AN: This wouldn't get out of my head. And I have no idea where it came from. And yet, I find myself liking the idea enough to call it canon.
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Dr. Jane Granger, PhD, D.D.S., wife to Dr. Steven Granger, D.D.S., mother to Hermione Granger (no title, yet) had a mind like a steel trap. Before the family had even left the train station, the very first time they had picked up their daughter from Hogwarts, she realized her daughter had irrevocably changed.
And it wasn't just the bit about her being an honest-to-God witch, either.
So, looking to all the world like a proud parent listening to their child's stories about their time at boarding school (which she was), Jane Granger analyzed. As they left the station, she left Steven to do the questioning. When they reached their car, she simply slid into the passenger seat, letting Steven handle the driving.
She didn't want to split her attention between her daughter and London traffic, after all.
Before the Granger family had left downtown London, Jane had traced the source of Hermione's change to the fact that she had finally met other kids her age that could give her a mental run for her money. If she had been paying less attention, she probably would have chalked it up to Padma Patil and Su Li, her daughter's closest friends in her own House.
However, Jane was paying a great deal of attention, and noticed things the vast majority did not. In her opinion, the far more likely culprit was the Slytherin girl Hermione had befriended, Tracey Davis. She had noticed the way Professor Sprout, on the day she had come to the Granger home to announce Hermione was a witch, had described Slytherin House with distaste, albeit distaste she had tried very hard to hide behind professional neutrality.
Not to mention, Jane didn't need her Doctorate in 16th Century Literature to tell the difference between Cleverness and Cunning, especially since the former was paired with Studiousness, and the latter with Ambition.
It wasn't until midway through a late dinner that another name appeared on Jane Granger's radar. One Jane was familiar with, given the fact she had read several of Hermione's history and current events books on the magical world.
Apparently, Harriet Potter herself was in the same year as Hermione. Sorted into Slytherin, and quite close to Tracey Davis herself. And, by Hermione's own admission, perilously clever. And Hermione was not one to praise the minds of others like that. It was enough to make Jane speak up and enquire for more details.
"Honestly, mum, she's brilliant. I mean, I test better than she does, of course I do, she doesn't have perfect recall. And I get the feeling she doesn't fully apply herself to her examinations, either. I mean, I've seen her get test questions wrong that she answers perfectly both before and after the exam. But I dare say she has the sharpest mind in our year, myself included, and it might not be particularly close."
On the drive from London, Jane had been impressed that Hermione had acknowledged Padma, Su, and Tracey to be near her intellectual equal. Hermione had never been one to dole out praise lightly.
Now she found herself just this side of flabbergasted. She herself had difficultly wrapping her quite formidable mind around the concept of a girl Hermione's age with a potentially demonstrably higher IQ.
A girl that, at eleven years old, was already purposefully sabotaging her test scores to not stand out, generally being a slippery person to track down, and, as Hermione had mentioned earlier, was in the habit of knowing things.
It was nearly enough to send a shiver down her spine.
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During Hermione's second year at Hogwarts, when her weekly letters suddenly stopped with no warning, Jane Granger wrote her first letter to Harriet Potter. The twelve year old girl had freely admitted to the fact that something had happened to Hermione, but had artfully danced around the details. Instead, the young witch turned the conversation to Jane herself, mentioning that Hermione had once told her that her mother was a formidable chess player.
And so, Jane Granger found her weekly letters from her daughter exchanged for daily letters from a girl who spoke in riddles that challenged her to chess by mail.
Jane hadn't played chess seriously since her days at University, but her daughter's eidetic memory hadn't sprung from nowhere after all, and she accepted the challenge gladly.
Originally, Jane had set the old board in the sitting room up to keep the game fresh, but it took Harriet Potter less than a week to mention that she had no such board set within the castle.
You see, Mrs. Granger, magical chess sets have near sentient pieces, and I have yet to discover a set with the patience required to stand in for chess by mail. I'm afraid my memory will have to suffice.
The words were polite enough, but Jane Granger was both surprised and amused by the unstated challenge within.
The board in the Granger's sitting room was promptly returned to the default state, and the game continued solely in the minds of Jane Granger and Harriet Potter.
The game had begun on 3 November with a move of a white knight.
The game ended on 28 December with a move of the very same white knight capturing a black castle and placing the black king in checkmate.
Unless I am mistaken, that is both check and mate. Thank you for the game, it was most refreshing. That was the closest I have come to losing in quite some time. Even in absence of the game, I will continue to owl you with news, should I receive any.
Jane Granger eyed the snowy owl perched on her kitchen counter. Despite the seeming finality of the latest letter, the bird seemingly was told to wait for a response.
With her husband in the next room, Jane had to stifle a swear. She had decided before November was over that, win or lose, she was going to challenge Harriet Potter to another game.
Another thing the twelve year old had anticipated, apparently. Jane's eyebrow twitched. That girl was too clever by half. Not to mention a Master-level chess player. Jane hadn't lost a game of chess since before she had been pregnant with Hermione.
As she pondered her first move of the second game, Jane Granger vowed to never tell her husband about this. She would never live the it down.
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The second game ended on 3 March, when Jane Granger forced a draw.
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The fourteenth of May was Jane Granger's birthday. That evening, she received the most unexpected birthday present. A large barn owl unceremoniously dropped a thick, rectangular package on her kitchen table then flew back out the window that Jane kept open for Harriet's owl, Hedwig.
Under the thick, unmarked brown paper was a rather large book on dangerous magical creatures. Inside the front cover was a letter from the Girl-Who-Lived.
It began by the young witch bluntly claiming victory again, followed by a list of the moves that both parties would make over the next week, backing up her claim.
Jane felt her respect for the young witch rise several degrees, as she could find no fault in either sequence. However, the rest of the letter puzzled her.
Unfortunately, Mrs. Granger, I must end our correspondence here. Final examinations are coming up soon for me, and I believe you will find the book in your hand far more interesting than slowly losing another mental game of chess. Pages 490 and 618 should provide the answers you sought in your original letter to me.
H.L.P.
Proving once again that Hermione was truly her daughter, Jane Granger read the entire tome, cover to cover, in the next 24 hours. In that time period, she learned several things.
First, there existed a magical breed of snake known as a basilisk that could kill anyone who met its gaze, was horrifically venomous besides, could grow to impossible sizes, and was covered in scales that were mostly impervious to both magical and mundane methods.
Second, by all accounts, there was one such beast inside Hogwarts.
Third, by what had likely been a stroke of blind luck, the serpent hadn't killed her daughter, but merely petrified her.
Fourth, petrification was a reversible process, but the ingredients for the required potion were fairly difficult to obtain, and what seemed to be the primary active ingredient needed to be grown from scratch, a process that took nearly nine months.
Fifth and finally, Harriet Potter was in the habit of saying things she didn't mean. On page 490, the first one the attached letter had directed her to, there was a small note in the margin.
Knight to C5
And that note was only the first of many. Hidden in the margins of the massive tome she had received as a birthday gift, seemed to be the moves for an entire game of chess, planned entirely ahead of time.
During her initial read through of the book, Jane studiously ignored the notations, far more concerned with the actual material. It wasn't until nearly a month later that she came back to the book on a day off, and the one sided game of chess scribbled in the margins.
Once again, Jane Granger dusted off the board in the sitting room, sat down on the black side of the table with the book and a cup of tea, and played the game Harriet Potter had written down a month prior.
Once Jane had gotten to the fifth move, the notes began to grow more complex.
If you moved your Queen, Pawn to E4.
If not, Queen's Knight to E4.
A glance at the board confirmed her suspicions. Not only could both white Knights legally move to E4, thus the need for clarification, so could the pawn. But Jane's Queen hadn't moved from its starting square, in fact it couldn't as of yet. And she saw no reason to expose the piece this early.
However, if there was one thing Jane Granger had learned over the last nine months, it was that Harriet Potter was better than she was at chess. So Jane moved the requested Knight, only slightly confused.
And so the trend continued, with moves slowly giving way to If/Then statements. And rather quickly afterword, Jane noticed a pattern emerging.
Perhaps because of the fact that the entire game had been planned out ahead of time, but Harriet Potter was being strikingly more aggressive than she had been, previously. The girl had been nothing but cautious and careful in their previous games, always staying defensive and baiting her older opponent into taking the risks.
But this time, the young witch had seemingly sacrificed a Bishop on only her eleventh move, just to try to force Jane move her Queen from its starting position.
Jane just shook her head to herself, and captured the unguarded Bishop with a Pawn. Clearly, Harriet Potter had decided to change strategy. Perhaps, in time, Jane would see if there was method to her apparent madness.
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After just 31 moves, far less than their other games had taken, Jane Granger found herself, once again, in checkmate. Beaten by a girl younger than her daughter, when the girl had penned all of her moves a month prior.
Jane just packed away her chessboard and closed the book.
And if she drank an extra glass of wine or two with dinner, her husband didn't comment.
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AN: That last line amuses me far more than it probably should. Feel free to request snippets or otherwise heckle me via the box below.
I should also note that while my main character seems to be, I am no grand chess player. Please don't flay me alive if the moves I laid out don't make sense.
~ExaltedChaos