erstwhile-S: McG has her reasons. In fact, as much as possible I'm trying to make everyone here act in ways that make sense from their perspective, knowledge, and experience.
BOOK 1: HERMIONE GRANGER AND THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE
Chapter 8: Odds
Two Years Earlier
"So you learn math at school, right? Well here we do a different kind of math."
Hermione sat with Bacon in the back room underneath the bleachers at Bowton Downs. In fact, though neither knew it, they were sitting directly beneath a spectator's box in which Ma and Big Chris had once negotiated Hermione's future.
"But how do you know who's going to win?" asked Hermione. "You said you set the odds so that the house makes money, but you must need some idea who's going to win in order to do that."
Bacon merely smiled. "Nope. We don't have a clue. That's the beauty of the whole scheme."
Hermione frowned. "I don't get it." It visibly pained her to admit this.
"Say you're bookkeeping for a race, see," explained Bacon, "and ten blokes come up to you and each want to put ten quid on Lucky Lady. Then one fellow comes as wants to put ten on Golden Glenda. Now without knowing a thing about horses, what are your odds?"
Hermione saw it. "Ten to one," she breathed. "So as long as your odds line up with what people bet, you don't care who wins. You don't even try to predict it."
"Nope," smiled Bacon at her.
Hermione frowned again. The race outside must have finished, because the crowd above them roared. Bruno, the latest, and smallest robot Hermione had made, spun his articulated rollers in Hermione's pocket and beeped his displeasure at the noise.
"But you must have some idea of who's likely to win, otherwise you'd have to start at even odds each time."
"Ah," said Bacon, "that's true. Except, what we need is an idea of how people are likely to bet, not who's going to actually win."
Bruno reached a metal claw out of Hermione's pocket to try to grab one of the papers from a table. Hermione absentmindedly swatted it while she considered Bacon's words. Her eyes grew wide. "You and Soap are always asking around about who's placing what bets. I thought you were just making small talk!"
"Well, we are that. It's never bad to keep a finger on the pulse of a place, yeah? But that's not the only reason we do it, no."
Hermione had to admit that she was seeing Bacon in a whole new light. He'd always been somebody she respected, as a neighborhood authority. And she'd always known that he had an earthy wisdom about him. But he was somebody she might go to when she needed a sympathetic ear, not somebody she'd go to for help with her homework.
But now Hermione was surrounded by careful notes and calculations. Flipping through the stack on the table in front of her, she could see that they'd developed a shorthand to turn the informal conversations around the neighborhood into quantitative data, and then manipulations she didn't even recognize to create predictions for opening lines.
"This is incredible," Hermione breathed. Bruno beeped out a victory as he finally succeeded in pulling a sheaf of papers off of the table, only to realize too late that he brought down the whole folder on top it.
"I rather like it myself," said Bacon, while Hermione cleaned up the mess and scolded Bruno.
The two of them kept talking as they got into Bacon's car to take Hermione back to Ma's.
"How often do you update the line?" asked Hermione.
"Depends on how often it changes. Most things, the betting stays fairly constant start to finish. Sometimes though there's larger swings, especially for the bigger races when the betting starts further out. 'Course, if the swings get too big, we'll put people off for a bit. Stop taking bets, you know, while we figure out what's happened."
"What's happened?"
Bacon chuckled. "Sometimes the bets swing for an obvious reason. One dog gets injured, the odds for the rest of the pack change, right?"
Hermione nodded. They pulled out into the roadway, heading back to Ma's house. It was Sunday and Hermione would be in trouble if she wasn't home for dinner and an evening of reviewing her homework before getting up early the next morning to catch the cab to Oakbank.
"But sometimes there'll be a lot of bets against a particular dog, say, and for no reason that we can figure out," Bacon continued to explain. "Usually that means that somebody's made it their business to make sure that dog loses. That's when Jimmy and the boys get involved."
Hermione didn't know Jimmy well–all she knew about him was that he did the type of work that Aunt Margaret wouldn't allow anyone to talk about when children were present.
"Does that happen often?" asked Hermione.
Bacon shrugged. "Now and again. But since–"
Another car slammed into the side of Bacon's.
The world spun around Hermione, the view out of the windows blurring from motion and broken glass. The car kept rolling, and rolling, and rolling, until Hermione realized that the car wasn't actually rolling, she just felt like it was.
The car had come to a rest on its side, and Hermione looked out of her window into the gray sky. She felt thick-headed, like her thoughts were trying to gather themselves but were moving through some viscous liquid impeding them.
She'd been in a car accident, though. That much she could figure out. Somebody had hit them.
Hermione looked to her right and her heart stopped. Bacon! He looked like he was in much worse shape than she was; his eyes were closed, his head was bleeding—from this angle Hermione couldn't even tell if he was breathing.
She started fumbling with her seat belt. She needed to get help, maybe somebody outside could call someone—the people in the other car, maybe they could help!
"Told you it would work, didn't I?" A harsh voice floated through the ruined windows, and Hermione froze.
"It hasn't worked until we make sure she's alive, now has it?" The second voice was smoother than the first, but colder. Hermione was getting a bad feeling about this.
Suddenly the door beside her was levered open. Hermione looked up, squinting in the hazy sunlight. Two men stood next to the rolled vehicle, looking down at her.
"Aw, look, she's fine!" said one, and Hermione matched the harsh voice to a broad face with a scraggly beard.
"Indeed. Come, let's get her out." The colder voice belonged to the other face. Clean-shaven, with black hair slicked back.
The two men climbed up onto the car and started pulling Hermione out. For a brief moment, she simply let them. As a nine-year-old child, she was after all rather used to adults giving directions and simply expecting them to be followed.
As they got her halfway out of the car, though, the situation came back to her.
"Help!" she screamed. "Hel—"
"None of that, now," said the harsh voice. Hermione felt a rough hand close around her mouth. She bit down, hard.
The scraggly-bearded man pulled his hand away, swearing and almost dropping Hermione completely. Before she had any time to savor her small victory, though, another hand, smooth but hard, closed around her throat.
"No screaming," said the cold voice. Hermione struggled to make out the words, her lungs frantically trying to expand but unable to without any passage to draw in air. "We'd rather you were alive than not, but if we can't get you out of here without making a scene, killing you works for us as well. Understand?"
It was a short speech, but it was long enough for Hermione to start to get desperate for air. The hand around her throat didn't seem to be struggling—it simply held, like iron. Hermione hesitated a moment before her panic overwhelmed whatever resistance she was mustering and she simply nodded her head.
"Good girl," said the cold voice. "Now, moron, let's get out of here."
The two men piled Hermione into a pickup truck with a rather dented front grille. Hermione surmised they must have rammed Bacon's car with it a few moments ago.
They drove, and though Hermione tried to keep track of where they were going, the panic and fear and the throbbing pain in her head were all conspiring to make it difficult.
Hermione knew, of course, that her Uncle Chris had enemies. That was what had happened to her dad, all those years ago—he'd run afoul of those enemies somehow, though nobody had ever clarified for her exactly what that entailed. But for her entire childhood, those enemies were always—well "distant" wasn't the right word, they all lived in the same city, but removed.
Hermione would hear about people in the neighborhood who'd gotten beaten up, landed in the hospital. There were even a few times when there'd been a funeral for somebody much younger than you'd expect, and absolutely nobody would say what the cause of death was.
But it was always second-hand knowledge. Hermione had never actually come face-to-face with any of the gangsters who competed with Uncle Chris for control of the city. And now she was in a car with two of them, going who-knows-where.
After a long drive they stopped at an abandoned warehouse. This didn't narrow the options down much; there were dozens of such buildings around the city.
"Alright, out," said the harsh voice, and, possibly to make up for his injured hand, he shoved Hermione forward.
The men marched Hermione into the building. Hermione barely got a look before she was shoved into a dark room, but from what she could see this warehouse had none of the comfortable additions Uncle Chris liked to add to his. The walls were filthy, and towards the middle of the large open space the floor had actually rotted away to open onto a dark basement. She could hear a dripping of water coming from somewhere inside.
The men shoved her into a dark room and followed. Hermione felt rough hands on her shoulders, pushing her into a solid chair. Then, the bearded man held her in place, the cold one produced a bundle of zipties and quickly fastened her arms and legs to the chair.
"Right, now, we wait for the boss to come."
Hermione had no idea who the boss was, but she was certain she did not want to meet him.
The wait was interminable. The ties weren't overly tight, but even so within minutes the forced position was uncomfortable. Hermione tried to shift herself, to see if she could move the chair a bit, but it was either attached to the floor or simply too heavy for her. And, she reflected, even if she could move it, the most likely outcome would be tipping herself over and being in an even worse position than she was now.
If only the men would move far enough away that she could speak without them hearing her…
"Think we'll get to see you know what?" asked the harsh voice. There was undisguised excitement there.
"I think that you should know better by now than to refer to that, however obliquely," the cold voice replied.
"Oh, come on, nobody here but you and her, and who's she going to tell?"
"I said shut it!" The cold voice displayed some passion for the first time.
The two men glowered at each other in silence for a long time.
"Wasn't he supposed to be here by now?" asked the harsh voice eventually.
The other man grimaced, as if he were unhappy at having to admit that his companion was right about something.
"It has been longer than planned," he said at last. "I will go confirm that the meeting is still moving forward."
The cold man slid out of the room, leaving Hermione alone with harsh one. Suddenly she had a rush of fear; what if he decided, while they were alone, to take revenge for his bitten hand?
But she soon realized she needn't have worried. The harsh man was muttering to himself, clearly angry at the cold one, and had almost seemed to have forgotten that Hermione was there at all.
"Talking to me like that… who does he think he is? 'I'll go ascertain the coordinates of his lordship.'" He said the last bit in a falsetto voice clearly intended to mock his companion.
"Well the boss said we were to do this together! He's not in charge of me. If he's going to go find the boss, I'm going to go find the boss."
Hermione held her breath. If both men left, she might be able to…
"You'll be fine while I'm gone, right? No escape attempts? Not while you're tied up like that there won't be."
The man paused at the door of the room.
"Still, wouldn't hurt to…"
And with that, he strode across the room and struck Hermione, hard, across the jaw.
Hermione had never realized that anything could hurt so bad. The pain was radiating from the joint on the left side of her jaw all across her head. Something seemed to have broken, and she couldn't seem to move her mouth properly. The cottony, viscous feeling to her thoughts that had started to clear as more time had passed since the car accident was back with a vengeance.
After moments of agony, Hermione dimly realized that the harsh man had left the room as well, and she was finally alone.
What was she trying to do?
There was something she was going to do once she was alone, she was sure of it, but… she was in so much pain she could hardly… but she had to think…
She wasn't sure how much time passed as she sat there. Everything felt so uncomfortable, from the ties digging into her arms to the hard surface of the chair, the throbbing pain in her jaw, the metal legs in her pocket poking her—
That was it! Bruno! If she could activate him he could cut the ties!
"Bwoono," Hermione said. Her mouth still wouldn't open properly.
"Bwoo. No." She tried again. In the year she had been building her robots, she had never yet figured out what made them special. Why they could recognize her voice, or do things that no simple robot should be capable of doing.
She'd explored some of the contours of this ability. She'd learned, for instance, that the robot had to at least be functional; she couldn't just solder together parts willy-nilly and expect it to come alive. And she'd learned that she needed to want the robot to respond to her.
She needed to want it…
Not speaking, Hermione closed her eyes and focused her attention on the small robot in her pocked. She wanted it to turn on. She wanted it to turn on. She wanted it to turn on.
A soft beep sounded inside her jumper. Hermione felt the whirr of motors engaging through the cloth.
Bruno tentatively climbed up out of the pocket, and Hermione could have cried.
"Bwoono," she crooned over the tiny robot.
She had to focus, though. She still needed to get out of here.
Hermione closed her eyes again and willed the robot to use its metal legs on the ties. It happily climbed down her leg and started working.
It was a much slower process than Hermione had hoped. For all that they were plastic, the ties were tough, and minutes ticked by while Bruno slowly chewed through one, then the other.
It was only after her leg was free that Hermione realized she still wasn't thinking clearly. What good did freeing her leg do? She needed a hand free so she could work on the other ties!
Hermione willed Bruno to climb up the chair and start on her arm.
The going was even slower now. The cutter was getting dull—or maybe Bruno was just running out of power. Either option was bad.
Finally the first tie parted and fell to the ground. There was only one more on her right arm.
Bruno sawed laboriously away at it.
A thump reverberated through the building. Somebody had just slammed the front door.
"Hurry, Bruno!" Hermione whispered. The tiny robot seemed to get a second wind, if that were possible for a robot, and started sawing a little faster.
Hermione could make out shouts from the corridor outside.
Bruno kept sawing.
The shouting resolved into words as the men got closer.
"I told you to stay with her!"
"And I told you that you weren't put in charge here!"
"And if she's escaped?"
"Oh don't worry, I laid one across her jaw before I left, little bint probably hasn't even woken up yet."
A third voice, one Hermione didn't recognize, said something too quiet for Hermione to make out.
She was so close. The tie was almost done…
The door to the room opened, and her two captors stared inside, dumbfounded.
"What in the—"
With all her might, Hermione pulled at her bonds, and at last the abused zip tie broke.
Hermione jumped to her feet, picking up the chair as she did.
"Why you—"
Hermione swung the chair at the first man through the doorway. It was far too heavy for her, and she barely got it off the ground, but this proved to be a benefit as the heavy wood collided with the harsh man's knee and he went down with a roar and a sickening crack.
It didn't matter, though. There were two other men in the room, and even if Tiffany had been with her these were no schoolyard bullies to be frightened off with a sharp kick.
The cold man was already moving towards her, more warily than the harsh one had.
Hermione ran for it. If she could just—
"Arresto," said the third man in a bored voice. Hermione stopped. The cold man stopped. Even the other one, who had been on the floor clutching his knee and swearing loudly, stopped. The whole room froze.
The third man, who had been standing in the doorway, now stepped into the room. He was a small man, much shorter than either of the toughs with him, with long straggly hair and the look of a man who wasn't so much growing a beard as couldn't be bothered to shave. He exuded an air of leadership nonetheless, and Hermione thought she could see real fear in the frozen eyes of the other two men.
"Now what in the ell do we have here?" he asked, to nobody in particular.
He stepped over to where the harsh man was frozen on the floor. He kicked the fallen man, but in a desultory way, like he was kicking a garbage bag.
"My kingdom for some competent help," he muttered. "Ten-year-old girl and can't even keep her contained for an hour. Jesus wept."
"Right. Well let's start with you then." The man turned towards Hermione, and she realized that he was holding some sort of stick. It was about a foot long, make of a dark, rough-textured wood. He pointed the stick at Hermione and said, "obliviate."
Hermione felt like she had been hit in the head again, as another wave of cottonballs filled up her head and made her thinking fuzzy.
"Wha—was—tha?" she asked, slurred.
Strangely, for the first time since he'd entered the room, the small man looked less than composed. In fact, Hermione might have said that he looked afraid, if such a thing wasn't ridiculous.
"You—oh gods, what have you done?" He asked this question to the men on the floor. "Oh no no no no, this will not be good."
The man continued muttering to himself as he paced, clearly thinking.
"Get rid of them, send the girl back, they'll understand it was an accident, surely." Then he seemed to remember Hermione was there and turned to get a better look at her.
"Oh what did they do to you, oh no. That's okay, we can fix that." Then he pointed his stick at Hermione again and said a long string of words in a language Hermione didn't recognize. It almost sounded like Latin, which she studied at Oakbank of course, but the words were off and there was no grammar or meaning that she could make out.
Hermione felt a warmth wash over her. She tensed at first, but then she realized that the warmth was making everything hurt less. The pain in her head receded, the aches and bruises from the crash and the rough handling faded, and with a pop her jaw settled back into its normal arrangement.
Hermione was so shocked it took her a minute to realize that she could move again.
She took a step forward.
"Now, miss, I want you to know that this was all an accident. I gave no orders for any of my boys to hurt you, they took that up on themselves out of a misguided sense that it would please the bosses. And as a gesture of good faith…"
The small man seemed to gather himself, screwing himself up for some unpleasant task. He spoke a few more nonsense words, this time not anything Hermione even remotely recognized, and a bolt of green light flew from the stick he was holding and struck the man on the floor. One more set of words and another bolt of green light struck the cold man, who was still standing frozen.
Both men lost something the instant they were hit, some indescribable part of them, and Hermione knew without checking pulses or breathing that they were dead.
"Now, you tell your kin that I—"
"My kin?" asked Hermione, the reference shocking her out of her stupor. "Do you mean Big Chris?"
The man swallowed. "Aw shite," he said at last.
Then there was a burst of red light that filled the room, and Hermione's world went black.