Hermione pulled her jacket tighter around her as she felt a spear of cold wind stab through the thick coat. She could admit now that she had been woefully unprepared for the winter when she ran away. Living was not as cheap as she had expected, of course she had never been foolish enough to believe that her 300 pounds would get her through any extended period, but she had definitely been caught up in the excitement of learning that she was a witch and had let her elation get the better of her. A mistake that she did not intend to repeat again.
September had been easy, the still warm weather meant that she did not need to worry about where she slept if it was out of the way, so no noisy adults caught her outside at all hours. By mid-October although, she had started running out of money and there was no way she was going to waste her galleons on something as mundane as food. Using her last few pounds, she had bought the thickest jacket she could find in her size at the salvation army.
The next couple of weeks she had resorted to stealing food until a rather close call forced her to come to terms with how unsustainable it was. In need of a new way to get money, Hermione created Adeline. Adeline was a rich little French girl whose parents beat her. While on their vacation to England her father had went as if to beat her again, so she ran away. So sad.
Hermione almost felt bad, it was so easy it was like taking candy from a baby. All these rich muggles had way too much money and not nearly enough common sense to notice they were being duped. But then again, Hermione was a very good actress and it's not like the story was that far off the truth. The first time she had pulled off her scam, she had made off with 300 pounds and two sets of earrings that she pawned for another 600.
So that brought her to her current situation, out of money, walking through rows of beautiful townhouses on a freezing early January evening in a pair of jeans and the nicest top she had, having just cleaned them at a laundromat. Spotting a young mother getting out of a BMW with a daughter who looked about six, Hermione grinned as she settled on her targets. Focusing for a second, Hermione pushed herself down, settling into Adeline.
She ducked behind the nearest corner, then emerged running full tilt until she was close to the woman when she took what had to be the most dramatic fall of her life and burst into tears. When the woman moved over to check on her, Hermione made a feeble attempt to move away, jabbering in unintelligible French, staring up at her with wide eyes.
"O no" the woman said making shushing noises "It's okay, are you okay?"
Hermione fought the urge to roll her eyes, God this woman was gullible. What she did do was throw herself at the woman, awkwardly hugging her legs as she faked large shuddering sobs.
"Are you hurt? Where are your parents?" The woman looked down concern obvious on her face. On the word parents, Hermione upped the sobs such that the woman could not possibly miss it. "O no" the woman repeated, "Do you speak English? Do you want to come inside?" Hermione gave a weak nod as she gloated internally, absolutely nailed it.
Inside Hermione allowed herself to slow the flow of tears, drinking the tea that the woman brought her and choaking out "my papa" in a heavy French accent. The woman, her maternal instincts triggered by the apparent confirmation of Hermione's blatantly telegraphed story, quickly reassured Hermione that she could stay there for the night, and she would help her with whatever she needed.
After a delicious dinner prepared by the woman who had now introduced herself as Christine, Hermione moved to the guest room that had been made up for her and settled down to wait, watching the clock. She never had a chance to use her sneaking prowess any more now that she no longer needed to evade her father on a daily basis and they might have been a little bit rusty, but they were still good enough to not wake up a family in the middle of a city.
Ducking into the master bedroom, she silently grabbed a necklace box off the dresser. Not daring to open any drawers on the massive wooden antique and risk an errant squeak, she snuck back downstairs and riffling through Christine's purse and her husband's wallet, came up with 350 pounds and snuck off into the cold night.
Trekking across London Hermione walked with her head down, but on high alert. In one of her first weeks being homeless, she had almost been attacked by a crackhead when she was walking around late, and it was an experience that she intended never to be caught unawares by again.
This time though she made it back without incident. Hermione's home used to be a restaurant, but it had been closed for at least five years she guessed by the level of disrepair. The front of the restaurant was covered in metal bars, but Hermione had discovered that by going down the narrow alleyway behind the shop and hopping over a fence, she had access to the relatively unprotected back door where she had broken in through the window.
Her room was what used to be the walk-in freezer. It was insulated and had the added benefit of being lightproof, so she did not have to worry about anyone seeing light inside of a supposedly abandoned store. She had covered the floor with a large, ripped tarp she had found in a dumpster behind a hardware store. In the center of the room was a solar lantern that she had stolen from the camping section of a store, she usually left it next to the back door to charge during the days. Stuffed in the far corner of the room was large pile of blankets next to an equally large pile of books and attached to the door was a crudely made, and very burnt, target made from a large extremely dented silver platter she had found in a different dumpster.
When Hermione had first settled down in a remote corner of a nearby library, she had been crushed to see that massive bold notice on the inside cover declaring how "Underage magic usage outside of Hogwarts is strictly prohibited and will be reported to the Ministry of Magic." It had been a welcome surprise however when she was memorizing her History of Magic textbook, as she had with all the others, that she found the trace as the monitoring spell was called, only registered the use of magic with a wand.
It had taken Hermione a few days to allow herself to try to recreate the accidental magic she had first cast. That night she tried to summon the flames again in a dark alley behind some muggle stores where no one could see her. She hadn't been able to create anything before she was wracked with guilt. Why was she trying this? This magic was what had made her life into hell in the first place, this was what made her parents hate her. The guilt and sorrow threatened to make her fall in on herself, she almost collapsed right there in the alley. But no. The magic didn't hurt her, her parents did with all their stupidity and lack of understanding. None of it was her fault and being magical most certainly wasn't. Hermione did not try again that night, but she never had second thoughts about her magic again.
Hermione settled down in her nest of blankets and followed what had become her before bed ritual. She concentrated and flicking her wrist as if she was throwing a ball but not using her elbow, she tossed five balls of flame towards the target in quick succession. When she had started practicing, she had needed to focus on the emotions that caused the original response- anger, jealousy, hate- now though she could summon balls about the size of a fist just through concentration. Her accuracy was still terrible and the last one she summoned would be closer in size to a walnut, but she was always getting better.
Hermione woke up the next morning more excited than she had been for a month. She had been limiting the number of times she went into Diagon Alley, she did not want Tom to get suspicious of having to let an unattended child into Diagon Alley every other day. So, she had decided to keep her visits to once a month where she would go in, stock up on new books at Wiseacre's Secondhand Books, she had only bought her course books new, and wander around Diagon Alley just appreciating the magic.
She was especially happy for this visit though because the weather getting colder had led to the unintended side effect of her spending more time inside reading, meaning that she went through her new books much faster than expected and had been stuck reading nothing but muggle books from the public library for the past ten days.
Hermione stuffed her most recent batch of books- Standard Book of Spells: Grade 2, Combative Magical Theory, Protective Basics, and The Nine Styles of Dueling- into her book bag and left her house.
She first headed to the nearby Lindy's Diner. The diner was probably the most generic diner in the world. It looked like it hadn't been updated since the 60s and it smelled like coffee and grease all the time. But Hermione had all the waitresses believing that she was homeschooled, and they loved to give her extra bits of free dessert, something she would never turn down and especially not now. She was immediately engaged by a young brunette waitress. "O my god, Ella you will not believe what happened. Rosa had her baby!" Hermione put on her best excited face, "OMG Tina what did they name him" she squealed back. Ten minutes later Hermione was seated at the bar with a plate of lunch, on the house of course to celebrate.
A quick jaunt through the Leaky Cauldron later and Hermione arrived outside Wiseacre's. Wiseacre's looked exactly as if someone had been contracted to copy Flourish and Blots but on a much lower budget, something Hermione suspected was actually true. They were the same, but the windows were smaller, the molding simpler and the shelves cheaper. The flagrant attempts to copy barely even registered with Hermione though, she was always too busy being perplexed by Madam Wiseacre. Madam Wiseacre was a rotund woman, probably since Hermione had never seen her move from her large armchair behind the front desk. She always just waved her wand and summoned books to her and did the same for reshelving. But her eyes were the real object of Hermione's attention. She was very clearly completely blind. Her milky white eyes were perpetually staring in completely random directions. Hermione could not stop her mind from screaming to itself, why would a blind woman ever own a bookstore and how did she even run it competently?
Hermione entered the store, the loud bell on the door ringing causing the madam's head to swing vaguely in her direction. "Hello Madam Wiseacre" Hermione called out. "Ah, Hermione my dear, what are you looking to read this month?" Hermione stacked her old books on desk, she could return them for some store credit towards her next stack. "I was wondering if you had books on wandless magic." Wiseacre peered over her shoulder, a look that Hermione was sure would have been piercing had it been directed at her or accompanied by sight. "Now why would you be wanting to read about that." Hermione silently heaved in frustration. This was the exact reaction she had gotten before whenever she tried to ask about some topics, especially anything related to the dark wizard she could only find referenced as "You-know-who" it was quite frustrating, she obviously did not know. "O just curiosity" she replied, "I actually was wondering if you had some basic arithmancy and ancient runes sources." Madam Wiseacre relaxed a little. "Now that I can help you with" Hermione left a few minutes later with a textbook for each subject, as well as a large book on the practical applications of the subjects.
She was so annoyed, she did not know if it was because she was young or because Madam Wiseacre was an infuriating old woman, but she refused to give her answers on so many subjects. Hermione was sick of it but she only knew one place where no one would be sensitive enough to sensor information form her. Huffing indignantly, she ducked into Knockturn Alley.
The Alley really did not deserve to be called an Alley. Its width was more like a hallway and how all the buildings leaned forward slightly made it feel even narrower. Knockturn Alley was a little bit like a maze, it split and twisted and turned until Hermione was utterly disoriented. So far, she had seen stores selling shrunken heads, tattoos, and coffins as well as a seedy looking boarding house, but no books. She took another right-hand turn, honestly how was she not going in a circle at this point and came to a dead end at an antiques shop.
She turned around to head back down the alley and find a bookstore, there is no way there is not a banned bookstore somewhere along this alley, only to find her path blocked by three overly hairy and disheveled men. She could smell them from six feet away and honestly had no idea how she could have missed them following her. Hermione did not know if muggle drugs had made their way into the wizarding world, but she could just tell that these men were the wizarding equivalent of crack heads.
The men leered at her, taking a step forward forcing an involuntary step back from Hermione. "Going somewhere little girly" the man in the middle rasped at her. "Don't worry we aren't going to hurt you" he moved to grab her shoulder but stopped as he heard a bell jingling behind Hermione. Hermione was using this momentary distraction to back out of his arm's reach but was startled when she felt someone lightly grab her shoulder from behind. Hermione wheeled around, expecting another attacker but was shocked to see another girl her age.
"Irene, what are you doing?" Hermione heard the other girl say. "I told you to use the floo to visit me here, not to walk" The other girl turned to the men who had just tried to grab her and with more poise than Hermione had thought possible from anyone, glared at the men. "I sincerely hope you did not just attempt to accost an upstanding pure-blood heiress." She did not wait to see the men's reactions as she all but dragged Hermione into the shop behind them.
Hermione finally had a chance to calm herself and get a good look at the girl who had pulled her away. She looked as if she were in a black and white photo and Hermione did not say that because of her attire, although her robes did seem to be a bit more traditional than the ones, she saw most wearing around Diagon Alley, no it was because she had what had to be the palest skin and the blackest hair Hermione had ever seen. With such a complexion, her light blue eyes were almost startling.
Hermione composed herself and meeting the others girl's eyes, "Thank you." The other girl who had not taken her eyes off of Hermione, clearly studying her, responded by finally letting go of Hermione's shoulder, "Your welcome, I'm Aurelia Burke" she said, offering her hand to Hermione. Hermione took it and shook, "Hermione Granger."