CW: Dangerous information. Hermione's mother's story is taken from an apocryphal tale where the women involved were very lucky; use of pennyroil oil on the skin can cause organ failure and death very easily.
To Hermione's delight, Pansy stopped making snide remarks at her and appeared subdued. Her friendship with Daphne even seemed strained, which Hermione enjoyed taking advantage of by talking to Daphne more and learning about her. It was interesting to hear about what one of the Sacred 28 grew up with – the deportment lessons, the dancing classes, the etiquette, on and on and on. Part of Hermione was keeping a mental list and dreading everything she'd have to learn to fit into high society, but she couldn't help but find it fascinating.
The incident at that lunch had also reminded Hermione of something; Tracey had mentioned she'd gotten her cycle, when she was describing dead blood. And Snape had said something about a witch's power growing exponentially from that point on.
It was a very tedious afternoon Hermione spent one day, plugging in different hypothetical numbers, trying to find what would be the best month to purposefully have her period between age 11 and age 17. If a witch's power began growing at 11, in a linear fashion, and then would begin growing exponentially at some point X between age 11 and 17, and stop growing at age 17, at what value of X was the maximum final result? It was incredibly frustrating for Hermione. She didn't know the math necessary to make an equation to solve it, and she finally went off in search of a Prefect, who directed her to Professor Vector.
Professor Vector was a tall woman with long black hair, pale skin, and red robes, and she was pleasant woman whose eyes lit up at the prospect of a puzzle. Hermione explained her dilemma, without referring to why she was trying to find this out or her ultimate goal at all – just maximizing the final result, as if a slider being adjusted, growing linearly and then exponentially. Professor Vector accepted this as completely normal, and Hermione wondered if she was the type of person who entertained herself with complicated math questions in her mind regularly.
The woman scribbled out a few equations, solving them rapidly one after the other after the other. Hermione watched, not recognizing some of the operators in the equations at all. Whatever math Professor Vector was using, Hermione wasn't able to follow, but it was interesting nonetheless.
"Arithmancy is usually used for prediction trees, but it can be used without magic for this sort of thing," Professor Vector told her. "In your 3rd year, Arithmancy is an additional course you can sign up for."
"It looks hard," Hermione admitted. "I don't know anything beyond Algebra, but I was always good at it. You can make prediction trees?"
Professor Vector nodded. "We use the math to create formulas, and then magic to help create statistics and values of real-world things, turning them into constants to plug in. The equation then gives us the likelihood of outcomes. It's used mostly for spell crafting and curse breaking."
Hermione found the idea fascinating.
The answer Professor Vector gave her was 18 – 18 months after she'd turned 11 would be the optimal time to have her period, to maximize her potential power output. Hermione counted, and quickly realized that she was in her 17th month already – with no period to speak of, and it didn't seem inclined to be coming any time soon. She thanked Professor Vector profusely, promising to sign up for her class in third year.
Hermione went up to the Ravenclaw common room to think, idly answering a riddle on her way in. She picked her favorite window seat and looked out over the grounds, her mind racing.
Could she purposefully have her period early…?
This, more than anything, felt like cheating. Forcing her body to mature faster than it wanted to in order to maximize her magical potential felt akin to athletes taking performance-enhancing drugs. But still… now that she knew, she couldn't not do it. It would be monumentally unfair, if after everything she'd done, to end up not being a powerful witch by a quirk of genetics or chance. She couldn't not look into this. Not when failing here could ruin everything. Not when it would affect her for the rest of her life.
But… to force her period to come?
How?
Hermione's mother had had her period come early one month, once; she always told the story with a grin. She'd been at an earthy, female-only New Age camping gathering in her twenties, and the mosquitoes had been fierce. It being a New Age gathering, the women hadn't been about to use mosquito spray, so they'd all used pennyroyal oil, rubbing it on themselves to ward off the bugs. Within two days, all of the women attending had unexpectedly gotten their period, and they had subsequently learned all the effects of pennyroyal oil, in addition to repelling bugs. Her mother joked that they called it the Mass Menstruation of the Midlands, and Hermione had always giggled and declared it gross.
Hermione could owl her mother and ask for a bottle of pennyroyal oil. But… would that even work? Surely pennyroyal oil would only work if she'd already started her cycle? Otherwise, there'd be nothing for her uterus to expel, would there?
Hermione sighed and made a note to owl her mother just in case, but she resolved to keep looking. There had to be a better way, and she was rapidly running out of time.
