November 2003

Lucky to have a seat in the early morning train from Sheffield to Doncaster Hermione Granger – or Janice Wilkes from Perth, Western Australia, as her passport read nowadays – was about to lose herself in a book when she sensed something changing in the atmosphere of the carriage. Some of the women in her compartment had pricked up a bit, relaxing, some of them allowing themselves small smiles. The mood seemed to affect nearly the whole carriage but Hermione was at loss at what caused it. Then she heard.

"Dear passengers. Welcome aboard the regional train from Sheffield to Doncaster. Our next stop is Mexborough. Please remain safety conscious all the time."

That voice. It used to say, "Instructions are on the board." Or yell, "Longbottom! Put that in your cauldron and you will be responsible for multiple deaths!" But it was impossible! Professor Snape had died in the Final Battle, along with most Order members. For the last five years Hermione had tried hard to connect to anyone opposed to Voldemort. When the final confrontation had gone so terribly wrong the young witch had used her emergency Muggle plane ticket to Melbourne, had found her parents again and had undone the Memory-charm on them. The Grangers had been very angry but the terrible news from Great Britain – exploding trains, a collapsing Severn Bridge, Oxford and Cambridge burning, all accompagnied by a strange light phenomen on the night sky – had told them that their daughter had been right to fear for their lives. Hermione had stayed in Australia for the next two years, getting herself up to date with Muggle technology and trying to connect to Muggleborns or their families known to her via the world wide web or by phone. Her thorough approach yielded terrible results: all families of her Hogwarts contemporaries were erased – accidents, sudden illnesses and outright murder. Hermione found some distant Finch-Fletchley cousins in France who refused to speak to her after hearing her British accent, but no one else. She became very adept at reading the Muggle newspapers between the lines and had to draw the horrified conclusion that Voldemort's Death Eaters had managed to take over not only Wizarding Britain but also had a lot of influence in Muggle Britain. Still the young witch felt that she had to go back to her home-country, at least temporarily. Her parents were less than understanding. They felt that the wizarding world had already cost their family too much – an estrangement from their only child and the loss of their lifes work and savings in Britain.

Hermione gave her earnest assurances that she would take no risks and that she would return as soon as she had a clear view of the situation. Mr Granger then even helped her get false documents, due to a grateful patient who happened to be the best counterfeiter of the Perth region. The witch and her parents wrote letters at least weakly and once a month Hermione made a long-distance call. Her father had had fun devising a code to use, as his daughter feared that the Death Eaters were monitoring everything, even the Muggle telephone.

Murmurs of "Thank you, Miss." "Change at Doncaster, please." reached her ears. Hermione waited with bated breath until it was her turn to present her ticket, thinking frantically of a question for the conductor. Then he was upon her. The conductor's uniform looked very strange on the thin figure of Severus Snape, as did the short hair, but there was no mistaking the piercing black eyes and prominent nose. His eyes widened for a second in recognition.

"Excuse me, sir, is there a connecting train to Gainsborough from Doncaster?"

"There should be, but I do not know the exact time by heart. If you see me in the conductor's compartment in the next carriage in ten minutes I can look it up there."

"Thank you, sir."

With that he passed through to the next carriage.

"You lucky girl!" Hermione's neighbour exclaimed, "He can read me the train times all day long, I tell you."

The young woman blushed and sought to defend herself, "I really need that train."

"Don't mind her," another woman joined the conversation, "Mr Tolliver is not much to look at, but that voice makes sensible women behave like a coop of chicken. A thing of beauty in an otherwise very dreary commute, shitty day, hard life."

Under a chorus of "Hear, hear." the other female travellers either took up their conversations again or gathered their belongings for alighting in Mexborough. Hermione made her way to the conductor's compartment as instructed. Snape was already scribbling train times on a piece of paper.

"Ah, Miss, there you are. You should be able to reach the 7.12 to Gainsborough." The compartment was tiny and she was standing halfway on the corridor, with passengers waiting to reach the doors of the carriage. Snape pressed the paper into her hand and when passing her by to reach the doors whispered, "Mobiles are still safe, landlines and post not."

With a heavy heart she made her way back to her seat. Her job as a library assistant at Doncaster's Central Library barely paid for a dreadful bedsit in Rotherham and the train fares. Four days of the week her dinner consisted of half a tin of baked beans and two slices of toast. Fresh fruit and vegetables were nearly unattainable and Hermione used her weekends for long walks, always on the lookout for berries, the odd wild growing fruit tree and abandoned farms. Even though the Muggles of Great Britain did not know what exactly had hit them they felt the economic decline, the harsher climate and the never-ending series of disasters that made nearly everyone's life difficult. On her walk from the railway station to her work place she looked for public phones as there was no way she could afford a mobile phone. But if Snape worked as a conductor on this line they would find another way to communicate without endangering him by calling him from a landline.

Just then an ASDA ad on a passing bus caught her eyes. A pay as you go mobile for 39 pounds! She would have to safe and scrimp and touch her emergency stash but she would manage.