Inventor Hermione

Harry and Hermione were tidying up after a DA meeting, while in another corner of the room, Parvati and Lavender were whispering to each other. Eventually they drifted over to Hermione, and Parvati asked in slight embarrassment: "Hermione, Lav and I have never seen muggle swimming costumes. Can you describe them for us?"

Hermione sat at a desk and told them, "I can do better than that." First she conjured a large white cardboard, and used a temporary sticking charm to adhere it to the stone wall. Then she mumbled a spell they'd never heard and couldn't make out – and a picture of a full-body female mannequin appeared on the board! Harry's eyebrows raised, but the girls' jaws dropped! They were speechless!

With another quiet spell, the mannequin in the picture began rotating slowly. Hermione asked: "First, tell me if this is a standard female swimsuit in the wizarding world." With a few more wand-waves and mumbles, a costume blossomed over the rotating model. It was black, ran from the neckline down to the knees, had sleeves to the elbows, and a ruffled skirt around the middle.

"L.. b... cl... Close!" Lavender stuttered, blown away by what she was seeing. "The sleeves should go to the wrist, the bottom to the ankles, the ruffled skirt closer to the thigh, and another ruffle covering the neck."

With a few wand-waves, the model adjusted itself, but kept rotating. Hermione said, "The first picture you saw was a popular muggle swimsuit from the 1890s. It figures that the current wizarding version is even more … modest." With two more waves, the old-fashioned costume disappeared, and a new costume appeared. It was a standard one-piece, colored pink, covering just from the breasts to the thighs, with shoulder straps and no sleeves or leggings. "This has been a modest swimsuit in the muggle world for most of the 20th century."

"Wow!" sang both girls, with Parvati adding, "Ooh, I want one!"

Hermione cleared the board again, and now a brief bikini appeared on the rotating model. The top covered the breasts, with only a pair of straps in the back to tie it on; the bottom only covered the buttocks and the pubic area. The color was white with yellow spots. The girls were blushing slightly, but seemed fascinated. Harry laughed out loud!

"What's so funny?" asked Lavender.

"There's a song about that costume," Harry replied, and sang: "It was an itsy-bitsy teenie-weenie yellow polka-dot bikini, that she wore for the first time today!" His voice was a bit croaky, but he held the tune well.

Hermione smirked, and explained: "This style was designed in the 1950s, and was considered daring at the time; but now it's so common and popular around the world that nobody even raises an eyebrow anymore."
"Remarkable," said Parv, "I can only imagine how thrilled Madam Malkin will be when she gets hold of this!"

"Why would she get hold of this?" asked Hermione.

"Well – you can't just keep something this terrific to yourself!"

"Who said anything about keeping it to myself?"

"You're planning to keep it from Madam Malkin!"

"Not at all; after graduation, I plan to start my own business, licensing my inventions for people to use for a continuing fee, as long as they are honorable and don't discriminate."

"I don't get it, it doesn't seem fair!" said Lav, crestfallen. Harry took over the explanation.

"Look, girls," he began, "You know how amazingly brilliant Hermione is," she smiled and blushed slightly at this, "and you also know she is a muggle-born witch. Since you're both wizard-raised pure-bloods, it may never have occurred to you what-all that implies.

"By the time Hermione and I arrived here for First Year, she already knew about ten times as much as I did about the wizarding world. That's because first, she had almost a year to read up and study on it, while I only had a month; second, she's a far better student than me; third, she had parents who supported her talents and dreams, while I had relatives who hate magic and me in equal measure, didn't want me to even come here, and some summers, have even locked up my books so I couldn't even study, read, or do my summer homework." All three girls gasped a little at this revelation; even Hermione had never heard Harry discuss his awful upbringing so candidly, and she suspected he was leaving a lot out.

"In spite of all that, I'm a half-blood from an old wizarding family, and famous for something I can barely remember and probably didn't even do. (I suspect it was all down to my mother's talent at charms.) In spite of all the ministry persecution and bad press this year, when the smoke clears, I will have privileges and opportunities that the social system here will try to deny to Hermione. It isn't right or fair; but in point of fact, realistically, it's true.

"I'm sure Hermione knows ten times as much wizarding law as I do; nevertheless, I know this: there are people in the wizarding world who would gladly steal Hermione's innovations and inventions, knowing that the worst they'd face if caught is a slap on the wrist. If she tried to work for the ministry, she'd be lucky to land in a dead-end clerk's job; if she tried to open a shop on Diagon Alley, it would only be a matter of time before some offended pure-blood either sabotaged it, or started a boycott of it. If she wanted to practice law or healing, she'd be relegated to assistant-ships, because most pure-bloods would rather see an inferior fellow-pure-blood, rather than a superior muggle-born. It's a very messed-up system, but I'm afraid it'll take more than one generation to fix it."

Hermione picked up the point: "Girls, one area that is still wide open is spell creation, and multiple-spell-chained inventions. Many of the modern innovations in wizarding Britain, such as the Wizarding Wireless, were invented and developed by talented muggle-borns; they're less invested in doing things the way they've always been done. One still-inviolate law for everyone, is that an invention or patent belongs to the inventor; if it didn't, they'd all leave Britain for friendlier places. But even then, they've always needed the sponsorship and protection from a non-muggleborn from an old family, if they wanted to market their innovation successfully. If I couldn't keep and profit from my ideas, I'd have no easy way to make a living in the wizarding world, and would have to make my way back into the muggle world – but first, I'd have to spend years on remedial muggle education. That's why I can't just 'give it away' to Madam Malkin."

The girls raised their long faces. "We're sorry," said Lav, "we didn't really realize how bad it was."

"We understand," replied Hermione, "most pure-bloods don't, even when they have the best of intentions."

"And I promise," added Harry fervently, "If all works out, and we all survive, and if I have the means, I want to be first in line to sponsor, support and finance Hermione's inventions."

"Aww!" said Parv, and the others all smiled.

"Anyway," said Hermione, "take this with you." She unstuck the cardboard picture from the wall, conjured a cloth covering to keep it private, and handed it to Lavender. "If you want to copy the bikini, do it quickly, and don't let anyone else see this thing!"

Both girls nodded eagerly, and left the Room of Requirement quickly.

After they'd left, Harry asked: "Why did you just give away your invention?"

"I didn't," Hermione replied, "I just gave them the swimsuit design to look at and copy – if they're smart. The picture will disappear in 45 minutes, and the cardboard will disappear in an hour. If they dally, and don't copy it in time, that's not my look-out. Anyway, I have no plans to go into swimsuits, as I don't think the witches will wear even the one-piece for another 50 years or so; they're too hide-bound. If Parv and Lav want to make bikinis, let 'em; they would only be able to wear them to muggle beaches, because they'd be arrested at wizarding beaches!"

"Clever as always," said Harry admiringly, "but how did you come up with such an innovative idea?"

Hermione sighed sadly, "I keep forgetting how much your awful relatives tried to keep you in ignorance, even of the muggle world. The idea is based on Computer-Aided Design, or CAD. The theory went back to 1950, and simple versions were developed in the 'sixties, but the first commercially-available version for the PC was released in 1983, called AutoCAD. It's been getting more and more sophisticated ever since. Doing something like that rotating mannequin, let alone the various costumes, is very doable with CAD, but would take miles of code on the computer. Fortunately, with magic, the process is much simpler and faster! (Of course, pure-bloods would have no idea what we're talking about.)"

"Excellent. Brilliant," said Harry. "If you don't mind my asking: what other excellent innovations has your great mind devised?"

Hermione blushed slightly, and said: "I don't mind telling you, Harry, because I do trust you; but I need you to keep the secrets. The wizarding world is almost at the point of the rapacious robber barons of the 1890s, as you well know, and a lot of them have zero ethical compunctions."

"I will, I want to, and I promise!" vowed Harry, and a pale yellow light surrounded his head like a halo, and then disappeared.

Hermione grinned, and began: "Well, first, obviously, would be the mannequin card, which you've seen; and while I wish I could do a 3-D version that you could touch, that will be much more complex to design, and will have to wait. Second, just as obviously, is magical television; if radio powered by magic is possible, TV can't be far behind. You know there's a market, if quidditch mania is as fierce as I suspect." Harry nodded, smiling. "Still working on that one. The next, with the bugs almost worked out, is magical egg-sorting. It will not only separate large from jumbo, for example, but also candle the eggs to prevent fertile eggs or chick embryos from ending up in your omelette!" Harry winced. "I won't license that one to anybody who would use it to put a wizard out of a job; but if someone has house-elves wasting their time, sorting and candling eggs, when there's other better and less repetitive work for them to do, there's the market.

"Next, I have ideas for magical recycling and garbage disposal. Where do you think wizarding trash goes?" Harry shrugged. "Don't feel bad, Harry; most wizards don't know either. Ministry wizards go out to new wizarding homes, and for a fee, they install a little 'pocket dimension' in the waste disposal system. It's like a big room that keeps expanding as it receives more waste. Witches and wizards think they're vanishing their wastes, but they're really only banishing it to these pockets. Unfortunately, there's a limit to how big that room can grow. Once it reaches the same size as the house itself, even one more tissue or wad of gum could cause it to collapse catastrophically, causing horrible smelly decomposing waste to fill the house. This could have been prevented by having the ministry send out a team to install a second empty pocket dimension; it can take decades, generations even, to fill a pocket, but it can take months to clean the waste and smell from the house after the explosion.

"But many pure-bloods don't know or care, or can't be bothered. Even though the ministry favors making or replacing pure-bloods' pockets first, relegating muggle-borns' houses to the back of the line, a number of these explosions happen every year. My idea is to have a four-part replacement system: first, one that collects human and animal wastes, plus kitchen scraps, tree trimmings, straw etc. left over from harvesting crops, and puts it all through a magically-accelerated composting process, to enrich the soil for gardens and farm crops. So instead of filling that pocket, it becomes a valuable, and even saleable, resource. Second, a chute for collecting broken or unwanted furniture, and other unwanted but fixable objects. These would be kept in a holding tank, till house-elves working for the recycling company could pop in, pick up the debris, and pop out with it, to see what could be salvaged, repaired and resold by specialist elves. Those elves who like their freedom, like Dobby, could enjoy direct compensation; while those elves that, like Winky, can't bear the insult of being a free elf, could still be rewarded non-monetarily, and treated extra well.

Third, the same as muggle recycling: scrap glass and metal, etc. The advantage is that sorting and transforming these wastes into useful glass blocks and metal ingots with magic, is much faster and cheaper than muggle methods. Fourth, cloth and clothing. Rather than end up in the landfill pocket under houses, it could be repaired and resold in second-hand clothing shops, or stripped down and remade into new fashions.

"Of course, the muggle-born and -raised would be the first to install this system; but once high-society types bragged about how their system actually made them money, while preventing pocket-collapse explosions, I suspect the market would grow. I have more ideas, but we'll save them for another day, as we're tired and nearly late for curfew."

"Hermione," said Harry, "I am endlessly impressed by your brilliance. When the time comes, remember to offer me the chance to help and support. I think we're both too tired to discuss this further tonight, but let's reserve some time together soon to talk."

"It's a date!" Hermione smiled, as she took his arm, and they led each other back to Gryffindor Tower.