Hermione Granger and the Year Hidden from Hogwarts
Harry Potter Fanfiction
Chapter 12
A/N: I'm posting this story in three different places and seem to get the most reviews on AO3 where I can reply to the comments and interact. That's harder to do on . Any time I go to reply to a comment, it wants to send it as a DM, so if I'm doing something wrong on ff, let me know! I love each and every review and comment, so even if you don't hear from me or get a response, know that I've probably devoured your words at least three times! I write for the feedback.
Also, I am always looking for opportunities to practice my Spanish, so I appreciate the Spanish reviews too! When I understood 95% of the words, it made me feel better about dishing out money for Rosetta Stone when I could use those skills in an authentic interaction.
If you're into finding a little bit about what's going on behind the scenes in terms of timelines and whatnot—which can be considered a spoiler if you squint hard enough—I'll be adding a little note at the end of this chapter too, a spoiler lite, if you will. So, if you don't want any information, it'll be easy to skip!
September 1st, 1991
Hermione bent at the waist, hands propped on her knees as she gasped for breath. "I hate the treadmill."
Charles killed his machine beside her with a whooshed, "Thank God." He held his hand to his side like he'd gotten a stitch. "I thought I was going to die."
Surprisingly enough, only Dr. Hampton seemed to enjoy the workouts they'd added at the beginning of their normal routines. He wasn't even out of breath as he jumped down. "You two are being dramatic. We'll never improve our fitness if we don't push. Come on, what do you say we add another five minutes?"
Hermione collapsed against the wall, greedily gulping from her water bottle, leaving Charles to answer to the absurd suggestion.
"Why are we forced to do this again?" He plopped down beside Hermione, holding his hand out in silent demand. She passed him his water bottle, too out of breath to comment on how he could've just taken three steps and sat on her left where he'd left his drink in the first place. "We're just the lab rats. We're not actual MI5 agents."
Besides, they'd been in this routine of ritual torture long enough that she could guess his answer: three steps are three too many.
Dr. Hampton propped his hands on his hips as he sank into a deep lunge. "Ah, that stretch on the hamstring feels great. And Charles, you heard Ms. Walker. If we're going to be out in the field so much, we have to keep in shape just like any field agent. We nearly lost Hermione at Lake Baikal. It's important to keep up our endurance and stamina. Besides," he burst out, running in place. "Exercise stimulates the brain. And, Hermione can get physical education credit for the stuff we do here, giving her another free period to keep up with her studies or add another self-led course."
When Hermione finally felt like she could speak without dying, she leaned forward into her own stretch, reaching for her toes. "My parents support this, don't they?"
Dr. Hampton chuckled. "Support? Sure, we can say that. About like saying Parliament supports people not committing murder."
Hermione blinked as she processed his words. She glanced up. "Wait, they made my exercise a stipulation to continue, didn't they?"
"Well, your mother was very upset after we got back, and while Ms. Walker's choice to make this a requirement does make sense in a way now that they've agreed to let us venture out more to search for these creatures, I can't say it's protocol."
Charles paused. "What do you mean?"
Dr. Hampton shrugged. "MI5 collects the best of the best. If the brains were needed from time to time to go out in the field, then they'd just assign a couple of extra agents to their team whose area of expertise it was as an operative to guide them. So, I suspect that though the edict came from Ms. Walker, she might've been pressured along by your mother. Scary woman, that, when she wants to be."
Charles turned on her, glaring. "It's your fault we got roped into this."
"Bah," Dr. Hampton waved him off. "It's good for you, Charles. Like I said, we need to escape the monotony of books and data every now and then."
"My eyelids are sweating," Charles deadpanned. "I didn't even know that was physically possible."
Dr. Hampton clapped. "See, there you have it! It only took us thirty minutes for you to make a groundbreaking discovery!"
Charles groaned in equal parts exasperation and defeat, leaning his head back against the wall.
Dr. Hampton chuckled. "Now, Miss Granger, while we allow our colleague to recover from the horror of sweating eyelids, how about you catch me up. How was your first day of school?"
Hermione climbed to her feet. "Easier than last year since I didn't have to worry about starting a new school on top of everything. And it will be nice to not have to make a complete fool of myself taking physical education with twenty or so other kids my age. And since Latin was much easier than anticipated, between two free periods, I think I'll be able to pick up where I left off with Mandarin… and if we're going to be working more with the Russians going forward as well, I thought it would be a good idea to study that as my second. Especially since it's another language Charles speaks, so I'll be able to get some interactions with him rather just listen to the limited audio selections at the library."
"Brilliant," Dr. Hampton said, patting her shoulder. "And how about our projects? Have you been able to achieve any more colors in your meditation?"
"Yes, I did! And… I think that each color has its own function. Remember that time I was able to move the pencil?"
"Of course."
"Well, it wasn't enough just to direct and wrap the energy around the object, but I had to achieve the same pale golden color as well."
"So you were able to move it again?"
Hermione grinned instead of answering. She held her empty water bottle in her palm, switched to her metavision since she had to visually see the color of the energy for now. With practiced, she hoped to keep her normal vision as she learned the feel of it. Once she reached that pale yellow color, she wove the strands of energy around the water bottle, encasing it. If it were still full, she probably wouldn't have been able to budge it. It was like an unused muscle, but with practice, she was sure she'd be able to do some very impressive things with this new skill. As it was, the water bottle floated in the air, hovering about three inches above her palm.
"Outstanding," Dr. Hampton breathed.
Hermione controlled the object's descent and blinked out of her vision.
"So, colors are key?" Charles checked, climbing to his feet.
"I think so," Hermione claimed.
Charles swiped the cloth over his face. "Well, then we're all going to need a crash course on color names—maybe even something standardized? We can't just go around saying pale goldish."
"I said pale golden!" Hermione blurted, realizing she was nitpicking even before the exasperated look Charles shot her way.
"You're brilliant, Charles. We'll need an expert on color science. Is that even a thing?"
"Well, it's probably termed color theory, and yes, that's a thing. I might have a contact from university…"
"Get right on that. We need all the best data there is, and if there isn't a standardized color naming system yet, we need to get our hands on it. We'll need key charts for quick reference. Our standard color dot matrix printer won't be up to that task. We'll need to hire an artist and make sure they can formulate all the colors with paint…"
Dr. Hampton trailed off as he muttered too fast to be intelligible.
Hermione glanced at Charles for guidance since they both knew he could disappear for hours if they didn't reel him back in.
Charles cleared his throat. "Dr. Hampton?"
Dr. Hampton turned. "Yes?"
"I realize that it's exciting that Hermione made progress, but really, we'll still have to run this through the board of directors for approval before we can outsource an expert, and they'll be the ones to give any artist the best guidance for mixing, so we should put this on hold for the time being. We can work on getting everything organized and set in place tomorrow while Hermione's at school, but in the meantime, didn't you want to have Hermione work with subject 202?"
"Ah, right, of course. An efficient breakdown of our time, of course. Subject 202 has recently become more receptive to working with our experiments, so we'd like to see if you could make more inroads by studying his magic. He should be in the containment unit right about now, so how about you say we go on back to our lab?"
Hermione cleared her throat and nodded. She also couldn't help but to feel a spark of excitement at the breakthrough in their research especially when the possibilities seemed so endless. She could see ghosts, make flames, and now perform telekinesis. What else would she be able to do?
The pressure that'd been present since her eleventh birthday had tightened its when she woke up today, giving her the sense that she should be somewhere… but where? Thankfully, the excitement helped to ease back the ennui bordering on depression that'd lingered over her first day of school.
September 6th, 1991
Inside Laboratory 5, the elven creature was already inside the large, cylindrical containment unit.
Hermione shuddered at the dark look in its eyes, staring at her hungrily, and she suspected she might know what had happened to those missing children.
He'd refused to cooperate so far, even after croaking out a broken, "I work," to his handlers on her first day of school, but the creature had undergone a change of heart, refusing to cooperate and sitting sullenly at the far edge of the cage, doing nothing but keeping its eyes locked on Hermione, tracking her every move. It was disconcerting to say the least.
She'd actually tried to linger in the gym yesterday to extend their workout routine to limit her time in the lab as much as possible. Of course, Charles had nixed that plan before it could seed inside Dr. Hampton's mind that they were ready to up the physical fitness to the next level.
While it was interesting to log the features of the being and note similarities to other animals, it never used its power whatever that was, when Hermione was present, so she hadn't been able to tell what color or even ability it had.
"Just try talking to him," Dr. Hampton encouraged when she gave world weary sigh.
"Fine."
"You're hooked up to the monitors, and we added more of the camera scanners with our extended budget. They arrived yesterday, so don't worry about keeping him in a certain area. The entire containment unit is under surveillance now. If he does something, we'll have it documented."
"It was like Boxing Day came early," Charles added.
"Indeed. While you do that, we'll be over here, looking more into the color theory books our liaison sent."
"Okay," Hermione agreed reluctantly, casting a yearning glance at the books herself.
Dr. Hampton chuckled. "Don't worry about those. We'll do the grunt work, cycle through the wish wash and rubbish to give you a detailed report of the relevant information."
Hermione's cheeks warmed as she spun away, her embarrassment fueling her retreat so that before she knew it, she was within arm's distance of the cage without realizing.
It was the closest she'd gotten to it since it'd swam up beneath her in the inky blackness and gripped her ankle. Feeling as if she was on the menu didn't exactly encourage her to cozy up to the creature.
Subject 202 noticed as well, and he watched her with narrowed eyes but said nothing even though it was capable of human speech.
She sighed. "You know, they call you Subject 202. That's not a very flattering name. Perhaps you'd like to tell me yours?"
He didn't say anything.
Her neck tickled as Ignis crawled out from his hidey hole and along her shoulder to look at what was happening.
"Hi, boy," she cooed, using the tip of her index to rub his head. He nuzzled into her touch, a grin stretching his wide mouth at the corners and tongue lolling out as his tail wagged.
He reminded her of a puppy.
The first day of school, she'd told him to stay home despite the sad eyes he'd given her. But he was classified information of the highest degree. If Ms. Walker had her way, he'd be locked up in a cage right along Subject 202, but any time they tried to take him, he'd go up in flames, only to reappear within another ball of flames back on her shoulder. So Hermione had been given the tenth degree, signed a textbook of nondisclosures, contracts, and rules, and gotten to keep him.
When she'd arrived home that day after the lab, Ignis had been a dull, sickly grey color. She'd assumed it was because he fed on fire, but the second day of school, he'd been in the same position, despite the candle she'd left lit in her room. After that, she always kept him with her as long as he promised to stay hidden.
He'd seemed to understand because he had, only popping out of his cocoon of hair when it was safe to do so, even without prompting on her part.
"What do you think, Ignis?" she asked, staring at Subject 202.
Ignis arched his back, curled his tail in tight and hissed at the elven creature, little plumes of smoke curling from his mouth as if he were a fierce dragon.
Hermione nodded. "Yeah, I think so too. But, we have to try, right?"
Ignis huffed another ring of smoke.
Hermione grinned but decided to persevere. "Alright, Subject 202, I'll just keep calling you that until you decide to share your name. Would you like to talk about something else?"
Nothing.
"Maybe you'd like to tell me what happened to those children that went missing? Where can we find them?"
She held no delusions that they were dead. Even as an almost twelve-year-old, she'd seen too much death between her psychometry visions and ghosts to not know that things didn't always have a happy ending like they did on the telly.
Subject 202 grinned an evil, terrifying grin, flashing sharp, pointed teeth beneath its hooked nose, but he still didn't say a word.
He didn't need to.
Hermione swallowed, trying to soothe Ignis who'd ran to the end of her shoulder and leaned as far forward as he could get, chattering and hissing at the threat.
Ignis's complaining grew worse, turning into an angry drawn-out squeal, and she had just enough time to recognize it as a warning and turn back to the cage, only to fall back on the ground as Subject 202 impacted the glass with slamming force right where she'd been.
"Hermione!"
"Miss Granger!"
Hermione trembled, staring at the crazed actions of the elven creature, banging, biting, and scratching at the glass hard enough that it should've broken if it weren't three inches thick of tempered custom glass.
A hand landed on her shoulder, causing her to scream in fright and Ignis to ignite into a ball of blue flames.
The person backed off, hands up in the air.
Charles.
"I asked if you were okay, Hermione."
"Yeah, I'm…" she trailed off because a low, sibilant voice sounded, an unnatural voice.
"Errrkling eeeat you. Errrkling eeeat you! ERKLING EEEAT!"
Hermione gasped, too terrified to breathe as it beat so hard against the glass that lime green ooze—it's blood, she realized—marred the glass.
"EEEAT! ERRRKLING EEEAT!"
Hermione scrambled backwards along the floor, not wanting to tear her eyes off the threat for an instant, but still needing the reassurance of space between them.
Once she caught her breath, her brain somehow had the foresight to switch into her metavision. A dull brown, perhaps a cross between tree bark and tan, swirled around him. She tried her best to catalogue it to memory, though what power Subject 202, Erkling, was using, she had no clue.
One thing was for sure though. If he had a power that would release him from the containment, he would've used it in a heartbeat.
WARNING: Spoiler Lite! Read at your own peril.
A/N: Okay, so, we're dipping more into the magical realm now, even if Hermione has officially missed the start of her original first year at Hogwarts now. There will be a sneak peek at Hogwarts and some cherished characters coming shortly. I've got it scheduled for Chapter 16 for now, but it could be about 2 chapters beyond that. The story doesn't always obey the pacing I set in my outline. From that point on, there'll be one more chapter, and then we should be hearing regularly from one HP character in particular until Hermione starts Hogwarts. She will be due to start Hogwarts for her second year, so have no fear. The story is called, The Year Hidden from Hogwarts, after all 😉
Let me know if you like hearing these little tidbits or if you'd rather just keep it all a mystery! I adore your comments.