Desiring Other Times
Chapter 20 – Advantage
Disclaimer: You know you're addicted when you start reading all of these for funny things… No, no, NO! I don't own Harry Potter!!
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It's time. Time to move through the world of magic again, time to start becoming someone as powerful as the wizard I should have been. Enough ambient magic has been flowing through me that I could put Dumbledore to shame, and I always knew having access to the Black library would be useful.
They'll call me a Squib that doesn't know my place. But I'll show them that I'm worth more than someone like Malfoy, more than my brother, even.
I'll be incredible. I'll be legendary.
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"And that comes to one hundred and fifteen dollars. Are you paying by credit or cash?" The lady behind the counter looked at me expectantly, although a little twitching at her lips betrayed the fact that she was seriously wondering where my parents were.
"Cash, actually," I replied smoothly, and watched her eyebrows rise momentarily. I took out a wallet, pulled out two fifties and a twenty and laid them on the counter.
"Certainly…" She took the notes and rather clumsily worked at the teller. Most of the customers paid by credit card, but the optical store had been one of few in the area that accepted cash. Once she had put the money away and printed out my receipt, she slid the receipt into a plastic bag and handed it to me.
"Thankyou for choosing Eyecare Services, sir!" She parroted, but I was already slipping out the store.
"How did it go?" Hermione fell into step beside me when I exited.
"Fine. They managed to get them all made in time…" I replied, referring to the fact that I couldn't continue wearing the conjured contacts for much longer (they placed far too much strain on my eyes).
"Well? Are you going to show me?"
"Show you what?"
She huffed. "You wouldn't tell me what design you'd chosen. So?"
I grinned. "Hang on a bit, I'll put some in." I took out a box of contacts and a bottle of tear fluid. "Hold on to this, will you?"
A quick trip to the bathrooms, much fumbling with the contacts and I was back out again. Hermione stood up from the bench she had sitting on while waiting, and peered into my eyes.
"They're… green. You don't… didn't have green eyes!" She exclaimed, rather unnecessarily.
"Of course. I always wanted eyes like Harry's…" Then grinned. "But I have other ones, too. Normal brown ones, and…" Fishing around in the bag, I pulled out one box. "Cat's eyes!"
Hermione quirked an eyebrow. Then she frowned. Then she glared at me. "Jeremy, are you trying to freak someone out…?"
"Erhe… Of course not!" I blustered, not fooling anyone at all.
"Jeremy…" She muttered in a rather McGonagall-like tone, the tone that said You've-Done-Something-Wrong-And-I-Know-You-Know-I-Know.
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"Jeremy! What in Merlin's name do you think you're doing?!"
Hermione's rather scandalised voice cut through the silence of the empty hall, and the robed figure at the Goblet of Fire froze.
"How do I say this…" Jeremy's voice was wry.
"I'm in half a mind to tell the Headmistress that you're trying to enter yourself in the Tournament!" She stormed up to Jeremy.
"Well, neither half of you will remember it!" Jeremy whipped around and pointed an unfamiliar wand at Hermione. "Obliviate!"
Hermione blinked, a little confused. Jeremy took the chance to stride across the Age Line – and remarkably, walk across it unscathed – and drop a piece of parchment in the Goblet.
Just as he let go of the parchment, Hermione blinked the last of the confusion away. "Jeremy! What in Merlin's name do you think you're doing?!"
"Troublesome brat…!"
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"Hermione? Are you feeling okay?" I tugged at Hermione's sleeve, and she slowly turned to face me. I nearly gagged when I saw her face was twisted into a maniacal grin, one that I thought should belong only on the witch's face in Hansel and Gretel. The mask-like expression seemed to shimmer and it shifted as she moved, in such a manner that I was sure if she moved fast enough, she could leave the 'mask' behind and it would take a matter of seconds to catch up to her. I grimaced, and shut my eyes tightly, wishing, willing, commanding the eyes to just stop telling the future.
"Jeremy? I… I thought… Where were…" Her voice seemed confused, utterly disorientated. I opened my eyes (thankfully, I could see normally again) and peered at her. She was blinking rapidly, and looked rather agitated. It was her eyes that clued me in to the fact that something seriously wrong had happened, and she wasn't just acting weird due to lack of sleep.
Her eyes were covered in a sort of grey cloud, like cataracts except it was, well, grey. "We're going to the Sick Bay, Hermione." I told her in a hushed whisper, and dragged her out of the fourth year common area.
"Jeremy? Where are we going? Don't we have… um…" She continued speaking in half sentences the whole way, and it was with a very panicky expression that I burst into the Sick Bay and yelled for a nurse.
"Miss! There's something wrong with Hermione!" I bellowed, and some of the nurses turned to look at me. One stood up from her desk and waved away the others, who returned to whatever it was they were doing. The nurse approached Hermione and I.
She frowned when nothing conspicuously wrong seemed apparent, but I tapped just under my eye and she took a closer look at Hermione's eyes. Nurse Windham's own pair widened, then she frowned.
Windham straightened, and ushered Hermione to a bed. Hermione was still babbling brokenly, which only seemed to make Windham's jaw tighten. "Stay here with her, this is something the Headmistress needs to know about."
I nodded, a little confused. It wasn't like Hermione was missing an arm or a leg, and she only seemed Confounded, in a general sort of manner. But Confounded people's eyes didn't turn grey, and they didn't speak in half-sentences as if they were losing their train of thought every ten seconds…
A few seconds later, Headmistress Eckhard swept in with Nurse Windham in tow. Windham was twisting her hands worriedly and seemed paler than before, neither of which reassured me at all.
Windham drew the Privacy Curtains about the bed, while the Headmistress drew up a chair, and peered into Hermione's eyes, lifting the eyelids gently to better see Hermione's eyeballs. She frowned even more as she listened to Hermione's continuing broken speech, then sat up. "She's been Obliviated."
"What?" I replied.
"Obliviated, had her memories removed, Mr. Potter. I'm sure they covered that in Charms at Hogwarts…"
"I know what Obliviated means, but how… how?" I gestured at Hermione, finding no words to phrase my question appropriately.
"Ah." Eckhard nodded. "A little… enchantment that is cast when any student signs the enrolment form. It allows for some protection against unsanctioned spells, and is only lifted when the student receives their graduation certificate and leaves the grounds."
My jaw dropped – enchantments like these actually existed? "So… can you… heal her? Find out who did this to her?"
Here, Eckhard and Windham exchanged unreadable looks. "Perhaps. How long has it been since you last saw her when she was 'normal'?"
I shrugged. "Last night. Before we went to bed."
A little silence.
"I found her this way this morning." I added.
"So sometime during the night, Miss Granger was Obliviated," mused Eckhard. "I will consult the records and check for unusual activity." She stood up, and nodded to Windham, then me. Taking one last glance at Hermione, Headmistress Eckhard slip past the curtains.
Windham sighed. "It would be best if you stayed – she is highly disorientated and will not take well to being left alone." I nodded. "I'll be back in a bit." She left as well, but was back within a minute, carrying a tray of potions, two pairs of thin plastic gloves and a few thin strips of white cloth that seemed to shimmer.
Setting the tray on the bedside table, she picked up a pair of gloves and held them out to me. "Put these gloves on." I did, and waited as she put on a pair as well.
"Tie this around her head so her eyes are covered," was the next instruction, and I took the strip of cloth.
"Won't she get even more nervous?"
"They're spelled so she can see through them. But we need to see when to change them, so they will be opaque to us."
I nodded, and continued to follow her instructions while she poured out some doses of potion. The cloth, apparently, helped leech out the magic that had modified her mind and also returned the enrolment enchantment to its normal state. The crystal blue potion calmed Hermione down, while the dull purple potion encouraged her magic to find any intrusions into her mind and expel them.
Windham disappeared after giving Hermione her first dose of potion, and returned twenty minutes later with a chart.
"As you can see on this chart, it shows when it is the ideal time to change the Leeching Cloth. Right now, the cloth is turning blue, and it will soon become dark green. Make sure to change it before it turns yellow."
I nodded, and she left, returning only once to deliver a bookbag. "Your dorm's house-elf collected the books you need for assignments," she explained. "The house-elves somehow know when you are unable to do your work and arrange for you to have access to the resources you need." Windham smiled wryly.
"Seriously?" I murmured, a little awestruck. I hadn't read about this service in the pamphlets… And the sheer number of house-elves required for every dorm of six to have one house-elf… it amazed me every time.
"House-elves… I used to…" Hermione frowned behind the cloth.
"Used to what?"
"…I…"
"She thought they were slave labour." A new voice spoke up. I looked up, and saw Melinda Niven had slipped through the curtains and was standing a little nervously at the foot of Hermione's bed. "I got sent a message, that Hermione… took sick."
"She was Obliviated."
She blinked, her eyes widened, then she nodded. "I see… that would explain what those are for, then."
I stared at her. "Does this happen often? People Obliviating each other, I mean."
"Not really. I mean, it happens a bit. Just not as often as well, people Stupefying each other, at least." Noting that there weren't any spare chairs (I had taken the one Eckhard had vacated), she pulled out her wand and conjured one for herself.
Melinda was one of Hermione's dorm mates, and it seemed that Hermione got on better with her fellow dorm mates here at Washington Academy than back at Hogwarts. Granted, anyone would be an improvement on Lavender, whose life goal seemed to be to memorise every bit of gossip there ever was and pass them on to everyone else.
At least, that's what I've heard about the girl. Can't really say I know her that well.
"So what were you saying? She thought they were slave labour?"
Melinda shrugged and had a 'what-can-you-say' kind of expression on her face. "Most house-elves don't get pay, holidays or anything like that like working humans do. She didn't seem to quite get the fact that they're happier that way, up until we asked if she would like it if aliens from outer space invaded and burned all the books and made it a law that no human was allowed to read."
I blinked. "How did that help?"
Melinda slapped a palm to her forehead in exasperation. "Because it… oh, never mind!"
I thought about what she'd said. "Ah! I get it, never mind."
She mumbled something under her breath, but didn't say anything.
"How long do most people take to heal? From this, I mean."
Melinda shrugged. "Most are released from the Sick Bay within a few hours, but some stay in here for a few days. Depends on how well the Memory Charm was done and how, um… how do I say this? Er… 'strong'? I guess that's an appropriate word… yes, well, it depends on how strong the victim's mind is."
"So the stronger, the faster she heals?"
She shook her head vehemently. "No, that's not it. The stronger, the slower, because… well, think about it this way. You have a cushion and a piece of wood. The cushion is softer, but it's easier to break the wood."
I made a face at all the analogies. "How do you know all this?"
Melinda made a face, too. "You would too if your brothers had a habit of keeping secrets from everyone… not that they ever succeeded, of course."
"Brothers? You have brothers?"
"I said had a habit of keeping secrets."
"Oh."
Uncomfortable, embarrassed silence filled the time as we waited for, well, something to happen. I watched the cloth on Hermione's eyes turn topaz blue, while Melinda sat there pretending to read a book. Hermione had fallen silent long ago, and seemed to be sleeping.
"They were killed by You-Know-Who." She said, all of a sudden. "At least, they got killed by one of his followers. It was only two years ago, and they'd just graduated… they joined some vigilante group and hared off to Romania after a Dark Wizard. The government found them with the Dark Mark floating above their bodies."
I looked at my hands that lay clasped in my lap. What was there to say?
"I promised myself that when I graduated, I would find whoever killed them and make sure they would pay." Here, she looked fiercely at me, and the force of her gaze made me look up at her, to meet her eyes.
"When I found out Hermione Granger was your friend, I wasted no time becoming friends with her. Thankfully, she was someone I could actually become real friends with, and it wasn't a painful task. When I heard you were coming here…"
I frowned at her. She had befriended Hermione so she could somehow make contact with me? Sure, they were friends now… or so she said. I fortified the Occlumency about my mind, and waited for Melinda to finish speaking.
"I know you're the Chosen One, Jeremy. I think we can help each other."
"What makes you think you can help me?" I challenged, demanded of her.
She didn't smile maniacally, she didn't smirk, she didn't do anything that set off alarm bells and flashing signs that read 'Evil Person Here'. Melinda spoke, and I couldn't find myself doing anything else other than listening to her.
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Author's Notes: I'm building up slowly to my normal chapter length. Sorry for the long break, I'm experiencing technical problems and a rather hectic timetable even though I've just graduated.
1. Contacts – there are lots of things other than just stuffing a piece of plastic into your eye. You have to make sure your eye doesn't dry up (hence the tear drop bottles), and you have to put them in some cleansing fluid for the night. They're not infallible, and there are all sorts of weaknesses to contacts.
2. Hogwarts is a school of around 250 students, add magic to the mix and there's only one nurse at the Hospital Wing?! This is Washington Academy, and Muggles are more likely to attend due to the hybrid curriculum, so more students, meaning more nurses.
3. Melinda Niven – Melinda is a modern name derived from the combination of 'Mel' (from Melanie) and the popular name suffix 'inda'. Melanie means 'black'. My preferred etymology for Melinda is 'Mel' and 'Linda' (where Linda means beautiful), so Melinda is literally translated here as Beautiful Dark. Niven means 'servant of the saint'.