"Mum, Dad! I'm home!" called Hermione as she closed the door behind her.
"Dad had to go to the clinic again, an emergency!" her mother's voice rang out from the kitchen. Hermione took her shopping bags upstairs first, mainly to pick up Lancelot. When she opened the door, however, there was no sign of him as she entered her room. Probably he had a bigger outing planned, she thought to herself, and went back downstairs to the kitchen.
"What's for dinner today?" asked Hermione, trying not to give any indication of her excitement.
"Since I don't know when your father is coming over, I thought I'd get us something from Ganesha. Dad will call when he gets home and I'll get him ...". Hermione's mother's breath caught mid-sentence as she turned and caught sight of her daughter.
"Where did you get those beautiful glasses, dear?" she asked incredulously, eyeing her daughter.
"From Diagon Alley! They're magic glasses!" exclaimed Hermione, rushing up to hug her mother. They both jumped up and down exultantly, celebrating the defeated curse that had plagued Hermione since she was a toddler. Hermione spun in a circle once afterwards to present her new robe to her mother.
"I suppose all wizards and witches wear robes then?" she asked with a furrowed brow.
"Don't worry, I'll wear muggle clothes at home," Hermione said banteringly, giggling as her mother nodded in agreement.
She probably wouldn't be able to convince her parents of witch fashion. Hermione told her about the rest of her purchases, which sent a slightly worried look darting across her mother's face. Earnestly, she explained to Hermione that she wanted to talk about her finances with her and her father that evening.
Hermione agreed, already knowing that she had planned well. She just had to explain that to her parents later. Hermione's mother relaxed again and stroked her daughter's cheek.
"Are you hungry yet?" she asked, reaching for the phone. Hermione nodded and pulled the menu note of their favourite Indian restaurant towards her.
That evening, Lancelot also came fluttering in through the window again. Hermione had tried out her new Blotts Book after dinner and read a chapter each in her new Transfiguration and Charms books. She greeted Lancelot and tapped the Flourish Quill on the first page to select the Sigmund Freud book. At dinner she had asked her mother what she knew about him.
Her mother, however, could not tell her much, except that he had been one of the important researchers of the human psyche. She had been as surprised as Hermione that he had been a wizard. Hermione spent the rest of the evening reading spellbound chapter after chapter of Freud's elaboration of the magic of the mind and understanding the harmony between the magic that flows through the body and the mind that directs it.
He elaborated that an expanded mind could direct magic much more efficiently and powerfully. Further, he described that his teachings and approaches could only be implemented by very few of his students, as their minds were pigeonholed by growing up with witches and wizards when it came to certain subjects. The ability to expand the mind to its maximum magical potential was reserved for a select few who were willing to reach into the deepest recesses of their minds and break the chains in which it was trapped.
The theoretical introduction to magic was the complete opposite of the strictly prescribed spell instructions that the rest of the books contained. The book gave the reader an idea of magical potential without once defining it and expecting it as a given. Freud also elaborated that he alone could not explain the full complexity of a magical person's mind. Hermione liked this approach. Expanding her own magic by understanding it became her new goal.
Freud detailed in his book that the consciousness of some of his students could be expanded through trances. He listed the steps leading to success, but pointed out the vanishingly small guarantee of success of about four out of five hundred students he had taught this method. The student had to fall asleep in a trance, which was accomplished by meditation with the help of a spell.
The expansion of the mind had to be done by consciously exploring one's own mind while asleep under trance, and each of the persons for whom the expansion of the mind had worked described an individual process. Freud attributed this to the uniqueness of each magical being.
"Even if it doesn't work, I want to at least try," Hermione said to herself and wrote down the individual steps on a piece of paper, which she learned by heart. She didn't manage the spell for the trance until two days later, as it ranked as clearly advanced magic.
"At least my head won't explode if I don't manage it," Hermione kept telling herself, thinking of the burst apple she found scraps of in her room from time to time. The morning after the third night of trying to achieve a trance with the meditation spell, she could remember every second she had spent dreamless in her mind.
Since she was nevertheless fit and well rested, she interpreted this as a success. Before going to bed that night, she prepared herself to feel and expand her mind.
"Meditatus!" said Hermione as she held her hands left and right to her head, fingertips not touching her face. Instantly, she fell through the white void, just as she had last night. She concentrated on visually manifesting her thoughts as Freud had described. After a while, she suddenly hit the marble floor of a seemingly endless library, but without sound or pain.
Hermione looked around curiously at the endless tangle of huge bookshelves, which contained vast numbers of different coloured books. She stepped closer to a shelf and examined the covers of the coloured books. They were all one colour and she looked in vain for a label revealing the author or title.
She wanted to take one of the books from the shelf. When she touched the book in the cupboard, it flickered briefly and a label appeared with a number on the spine. The number 235 was written on the book Hermione had touched. After a few seconds, the plaque faded and the book was once again encased solely in a cover of a pastel shade of blue.
She took out the book and opened it. It contained only blank pages. Thoughtfully, Hermione put the book back in its place and opened some more books. Except for the cover and the number on the spine, none of the books were different. They were all completely blank. She took a few steps back and glanced at the overall appearance of the shelf.
It looked disorganised, chaotic. She spotted two books on the shelf that were clearly the same colour. She touched them both and read the numbers that appeared.
"One and twenty-four," Hermione murmured, looking around. In the seemingly endless sea of different coloured books, it was difficult to pick out a particular colour. Without further ado, she picked up the book with the number 1 and took it to the next shelf to compare the colour more easily.
She found another book on the next shelf that was the same pastel ultramarine blue colour as the one in her hand. She touched the cover and the number 198 appeared. Hermione recognised a pattern in her surroundings.
A chaos that could be ordered. Hermione took the book and went back to the first shelf where she took out a different coloured book and replaced it with the blue book. Nothing happened. Hermione shrugged and sorted the green book she had taken out to replace it into the place of the blue book on the other shelf. For the moment, she wanted to sort a single colour first, to find out if anything would happen.
Again and again she found ultramarine blue books on the different shelves and carried them to the first shelf to sort them. She realised that she enjoyed bringing order to the library. With the patience of a saint, she sorted book after book onto the shelf until only one was missing.
"Number 256 is missing," she said, looking at the gap at the very bottom right of the shelf. She must have missed one. Again she roamed the shelves, comparing the covers with the book in her hand. When she was about to become impatient, she found the book.
She touched it with her index finger and sighed when she recognised the number 0. That meant she had sorted incorrectly. She walked quickly back to the shelf and rearranged the books so that the last gap was not at the bottom right, but at the top left. The book in her hand began to pulse as if a heart was beating in it.
Determined, Hermione tucked the book into its place, where it fit seamlessly. The books on the shelf began to glow. So brightly that Hermione had to cover her eyes for a moment to avoid going blind. A few moments later it went dark again in front of her covered eyes and she took her hands away from her face.
The books were unchanged at first glance, but Hermione realised that the labels with the numbers were now visible throughout. She took a book from the shelf and opened it. Delighted, she realised that it was now full of text and pictures. She figured that it was a mixture of memories, facts and explanations of subjects from her school career in the Muggle world.
Determined, she slammed the book shut and put it back in its place. Her ambition was kindled. In what seemed an interminable amount of time, she sorted shelf after shelf, speeding up as she went. By the second shelf, she had realised that if she pre-sorted the shelf correctly in the first place, leaving the first place empty, she would find the book with the number 0 much faster.
She could hear the distant pulsing and followed the sound, which made finding the last book much easier. She began to build up stacks of books of the same colour between the shelves, grouping them by colour in advance. Finally, after what seemed like an endless amount of time, when she placed the last book on the last shelf, leaving only 0 empty, she clearly felt her heartbeat.
The pulsing became louder and louder and finally a book with the colour of the last shelf manifested itself in her left hand. She inserted it at the last gap and closed her eyes to shield them from the glaring light in which all the shelves now shone. When she opened her eyes again, she saw the ceiling of her room above her.
Confused, she looked around the room. Lancelot was crowing and jumping up and down excitedly. He fluttered to the closed window and tapped his beak against it nervously. Hermione put on her glasses, stood up and opened the window for the raven, who flew out instantly. She rubbed her slightly burning eyes and yawned heartily before heading downstairs to satisfy her hunger for bears.
"Thank goodness you're finally awake! Good morning, sleepyhead!" her mother exclaimed with a relieved tone in her voice as Hermione came into the kitchen.
"Why? Did I oversleep?" asked Hermione, stretching with a yawn.
"Well, if you do ask that way, you've slept through three days. We tried to wake you up several times, but Lancelot defended you to blood," said her mother, showing her a plaster on her ring finger. Hermione's eyes widened.
"That explains the urgency with which he wanted out," Hermione said, chuckling. "I'm starving!" she said, dropping into the chair at the small kitchen table.
"I bet you are, just a minute," her mother replied cheerfully and made Hermione a big breakfast. When she was full and well hydrated again, Hermione made her way to her room. She wanted to reread the chapter where Freud described the results of mind expansion. As she passed the bathroom, she decided to switch plans. Over a bath, she could think again about her three-day trance.
"I wonder if it worked. Why did I wake up when I was putting the last book away?" wondered Hermione as she relaxed in the warm water. With a towel wrapped around her body and one around her hair, she entered her room half an hour later and lay down on her bed again. She called the Blotts Book to her with a wave of her hand and opened it.
Then she immediately slammed it shut again and stood up, startled. She shook her head and blinked. As she stood up, she lost her towel. She looked down at her hands and shook her head again before going to her wardrobe to get dressed.
When she had rubbed her hair dry, she tossed the towel to the one already on the floor. While she had been getting dressed, she had tried to recall every millisecond in her mind. She must have been mistaken.
Determined to try again, she made the hand gesture of 'Accio' towards the towel she had just thrown away. Without a moment's pause, the towel immediately flew towards Hermione's hand.
"What?" she exclaimed loudly, throwing herself on her Blotts Book. Hastily, she tapped 'Achievements in Charming' and opened the glossary. A few seconds later she was flicking wildly and had finally found the right page.
"Nonverbal spells. The ability to cast a spell without speaking it aloud, using only the caster's willpower on the wand, so that the spell succeeds without being articulated," Hermione read aloud.
'That can't be a coincidence,' she thought. She fixed her eyes on the second towel lying on the floor and made the motion with her hand for the levitation spell. Instantly, the towel rose into the air and remained floating at the level of her cheered so loudly that several moments later her mother stuck her head in at the door with a questioning look after she had knocked.
"It's all right, I just had a great idea!" said Hermione, blushing slightly. Reassured, her mother closed the door and returned her attention to her novel downstairs.
Hermione couldn't resist trying out all the spells she had learned so far without saying them. None of them gave her any trouble. After about two hours, Lancelot also returned from his excursion and crowed happily at her.
"I heard you were defending me, my noble knight," she said, and Lancelot ruffled his feathers. "Perhaps you will soon earn to be called Sir Lancelot," Hermione added, giggling as Lancelot bobbed up and down delightedly.
She took a step towards him to pet him. The moment her hand cupped Lancelot's back, his eyes glistened silvery and bright and a loud voice rang in her head.
"Daughter of the Raven! Your time has come. The Elders are calling you," it echoed in her head. It took Hermione a while to find her voice.
"Are - are you Rowena Ravenclaw?" she asked in a stifled voice.
"No. Rowena was the first Daughter of the Raven. You are her successor. I have been titled many times, most recently I was called Cathubodua. You my child, like Rowena, are blessed by the spheres. Few mortals have ever been able to contact the Elders," the voice in her head replied.
"Then - did you send Lancelot?" asked Hermione.
"Your raven chose you. You have followed your destiny, Daughter of the Raven," replied Cathubodua.
"What does that mean?" asked Hermione, confused.
"The Daughter of the Raven is born in times of great hardship to assist the warriors in the fight against extinction. The mind and the power in unison. Protect and advise the lion, or the world as you know it will be no more," the Elder replied.
"I - I don't know if I will be able to," Hermione said with a tremor in her voice.
"Don't be afraid. Your skills will be formed by the time the battle begins. But beware of the evil that lurks beneath the surface. Do not show your true power to anyone you do not fully trust until the lion begins the fight," the Elder said in a wise voice.
"Can I always talk to you through the raven now?" asked Hermione.
"No. I will not appear to you again until the battle is decided. Go your way and trust your mind. What you think is right will be right. Farewell, Daughter of the Raven," said Cathubodua and Lancelot's eyes lost their silvery light. The raven blinked and crowed delightedly.
"Pinch me please, Lancelot," Hermione said incredulously. She twitched slightly as the raven pecked her hand once, gently.
Hermione spent the next few days trying to find out everything she could about Rowena Ravenclaw and Cathubodua. Every day she had gone to Flourish & Blotts to register more books for her Blotts Book. She didn't learn very much, however, as not much was known about Rowena Ravenclaw's exact life dates.
She found out something about Cathubodua in Celtic sagas, but nothing more than that she was worshipped by the Celts as a goddess of war and the dead. By the Celts she was known as the Battle Raven, which was the rough translation of the title Cathubodua.
"Makes sense if she only appears to the Children of the Raven," Hermione concluded. Since the Elder had told her to concentrate on her education, she now did so more eagerly than ever.
She diligently practised spells daily and continued to read Sigmund Freud's book, eager to explore her mind and magical powers. In the last third of his book, he went into the protection of one's mind from attacks and those very attacks. The two teachings of Occlumency and Legilimency.
The former reminded Hermione of her contact with the Elder who had inculcated her to hide her true abilities from others she did not trust. She decided to learn Occlumency and eventually take up Legilimentary. However, she quickly realised that without an assault on her mind, she could not really know if she was implementing the instructions from the book correctly.
She tried to clear her mind whenever possible. At night, in a trance, she returned to the library where she had discovered a new unordered bookshelf since her initial attempts at occlumency. They seemed to be added whenever Hermione explored a new part of her mind. Keeping the books in order helped her make faster progress on the subjects they belonged to.
After ordering the shelf of dark purple books last night, Hermione could feel the next day how much less energy and attention she had to devote to maintaining the mental block. She was by now firmly convinced that she had completed the expansion of the mind described in Freud's book.
She began her first attempts at Legilimency two weeks before school would start. Since she was confident by now that she could cast the spell flawlessly, she asked Lancelot if she could use him for her first attempt. The raven ruffled his feathers and hopped happily towards her. He had grown a little by now. Not much, but one could tell the difference if one knew how big he had been in the Magic Menagerie.
"Okay, hold still," she whispered, executing the move for the 'Legilimens' spell. She was instantly pulled through a tunnel and in the next moment was standing in the Magic Menagerie. The owner was just turning the closed sign on the door with a wave of her wand when a man in his 50s apparated to the entrance.
"Oh, good, I still have permission!" he said loudly, whereupon the witch was startled terribly and placed a hand on her chest over her heart. She had the wizard reflexively fixed with her wand in the next moment. But the witch seemed to recognise the man and lowered the wand.
"Sorry to come unannounced like this, Irma. Look here, I found an injured animal," he said, his cheeks flushed, and from an inner pocket of his bright yellow robe he brought out a small black bird.
"You apparated with an animal? An injured one at that! Just you wait!" the witch exclaimed, pulling a long feather duster from under the counter. With a flick of her wand it flew straight at the man and thrashed him.
"Irma, please! Ouch! I'm sorry! Ouch!" the man cried in pain, shielding the little bird from the blows.
"Learn from it!" the witch cried and Hermione had to giggle. The witch let go of the man and with a wave of her hand instructed him to present the injured bird. He did as he was told and the witch looked at Lancelot's wing, which he stretched away from his body. The witch gently ran her finger over the wing joint and sighed.
"Broken in two places, now you must be brave, little one," she said, pointing the wand at the wing. Twice in succession she said 'Episkey' and the bird twitched briefly but made no sound. She felt the wing again and then smiled.
"Just like new! You're not saying anything," she said facing the raven, who just looked at her.
"Did he make any sounds before you apparated with him?" she asked the man.
"I don't know exactly, I only found him about three minutes ago. Apparated here right away," the man said sheepishly, scratching the back of his head.
"That's what we get for it now. Think first, then act! Next time you find a sick animal, pick me up. I can apparate too!"
At this, the man remained speechless for a moment. He couldn't seem to think of any excuse.
"I'm sorry Irma, would you take the bird in, it looks a bit weak, don't you think?" he said meekly.
"Indeed," said the woman, turning to pull out nuts from one of the jars behind the counter.
"I'll nurse him, don't worry," she said, placing a nut down for little Lancelot. Hermione noticed the memory slowly fading and the outline of her desk becoming clearer in her field of vision.
When she had stepped completely out of her raven's head, she noticed that the intrusion into its memory had cost him quite a bit of strength. He sat on the desk, trembling slightly. Hermione quickly pulled up the bag of raven treats and placed some in front of his beak. One by one they were devoured and Lancelot crowed weakly.
"I'm sorry, sweetie," she said with a worried expression on her face. Seeing that the raven's eyes were slowly falling shut, she lifted the bird into his woollen beanie. As she cupped his body with her hands, she suddenly felt a sense of contentment and warmth that she could not place.
When she placed Lancelot on his beanie, the feeling faded away immediately after she let go of him. Astonished, she looked at her hands. She touched his head again with her index finger and felt the feeling flare up inside her again. When she removed her finger again, it faded again.
"Interesting," Hermione said.
After briefly touching her mother's hand while washing up after dinner, she had again been overcome by feelings that were not her own. She could feel maternal pride. She smiled at her mother, but hastily said goodbye and ran upstairs to her room.
Immediately she opened 'The Doctrine of the Power of the Magical Mind' to search the chapters on Legilimency. She spent the whole evening looking for an explanation of this ability, but found absolutely nothing on the subject. Since her attempt at Legilimency with Lancelot had felt a lot like what Freud described in his book, Hermione wanted to focus more on her own ability.
When she visited her library again that night in a trance, she was amazed to find a new shelf about three times the size of the rest. There were just five books with light green covers on it. Hermione arranged the books, numbered 1 to 5, and searched the rest of the shelves, but could find no books.
Electrified by this mystery, she spent the rest of her trance repeating the contents of the books that were on the Occlumency shelf. Well rested, she woke the next day and was glad to find Lancelot on his new perch, crowing cheerfully.
"Good morning!" said Hermione, putting her contact lenses in place with a nonverbal levitation charm. She had been wearing the contacts every day for a few days now, mainly to get used to them before school, but they fitted so perfectly to her eyes that she didn't notice them at all.
Every time she put the lenses in, she silently thanked Madam Malkin for sending her to Mr Oculus. She stood up and stroked Lancelot's feathers. Again she felt a feeling of the raven as soon as she touched him, this time it was attraction. Smiling, she stroked his feathers three times and the raven narrowed his eyes. She put her hand on his back.
"Will you come for breakfast? You'll get your own fried egg as a reward for yesterday!" she said and immediately a wave of Lancelot's joy washed over her. His eyes shot open and he fluttered onto her head a second later. He waited there until she had brushed her hair off her shoulder and then bounced unerringly onto it.
Her parents were once again both needed at the clinic, so Hermione prepared breakfast for her raven and herself. She set the table with two plates and went to the table with the pan. As promised, Lancelot got a fried egg of his own, which he wolfed down in record time.
After breakfast, she washed up, performing every move by magic. She was by now so confident in the subject of magic that she managed most things without thinking. It would be hard to do all the magic with the wand and spoken, she thought. When she was done, she walked Lancelot upstairs and set him down on his perch.
"You don't feel any pain or strain when I touch you, do you?" asked Hermione Lancelot with a serious expression on her face. He wiggled his head and bobbed up and down on the pole happily, which Hermione interpreted as a no.
"Then I'd like to do some research on the magic with you, if that's all right with you," she said, smiling. Lancelot continued to bob up and down and then hopped onto the desk in front of Hermione, where he sat down in his beanie.
"You'll report back when you need to go out, though," Hermione said with a raised index finger, pulling the beanie along with the raven towards her after sitting down in her desk chair. For the rest of the day, Hermione continued to test her ability to read others' emotions. She was scrupulous about giving Lancelot breaks and let him out at lunchtime. She urged him not to come back until he wanted to.
After the raven had flown out, Hermione had gone into a trance on her bed and noticed that there were two new books on the new shelf.
"So I seem to be making progress," she thought aloud as she opened her eyes. She prepared herself something small for lunch and then read the last few chapters in Freud's book. By now she was convinced she could tie her own research to it, as she couldn't glean much new from the lines.
The breakthrough, in her opinion, had been the trance in which she had ordered the chaos in her mind and thus expanded it. Over the next few days Hermione made progress in reading emotions, as she called it. Since she didn't have to perform a spell to do it, she couldn't title it as such. She had been able to shelve ten more books during the last three days.
She had learned to suppress the stream of emotions at touch and could read from a certain distance. By now, no matter where she was in her room, she could access Lancelot's emotional world. With her parents it was a little harder. With them, she managed to get within a metre and a half. The last three days of the holiday passed quickly and Hermione concentrated day by day on extending her reach.
As she began to pack on the last morning before the trip to Hogwarts, a wave of sadness overcame her. She wouldn't see her parents until Christmas. She had never been away from them for so long. The Grangers spent the entire evening snuggled close together.
Hermione could feel her parents' sorrow, but also their pride. She fell asleep in her parents' arms and her father carried her to bed, as he had last done with five-year-old Hermione.
Author's Note:
How will Hermione fare on her journey to Hogwarts and in her new world?
Find out in the next chapter!
I hope you like it and would be glad to read a few lines if you did!