Hermione Investigates
Chapter 2
After several days during which I did not hear back from Tonks, I was terribly anxious for news about Voldemort. The catch was that, living in a quiet Muggle suburb, I heard almost no important wizard news. The DAILY PROPHET, which was delivered by owl every morning, said nothing about the Dark Lord.
I was tempted to visit the Weasleys for a while and get news that way. But as I was getting older, I was starting to realize the practical side of things. The Weasleys were a poor family and had four children to pay Hogwarts tuition for, having already put Percy, Charlie, and Bill through. Though they never complained about it, my visits, and Harry's, meant another mouth to feed.
But why should visiting always go that direction?.
"Mum?" I asked at dinner. "Do you mind if I have a friend from Hogwarts over for a couple of days?"
"That would be nice, Minnie. Who are you thinking of inviting?"
"Harry, or Ron."
"Hmm," said Dad. "Maybe it would not be good to have a boy over, Minnie. People would gossip, and we don't want them speculating too much on where you go to school during most of the year."
"Oh." It hadn't occurred to me that people would interpret the visitor as a boy friend, because I never thought of Harry or Ron that way. What about a girl? "Ginny Weasley, then." Ginny wasn't as close a friend as Ron was, but she would certainly be in as much in touch with Wizard news as her brothers.
My parents were agreeable, so the next day, when the owl delivered my Daily Prophet, I gave it an extra snack, attached a note to its leg, and asked it to take it to Ginny. I never have figured out how owls know who everybody is and where they live, but I got a message back from Ginny the next day. "That would be cool, coming for a visit. Living at home with a lot of brothers, I don't get much chance for girl talk in the summer. There's one teenaged witch who lives nearby, but everybody calls her Loony, for good reason. I'd love to come."
Girl talk wasn't exactly what I had in mind, but it would do far a start.
We worked out logistics in subsequent notes. Ginny knew how to get to and around King's Cross Station, so she would look for the rail line that would take her to my town, and make sure that she had enough "Muggle money" (pounds sterling) to pay her way, including a return ticket. Mum and I would pick her up at the local railway station.
"I think I see your friend," Mum said after the train stopped at the platform.
"How do you know?" I was trying to remember whether Mum had ever meant Ginny.
Mum giggled. "Because she's wearing a T-shirt with a full-length skirt. You told me that wizards had a rather different fashion sense. Besides, she has that very red hair."
Mum was right about it being Ginny. When we walked up to her, she was very polite to Mum; Mrs. Weasley had taught her well, in spite of the fact that she had 6 rather wild older brothers. We led her to the car. Ginny was familiar with Muggle cars, but was disappointed that ours couldn't fly or expand to accommodate more passengers.
I had warned her in advance not to talk in front of my parents about Voldemort; I had not decided yet how to break the news that a powerful and dangerous wizard had come back to life. Unfortunately Ginny hit on another awkward subject.
"Have you heard from Krum lately?" she asked.
"We've exchanged letters," I said reluctantly.
"Who is Crumb?" asked my mother, who heard us from her driving seat.
"He's nobody," I said hastily.
"Nobody!" echoed Ginny indignantly. I had forgotten that she was a big Quidditch fan, and hoped to join the Griffindor team this year or next. "Why, he's the most famous Quidditch player in the world. And he took HERMIONE to the Christmas dance! All the other girls were so jealous."
Even looking at the back of Mum's head, I could tell that my Mum was startled by that information. Being separated from me for much of the year, Mum and Dad still tended to think of me as their little girl, their Minnie. I got the impression that once Ginny had gone back home, my mother would want to have a long awkward conversation about being careful with boys, particularly sport stars. "So how is Neville?" I asked, to change the subject.
"Oh, he and I aren't going out together anymore. Nice boy, but often shy." She started comparing the merits of several boys at Hogwarts and seemed to forget about Krum.
Mum had to go back to work at the dentistry office, so she dropped off Ginny and me at our house. As I looked at the shrubbery by our front door, I had an odd sense of déjà vu. Four years ago, the same day that I had heard of Hogwarts for the first time, I had found a piece of paper in the bushes, which simply said "FIND HARRY POTTER". I later sought out Harry on the Hogwarts Express, under pretext of looking for Neville Longbottom's missing toad, and that day had changed my life. I never found out where that note came from.
Ginny meanwhile was fascinated by the "Muggle Machinery" in my house – washing machines, Hoovers for picking up dirt, and so on. She even interpreted light switches, which I took for granted, as "machines for turning on lights, like Dumbledore's Deluminator".
"I brought my wand with me," Ginny said with some embarrassment . "Mum said I couldn't use it because of Under-age Sorcery rules, and besides that it might muck up your electronics, but I'd feel naked without it."
"It's all right. I keep mine hidden in my dresser in my room."
I took her to my room, and was startled when she said "EEK! I didn't know that you collected bugs, Hermione." She pointed to a jar with a beetle inside.
"Oh," I said. "That's not a real bug. That's Rita Skeeter, stuck in her own spell. She turned herself into an insect to eavesdrop on us talking to Dumbledore."
"My brothers told me. But they said you planned to let her go when you got back to London."
"Changed my mind, and decided to let her stew a while longer, after thinking of all the rotten things she wrote about me. Do you think that's terribly vindictive of me?"
"Not at all."
So we exchanged confidences, now and after dinner. She wanted to know what it was like, growing up as a Muggle girl. And she mentioned a few things that I had not heard at Hogwarts.
"I love horses. When I was a younger, Mum and Dad sent me to some cousins who had girls my age. They owed horses and taught me how to ride. Later, when I was trained to ride brooms, I thought it was like horse riding, just in 3 dimensions. Do you ride?"
"No. But there is a riding stable on the edge of town, if you want to rent a horse for a day."
Later:
"There's something odd about my ancestry. On Dad's side I was the first girl in 7 generations, and I was born only after Mum had 6 boys. But nobody knows if that's significant, or just a coincidence. Trelawney says I'll get a famous husband. But that's so old-fashioned, and I'm not looking forward to it at the moment."
It wasn't until late that night, when we were in bed, that I brought up the most important subject. "You heard Harry's story, didn't you? When Dumbledore announced it to the school?"
I couldn't see Ginny in the darkness. But I felt her tense up. "Yes. That HE's back. And that he might play with my head again."
Ulp, I forgot that Ginny had had her own history with Voldemort, being possessed by that ghost or whatever. "I don't think he'll target you again. Last time he was very limited in his power, and you happened to be the only one in reach. This time –"
"This time he could cast his curse on everybody, if he's not stopped!"
"People are working to stop him. Like Dumbledore. And-" I hesitated, hoping Ginny could suggest others.
"Dad's away a lot. I think he's doing extra work at the Ministry, helping devise strategy against – HIM."
My heart sank. I knew, that Mr. Weasley's usual duties at the Ministry had to do with regulating magical artifacts to keep them from being discovered by Muggles. He would be far less likely to be called to work against Voldemort than Tonks would.
If only Tonks would get back to me-
(AUTHOR'S NOTE: The story about finding the note instructing Hermione to seek out Harry is from my previous story HERMIONE GRANGER AND THE ALTERNATE UNIVERSE)
(AUTHOR'S NOTE: My notion that Ginny is fond of horses is based on the fact that her Patronus takes that form.)