Chapter 5: A New Day

There was someone in the kitchen; in fact, there was more than one person there. Her daughter Hermione and Hermione's teacher Ms. Rose were sitting casually at the kitchen table drinking tea.

"Well, ahem..." Anne said with her hand over her heart trying to get it to calm down. "Hermione, dear, can I please ask why on earth you are up at midnight. And perhaps more importantly why on earth Ms. Rose is here in our house?" Anne did not dislike Ms. Rose, in fact one might possibly go so far as to say that she liked the woman very much, but that still did not grant her permission to be in her house well after midnight when only Hermione was awake.

"Mum, Ms. Rose really wanted to talk to you, she said that it was dreadfully important. But when I told her that you were asleep, she said that you actually weren't that you were writing in your notebook, and that got a conversation started. We had guessed that you would come out eventually so we decided to wait."

"Mrs. Granger, please do excuse the intrusion but Hermione is correct in saying that it was very important that I see you. I suppose that you have been told by your lovely daughter that I was fired earlier today."

"Yes, in fact I was told, that is why I decided that after the PTA meeting tonight that Hermione will no longer be enrolled in that school.

Hermione didn't know whether to be shocked, hurt, excited, or thrilled with this news. She knew her mother would not hold her back from getting the best education possible, so she decided that what ever her mother decided she would agree with. But she was still confused on one thing, "Mum, if I am not going to be going to public school anymore, does that mean that I will have to be home schooled?"

"There are other alternatives, such as boarding school, but yes darling, I had intended you to be home schooled."

"Mum, if I am going to be taught at home, who is going to do it? You and Daddy both work, and there is no way I want to be a dentist when I grow up."

Anne and Ms. Rose both laughed. They were truly kindred spirits. There was now no doubt whatsoever in Anne's mind about what she wanted to do about Hermione's education. "Actually Hermione, I had hoped to ask Ms. Rose if she would possibly be interested in becoming your teacher."

Hermione squealed with delight and Anne and Selena both shushed her at the same time. "Your father is still asleep Hermione. This still has to be discussed with him you know. There is no way that I am going to make such a momentous decision without at least pretending to want his input. But the fact of the matter is that I had planned to ask Ms. Rose if she had another job lined up already. So, Selena, would you like to be Hermione's teacher?"

"Please Ms. Rose!! PLEASE! ," squealed Hermione.

"Surely you knew that I would love nothing better than to be Hermione's sole teacher. She was already ahead of the typical P7 material anyway. It will do her good to have a curriculum focused around her specific needs. But I do think," she was now talking to Hermione, "that you should still go to the PTA meeting and inquire about the deficits in the computer funding. You didn't get a very good answer the last time you asked."

"Perhaps we can do a sort of slide show to make the facts a little bit clearer." This was Anne's idea. Soon they had colored paper and markers strewn across the table drawing out each chart and including every piece of data. It was a very good thing that it was a Saturday. If it had been a weekday there would have been no way that any of them would have made it to school or work. Around 3:30am they had finished drawing out the way they wanted each slide to look and Selena volunteered to take them to the copy shop to have the slides made.

In total there were twenty-three slides. And at the end they were all quite proud of the work they had done. They had made it perfectly clear that there was in fact money missing from the total that they had been given by the Vice Principal in charge of financial issues, but that was only the beginning. They had no idea where the money had actually gone, and they intended to find out.