Hermione Granger and the Year Hidden from Hogwarts
Harry Potter Fanfiction
Chapter 4
Chapter 4 - October 30th, 1985
Dr. Hampton cleared his throat, his voice echoing vaguely in the rounded, cavernous walls of the room they'd entered. "Well, as I was saying, the test is quite simple. Charles will fit you with some wires and sensors while I explain the premise of the test."
"Okay." Hermione watched, round-eyed as Mr. Saxon pulled out a tangle of wiring.
Dr. Hampton gestured to three complicated, behemoth boxes in the middle of the space. "These are quite advanced technology—faraday cages, and not like those backwater fake ones that crop up from someone's basement as a homespun science project. We've had these cages vetted and confirmed in working order."
"What is it they're supposed to do, sir?"
He clapped the top of one like it was a good old boy. "Why, house ghosts, of course!"
Hermione's jaw dropped, and without hesitation, she squeezed her eyes shut before opening them again. A faint, ethereal blue coated everything, apart from the Faraday cage in the middle. It glowed with a blinding white light. It was so bright, in fact, that she almost missed the fact that the one beside it had its own glow, but it was a much duller, sickly grey color.
"Doctor, you have to see this." Mr. Saxon gasped.
"What is it, m'boy?"
"I've only got a third of the sensors on, but look at the data we're reading from this. It's off the charts."
Dr. Hampton gave a noncommittal hum, but his eyes had caught on her and remained there. "Charles, perhaps leave the computer analysis for a moment. In an experiment, it's always better to observe the fleeting things first."
Mr. Saxon frowned. "What? But the data helps guide—oh," he broke off as his eyes stopped on Hermione.
Hermione's concentration broke, and the ghostly plain dropped from existence. "What?"
Mr. Saxon cleared his throat, still staring. "Y—"
"Nothing," Dr. Hampton interrupted, giving his assistant a pointed look. "Don't mind us."
Hermione frowned. Mr. Saxon hadn't broken his gaze yet as if waiting for her to sprout wings or something.
Dr. Hampton cleared his throat loudly. "Charles? The wires?"
"Huh, oh!" Mr. Saxon finally broke his gaze. "Right. I'll continue connecting these, shall I?"
Hermione continued to study him, hoping for some clue in the direction of his gaze or mannerisms.
"Let's focus, please, Hermione. Now, the test is simple. We have the three Faraday cages. When we've got you all wired up, you'll approach them and tell us which one is housing a ghost. Another psychic captured it when we investigated a haunting, so we already know which is occupied. If you can tell us the correct one, then we'll have proof to back up your claims."
"Understand?"
Hermoine relaxed significantly. "That's it?"
Dr. Hampton laughed. "Cheeky little thing. Yes, though you might not find it so easy. Part of the shielding that helps contain the spirit has been known to also interfere with psychic abilities—or so we've been told. That's why there are little portholes to peer inside in case that's how your powers work. If your power works through touch—"
"No, it's visual, sir."
"Excellent, excellent. Before we let you approach and do your thing, do you have any last questions?"
Hermione tilted her head. "Just one, I think. Is this implying that only one cage is occupied part of the test as well?"
The doctor laughed. "Ah, you're a clever one, aren't you? I don't think I've ever been asked that question before, but no, I assure you, only one of the boxes is preoccupied."
Hermione's brows pulled down. "Okay, then I assume you're talking about the one in the middle."
Dr. Hampton's face went carefully neutral, but Mr. Saxon dropped the electrode he'd been about to stick on her other temple and shot a wide-eyed look at the doctor.
Hermione thought the interaction was very telling. "I'm right, aren't I?"
Dr. Hampton, realizing where she'd taken her cue from, coughed pointedly, and Mr. Saxon's face blanked as well. "Hermione, are you positive you don't want to… approach the containers? You only get one chance at this. We'll have other tests. In the past, there have been others that claimed they were psychic but were only great at faking because they read people's body language. The truth will out eventually in our study. I assure you, people would not be very happy if you wasted so much of our time and resources only to find out later on that you weren't psychic at all."
Hermione bit her lip, fighting down the burning sting in her eyes. She felt her confidence shrink, pulling back her pretentiousness. "But I am."
Dr. Hampton's expression softened. "Okay, let me ask you this. Why did you say two boxes were occupied?"
Hermione shrugged, looking down at the floor and not wanting to get herself in trouble. Her teacher was right about her attitude. So were her peers.
Dr. Hampton squatted, stooping down to catch her eye. "Child, you're not in trouble. I'll tell you what. Today, you get a free pass. Anything you say, you absolutely cannot get in trouble for and won't be a waste of time."
"Really?"
"On my honor."
"Even if I say b-bollocks?" Hermione whispered the forbidden word.
Dr. Hampton chuckled. "Well, I imagine your parents might have something to say about that."
Suddenly an intercom went off and her mother's voice filled the room. "You better believe we will. Hermione Jean Granger, behave."
Hermione giggled, wiping the tears from her face.
"Better?" the doctor. When she nodded, he stood. "Okay, now, just to have all our t's crossed and i's dotted, explain why you guessed the middle box, and what other box you believe is occupied and why so Charles can note it down in our observations."
Hermione nodded, back on even footing. She understood the concept of careful research. Still, she tempered her tone to avoid being so overconfident. "The one in the middle glows. In fact, it was almost blinding."
"Was?" Dr. Hampton prodded.
She bobbed her head. "Yes, when I look with my other sight."
"Can you explain that some more?"
She paused, flummoxed for a beat. "Well, I guess I just close my eyes hard and focus on seeing the other side of the...veil, if you will. It's difficult to put into words."
"And what do you see when you do this?"
"Everything has a bluish, ethereal quality. And then I can see the ghosts if there are any around."
"Full apparitions?"
"Apparitions, sir?"
"Ghosts? They have a head, body, etc. You explained what the little girl was wearing to the police."
"Oh, yes. They look like regular people. Well, except for the ones that reappear the way they looked when they died. Most of them don't, I don't think, and I've only seen one that way." She shivered. "It wasn't pleasant."
"No?"
"No. He'd been…shot in the head, you see."
Mr. Saxon had long forgotten the computer in exchange for a biro and notepad, taking enthralled notes if the awed expression on his face in between furious scribbling was anything to go by.
"I'm sure that must've been quite unpleasant," Dr. Hampton agreed, neutrally.
"It was. I was only four at the time, and I was worried he would drip blood on my bed."
Dr. Hampton nodded before returning to an earlier thread of inquiry. "Now, you said you have to blink."
Hermione's head bobbed up and down, eager to move past her snafu and please him. "Yes, see, like this," she said and demonstrated.
The wash of incandescent blue fell back over the present, and she glanced at the boxes again, double-checking what she'd seen before.
Sure enough, through the blinding force that was the middle box, the cage on the far right still held those greyish wisps of tendrils.
Mr. Saxon jotted something down in the margins of his notebook. Curiously, the notebook looked almost invisible with her eyes dialed into the other world as they were.
"And it's necessary to blink?"
Hermione paused at the doctor's question. "I—I'm not sure."
"It's okay. You're not in trouble. I was only curious. At any rate, it's something we can look into further down the line. Now, you said the world looks ethereal when you're in this state?"
"Yes. Some things glow. Some things might be invisible, like Mr. Saxon's notebook."
"Charlie," Mr. Saxon insisted, waving the notebook around in front of her face.
She huffed and backed up. "I said the notepad was invisible, not your hand."
His blue and green form reminded her of the aurora borealis. "Oh, right."
She stared at him a moment longer, fascinated at the way the colors shifted, blended, and flowed through his outline. Until this moment, she hadn't realized how adamantly she'd avoided anything to do with peeking into the other side.
When he began to fidget in his seat and his head area gained a rosy hue, she tore her eyes away, exploring the rest of the room from her spot.
"So, you see the living too?" Dr. Hampton continued.
Hermione peered around, withholding an immediate answer since she hadn't spent enough time to confirm or not. "Yes, but I also see the computers, just there, and the wiring in the walls. They're like lines of bright yellow ants marching in a row at hyper speed."
Dr. Hampton's muted orange form scratched his chin. "Hmm, if you're picking up electricity, maybe it's any type of energy signature you can note."
"Yes. Even that potted plant over there has a soft green tint."
They glanced in the direction she pointed, but neither jumped in to reply right away.
She figured out why when Mr. Saxon snapped his fingers in excitement. "Oh! That's my office on the other side of the wall, Doctor. I bet she's seeing that cactus my mom sent me because I kept forgetting to water the others."
Although most of Dr. Hampton's body remained that muted orange, his brain brightened briefly to a flicker of canary yellow. "Through the walls? Maybe. Note that down for further inquiry."
Hermione felt a headache forming, as if she'd spent too long crossing her eyes and now they throbbed with strain. She blinked, and the world returned back to normal, and yes, they were right. There wasn't any potted plant in the hi-tech, space-age lab. Just steel walls, buttons, and monitors.
Dr. Hampton shot Mr. Saxon a silent look, and the assistant noted something down without any further prompting. "Now, Hermione, tell us about the other box you think you mentioned. Is it possible it's an electrical signature?"
"No, the first box" –she nodded to it— "is a complete dud. I only get something from the other two."
"You switched to past tense again," Dr. Hampton noted. "Is it safe to say you stopped your otherworldly vision?"
Mr. Saxon snorted, but a quelling look from his boss had him withholding any verbal comment.
"Yes, everything's back to normal."
"Brilliant. Can you tell us anything else about it?"
She glanced up at him. "Can I get closer?"
"Of course. Whatever you need to do. You're all hooked up now."
She moved past the cages, hurrying beyond the middle one and stopping in front of the last. Switching sights, she was almost blinded from the light pollution from the middle one. "Can you move the other one away. Up this close, I can't see anything." They did so, taking it to the far side of the room. She gave it one last look in her normal vision, unable to help the ominous feeling she got from it, returned her attention to the mystery before her, and switched.
With more distance from the overbearing presence of the other, she could make out swirls and soft light, as if something was moving inside. She startled and stumbled back a few steps when an eye manifested, or paused in the middle of the porthole window, as if whatever was inside had sensed her looking at it.
"What is it? What's wrong?" the doctor asked at the same time Mr. Saxon, staring at his computers, said, "Uh, doc? Somehow, whatever she did, our computer is showing slightly elevated readings from its baseline for Box Three."
Hermione inched closer again. "I didn't do anything."
"Well, it wasn't reading anything for the three months we've had them, and no one else has tampered with it," Mr. Saxon drawled.
A glimpse of a face slid by, as if the presence inside had to constantly be on the move.
Hermione backed up, but not from being startled this time, and returned her vision to normal. "I think it was the other box that kept this one down?"
"Like it suppressed it?" Dr. Hampton frowned, glancing at the other box.
"Maybe. I don't know. I can only catch glimpses of the ghost in this one. But the feeling I get off it… it might've been hiding from the other. If you released it, I could talk to it and ask questions."
They hesitated. "That probably wouldn't be a good idea. Does it feel malicious?"
Hermione nodded at the one on the far wall. "No, that one does. This one—I don't know, it feels like they're young."
Clearly beyond the scope of their study, Dr. Hampton and Mr. Saxon conversed. "Should we?"
"It could go bad."
Mr. Saxon shrugged. "She said it doesn't feel bad. What I'd like to know is how one of our cages sat dormant for so long if something's been in it this whole time. It's only pure lock that protocol says to keep them shut tight and plugged in at all times in case of emergency. If we need to calibrate the settings, then I'd like to know to avoid getting surprised by Hide-and-Seek Casper when I'm performing maintenance on our equipment."
Dr. Hampton digested his assistant's words before turning to Hermione. "You don't think the spirit in there is malevolent?"
"No," she confirmed.
He glanced at the intercom. "Drs. Granger?"
The speaker crackled. "That's a go from me. Go get 'em, tootsie pants."
Hermione's cheeks heated, and her eyes hooked on a computer monitor as if it were the most interesting thing in the world.
Then her mum's voice came on. "I agree, Hermione. We spent too long dismissing your claims. We'll trust your word on this."
"Okay." Dr. Hampton nodded at Mr. Saxon. "Go ahead, Charles."
"Down the rabbit hole we go, Alice," Mr. Saxon whispered.
Bolstered by her parents' confidence, Hermione squared her shoulders and faced the box as it clicked open. She'd already blinked to her ghost vision, so she saw the energy ooze out of the door like viscous molasses and puddle on the floor.
It stayed there for a moment, and then the temperature rapidly cooled as the presence absorbed the ambient heat and power its form.
An alarm went off, but Mr. Saxon said it was only a warning set to denote drops in temperature.
When she glanced back, the sludge had formed into a transparent child, a young boy no older than four. She smiled. "Hello. My name's Hermione. What's your name?"
The boy spoke in a rush of harsh, foreign sounds strung together rapidly.
"Pardon?" she replied, thinking she'd misheard.
When the same harsh-sounding syllables and phonics released forth, she was stumped, wondering if the prolonged use of her power had messed with her enough that she couldn't understand language anymore. Then, she realized how thickheaded she'd been.
"Oh," Hermione gasped, shocked.