Hermione Granger's summer break was not going according to plan. Her parents had been quite concerned when their eleven-year-old daughter returned from her first year at private school with no progress reports, a recently shaved head, and what they called "an abundance of teenage angst".
Hermione couldn't tell them anything truthful about her year. Due to bureaucratic corruption and memory-altering magic, her parents believed she attended a school that taught things like mathematics, science, and literature. In reality, lessons at Hogwarts focused on charms, potions, and the history of Wizarding society, which existed in secret from the larger, more technologically advanced, non-magic society which they called muggles. She couldn't tell her parents about the life-threatening events she had gotten caught up in over the last nine months. How an ancient lich tried to steal her body, how she'd managed to escape by burning down the lich's domain, and how that same fire had burned off her hair and left her body covered in burns. This all meant that Hermione had to lie until she could figure out a way to introduce her parents to the world of witches and wizards.
On her first night back, Hermione invented a story to explain what had happened to her hair, "There was a really bad outbreak of lice, everyone in my dorm got their heads shaved to keep it from spreading."
"Well, you could have mentioned it in one of your letters," her father said sternly while her mother tried in vain to stylize her short curls, "Speaking of your letters, we hardly received any this spring. Next year we expect you to write to us every two weeks."
"But I-" Hermione began, only for her mother to cut her off.
"And those letters better have some signed grade reports from your teachers. Every time you wrote to us, all you did was ask for more writing supplies."
"It's just that-" Hermione tried to explain, then her father ended the conversation with one sentence.
"Until further notice, you're grounded."
Wanting to complain about this injustice to her new friends from Hogwarts, Hermione pulled the magical communication papers from her school trunk and wrote messages on each of them. Unfortunately, neither Neville nor Li replied. After a week of worrying they were ignoring her, she realized her magic must be too weak to make the papers work over such a long distance. This hadn't been a problem when a centuries-old witch had been providing extra magical power to Hermione's spells, but frustratingly, the aftermath of her conflict with Rowena Ravenclaw had damaged and stunted Hermione's magical abilities.
After getting over the shock of their daughter's new hairstyle, her parents took note of how pale and thin she looked. They pestered her constantly about eating enough and added extra butter to all of her meals. Hermione even found a public health pamphlet about anorexia on her bed one evening, though neither of her parents broached the topic with her directly.
Her atrophied muscles and pale complexion were actually due to spending weeks recovering in the Hospital Wing at Hogwarts. The staff managed to heal her burns eventually, but the process had left her bedridden for weeks. The silver lining was that Hermione got permission to ride her bike around the neighborhood for two hours every afternoon. Her parents agreed to the request immediately, figuring she needed sunshine and exercise. With these brief windows of freedom, Hermione considered tracking down Margaret, her only friend through most of elementary school.
Unfortunately, the last time they'd spoken, Margaret refused to accept that Hermione was a witch, instead mocking Hermione in an attempt to look "cool" in front of her cousin Chelsea, a nasty older girl who always seemed to be getting in trouble. Despite her trepidation, it only took a week of solitude before Hermione found herself entering Mr Abidi's corner store, a shop run by a friendly Pakistani man. Margaret lived nearby and she frequently stopped in to buy snacks.
She didn't see Margaret as she walked down each of the three short aisles loaded with food, but she did spot the store owner's son, David. He was restocking a shelf with bags of ketchup-flavored crisps. David was a year younger than Hermione and had always been kind to her and Margaret.
"Hermione? Is that you?" David asked, accidentally dropping a bag of crisps as he noticed her.
Smiling half-heartedly, Hermione said, "Yeah, it's me, how did your year five go?"
"Uh, fine," David answered, bending down to pick up the bag he'd dropped, "I've been wanting to ask you about your school, is it true they…"
He trailed off as the door to the shop opened and two girls walked in. The shorter of the two was Margaret, exactly who Hermione had been looking for, but the other was her cousin Chelsea. Hermione immediately ducked behind the end of a shelf, hoping they hadn't seen her. David started to say something, so Hermione held a finger to her lips to silence him. She could hear Margaret and her cousin Chelsea discussing one of their school's teachers as they approached the aisle on Hermione's left.
"Sister Jacobs has it out for me," Chelsea complained, "it's not like I'm the only one who cheated on that test."
"She's the worst," Margaret agreed, then added, "She's so old, hopefully, she'll retire before I have to take her class."
"Hey," Chelsea said thoughtfully, as if something had just occurred to her "Was that your little magician friend's rusty bike out front?"
"Who, Hermione?" Margaret asked, then she continued, "I'm not sure. I asked around, and no one saw her at the public school last year. Maybe she convinced her parents to try homeschooling."
"Makes sense," Chelsea said with a giggle, "I bet her parents give her plenty of time to play pretend in the back garden."
Hermione hurried down the aisle on her right, keeping a shelf between her and the two horrible girls. She rushed out the door, only glancing back once to see Chelsea's smirk and Margaret's look of shock. Tears formed in Hermione's eyes as she grabbed her bike and rode off as quickly as she could. After that encounter, Hermione avoided Mr. Abidi's store and any of the parks she used to frequent with Margaret.
Good news finally arrived when Hermione's parents told her they were leaving town to attend a continuing education conference for dentists in the UK. They would be gone for five days, and Hermione planned to take full advantage of their absence. Her father left two crisp twenty-pound notes for emergencies, and as soon as her parents left to catch their train, Hermione took the money and bought a round-trip ticket to London.
After a half day of travel, Hermione sat in Mr Ollivander's kitchen drinking from a porcelain cup decorated with gold filigree around the rim and dragonflies painted on its sides. Clouds tinged pink by the setting sun were visible through a small window above the sink.
After taking another sip of the delicious lemon ginger tea, Hermione set her cup down and pulled her wand from her jacket pocket. As her hand touched the wood, she felt warmth emanating from the wand, but she heard no words and felt no emotions. Since the events in the tower, her wand had gone silent.
"Is it safe for me to continue using this wand?" She asked, setting her wand on the table between herself and the elderly wandmaker.
Ollivander gazed down at her wand for a moment before answering, "Yes, but you are wise to ask this question. Your wand would not have risked overloading you with magic if it hadn't been serving a different master. Now that Rowena's bond to the wand is severed, it cannot intentionally cause you harm. A properly bonded wand will not disobey or work against its wielder, even potent wands like yours, which can develop something akin to true sentience."
"How many others have wands like mine?" Hermione asked after considering Ollivander's words.
"I have no idea," the old man said with a shrug, "I suspect many famous wizards like Albus Dumbledore and Xi Zhang possess wands like yours, but it is impossible to say."
"What about you?" Hermione inquired suspiciously, "Did you use what Ravenclaw taught you to craft a wand like mine?"
"Hmm," Ollivander said, seeming to consider before replying, "There are more secrets to wandmaking than you realize. You know enough to cause chaos in the wandmaking industry if you were to go public with what you've discovered, but you know less than you might think. I will decline to answer your question right now, but come see me at the end of the summer and I will tell you more."
Hermione wanted to argue, to demand answers, but she didn't want Ollivander to change his mind about letting her use magic in his home.
Instead, she moved onto a new topic, "I have three days before I need to be home. What can you teach me in that amount of time?"
Appearing relieved by a question unrelated to wands, Ollivander casually said, "Almost nothing."
Hermione began to respond, but he held up a hand to forestall her, "Firstly, due to the spiritual damage you have suffered, you are not currently prepared for attempting advanced magic. Secondly, I don't have time to tutor you. First-years buying their wands over the summer is my main source of income. I spend the majority of the year collecting materials and crafting new wands. However, I will, as promised, provide you with a location to use magic where the Ministry will not know you are violating the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery. Over the next few days, cast as many spells as you can. This past month of rest has already benefited you greatly, I can sense a stronger magical aura around you than the last time we spoke. You should be safe to cast any first-year spell without damaging yourself further."
With a resigned sigh, Hermione rolled her eyes and said, "Fine."
Quietly chuckling, Ollivander drained the last of his tea, stood, and gestured for Hermione to follow. He led her along the building's second-story hallway, passing the stairs down to his shop on the left. At the end of the hallway, he opened a door to a spare bedroom. It was not impressive, the slanting roof providing one of its walls and making the space feel cramped.
"Here's the spare room," Ollivander explained unnecessarily, "I will be awake for another few hours if you need anything or if you cause any damage with your spells that you cannot repair. Otherwise, I'll see you tomorrow."
As the sound of Ollivander's footsteps faded, she pulled 'Standard Book of Spells Year One' from her backpack. With a flick of her wand, she began attempting every spell listed. Hours later, an exhausted Hermione collapsed heavily onto the room's bed. She had managed to cast almost a third of the book's spells before her sore arm, dry throat, and pounding head forced her to stop.
Hermione ate one of the sandwiches she packed, then began to wash up for bed while silently considering, "My spells are way more effective than they were after leaving the Hospital Wing, but still weak. I doubt I'll be able to take the third-year Charms class Flitwick offered, but maybe he'd let me take a higher-level theory class instead."
On the third day of Hermione's time in London, she finished reviewing all the spells in her first-year textbook. When Ollivander came upstairs for dinner, Hermione sat at the kitchen table and told him about her progress.
"Good," Ollivander answered as he bustled about the kitchen, preparing cabbage and chicken soup. "I believe by the time you are back at Hogwarts, your second-year classes will be no challenge. After dinner, I will teach you something more interesting than the dribble they teach first-years."
They ate in silence, and then Ollivander lit a lantern and led her downstairs. In the back corner of the shop's main room was a small closet. Ollivander unlocked the door, handed Hermione the lantern, and hestured for her to enter. Hermione's eyes widened as she stepped into the cramped space. Every inch of the closet was filled with books. Shelves lined the walls, all tightly packed with dozens of heavy tomes. Knee-high stacks of books covered the floor, barely enough ground exposed to stand on.
With a slightly reproachful tone, Hermione turned to glare at Ollivander, "You could have shown me your book collection days ago. I'll be lucky to get through two books before I have to leave."
With a laugh, he explained, "Worry not, Ms Granger. The spell I would like to teach you was created for bookworms like us. Here is the incantation."
He handed her a slip of paper with two words written on it, "Leituras Rapidas."
"It would be my pleasure," Ollivander said earnestly, bright blue eyes twinkling, "to introduce you to one of my favorite spells, the speed reading charm."
