journey to the Lizard side...

Hermione looked up from her book as someone sat down next to her, smiling at Harry when she saw who it was. He was covered in bits of grass and mud and holding his broom in one hand, both of them looking somewhat damp. Even so, he seemed in a good mood.

"I suppose that expression means your practice went well," she commented, marking her place with a finger and closing the book for the moment.

He nodded, putting the broom down next to them and leaning forward to warm his hands on the fire. It was still only mid-October, but this far north the temperature was rapidly dropping, which was causing some very foggy and damp days. People who went outside and flew around hundreds of feet in the air tended to come back cold and wet, as Harry was proving.

"It was brilliant, actually. We're really on form this year. And with all the excitement over the summer, half of Slytherin being pulled out until people work out what happened, and the general chaos, we've got a good chance to win again if we keep it up." He rubbed his hands together and held them out again. "Strange thing, all that fuss. I wonder what killed all those Death Eaters?"

Hermione shrugged, her expression neutral. "We may never know. Probably something that His Darkness did that went horribly wrong."

"Suppose so." Harry grinned at her. "Can't say it bothers me. Life has been a lot less complicated and dangerous since those weird lizard-people turned up in fourth year, and now with all the Death Eaters having eaten too much Death, I'm really glad I can just get on with life. I was starting to think that Riddle had it in for me."

"I have no idea why you'd think that, Harry," Hermione said gravely, but couldn't hold her smile back for long in the face of his laughter.

"Me either. Strange, isn't it? A man tries to kill you half a dozen times, then offs himself somehow along with all his minions, or whatever actually happened. You almost start to feel left out."

She giggled, shaking her head. "Somehow I doubt you actually believe that."

"Not really, no." He leaned back, apparently warm now. "Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if that stupid goblet, or burner, or whatever it was, had actually been used for that daft TriWizard thing. You know as well as I do that I'd have somehow ended up in it."

She couldn't deny that this was probably quite likely, considering all the other strange coincidences that had plagued his first few years at Hogwarts. In her darker moments, she was fairly convinced about there being some form of plot against her friend, and not necessarily all from the supposedly evil side of the wizarding world…

"Since they did whatever it was they did to it, though, it's been a lot warmer in here," he added after a few reflective moments, looking over at the nearest place warm air was coming from, through a mass of small holes low down on the wall. Everyone had always known they were there but no one knew what their purpose was until the staff, after Saurial and Ianthe had left that day some two years ago, had read the manual they'd left and put the newly repaired artifact back where it had apparently come from over five hundred years earlier.

Hermione wondered where the other two had gone, considering there were supposedly three of them originally. Quite a few people had tried to work that out as well but so far no one had. It was just one of those mysteries of history.

Both of them looked around as several more people entered the common room, spotting Ron in the middle of the group. He talked to a couple of them before heading their way. Sitting down on Harry's other side, he leaned back and relaxed. "Glad that's over. I'm starving."

"Have you done your Transfiguration homework yet?" Hermione asked, quite deliberately as she found his reaction funny. He grimaced, opening his eyes again and looking at her with an aggrieved expression.

"Let a man relax for a bit before you go asking things like that, will you, Hermione?" he muttered.

She opened her book and settled back, smiling faintly. "By which you mean, no, you haven't."

Harry snickered when Ron sighed. "I'll do it later."

"Promise?"

"I promise," the red-head grumbled. "You really are a little much, sometimes."

"I'm merely trying to keep my friends from slacking off to the point they cause themselves trouble later," she replied archly, crooking an eyebrow at him. Ron looked back, shaking his head sadly.

"Mad as mutton, you are, sometimes. Were you born in a library or something?"

She grinned at him for a moment, knowing he wasn't really offended. Over the years, the three of them had developed a nice relationship, one she valued. And she knew the other two did as well in their own ways. Harry was her best friend, and in reality her first one, but Ron had ended up very close to her as well, despite some early setbacks. If nothing else he'd finally learned a little tact, which had pleased almost everyone. Harry had learned to stand up for himself, and she herself was honest enough to admit she'd learned how not to show off her knowledge. It had benefited all of them in different ways.

Now if only Ron could learn to chew with his mouth closed…

'One day,' she thought, smiling to herself. The three of them fell silent, Hermione reading, Harry staring into the fire, and Ron apparently dozing.

"What are you going to do when we finish school?" Harry asked a few minutes later, out of the blue. She raised her eyes from the book again, studying him. Ron opened one eye, then closed it once more, but she could feel him listening.

"What brought that up?" she asked curiously.

"Don't really know," he shrugged, still watching the logs slowly burn to ash. "I guess I've been thinking about things for a while."

"Want to watch that, Harry," Ron grunted. "Thinking about things, I mean. You'll end up as bad as Hermione."

She looked at him, then Harry, who was looking back with a small smile. "Poke him for me, I can't reach," she requested. He did so, resulting in a squawk from Ron, then a snicker.

"What sort of things?" Hermione asked when the two had stopped poking each other.

"Things," her friend repeated, looking thoughtful but slightly puzzled. "I mean… you're the smartest person in the entire school, I'm sure. You can do anything you want. Me, I'm not an idiot, but I know I'm not as smart as you are. I've got loads of power, true enough, and I learn well under pressure, so there's that, but you're still the one who gets it first practically every time. You probably know more spells than half the professors!" He grinned as she looked slightly embarrassed.

"Maybe one or two of them," she demurred, but was aware he wasn't too far wrong in some ways. But then she liked learning things.

"Ron here, he's a lazy git..."

"Oi!"

"You know you are."

"Well..."

Harry snickered, then went on, "...but he's brilliant at tactics, not stupid either even though sometimes you wouldn't realize it..."

"Oi! Again!"

Hermione giggled at the other young man who was looking slightly miffed now.

"…and is also fairly powerful when he can be arsed to put the work in. Even if it takes him twice as long as everyone else to learn some spells."

"Some friends," Ron muttered, giving them both baleful looks. The other two exchanged amused glances then ignored him, knowing he wasn't really insulted. It was nothing they hadn't said before and it was all basically true.

"Nev is at least as powerful in raw magic as I am, Luna is nearly as smart as you are, and so on. But none of us have really talked about jobs. Except Ron, and his plans to dominate the Quiddich world."

"I have so many plans," Ron nodded. "So many." He looked hard at Harry. "You like Quiddich as well, you could easily do it professionally."

Harry shrugged. "It's fun, but I mainly like it for the flying. You know that."

"Hmph." His friend shook his head. "I don't believe you. You look too happy when you win the game."

"Let's not start that argument again," Harry said quickly. "We always end up doing that. I'm trying to be serious for once."

"You can't, he's in London."

Harry groaned. "Oh, god, not you too! That pun is terrible, and it only works in an American accent in the first place. Stop it."

It was Ron's turn to grin, while Hermione laughed.

"How is your lunatic godfather anyway?"

"He's fine, especially now that we finally convinced Dumbledore to stop trying to get me to go back to the damn Dursley's. Sirius pointed out that with all Riddle's followers tits up in a ditch there was no reason for me to ever see them again." Harry frowned for a moment. "Sometimes I really wonder why the Headmaster was so dead-set on me staying with them. I told him enough times that neither I nor they wanted me there, but..." He shrugged, looking mildly puzzled, but quickly ignored the question. "I'm going to stay with him over Christmas, he's spending loads of money on doing up the house for me, no matter what I tell him about how I don't expect anything fancy."

"The man was in prison for something he didn't do for years, Harry, let him have his fun," Hermione suggested. "He loves you, after all."

The boy smiled widely. "He does, doesn't he," he said softly. They were all silent for a few seconds until he shook himself a little. "Stop distracting me. Jobs. It's only a year or so before we're all out of here, released into the wild. What am I going to do? What are you two going to do?"

"What do you want to do?" Hermione asked, giving up on her book and closing it, with her wand marking where she'd got to.

"Dunno," Harry admitted. "I'm not interested in professional Quiddich, no matter what Ron says..." The boy next to him grunted in a slightly disbelieving manner and got an elbow in the ribs for his trouble. "I did think about becoming an Auror, of course, since I have a knack for DADA, but… I'm not sure that's quite right either. I don't trust the ministry further than I can throw it, even with all the changes recently. Susan's aunt is fine, I like her, and there are a few others, but there are also a lot of entitled tossers running the place."

He sighed heavily. "But what else is there? The wizarding world, especially the British one, doesn't have that many sorts of jobs as far as I can see."

"You don't actually need to work, you know," Hermione pointed out. "Your family was pretty wealthy, and Sirius is loaded. You could easily live off that for the rest of your life, especially if you invested some of it in the non-magical world with a little careful thought."

"I know, but I don't really want to sit around on my arse all day for the rest of my life," Harry replied. All three of them fell silent for a while, looking at the fire.

"Travel the world?" Hermione suggested. "You could join forces with Luna. I'm sure she'd love to have you come with her while she looks for things that don't exist."

Harry chuckled. "You know, I'm half-tempted to do that. I like her, and I'm not entirely convinced that all her weird animals are actually made up. Maybe they're just really rare, or possibly recently extinct, like that… what was it..." He thought, then snapped his fingers. "Tasmanian Tiger, that was it. I saw something on TV at the Dursley's about it last year. Some people think there still might be some left, hiding somewhere in Tasmania. People keep looking for them. Maybe Luna's creatures are the magical equivalent?"

Hermione looked at him, somewhat surprised. "That's… possible, I suppose," she admitted. "I didn't think of it like that."

Tapping her head with a finger, Harry smirked. "Think outside the book, Hermione."

"You mean box."

"I know what I mean."

Sighing, she smiled at him, shaking her head. "All right, you made your point. Don't push it."

"What about a dark wizard hunter?" Ron suggested. "Go freelance, sort of thing. They keep popping up all over the place, even I know that. And with he-who-is-as-dead-as-anything out of the picture I'll bet there will be people turning up to fill the gap."

"Merlin, that's a depressing thought, Ron," Harry said after an appalled look. Hermione nodded vehemently. "We only just got rid of the bastard, don't wish someone worse on us!"

"I'm just saying," Ron shrugged. "I know a little history, even with Binns putting everyone to sleep the moment he opens his mouth, and obsessing about goblins. Dad's told us about that sort of thing. They turn up out of nowhere all the time. Riddle sort of took over for a long while, no one else could hold a candle to him after all, but now he's out of the way..."

"Damn it." Harry glared into the fire. "I don't want to go through that again."

"I doubt you'd have to," Hermione soothed him. "Don't panic. Riddle was a special case."

"I certainly hope so," the black-haired young man grumped, folding his arms.

"It's a possible career, though, right?" Ron asked, looking at them both. "I bet it would pay well. And I also think you'd be good at it, you're a lot better than anyone else I know at Defense. A couple of years of hard training, maybe the Auror course, and you could travel around dealing with the people even the Aurors are worried about."

"Why do I think that you're glossing over some very important things there, Ron?" Harry asked with a small smile. Ron shrugged, while Hermione smiled as well.

"Don't know, it seems simple enough to me," the red-head replied.

"A lot of things do, Ron," Hermione giggled. He gave her a hard look while Harry started laughing.

"Thanks, Hermione," the young man responded. "Thanks very much."

"You're welcome," she smiled.

They ended up arguing about homework, the best type of pudding, and whether any of Luna Lovegood's cryptozoological creatures really did exist for the next couple of hours, before they all finally went to bed. However, Hermione kept thinking about the point that Harry had raised for some time after that.

What did she want to do when she finally graduated as a fully trained witch?

One thought kept coming back to her, a memory of an offer made over the summer...

A little over a month later, that question had migrated to the back of her mind, as she was busy studying hard. Not unusual, she was after all Hermione Granger. It was sort of her thing.

One morning she was sitting down for breakfast with a textbook, as usual, sitting beside her plate, when the mail owls began arriving. Not expecting anything today, she ignored the birds flapping around the place with the ease of long practice, only leaning back a little as Hedwig landed between her plate and Harry's, promptly stealing half the bacon on his plate before letting him have the letter tied to her leg.

The snowy owl sidled over to her plate and eyed a sausage with a contemplative air. "Try it and I'll have roast owl for lunch," Hermione said without looking up. The owl glared at her, made a rude noise, and turned around. Seconds later Ron squawked in outrage, Hedwig made a triumphant sound, and Harry started snickering.

"I was eating that!" Ron shouted.

Hedwig barked insultingly at him, then flew off, with Harry grinning after her, before he turned to his letter. Hermione simply smiled to herself and kept reading, eating one handed.

"Aren't you going to take your mail, Hermione?" Ron asked after a few seconds, having calmed down rapidly. The little skit with Hedwig was a commonplace thing these days, the owl definitely had a sense of humor, albeit a weird one.

"Mail?" she queried, finally looking up. Ron motioned with his fork to the side of her plate.

Turning her head, she stared at the… bird…? that was patiently waiting a couple of feet away. "Funny looking bird," Ron added, inspecting the creature. "What is it, a hawk of some sort?"

Hermione gaped at the feathered thing that was a bit bigger than a crow, with obvious claws sticking out of the last wing joint. Yellow-orange eyes which were far too intelligent looked back at her, somehow seeming amused. She recognized it instantly, although she couldn't believe it.

The creature was standing on a small parcel, about two inches square and an inch thick, which had her name on a tag attached to it. When it was sure it had her attention, it stepped off the paper-wrapped parcel and pushed it towards her with one taloned foot. Numbly, she picked it up and read the label.

'Hermione Granger, private correspondence. Attempted opening by any other person will have severe consequences. Mail protection by FamTech™ MailGuard®'

Blinking in shock, she read it again, then looked at the bird that was now definitely, somehow, smirking at her. It walked over to her plate, grabbed the sausage that Hedwig had been warned off, swallowed it, winked at her, and took off, quickly flying up to the ceiling where it vanished from sight.

The brunette girl followed it with her eyes in a wondering manner.

"What sort of bird was that, any idea?" Harry asked from next to her. She twitched a little, lowering her gaze to meet his, then looking at Ron, then the package she was still holding.

"It wasn't a bird, technically," she said faintly. "It was a flying dinosaur. An archeopteryx. Which is impossible, they died out nearly a hundred and fifty million years ago."

"Looked pretty alive to me," Ron said, peering upwards for a moment. "Hungry, too." He looked back at her. "What's in the parcel, then?"

"I have no idea," she replied. Turning the label over, she saw that there was more writing on it. 'Open only in a private location.' It was followed by the letter S.

The label, coupled with the way it had been delivered, suddenly gave her a shrewd idea who had sent it. Why, on the other hand, was anyone's guess.

After a long moment she slipped it into her pocket. "I'll look at it later," she said, resuming eating her breakfast. "We don't have long before class."

Her friends stared at her, then exchanged a look. It clearly said, 'It's Hermione, don't bother asking...' They also resumed eating. Very soon, they were heading to Charms and the matter of the odd parcel was dropped for the moment.

None of them noticed Luna staring hard at Hermione, and occasionally glancing upwards with a wondering look in her silver-gray eyes...

When the day was finally over, dinner had been eaten, and homework completed, Hermione finally allowed herself to think about the small packet in her pocket, which she'd felt bump her leg the entire day. Retiring to her bed with the excuse of being more tired than usual, she pulled the curtains around it, then cast every privacy charm on them she could think of, resulting in something that even Dumbledore would have had trouble getting through.

She knew a lot of privacy charms.

Sitting cross-legged on the bed, she pulled the small parcel out of her pocket and dropped it in front of her, staring at it. After a moment she started casting diagnostics spells on it, just in case.

Ten minutes later she was mightily puzzled. It came up entirely clean, and in fact entirely non-magical, but at the same time she could literally feel something odd about it. If it wasn't magic, what was it?

Eventually she sighed a little, shrugged, and reached for the string holding the paper cover on. Carefully untying it, she folded the paper back and inspected the contents. A small metallic box met her eyes. She picked it up and looked carefully at it, shaking it a little near her ear, then feeling it to work out how it opened. Presuming that it did. As she ran her thumb over one specific place on the top surface, a quiet tone sounded.

"Authorized recipient Hermione Jean Granger detected and verified. Please place this device on a clear surface with at least one foot of space available in all directions."

Letting out a little yip at the totally unexpected, if polite, voice, Hermione fumbled the thing, nearly dropped it, caught it again, then very gently put it on the bed and shuffled back.

"Thank you," the thing said. Then it wavered and somehow unfolded in a manner that made her eyes hurt and her stomach twinge for a moment. It was entirely unlike any shrinking spell she'd ever seen before, it was more like the thing had suddenly had more dimensions than it should have done. She couldn't begin to understand how that was achieved even with her encyclopedic knowledge of magic.

The resulting object was a case that was roughly a two foot cube, with a handprint outlined on the top surface, the entire thing made of a very familiar looking gray metallic substance. Something she'd seen before, a few months back, in the form of a small but impossibly heavy wheel.

"To open, place hand on sensor. Current configuration dictates that attempted use by non-authorized personnel will be met with sublethal consequences on the first attempt only. Repeat attempts will result in lethal response. No further verbal warnings will be given. Full instructions for use are inside."

The voice fell silent once again, leaving the girl staring uneasily at the case. She was wondering if it was a good idea to actually even touch it now.

Eventually, after checking yet again for magic, and finding nothing she recognized, she sighed and decided that the person who had taken out the worst Dark Lord in a century and all his minions with a device from a science fiction book wasn't going to be put off by a talking box. Not completely certain that was a valid argument, she reached forward and put her hand into the outline on the lid even so.

The end result was entirely anticlimactic. It merely beeped once and the lid lifted a little, swinging up when she moved her hand out of the way. Curious but cautious she opened it further and peered in, her eyes widening in amazement.

"Oh, my god, it's full of books," she breathed.

There were at least a dozen books visible, the spines towards her. Reaching in she ran her fingers over them, reading the titles with interest.

ST Pattern Theory, a primer on advanced magical energy manipulation

The Multiverse Explained

The Mathematics of Reality

How to make the Universe cry, a guide to true magic

Energy from Outside

There were more, but several of them were in a language she didn't recognize, one of them seemed to be staring at her, and two more kept changing every time she looked away and back.

After a moment's wonder, she noticed that there was an envelope with her name on it taped to the underside of the lid. Peeling it loose, she opened it. Tipping it up over the bed caused a book that was too thick to have fitted inside to slide out, along with a letter. The book was entitled 'Operations manual, Famtech™ Tot-L-Safe® document storage system.' She put that to one side and unfolded the sheet of paper, reading the neatly hand-written text with great interest.

Hello, Hermione

We were impressed how well you solved your dark wizard problem. The solution you came up with was elegant and sneaky, which is something we definitely like. As I said at the time, we think you might well be someone we should be looking at as a future associate of our company, as you obviously have a mind that is capable of handling some unusual applications of magic. Research and Development would be interested in evaluating you.

We're aware that you're doing very well in your schooling, for which I'd like to say 'well done! ' I would urge you, although I expect it's redundant, to keep up the momentum and ace those exams.

After talking things over with Saurial and Metis, as well as some other friends and family, we decided that we'd send you this box of useful books. It covers a number of subjects that I know you will not have come across before, but if you have any interest in work outside the rather limited possibilities of your current culture, will be required.

Should you decide that you would be interested in possible work with us, I'd suggest starting with ST Pattern Theory. It's a classic, written by some good friends of ours in a different part of the multiverse, and it elegantly describes some of the most important fundamentals of real magic, the sort of thing that is as far beyond the limited tricks your wizards generally use as their magic is beyond the non-magical inhabitants of your world.

The first chapter goes over some basic exercises that are required for this type of magic. It's possible that due to your existing training you may find that it's not compatible with your own magic, in which case we'd have to look into sorting that out. However, Saurial says she's pretty sure you'll find it simple enough to get to grips with. It takes a very specific sort of mind to truly excel at, and from what we've found out about you, you have that sort of mind.

If you haven't already discovered it, under the first layer of books are some others. These are various textbooks on mathematics, technology, magitech, languages, and a number of other subjects that you'd find both interesting and useful. None of the books are particularly restricted, at least on most magic-heavy worlds, but you won't find any other copies on yours. There are security spells on them all which will prevent anyone not authorized from reading them, they'll just look like some boring textbook that no one would want to read.

I would also suggest reading the manual, very carefully. Saurial is always complaining that no one ever reads the manual! Remember your burner problems…

We'll be in contact again soon. Have a good Christmas, enjoy yourself, and don't get too stressed about your exams. You'll do fine.

I have it on good authority that there's a 97.83% chance of that!

Ianthe.

The brunette read the letter again, her eyes wide, then stared at the box for close to ten minutes with an awed expression. Very slowly, a smile spread across her face.

She reached for the manual and settled back to study it.

"I think I may have worked out what I want to do after we graduate," Hermione said one evening a few days before the Christmas holiday, looking up from the book she was reading. Harry, who was scribbling a rough draft of the final Transfiguration essay of the year, looked up at her.

"Hmm?" he said absently, before focusing on her face. "Oh." It took a moment to remember that conversation from weeks back. "Good?" She smiled at him, as he looked mildly embarrassed. He'd been miles away, thinking hard about his essay.

"What is it?" he asked a moment later.

"I'm thinking of going into magical research," she said, turning the page of her book.

"That… actually fits you," he grinned. "Unspeakable? I'll bet they'd take you in an instant."

"Something like that," his friend replied. "But probably combined with travel. It could be very interesting, I think."

"Well, whatever you do, I'm sure you'll be good at it," he assured her, entirely truthfully. "I still can't work out the answer to my own question, though."

"You'll figure it out sooner or later, Harry," she replied quietly. "You always do. And you'll be good at it as well."

"Thanks," he smiled. "Hey, Sirius told me to invite you and Ron over for Boxing Day. I think he wants the excuse to have another big meal. He'll probably try to drag you over for New Year's as well, knowing him."

"It sounds fun," she told him, closing the book and putting it down. "I'm up for it."

"Great." He grinned at her. "Now, a question." He held up his draft and showed it to her. "Could you check my spelling?"

Laughing, she took it from him and began reading it, making corrections with the quill she plucked from his fingers.