Chapter 3: Reassurance

NEW AGE SOLUTIONS

by Violet Peekins

Serving both Muggles and Wizards with their New Age Needs

So read the sign on the door of the odd little shop in the odd little neighbourhood just off Charing Cross Road in London. Hermione scrutinized the sign, both intrigued and confused. The name of the shop was legitimate enough as was that of its proprietor. But the last line... serving both Muggle and Wizard? What were Muggles? And surely Wizards didn't exist, and if they did, they would be able to solve their own problems without the help of some occultist or spiritualist or whatever it was this Ms. Peekins preferred to be called.

But the oddest thing about the sign was that neither of her parents seemed able to see that last line about Ms. Peekins's clientele. They read, "New Age Solutions by Violet Peekins. Well, we must be here," Archie said brightly. He was trying to play optimist. "Though in honesty I didn't expect to find much of anything in this section of London. I was beginning to think Dr. Briar had led us pretty far astray!"

"Well, we're here, that's the important thing," Addie said, looking around the neighbourhood nervously. "Come on, let's go in. I feel like... I can't explain... like I'm being watched."

Hermione actually had that feeling as well. They clearly were not the only people here, though they were the only ones standing out in the open. There were eyes watching them, and mouths probably laughing at them as they stood there, uncertain and confused, on the doorstep of Violet Peekins and her New Age Solutions. She peered down alleyways and into cobwebby windows. Sometimes she thought she caught a glimpse of things, people, an odd owl out in the daytime. But these were always fleeting visions and disappeared before she could be absolutely certain. "You are not going crazy," she whispered firmly to herself.

"Hermione, dear, ready?" She looked up to see her father's hand poised over the old-fashioned looking door latch. She nodded resolutely and he disengaged the latch.

There was the tinkle of bells, loud and incongruous against the dim silence of this street. A wash of scents came out, intertwining and seeming to beckon the Granger family inside the dark and mysterious shop. With a sense of grim resolution Archie went first, followed by Addie, who wasn't trying at all to hide her trepidations. Hermione followed last, latching the door behind her. With that one simple action she had a feeling she could not explain. A feeling that this visit to this woman could change everything. It gave her a sense of hope, but she quickly quenched that sense. She was simply giving into the emotional state of things. She was reasonable and logical. She always had been. She needed to approach this with the same state of mind.

The lighting within was stereotypically dim and almost a bit smoky from the burning incense around. Hermione smelled cinnamon, lavender, cardamom, vanilla and sandalwood. She couldn't decide if the mix of scents was pleasing, or murder to her olfactory nerves. She felt her eyes water a bit. Any light in the shop came from candles. In fact, a quick observatory gaze about the room showed her that there appeared to be very few, if any, electrical implements lying around. At the back of the shop a smaller room was closed off, albeit ineffectually, by hanging strands of beads in all sorts of colors. They appeared to be crystal, and caught the dancing candlelight.

They also tinkled pleasantly when they moved, as they did just now. A woman emerged from the back. She was a bit on the large boned side, but she moved through her tiny shop with the grace of a fairy. Hermione had expected her to be wearing a headscarf and a blouse and skirt of hippy influence, or more like gypsies. But the woman, who had to be Violet Peekins, wore a pale purple robe. Not a bathrobe, by any means, but a tailored violet floor-length robe, adorned around the collar by embroidery and sewn on crystal pieces. Her hair was not bound under a scarf in stereotypical gypsy fashion, as Hermione had expected it would be, but instead wound into a complicated looking plait that she allowed to dangle down to the small of her back. And instead of being dark and Eastern European, the way Hermione had expected, her features were far more Nordic: pale blonde hair, deep blue eyes, light skin. Already she had defied everything Hermione had expected of her, which made Hermione feel immediately uncomfortable, and quickly put her on the defensive.

When Violet Peekins finally spoke her voice was reminiscent of the tinkling bells on the door. "Welcome, welcome. You must be the Grangers."

"Did your crystal ball tell you that?" Hermione interjected immediately. She knew it sounded pert and rude, but she felt the need to establish a wall between them straight away.

Violet Peekins stared momentarily at the girl, then at her parents, who appeared simply mortified. She looked back at the girl and smiled. "No, dear, my day timer told me that. As for your names, Archibald, Adeline, and Hermione Granger, my friend Dr. Briar told me those. While I do deal in New Age solutions, which can involve a bit of divination, I also practice good business skills." With that she gave a knowing wink in Hermione's direction. "Why don't you come to the back. We'll sit down and see what we can discover about your little girl."

As defensive and skeptical as Hermione felt she still found herself trailing behind her parents and the purple-clad spiritualist. She followed them behind the crystal curtain and huffed with impatience as a strand of crystals became entangled in her hair. Violet Peekins approached her and tried to assist, but Hermione refused to let herself be helped by this woman. In the end she disengaged, but several strands of her brown hair were caught between the beads and crystals. She took a seat and crossed her arms over her chest, not at all pleased by how the visit was going this early on.

"So. Dr. Briar told me a few things about you, but I'd like to hear you tell me about your predicament."

Archie and Adeline spent the next quarter of an hour going through Hermione's life story and the problems they'd all faced. Hermione sat sullenly, staring at the things around her. She couldn't deny she was disappointed by the lack of a crystal ball in Ms. Peekins's inner sanctum. She'd been looking to use that to disprove the whole New Age thing. She did catch a glimpse of a cauldron on a stand over a miniature fire pit. What that could be used for Hermione did not want to conjecture. As it was her mind was already reciting Act IV scene 1 of Macbeth.

"Hermione."

She looked up suddenly, her thoughts broken into. "Yes, Ms. Peekins?"

The woman smiled. "Oh, call me Violet. Or Vi. I've never been one for formalities. Now. I've been doing some reading and research ever since Quincy Briar rang me up and told me you may be coming to see me."

"Excellent. I'm glad to know this will be steeped in research," Hermione said flatly, her arms still crossed over her chest.

Violet smiled tenderly. "You're a skeptic. It's natural, especially in someone of your talents and abilities. You have a natural predisposition toward questioning everything around you, especially those things which don't seem to have a logical explanation. And to you, what I do is not logical."

"I won't deny that."

"Excellent. This gives us somewhere to begin."

"What exactly are you doing?" Archie broke in, concerned.

"Talking to your daughter. There are a few things I'd like to do after, but I want to start by simply talking to her."

"Oh, I don't know if you'll get much of anywhere, she can be quite impossible sometimes," Addie said nervously.

"I think she and I will get on just fine, given time," Violet said warmly. "Actually, perhaps you two could leave us? There are chairs and some light refreshments out in the foyer." It was less of a suggestion and more of a tacit command.

Hermione watched in surprise as both her parents nodded in agreement and left, the crystal curtain caroling in their wake. "Why did you do that?" she asked.

"I think we'll get somewhere more effectively if they're not here, jumping in after every less than savory thing you say," she said, a slight knowing twinkle in her deep blue, almost indigo, eyes. "I feel that you feel held back. Like you know that no matter what you say they'll jump in and explain it away. Or apologize for you. I don't want that, I want to see you, raw and unimpeded by your parents' presence. I want to talk to you, not to them about you."

Hermione processed this. Much as she wanted to play defensive, hard-to-get skeptic, Violet Peekins was offering her what she'd wanted since this whole odyssey of specialists and testing had begun. She wanted to talk to her. Hermione uncrossed her arms and leaned in a bit. "What do you want to talk about?"

"Well, I'd like you to tell me a few things about yourself. Then I'll ask you a few questions I've found in my research, then I'll look at your aura and do a reading. Yes, that's the imprecise part of things," she said, noting Hermione's darkened expression. "To you, at least. It's something I've studied and specialized in. And I think, if I'm reading the signs right, it's something you may end up studying as well." She blinked rapidly and came back to the room and the table. "But first things first."

Violet asked Hermione a series of questions, largely related to her interpersonal interactions. To Hermione's surprise she asked very little about her prodigy status or intelligence. She had to admit that it felt good, for once, to come to a 'specialist' and not have that be the focus of the visit.

"How do you feel about systems, Hermione? Rules, regulations, authority... that sort of thing."

Hermione thought for a moment. "Well, I am aware that rules exist to facilitate the running of a society, and that without them it'd be anarchy. If a system existed that was free from consequences, then it'd be chaos. Social norms and mores would fly out the window. It'd be a devolution in human society."

"Yes, I'd agree with that. But how do you feel about it all?"

"Oh, sorry, right. I accept the need for rules and regulations, but feel that they often leave little room for creative approaches to problem solving. Sometimes they're far too rigid. And while they work for the majority, what about the minority? Take the concept of the debtors' prisons in Dickensian London. You have to go to prison because you can't pay your debt? How can you possibly earn enough in prison to pay back a debt? It was asinine. Thankfully things have since changed, but—"

"Alright, alright, I see you've got a bit of a social conscience," Violet said with a smile. "Nothing wrong with that though. We need more young people wanting to make a difference these days."

"I'd like to think I'm one of those," Hermione said simply. "I'm okay with rules that have a reason, but when they're just there and there's no rhyme or reason, and they're horribly unfair to the disenfranchised members of society... that's when I get upset with them."

"As is your right to, Hermione. Now, how are things socially?"

Hermione observably cringed. "You had to ask."

"It's part of my job, Hermione. I'm guessing right away they're not great."

"No... not really," she said, trying to tell herself she could be honest with Violet Peekins. "The hard thing is there's no one out there quite like me. Even the gifted groups my mum has tried haven't done much. The children there are nice enough, and they're gifted. But... that's just it, they're gifted. Most of them aren't prodigies, and most of them really don't seem to care about the things I care about. They all want to play chess and solve maths problems and brag about the languages they learned over the summer."

"What about you?"

"I want to talk about how we can use what we've been given to change the world," Hermione blurted out without even thinking. She clapped her hand over her mouth, brown eyes wide with shock. "I...I..."

"You just told me what you want most in life," Violet said knowingly. She reached out a strong, pale hand and patted Hermione's other hand. "It's alright, dear. We all want something out of life, and sometimes it's tough for us to decide how to do it. And it's tougher because in your position very few people will take you seriously because one, you're really just a child, but two, your attitude is that of a very wise adult. It shows adults their flaws and faults and they don't usually like that. They label you as pert, arrogant, and a problem child, when in fact you intimidate them."

"How can you tell me all this?" Hermione whispered. "It's... it's so true. But you're not a scientist... you can't go to school for things like, like... well, like this!" she said, gesturing to the cauldron and bottles of odd ingredients scattered around the small, candle lit room.

Violet laughed lightly, but not at Hermione's incredulousness. "You'll find, very soon, I imagine, that school isn't always what you think it is. There are other things out in the world, things you can't understand just yet. Now, if you please, I'd like to read your aura."

Hermione didn't know how or at what point she'd suddenly decided to respect this woman, but it must have been very recently, because she felt no desire to refute the idea of an aura reading with some pert, scholarly comment about the lack of scientific credibility to aura readings. She just asked, in an uncharacteristically small voice, "Violet... what's an aura?"

"Oh, right, I'm sorry," Violet said with an apologetic smile. "It's usually a halo of colour surrounding you. In my line of work we use it to identify body malfunctions–you know, if a medical doctor is having trouble diagnosing an illness, the patient could see someone like me, and we'd look at the aura and be able to tell where the disturbance was. Knowing that, the aura could be used to heal. It's the manifestation of life energy in every living person," she finished, her voice so convincing that even Hermione the genius skeptic almost believed her right then and there. "Come on, dear, close your eyes and let me work my magic."

Hermione obeyed without question. She sat straight in the chair, eyes closed, but still able to see the shadows of Violet's hands passing before her eyelids. She tried to relax, to breathe deeply, to ignore the strange sensations that were growing within her entire body. And then it felt almost as though she could see faint hints of deep blue behind her closed eyelids. The blue grew deeper and deeper until it was almost black.

Hermione gasped and her eyelids flew open. Only instead of seeing Violet sitting across from her at the small table she saw the dancing flames and shadows on the ceiling. She was prostrate, staring up. The carpet beneath her was soft, clean, black shag. She tried to find her voice, but it was hard. "Wh...what... happened," she croaked, trying to sit up.

Violet appeared at her side and helped her to a sitting position, though would not let her back into the chair. "You need to sit for a bit. You blacked out. Probably forgot to breathe. Her, sip this."

Hermione took the silver goblet Violet offered to her and took a swig, expecting water. It had the consistency of water, but somehow made her feel stronger, better than any water could make her feel after something like this. "Everything went blue before I passed out," she confessed quietly.

"Yes, I noted your Ajna Chakra, the Indigo one, is particularly strong."

"What does it do?" Hermione asked, forgetting for the moment that she was not supposed to place any truth or belief in things as silly as auras. Any aura she needed to be concerned with was back at the chemistry lab, in the mass spectrometer. Or was it?

"The Ajna Chakra is the one associated with the Third Eye." She laughed gently when she saw Hermione's hand fly up to touch her forehead. "No, no, Hermione. It's not a physical thing. It's metaphysical. It has to do with your awareness of time. It gives you a unique sense of intuition that many children your age lack."

"What does this mean for the rest of my life?" Hermione asked, sounding miserable. "It may explain some of my personality, but it doesn't help the situation much."

"Oh, I think it does," Violet said. "I think knowing this will make a future occurrence seem a bit less strange to you and your family. And I think it'll make a decision about that occurrence very easy for you."

"Now you're using your crystal ball," Hermione grumbled, trying to get back up to her feet.

"No, tea leaves," Violet said with a wink, helping her. "But in honesty, you are a gifted child in many different ways. Not all of them bad," she added. "You have potential to do amazing things."

"I know that, I've been told that all my life."

"But something is coming that will make that a reality." Violet firmly steered Hermione through the curtain, being careful not to get her bushy hair tangled in the strands again. "Your daughter's going to be even greater than she is now," she announced, delivering a still-pale Hermione to her parents. "Something will happen in just a few short weeks, something that you won't expect, and probably won't understand, but need to accept and allow Hermione to decide upon."

"Oh..." was all Addie and Archie could say, flashing puzzled looks between one another. They then looked toward their pale and swaying daughter. "Hermione!"

"Don't worry, she'll be fine," Violet reassured them. "Just give her some warm tea and a long lie-in tomorrow, and I guarantee she'll be back to her usual shenanigans in no time."

"Thank you, Ms. Peekins," Archie said, rising and taking out his checkbook. "How much do we owe you?"

Violet suddenly looked far more serious and imposing than she had looked all afternoon. "I can't accept your payment for this. It's not every day someone in my line of work meets someone like your daughter. The pleasure was truly all mine, and I can't accept your money." She ushered the Grangers out of her shop. "Thank you again. Please phone, or call again," she added. And finally, "Hermione... you will find your place," she called reassuringly.

Addie and Archie smiled politely and Hermione waved, lackluster as her parents led her away from the shop. It was only when they'd boarded the tube she realized that she'd completely forgotten to ask about Muggles and Wizards.