Chapter 13
Hermione was standing in the doorway of the music room as the song finished. It was not a room she had been to often, only once or twice, as music was not even an elective at Hogwarts.
The man before her sat strumming random chords on an acoustic guitar, his back to her, in the same red and white jumpsuit, although it did look cleaner. It had been a cool night so the view afforded the day before was lost.
"Am I in your way?" he asked spinning around on the desk to face her. "I hope I wasn't playing too loud, did someone complain?"
A confused look crossed her face. "Huh?.. Oh, no. Well… You see…" She took a deep breath, let it out and began again. "No, no one complained. I was on my way to breakfast when I heard you playing. I've never heard anyone playing an Elvis song here."
Harry smiled. "I'm impressed, most people don't recognize it as an Elvis tune. I guess it's too deep a cut."
"Blame my grandfather," she said moving to sit down across from him. "He was stationed near a bunch of Yanks when he was in the Royal Navy. He brought a lot of Elvis music home with him, and my father, he's a dentist, both my parents are…dental surgeons, and he became quite the fan."
"Yanks?... Oh, you mean Americans, not Yankees." Harry chuckled, "Got to love the different terms." Again confusion shone on her face. "Yankees is a term in the south for anyone born north of the Mason-Dixon line… It's not important. I just need to remember all the slang here is different."
She nodded her understanding, her father had given her some examples once. "I'm Hermione Granger," she said sticking out her hand.
He slid the guitar onto the desk and took her hand. "Pleasure to meet you. Harry Potter."
"Harry Potter… I read about you… before I started school."
An awkward silence hung in the air, till Harry asked, "Um... Could you explain something to me?" He stood and walked to a wooden shelf and pulled free a piece of parchment filled with music. "Why in the world is there a part written for toads?" He handed it to her.
A small smile crossed her face, "Toad choir…"
He had started chuckling. "You have got to be kidding… toad choir?"
"Yes," she said chuckling herself. "As silly as it sounds, toad choir. Neville Longbottom tried out for it in our second year. Till he found out his toad, Trevor, is evidently quite tone deaf."
He laughed harder at that, the idea of a tone deaf toad was just too odd. "And your toad?"
She made a sour look. "No toads in my home thank you! I have the cutest ginger cat, Crookshanks, he's upstairs somewhere. Most probably sleeping."
"They just let you bring your pets to school?" he asked surprised.
"Each student shall be permitted, one pet. An Owl, Cat or Toad," she stated as if reading it directly from the source. She shook her head. "Although that seems to not really be the case, Lee Jordan has a pet spider, Ronald Weasley…" she spat the name, "had a rat, horrible thing. It is rumored that there are others."
"So the rules here are rather… fluid?" he asked.
"That is one way of putting it. More that they only apply if you aren't one of the favored," she said sounding bitter.
"And you are not one of the favored I take it?" he asked shifting to face her more easily.
"My parents are dentists, doesn't that say it all?" she said becoming agitated. "But then again I forgot who I am talking to, the ultimate in the privileged, Harry Potter. Taught by the hand chosen of the Great Dumbledore…"
"Whoa… Hold it there little Miss! I have never had any thing to do with that whiskered prick till yesterday! And I'll have you know that I never wanted any part of this world, or to set foot in Britain EVER AGAIN! I don't have any idea what crawled up your ass, but it has nothing to do with me! He has had nothing to do with my life! Just because you read about me don't expect it to be true!"
He stood and stalked closer, "I do not live in the UK! I do NOT own a wand! I do not want to be here!" he said within inches of her face.
She looked deep in his eyes searching for deception, and finally broke her gaze away from his blazing green glare. "I guess that makes two of us," she said quietly, her face reddening from embarrassment.
He backed up a step. "You don't want to be here?"
She nodded. "When I first heard of magic I was thrilled, I hoped it would be the change I was wanting for, but it has become a nightmare. Now I'm trapped here till the end of my fifth year."
"Trapped? How?" he asked.
"My parents are muggles," she said with a shrug.
He looked at her confused. "So? What's a muggle?"
"What's a mug... You really don't live here do you?"
"No, Charlotte, North Carolina," he said with a crooked smile.
"Muggles are non-magicals, normal people. Like my parents." She paused a moment and collected her thoughts. "They have no standing in the magical world, no way to be represented by the law, and my being their child has left us in a bind… You see, when a witch or wizard is born into a non-magical family the laws require the child to attend magical schooling. Otherwise the child's magic is bound, and the family's memories are altered to remove any knowledge of the magical world."
He saw the sadness in her face, then said, "Let me guess, if you want to leave after you've started the rules are the same? And you spend, what seven… eight months a year here? All of that would be wiped away, with little or no explanation just large gaps."
Her eyes were filled with tears, as she nodded. "It is closer to nine, but yes, you need to understand I love to learn… and that… that could be the worst for me. Not to mention I am so far behind in my schooling. I'm taking classes in the summer, but I need to keep going here till after my O.W.L.S. then I'll be free of this place."
He looked disgusted. "And why would they do something like that?"
"For protection." She stood and walked to the blackboard, and fiddled with a piece of chalk as she spoke. "They want to stay hidden from the world, they say that everyone would want magical answers for their problems. It would lead to pandemonium if the world knew."
"So they hide…" He shook his head. "They seem to be lost in time, gas lights, candles, for god's sake they use parchment and quills."
She laughed. "That's just the half of it, brass scales in potions class, our telescope is less than a twenty power, no forms of electricity at all, and believe it or not we ride a steam train seven hours from London every time term changes.
"And the classes," she continued. "The worst is Muggle Studies, to them a car is still an oddity, airplanes are nearly unknown and the professor keeps calling electricity 'eltectisity', and has no idea about anything past the year 1910 or so. Then there is Binns, the ghost that teaches History, he speaks in a complete monotone and reads exactly what is in the book, rumor has it he has done that for years, and he never even acknowledges a question.
"And then there is Professor Snape, he teaches potions." She dusted off her hands and sat again. "The man is beyond insufferable. His teaching style consists of, 'The instructions are on the board you have X amount of time, begin!', then he wanders through the class belittling, and yelling at the students for being dunderheads because they did something incorrect.
"But the other classes aren't all bad, I like Transfiguration, Professor McGonagall knows her stuff, as does Professor Flitwick our Charms Professor. With the two electives I kept, Arithmancy and Runes, it keeps me busy, although I'm not sure what I am going to do with a background in Runes or base seven math after I leave."
Harry chuckled, "Take up theoretical mathematics?"
She smiled, "Who thought that any of those odd maths would apply to anything like magic?"
"We had a guest lecturer once in my advanced Algebra class," Harry said. "He told us that they may not know how some of their maths apply yet but they do because the math works. Most of that is beyond me, I tend to be more of a physics person. Thing A broke. Why? How do we keep it from happening again? Very linear."
"I would think it would be more like, I broke thing A! How do I fix it so no one notices? Then how do I keep it from happening again," she said with a cheeky smile.
"Nope, not in my line of work," he said matching her grin. "That can get a person killed, first rule is something always breaks. It may be from user error, me, or we may need a better quality raw material, or a better design. Those things happen and need to be addressed by the team."
"I didn't mean..."
"No, its not a problem. At one time you would have been right, and it took a long time for me to understand your team… your family is important, and the things that they want the most are for you to be safe, and to support you in your choices and life."
He stood and offered her a hand to help her stand. "You said something about breakfast? How about we go find something to eat?" He walked out the door calling over his shoulder, "You coming?"
She hurried to the door and stopped as she turned the corner. "Don't you need to put up the guit…" She looked at the place he had set the guitar he had been playing earlier… and it was nowhere to be seen.
Albus sat at his desk, a position that once afforded him a great deal of satisfaction. As head of Hogwarts he was able to see the future walking in the halls around him. He loved this place and all of the children that had walked these halls more than anything. His children, his life, he had given everything to them.
He could remember the day he first walked these very halls as a student, he had… borrowed his older cousin's books over the years, and was at a third year level before he was ever sorted. He was hailed as a prodigy, and kept up that illusion by staying ahead.
He spent years living up to that expectation, and after his final showdown with his one-time friend Gellert Grindelwald in the final days of the war, Wizarding Europe turned to him to help them rebuild. He did. He took on the jobs with the same determination he had shown in his youth, helping to rebuild the Wizengamot, allowing seats fallen vacant to be taken over by younger families to fill out their rolls, and taking its lead role as Chief Warlock to help quell any disputes.
Next he organized and participated in the first meetings of the International Wizards Council. Again he was asked to take its head, as Chief Mugwump, to help smooth over any issues. He agreed readily, willing to give of himself to his fellow wizards.
He was proud to do so, and finally when the elderly headmaster of Hogwarts, Armando Dippet, handed him the headmaster's office he felt that his life was complete. Everything he had dreamt of had come to pass, and his legacy would live on.
Then his one failure had come… Lord Voldemort, Tom Riddle. Albus still did not understand how things had gone so very wrong. He had met with the orphan when he was first invited to Hogwarts, and knew immediately that he was going to be a powerful wizard. He was extremely intelligent, and magic came to him as if it was second nature.
When Tom came to the castle he devoured the lessons, he could always be found researching or practicing. He was a devoted student, always quick to grasp the next concept and able to push beyond by sheer intuition to the next. He would be the crowning jewel, the legacy made flesh!
At the end of the first year young Tom had begged to be allowed to stay in the castle. This was of course denied, Albus knew that the young man needed time to be a child as well. Time with his peers, and even though he lived in an orphanage that was as good a place as possible, as he was surrounded by other children, he had people there that cared for him, and he was safe. Time away would do him good and help him develop the personal skills that would allow him to lead the future generation.
Every year he asked again, and Albus explained that it was for the best and he returned to the orphanage. It was for his own good.
He graduated at the top of his class, and Albus knew that he had set him on the path to greatness. He would be the next shining ray of the Light, he had developed into a leader among the students, a prefect every year, even a special award in service of the school! Albus had so wished to make him Head Boy, but it was better that he know humility so he had, in the end, chosen another.
Two years after his graduation Tom had returned to Hogwarts to apply as the instructor of his beloved Defense Against the Dark Arts. Albus had felt it necessary to reject his application. He had explained that he was just not suited for the position. Albus knew he would return and the next time Tom would be seasoned enough to become a professor and Albus would guide him into one of the fields that he selected for him. Tom would be set to attain the greatness Albus knew was within him.
The next time Albus laid eyes on this favored student he was a twisted and angry man, he had lost his way and drifted into the dark arts. Albus tried everything he could think of during those dark times to bring his student back to the light, to be the beacon he had dreamed of.
All of that ended the night he visited the Potters. Albus had warned them they were in danger, hidden them away trying to buy time to bypass the fate that had set its sights on Tom, but his efforts were undone. A fateful betrayal, by a one time friend of the Potters, set events in motion that saw young Harry orphaned that night.
In a flash of insight, he understood the true meaning! Destiny was giving him a second chance! If he set young Harry to live in the muggle world with Lily's family he could erect blood wards using her sacrifice! He would be safe until he was old enough for Albus to take into hand! Harry would be smart like his mother, powerful like his father, and with the correct planning the Wizarding World would have a new Light, humble, intelligent, hardworking. Harry would be the legacy!
But… How quickly those plans had come undone. So he sat here in his once favorite chair of the many he held, trying to find a way to get Harry to understand that he was the light of the future. He was the one that they would all someday turn to. That his calling was to be the legacy of Albus Wulfric Percival Brian Dumbledore!
It may have taken all night to prepare the documents and get them submitted for the special session that he had called of the Wizengamot on Monday, but with the help of the Minister for Magic they would welcome back the lost son of Lily and James Potter to his home.
Now, if he could only remember what he had done with his Lemon Drops.