Chapter 2: Witching Hour

Hermione curled contentedly in her favourite armchair tucked in the corner of her parents' study. Dark wood panelling and the scent of ink and books surrounded her like a blanket warmed by sunshine. She was never more content than she was in this chair, this room, with a book or two balanced precariously on her lap.

Hermione usually chose works that were well beyond her scope as a ten year old child - heavy tomes like Tolstoy and Tennyson that she stumbled over with dogged patience and a few kind explanations from her parents. Her father preferred biographies, reading them to her in his resonant baritone, sweeping his arm away from himself to emphasise his words. Her mother though had always preferred fiction.

Hermione's appetite for learning had earned her isolation in her small junior school class. Her exuberance had placed her on the receiving end of mean-spirited pranks and more than a few harsh words. She had learned to avoid the other children in the playground, ducking around the supervising teachers to sneak into the school library - but her father had taught her to never falter from the pursuit of knowledge, which was why she continued to raise her hand with every question she knew the answer to, despite the invariable consequences.

"Hermione dear!"

She looked up from the yellowing pages, eyebrows quirked in a frown and still trying to understand the flowery prose. Reaching over to the side table Hermione placed a lovely filigree bookmark between the sheets - never dog-earing, a cardinal sin if there ever was one - and stood to answer her mother's summons.

Her parents were in the kitchen, her mother icing what appeared to be a book-shaped cake. Hermione smiled. Her mother was never one for baking.

"Is that chocolate, mum?"

"Don't be ridiculous sweetheart," her father chirped, grinning at his wife from across the counter. "It's barely edible! I think the word you were looking for is 'charcoal'."

Mrs Granger huffed before smiling good-naturedly at her husband, and began to dab ineffectually at the brown icing that was threatening to smudge into the white. Hermione laughed and tilted her head to read the title piped with a careful hand across the top of the cake.

"A Winter's Tale," she read, reaching around her mother's arm to scoop a little icing into her mouth and blinking in surprise at the sweetness. Hermione's parents were usually quite strict with unnecessary sugar in her diet. Her teeth, though perhaps a little large at the front, were quite possibly the healthiest in her school.

"It's your birthday tomorrow Hermione, I thought it would be nice to have a cake that tasted like a cake should!"

"And what with everyone assuming we were inspired by A Winter's Tale, we thought we might lean into it this year," added her father, smiling down at his daughter and smoothing back her uncontrollable curls. Hermione leaned contentedly into her father's side and handed her mother the green icing, watching her pipe what appeared to be leafy vines across the cover of her cake.

Hermione awoke on the morning of her birthday with a smile. Though her parents tended to be quite busy they made sure to dote on their only child, delighting in their shared love of history and literature. It was tradition for her parents to close their surgery and keep Hermione from school - despite it being within the first few weeks of the new term - to spend the day together as a family. She could hear the muffled voice of her mother downstairs and scrambled to get out of bed, still struggling with her dressing gown when she slid into the kitchen and into her parents' arms.

Hermione was just sitting down to her special breakfast - scones with jam, fresh strawberries and clotted cream that her father had purchased from her favourite tea shop for the occasion - when there was a firm knock at their front door.

"Knock, knock, knock! Who's there?" Her mother sang.

"Faith, here's an English tailor come hither for stealing out a French hose," her father recited, eyes twinkling at his wife and daughter.

"Macbeth," laughed Hermione, playing the game. "That one was easy, though I don't think the person at the front door needs a goose roasted."

Her father snorted and patted his mouth with his napkin before excusing himself from the breakfast table to answer the door. He had only been gone for a few minutes when, in a strained tone, he called for his wife. Hermione glanced up at her mother curiously, lips dusted with crumbs, watching as she shrugged and stood. With her mother gone, Hermione gave into temptation and reached into the pocket of her dressing gown for a diminutive book with a fading blue cloth cover and began to read. She usually wasn't allowed books at the table.

So engrossed in the text was Hermione that it took a few moments to realise her parents were watching her from the doorway. She glanced up guiltily, excuses at her lips, but was surprised into silence by the tall woman who stood between them. Her clothing was almost ridiculous, moss-green velvet flowing like liquid to the floor, clasped at her throat with a gold brooch shaped like a crescent moon. Perched atop a sternly secured slightly-greying bun was a conical hat. Hermione blinked - had her parents gone so far as to hire a pretend witch for her birthday?

The woman smiled at her and despite the stranger's stern countenance Hermione found herself smiling back, the hairs on the back of her neck prickling in a strange but not unpleasant way. Hermione's parents stood transfixed, staring at their daughter, jumping slightly when the woman addressed them with a strangely familiar accent.

"Isn't it peculiar how many things one can miss simply because we think them impossible?"

A/N: Please do review, if you have a spare minute!