Dr Tesco Clementine was examining the latest additions to Dr Arkengarth's 35th Century ceramics when the door to the gallery opened at the far end. She looked up from a particularly interesting piece, that recalled a nearly two thousand year old intricate Celtic design, to see her favourite pupil walking towards her with speed and purpose. And she was holding something in her hands that promised to be far more curious than some stuffy old pottery.
"Hermione! How nice to see you!" Dr Clementine beamed as the affable Miss Granger arrived at her side. "What brings you here this morning? It's Wednesday and you should be enjoying your day off."
"Oh I am," Hermione smiled brightly. "My Harry and I have just been to check on the progress of our airship. She is going through the final engine pod checks today, and then she's all ours for collection whenever we are ready, once she's been painted with her name and registration, of course."
"Which engines did you decide on in the end?" asked Dr Clementine.
"Harry wanted to go for some Jeunet-Carot ones, but they are far too showy for my liking," Hermione sniffed haughtily. "So I persuaded him to opt for a pair of twin prop Augenhauser pods from Berlin. Far more reliable and efficient, according to the latest edition of What Pod, anyway."
Dr Clementine nodded fondly. Trust Hermione to make a decision based on something she read in a trade journal.
"So, if you aren't busy planning your first adventure with your lovely young man, what is it that has brought you here?"
Hermione's eyes lit up and she clutched the item at her side a little more tightly.
"Well, Dr Tesco, it actually is an adventure that I've come to see you about," Hermione began in a near whisper. There was a subdued excitement behind her eyes. "Harry and I found this book while sifting through the Gut a few days ago ... and I don't know what to make of it at all. I was hoping you could help me with it."
Tesco Clementine felt her heart stir. She and Hermione shared a passion for books, hence the comfort she felt in letting Hermione use her first name, and there was something about Hermione's manner that piqued her interest. The girl was practically bobbing on her heels with her restless fervour. Whatever this book was, it seemed to be the sort of thing that even a seasoned library curator like Tesco would get excited about.
"Well, if we are going to talk shop, I think we should return to the library," Dr Clementine replied. "That's where books belong, after all."
"Yes, let's," Hermione smiled, happy at any opportunity to visit Tesco's rustic old assemblage of ancient tomes. It was her favourite place to be, second only to being cuddled up somewhere with Harry. If only he liked the library as much as she, then they could cuddle up there together ... though if they did, Hermione might die of sheer contentment.
But that was a daydream for another time. For now, she followed Dr Clementine away from the ceramics gallery, through the Origins exhibits (which chronicled the rise of the Traction Era) and shuddered at the quaint exhibition about people who still liked to live on the bare Earth. It was a concept abhorrent to most decent Londoners, few of whom could imagine a life without a solid deck plate beneath their feet.
Anything else was just savage, really.
The Earth still had its purposes, however. London, like any other city, had to make regular stops to top up their enormous fresh water tanks, to slake the throats of thirsty Londoners, as well as harvesting vegetation for food or to turn into the bio-fuels that kept the city powered. Hermione knew that this was an essential use of this natural resource, but she much preferred how the Ancients used trees, namely to turn them into the books that she loved so much.
And the Bodleian Library of London had a collection so vast it was to be envied wherever it was known. Original books were scarce these days, having either been destroyed by fire or time, with many having been used as emergency heat to keep people warm in the immediate aftermath of the Sixty Minute War. If it burned, it went into the flames. That was the mantra in those days.
Hermione was eminently grateful to those hardy souls who had risked all to preserve these ancient manuscripts all those centuries ago. She said her prayers to one of London's many Gods every morning, asking them to take care of these heroes in the next world. Because they were heroes in Hermione's eyes, deserving of beatification just as much as the likes of Quirke, Crumb and Godshawk as far as she was concerned.
For they had braved becoming pariahs, by spiriting out books to hide in bunkers or to be preserved in great vaults, which were discovered every now and then by small mining towns that drilled deep into the layers of detritus, that hid the past from the surface world. Hermione hoped that her adventures with Harry might take her to see some of these vast caches, or maybe they'd even uncover the mythical Great Library of Alexanderplatz, reputedly hidden under the paw of the statue of the lion-man, Leon Spinx, wherever in the world that might be.
Today, however, Hermione had to focus solely on the project at hand. For the discovery made by young Tom Natsworthy had certainly sparked the spirit of adventure in her. And in Harry, too ... once he had stopped his relentless teasing about Tom's little crush on her, which seemed to be becoming more acute every time they met.
Hermione wasn't remotely interested, of course, but it was a shame she had to be so distant with Tom. He was a nice boy, and it gratified her vanity to be admired by him. But she was Harry's girl through and through, and giving the wrong impression to a fifteen-year-old boy just wouldn't do at all. She was sure he would find a nice girl soon enough, someone decent and wholesome to bring him out of his shell and give him the affection he deserved.
But for now, Hermione was wholly interested in the discovery that Tom had made for her. She sat opposite Dr Clementine at her handsome oak desk and placed the large book into the space between them. Then she looked up expectantly at the curator.
"So, what do we have here?" asked Dr Clementine, pulling her half-moon spectacles from her head down to her nose.
"A book, Dr Tesco."
"Yes, Hermione, I can see that," Dr Clementine quirked in reply. "What I meant was why have you brought it to me? What's important about it?"
"I was hoping you could tell me," Hermione answered eagerly. "It's called Hogwarts: A History, but I have no idea what Hogwarts might be. More than that though, it seems to be about magic."
Dr Clementine raised her eyebrows. "Magic, you say? How curious. You realise that magic isn't real, don't you? It's all make-believe."
"Oh, of course I know that!" Hermione squeaked as though reprimanded. "There's no such thing as magic. But this book appears to be about magic ... because it's written in strange symbols. Look."
Hermione flicked open a few pages to demonstrate. There were odd markings in lines that looked like a written language, others were more pictorial in nature and might have been describing rituals or rites. Or they might have been drawings about the correct way to catch fish with primitive spears, of course. But Hermione's vivid imagination didn't want the book to be about anything mundane, so it was a book of magic and that was all there was to it.
Dr Clementine pulled the book closer to herself and peered at the pages, rolling them between her fingers. "This is parchment ... genuine parchment pages! My, my ..."
"That's what I thought!" Hermione exclaimed. "That means it must be very old, doesn't it?"
"Very," Dr Clementine agreed with a nod. "Thousands of years at least. But look at the condition ... it's barely aged at all."
"That must be the magic," Hermione told her, confidently. "A preserving spell or something. Stops it rotting away."
Dr Clementine rolled her eyes doubtfully. "Didn't you hear what I just said about magic?"
"Yes, Dr Tesco, but it's fun to pretend, isn't it?" Hermione grinned back. "Imagine if that was the truth, and that people really did do magic all those years ago ... casting spells and flying broomsticks and things ... and imagine if this book was the key to rediscovering that knowledge. I know it probably isn't, but there's no harm in wondering."
"No, you are quite right," Dr Clementine smiled. "If we wanted to give up our imaginations, we might as well shave all our bodies of hair and join the Engineers Guild and be done with it. You keep on dreaming, Hermione. Who knows where it will take you."
Hermione coloured a little at that. Then she turned back to the book. "So, what do you think it is? Have you ever heard of Hogwarts before?"
"No, it isn't a name that strikes me immediately," Dr Clementine frowned as she thought. "But we have an extensive index here. Let's see if we cant cross reference it with other books and find something useful."
So they tried. They looked at maps of the world, but found no mention of Hogwarts as a country or city. This didn't mean that it hadn't been one, of course, as place names changed all the time, especially in the static settlements of the past and present. Traction Cities generally kept their names no matter where they moved to, but as Traction Towns were eaten all the time, it was quite possible that Hogwarts had simply been devoured by a bigger, hungrier city and it's name lost to the progress of Municipal Darwinism.
There was also no mention of Hogwarts in any of the obvious historical records. The Doomsday Book, of which London had the only surviving copy, made no reference to it, various census forms from the 21st Century didn't list it, and there were no photographs relating to anything that even sounded like it. Hermione was left disappointed, frustrated and confused at the lack of success.
"It could just be that this is a work of fiction," Dr Clementine pointed out reasonably. "This may not be a historical work, like the stories we have from the Bronze Age and the Middle Earth Ages. I'm afraid that there may be no Gandalf in your new book, Hermione."
"Yes ... I suppose you could be right," Hermione accepted sadly. "I just wish I knew how to read those symbols, just to know what they say."
"Well that is something we can look at!" Dr Clementine chimed suddenly. "We have plenty of documents relating to lost languages that have been unearthed over the years. Let's see if we can find a match to hieroglyphs or cuneiform or something similar."
"Brilliant idea!" Hermione cried. "Where do we start with that?"
"First of all I suggest we make a list of the great universities, as all of them studied the ancient world and their languages," Dr Clementine advised. "The library is indexed with research papers from each one, but I can never remember them all. Find me the index card that lists Academic Institutions of the Static Era."
Hermione hurried to a large filing cabinet to the right and began sifting to find the correct card. One she'd located it, she went to hand it to Dr Clementine, but halted with a gasp as she read down the list.
"What is it, Hermione?" Dr Clementine asked in concern. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing, nothing ... but look at this!" Hermione hushed. "Look what I found in the list ... Cardiff, Cambridge, Durham, LSE, Oxford, all the ones we'd expect. But in the specialist school list, just above Gabriel College ... there it is! Hogwarts! 'Specialising in alchemy and magic,' it says! Wow!"
"Let me see that," Dr Clementine demanded, tugging the card from Hermione. She looked down the list and, sure enough, there it was. Hogwarts ... listed as a special school. "Well I never! It is a real thing, then? How peculiar. But there seems to be no other information about it."
"What about famous people who attended there?" Hermione suggested feverishly. "We know that Newton attended Cambridge and that Nicholas Quirke re-founded Oxford as a Traction University city, as he had ancestors who were alumni from the original, but what about Hogwarts? It must have had someone famous come from there to be listed here."
"A sound deduction," the curator replied. She picked up a book on famous Luminaries. "Let me see ... there is that vague reference to alchemy here, so who is the most famous alchemist ever? ... someone called Nicolas Flamel, so the book says ... Flamel, Flamel ... ah yes, from the country known as France ... alchemy is just another another quack science if you ask me, by the way ... Flamel's partner was one Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of ..."
"Hogwarts!" Hermione exclaimed, peering over Dr Clementine's shoulder to read faster than she could be told. "Then it really did exist! It was a real place with a real history, just like the book says! Oh this is so exciting, Dr Tesco!"
"Indeed it is," the curator agreed. She flipped the pages of her book again. "Who is this Dumbledore fellow, I wonder? Never heard of him either. But there is a reference to him here from something called a 'Frog Card' ... no idea what that might be, but let's see ... Albus Dumbledore: Headmaster of Hogwarts, Ten Pin Bowling Legend, known Mentor of the famous hero ... Harry Potter!"
Hermione blinked in surprise as the words hung like an echo above her. Did she say Harry Potter? What a curious coincidence! Harry and Potter were hardly uncommon names though, even these days, and this Dumbledore person would have likely lived centuries ago. There was no way that any of this could relate to Hermione and her Harry Potter ... no reason that they would be involved in something strange or mysterious ...
"Is ... is there any further reference to Harry? I mean, to Harry Potter? You know ... the other one?" Hermione asked, quietly.
Dr Clementine flicked through her book. Then she frowned. "Actually, there is an entry for him ... or, at least, there should be. The bottom of this page is missing. You know, it is almost as if someone has taken it out ... there is a clear tear mark here, as though it were carefully removed. The cut point is too smooth to simply have been torn out or ripped by accident."
"That's ... odd," Hermione mused. "But why would that be? Unless this Harry Potter did something bad or heretical."
"Or someone didn't want it known what he did at all," Dr Clementine hushed in a dark tone. "If this is deliberate, Hermione, then someone out there wants part of our history hidden. They are trying to cancel our culture!"
"And, as Historians, it is our duty to keep the past alive," Hermione stated firmly, puffing out her chest and she recited the mantra of her Guild. "I need to find out more about this other Harry Potter, about who he was, and why someone would be interested in him now. What a strange coincidence this is! But where do I look next, do you think?"
"You might try asking our Head Historian," Dr Clementine advised. "He is prolific when it comes to uncovering the secrets of the Ancients. In fact, he is responsible for most of the stock in this library. Thaddeus Valentine has a passion for archaeology that borders on the obsessive."
"But you never know when he's going to turn up, do you?" Hermione grumbled. "And with Harry and I leaving soon, I cant wait around on the off chance."
"You may be in luck," Dr Clementine replied. "Thaddeus' daughter, Kate, has a birthday later this month. Valentine will be sure to return to London then, to throw her a big party and show her off to the great and good of society. He dotes on her terribly, you know. You could ask him then. Just let me offer you a bit of advice ... don't mention the book you've found, if you can manage it."
"Why not?" Hermione asked, suspiciously.
Dr Clementine's expression changed to something dark and inscrutable. "Let's just say that Thaddeus has a way of acquiring precious relics ... and his methods are not always honourable. If he decides that he wants this Hogwarts: A History from you, he'll find a way to get it. There is a reason he carries a sword with him, let's just leave it at that."
Hermione gulped hard, imaging a sharp blade swinging towards her face. "Okay, I'll keep the book safe and hidden from now on. But Mr Valentine will be back soon, do you think?"
"I do," Dr Clementine nodded. "Mayor Chrome plans to take London back into the Great Hunting Ground in the very near future, and he'll want his favourite champion by his side when he does. Thaddeus is a skilled warrior as well as an Historian, and I'm sure Magnus will demand that he stays close as London goes back into potential danger for the first time in years. Who knows what sort of trouble we might roll into."
"I'm sure we will be fine, the Mayor must know what he is doing," Hermione replied bracingly. "But we need to get back to what we know ... research. Come on, let's find out what these symbols are. I'm sure I've seen them before, on Nordic pendants that merchants often peddle at Smithsfield Market. That'll be a good place to start, so let's find every book on Vikings and Norsemen that we have and see what turns up."