Hermione Granger and the Year Hidden from Hogwarts
Harry Potter Fanfiction
Chapter 2
A/N: I'm not sure what the Department of Education and Science would've been referred to as colloquially in the mid 80's, despite my research. The name dropped the "and Science" part in the early nineties, but that was all I uncovered. I just abbreviated it to its acronym like we do for Child Protective Services in the US.
October 29, 1985
The room they'd been placed in lacked windows, so they'd missed the sunrise, even if the clock on the wall now read that it was half past ten.
"Bet you regret not getting the digestives out now, don't you?" Mr. Granger grumbled.
"Daddy," Hermione pleaded, not wanting her parents to fight when things were so terrifying at the moment.
"I'm sorry, tootsie pants. Sorry, dear. You both know how I get when I'm feeling peckish."
Mrs. Granger reached for her husband's hand, giving it a dainty squeeze. "We know. I should've known better and fed the mountain troll when the chance presented itself."
He stole his hand out from beneath hers like it was a live wire. "Oi!"
Whatever comeback had been brewing was cut short as the door to the interview room opened for the first time in four hours. The intaking office that'd taken their report down, Officer Curtis, approached, grim-faced and with a file in his hand.
"Well, I'm afraid it's not good news."
Her parents straightened.
"We found the girl. Light blue dress—"
"Periwinkle," Hermione corrected automatically, and then blushed bright red when the officer's eyes cut up to hers. "Sorry," she mumbled, properly chastised.
"Periwinkle dress," he emphasized, making her cheeks burn hotter. "Folded lace socks and black shoes."
Hermione only just managed to stop herself from reminding him that they were Mary Jane shoes. It couldn't be helped. They'd found the girl. For the first time, it felt like something productive had come from her ability to see the dead.
Her parents looked lost, though, likely coming to the same realization—or at least Hermione desperately hoped so—that she'd been telling the truth all these years. She wasn't crazy.
"What does this mean?" her mother whispered, looking lost as her world upended off its axis.
The officer didn't answer her.
"And the crane?" Hermione prodded, hoping for more proof in case her parents were still on the fence.
Officer Curtis leaned back in his seat, his fingers tapping the closed file. He'd yet to open it. "Just as you said, we found her in the heart of Spitalfields, hidden in an alley just off Hanbury Street with a view of the famous mural. In fact, where they found her, was almost a perfect match to the perspective of the drawing you made."
"Oh, well, I didn't—" Hermione began even as her parents also rushed to correct the officer.
"I don't…Hermione's not…"
"There's no way our Hermione could've drawn that picture," her dad finished baldly. At his wife and daughter's dirty looks, he backpedaled. "Not that we don't love you with all our hearts, tootsie pants, but you such as an artist."
"I'm six!"
He ruffled her already untamable mane of hair. "Doesn't matter, kid. When you've got it, you've got it. And you don't got it."
He'd adopted a ridiculous American accent, rolling over the vowels so much he almost skipped the Western effect entirely and jumped right to Australian.
"One thing you got wrong though," Officer Curtis began. "Little Theresa Chapman wasn't cut. She was stabbed, six times, in her chest."
"Officer! I'll not have you saying such things in front of our daughter," Hermione's mum balked.
They broke into a heated discussion that she didn't comprehend in her dazed state.
Hermione blinked, her head feeling fuzzy. She recalled the innocent way Theresa had pointed at her heart. "She, she was confused." The adults' conversation cut off. "Theresa—I don't think she knew she was dead. That happens sometimes. They live in denial. But she's young too."
Officer Curtis furrowed his brows, opening the file for the first time and pretending to check it. "Yes, a little girl. The same age as you, I believe. Six years old. Just started primary school." The officer's eyes went to her father for some reason.
Her parents stiffened on either side of her.
"Now, wait a minute, officer, you can't honestly—"
The officer cut off her father's response. "Mr. and Mrs. Granger, I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to step out and speak with my colleagues."
The door opened before she could catch her thoughts, unable to comprehend the turn of events nor the significance of them. "Mum? Dad?"
Three officers entered the room, crowding the small gray space.
Mrs. Granger slammed the heel of her hands on the table. "She's a minor! You can't question her without an adult."
Hermione blinked at the unruffled state of her normally poised and proper mother. Her hair had fluffed up, doubling in volume with her anger.
Officer Curtis didn't miss a beat. "We have one. They should be here shortly. He's from the DES."
"The Department of Education and Science?" Hermione asked, latching onto something she understood amidst the sea of confusion on all sides.
The officer locked eyes on her again. "Yes. Are you familiar with them?"
"No," her dad replied, his voice sounding flat and dangerous. "She's not."
Hermione glanced in his direction, wondering if she ever recalled a time where he wasn't smiling or being goofy. The officer gestured for her to answer the question herself, so she cleared her throat. "I read about them in a book. I like to read. Are you worried that my parents don't treat me nicely?"
Her question seemed to throw the officer off kilter. His mouth opened and closed a couple of times until a woman arrived, pushing between the bulky officers, talking a mile a minute.
"Hello, Hermione. My name's Ms. Jane Walker, and that's a very complicated question you've just posed to our officer. Perhaps you should allow these men to take your parents to a separate room, and we can dive into the meat and potatoes of it, yeah? You seem like a very sharp young lady."
Officer Curtis frowned, his thick walrus mustache twitching. "Who the hell are you?"
Ms. Walker scowled at him. "I'm from the DES."
"No." Officer Curtis leaned forward, hands flat on the table. "You're not. I just spoke with our usual guy on the phone, and he assures me that he'll be here within the hour."
Hermione and her parents watched their back and forth like a tennis match.
Ms. Walker was the one to notice first, her eyes shifting in their direction. She cleared her throat. "Perhaps I could speak with you in the hall for a moment, Officer…"
"Curtis," he grunted out. "Be my guest. After you."
"Very well," she sniffed, her chin sticking out as she preceded him into the hallway.
The trio of officers that'd shown up to collect her parents shifted awkwardly in place in the silence that followed, interspersed with shouted, muffled words from the heated discussion in the hallway.
Hermione caught things like, "—my investigation," "the process, the process!" and "spook!"
The last one was disconcerting. Did the new woman believe her that this had something to do with the ghosts?
Her dad whistled, bouncing on the balls of his feet with his hands shoved in his sweat pockets. They hadn't taken the time to put themselves to rights when they'd made the unanimous vote to take this to the police. Hermione assumed the girl was dead, otherwise she wouldn't have been able to visit her, but her mum pointed out that they couldn't rule out the chance.
The officers all glanced at him, wearing vague frowns.
"Am I the only one sensing the tension between those two? Talk about explosive."
"Richard," her mother lamented.
"What? I'm just saying."
One of the officers broke rank, despite the exasperated looks from his colleagues. "Nah, Mr. Granger, I saw it too."
Hermione closed her eyes in a slow blink, and not to shift her vision over to the otherworldly screen.
Her dad beamed at finding a kindred spirit. "Please, call me Richard." He canted his head at the hallway. "I'd like to be a fly on the wall when those two finally give in to their—"
"Richard!"
"Sorry, dear," her dad mumbled, but his conspiratorial wink he shot the chatty officer when his wife turned away was unrepentant.
"Officer Wilkins, we're not supposed to engage with the suspects," the shorter of the officers reminded in a stern tone.
Hermione's attention sharpened.
"What? Maybe I'm establishing rapport."
Unamused, he pinned his subordinate with a look. "Are you?"
Like a mirror image of her dad, Officer Wilkins wilted, shoving his hands into his uniform pockets and rocking back a step. "Well, no—"
Unable to keep the burning question restrained any longer, Hermione interrupted them. "Pardon me, but did you say suspects?"
The scolding officer blushed head to toe, a rouge so dark that his blonde handlebar mustache nearly glowed white in contrast. "Uh, I, what I meant to say, young lady, er… no, you're not a suspect." He heaved a breath, obviously believing he'd found a workaround to her point-blank question.
Hermione's eyes rounded. "But my parents are?"
"No," Ms. Walker reassured, somehow aware of their conversation even as she opened the door. "In fact, your parents are not in trouble. Officers, I believe you'll find that you have something to do outside this room."
When the three officers turned to look at Curtis, he grunted, "You heard the lady. Let's go."
With reluctance, the men filed out until it was just the mysterious lady and them. She smiled, her perfect teeth flashing. "Please, have a seat."
Hermione rushed to a chair, eager to obey the new authority figure, but her dad crossed his arms, making her pause.
"Sorry, lady, but we don't know you from Adam. You can flash your fancy smile and bat your pretty eyelashes all you want—"
"Richard."
"—because I'm a married man, of course. Those antics won't work on me," her dad concluded.
Oddly enough, her mum agreed. "Nor me."
Ms. Walker blinked, her jaw dropping. "I'm not entirely sure what you're implying here."
Hermione frowned, confusion warring within her.
Her dad leaned forward, splaying his hands over the table. "See you look like a sweet, little ten-stone woman—"
"I beg your pardon, ten stones?" Ms. Walker objected.
"—but you just kicked out four rather testosterone-driven men. From their own room. So, you can take this innocent young lady act and shove it."
"Richard," her mum chided, but when Hermione checked she held the expression she wore when Hermione had done something that made her proud, but she didn't want to act too boastful of her achievements in public.
Ms. Walker shifted her focus to her mum. "Mrs. Granger, Emma, are you in the habit of allowing your husband to address other women this way?"
"Please, it's Mrs. Granger, and if you were attempting some sort of sisterhood, women-unite bond, you should know that I hold my dear husband in quite high-esteem, certainly above loose women I've just met."
"Now, now," her dad interjected softly. "Honeybuns, I don't think we should just Ms. Walker on how many men—"
"I meant her willingness and ease with which she lies, Richard," her mum rushed to clarify.
"Oh, right. Then, what my wife said. Times two."
Hermione could only sit and watch, fully aware she was missing some of the undercurrents and implications being tossed around, but catching the gist of it.
This woman wasn't whom she implied she was.
An edge of caution stole over her six-year-old self, and she kept her tongue, unwilling to muddle things up.
The woman dropped her expression after another ten seconds after her parents refused to budge. "Okay, I'm going to be upfront with you, I'm not from the DES—"
"No kidding."
"—I'm from the Security Service."
Her dad's jaw dropped as a naughty word slipped out that she shouldn't repeat. Glancing at her mother, she was so shocked that she hadn't even bothered to correct him.
Hermione tilted her head, recalling the documentary she'd watched one afternoon about the history of spy craft in the UK. Her dad loved the intrigue of a good conspiracy theory. "That's security intelligence. You're MI5?"
Her dad gripped her hand in warning or fear, one of the two.
Ms. Walker smiled though it felt placating. "My, you are an intelligent one."
"Is your name really Jane Walker?"
The woman's eyes emptied. "Maybe too intelligent for your age." She had her own folder with her, much like Officer Curtis, but hers wasn't stamped with the Scotland Yard logo.
It wasn't stamped with anything except a blood red "Classified" warning.
"Hermione Jean Granger, born the 19th of September, 1979 to parents Richard Daniel Granger and Emma Jean Granger, nee Darveaux. Your father's side is strictly British even as the name Granger shifted through different spellings and versions over time, but the Darveaux family, now there was an interesting read. Shall I continue?"
We were all speechless.
Ms. Walker cleared her throat. "Although white-washed through France eight generations back, your ancestry can actually be traced to Albania under several Macedonian variations of Darveaux, the most prominent and lengthy of which was Dervishi. I'm guessing that's where you and your mum get your brown eyes and textured, bushy hair. Likewise, I can even guess those far-removed but still predominant Middle Eastern genes help you tan golden brown instead of burning lobster red when you venture outdoors to visit the zoo or your mother's relatives in France every summer, despite your tendency to spend all your free time reading inside."
"Are you done?" her mum cut-in.
Hermione wondered how much of that deluge of information was a shock to her as well. If she'd ever traced their ancestry all the way back to Albania, she'd never shared the information with Hermione.
Ms. Walker arched a brow but shut the file and clasped her hands on the table atop it, as if they were going to try to steal their own information. "And that was just what I dug up on a cursory dive in the" –she made a point to glance at her wristwatch— "six hours since your name came across my desk this morning."
Her dad crossed his arms, clearly on the defensive. "You've proved your omnipotence, Spook. Explain something we don't know, like why your agency is so interested in my daughter."
"Isn't it obvious?" Ms. Walker shot back, a secretive smile playing on her lips.
"No, Ms. Walking, Talking Cliché," Mum snapped. "Since my husband's point failed to land with you, it's not."
At least Hermione wasn't alone in being patronized by Ms. Walker.
She clicked her nail on the table. "We can help her. Hermione is young, but despite that, if half of what the London police transcribed from your interview earlier is accurate, then she's going to be one of the most powerful psychics I've met."
Dad collapsed back in his seat. "Psychic."
"Yes, Mr. Granger. Hermione can converse with the dead. That opens up a whole host of applications to put her skills to use. With the right training. At our facility, she can learn control, mastery, and take back her life before the dead take over hers."
She could do that? Control the sometimes nightly interactions?
Mum wilted in her chair, glancing in Hermione's direction before sighing. "We've been sequestered in this room like criminals for over twelve hours. Do you need a decision right this minute?"
"No, ma'am. In fact, I've got a brochure for you to take. If you decide to go ahead with it, my business card's on the inside. It has my pager, and I never take it off." She flipped aside her smart, business blazer, flashing the small square device nestled into her waistline. "Page that, and I'll call you back right away, no matter the time of day."
Ms. Walker got to her feet as my parents, almost shell-shocked, gathered the glossy, nondescript pamphlets.
At the door, the MI5 agent paused and turned. "I feel I should warn you. This offer does come with an expiration date. You have twenty-four hours to reply, or we'll be scrubbing the fake identity and contact numbers we created for this outreach. It'll be like this this conversation never happened."
"What conversation?" her father joked weakly.
"Funny, Mr. Granger." With that last parting comment, Ms. Walker was gone.