Letter From Mellyrian (aka Glory Locks):
Hello everyone, I hope you're all happy and safe. This is a big update. As of October 26th, 2024, you'll want to read Brightest from the beginning or risk being horribly confused at the chapters which come next. The story ending is already in my head, but I'm being careful in how I organize it all. It's ambitious, but I'm motivated.
Come along for the ride if you'd like. This, to me, has always been a thought experiment I play with in my free hours. Pondering and looking at the world around me. Then back to mega-popular stories like Harry Potter. What would happen if someone helped Hagrid, Sirius, and actually did something amazing with that magic? Why wasn't the original story written more along those lines?
I've spent two years re-writing both this fanfiction and writing original books, written at night when I need something fun to do. Every morning I'd come into my workplace and try to fix a crumbling infrastructure. Which the organization's leadership had let degrade to a point it was afflicting thousands of people daily. To know what a problem is and not be able to convince the uppers to let me change it...yikes.
This coincided with our rent being raised twice in a year. The pay in our area, we literally couldn't afford to live there anymore, even with two incomes and me having a technical job. It's insane to think about, because if I was being priced out then how many other (thousands) of my "less well off" neighbors were as well? Around that time it became illegal to sleep in public parks. There were three hundred people who ended up living in the park next to our original crumbling rental, and it was illegal for me and my partner to use the food from his cook job to feed them. People who tried were arrested.
I moved to a new country. Which my partner and I had been considering for a while. We could no longer live in the place we had been. We had to move. We made the jump, had enough money saved up to do it. Moving is ridiculously expensive. I shipped things like the wooden bowls my grandpa carved and the little ceramic bells my grandparents had at their wedding. We had enough clothes to get us through the winter, but starting over with almost nothing has given me flashbacks to experiences from before.
Throughout all of this, I keep thinking about how lucky I was. How privileged my situation had been, to let me coast through the challenges. Like there were times I didn't know if I'd have enough money for the next set of groceries, but I still made it. A lot of people don't. I was so lucky.
I created new drawings, paintings, and now have a home. It feels like a good place. I was lucky enough to meet some people who reached out to others they knew, and they helped me get a new place to rent. That sort of kindness, I really can't overstate. They say it was nothing, but that little effort on their part seriously improved my life.
To all you readers, thank you to all the thoughtful and insightful discussions. Thank you for the encouragement. Someone said, "never stop writing" after a long and positive message. Such kindness from a stranger...I almost cried. After a day I'd just come home from my job where my lecherous supervisor refused to update something which was failing and hit 22,000 people in one swoop.
Getting encouragement like that on art, it's beautiful and buoys us through the rest of the harsh world. You know? You're amazing. I've really enjoyed some of our discussions. I enjoy seeing that sort of positivity and encouragement blasted across the internet.
It may be more important than ever to retain that heart, that kindness, and let it touch others. There are areas ravaged by natural disasters, by open air prison, apartheid, mass killing and people fleeing ethnic cleansing. Most of those places suffering don't have electric, water, or sewage utilities right now.
Please, don't forget to be kind. The people you're talking to, and the huge audience of the Internet, is going to see your comment. Convince your friends not to be petty. Convince them not to act like a spoiled child who has never had to worry about food in their life. To the rest of us, such behavior seems like a toddler squalling on a golden high chair. A fat toddler with sugar all over their face.
I've seen some really gnarly comments lately, unduly cruel. On other writers' stories. Comments that don't add any intelligent discourse, but snipe and complain. That the story update came too slow. That the grammar sucks. That there simply wasn't enough. Sniping at someone's art, that's ridiculously petty in the grand scheme of things.
Please remind your friends they're reading pieces of art, satire, adventure, and social critiques. Works that writers bleed and sweat out through hours. Some of which are based on real experiences the artist has witnessed. Some saw something silly and had to write it down. Others are writing from an experience less pleasant and would like the situation in the wider world to change and never repeat what they've experienced. They don't want you, any of you, to endure what they have.
The entire population of Palestine, all those innocent people, were locked in a prison without trial and have slowly witnessed the execution of all their family members. The 100 American doctors who came back sent a letter to the Whitehouse about how many babies they found with gun shot wounds directly to the head.
These writers and doctors claimed they couldn't sleep for the horror they'd seen. People online have been mocking them.
Convince your friends not to be part of this group of people. Convince them if we're reading someone else's work, getting the chance to see the world through their eyes...to show appreciation or a modicum of kindness. If they're having a bad day and feel the urge to snipe, instead convince them to be a silent lurker. Utterly neutral is better than being cruel.
These toddlers on golden high chairs, I don't know what they expect to eat if they keep tearing the world down till there's nothing left.
Know that you all have my sincerest love and hugs. We need to spread love and empathy to strangers more than ever. We all can be better. If you're lucky enough to have clean air and plants and a building...let's all go outside, touch a plant, realize how vulnerable this place is, and think of some small things we can do to keep it alive. To give everyone a chance to live safe and happy lives.
Much Love,
Mellyrian (aka Glory Locks)
CHAPTER 24
SURREAL
When she went to meet with her mentor, her uncle, whatever he was, the small half goblin gave her the same sharp grin he'd had the night he was flinging fence posts at unsuspecting wizards' heads. It seemed, once someone became used to standing up and fighting back, they weren't going to stop.
Hermione conjured a horde of fake yellow canaries and shot them at him. She saw his grin widen, before he was surrounded. Only the vortex grew and grew and suddenly it wasn't separate canaries, but a great yellow chicken and it's head was descending towards her. She hurtled herself back, the sharp beak pecked a Hermione sized chunk out of the ground. Then ruffled it's wings and squawked with bone trembling force.
Hermione giggled and sent bubbles up at it. The thing fixated on them with a single eye, head tilted to the side, then tried to snatch them all at once. Some bounced off, some stuck to the massive feathers. It kept chomping till the whole group of bubbles burst around its face.
Hermione forced more giant bubbles out, which rose to the ceiling, and formed chandeliers and flickering gold sconces. The blue fire inside each whipped out and darted around the chicken. Which, when it followed, trembled the stone of this goblin made room.
Their duel continued, increasingly preposterous, and teasing as Hermione unloaded her woes.
"Did you know I can't apply for a potions mastery or apprenticeship without submitting five forms to the ministry? Most of them just proving I am an official citizen, went to the school they want me to go to, and that I passed their test."
Her voice raised in pitch, "The French ones don't count. I checked."
The poor man stood through it all, occasionally sending a jinx and obstacles her way. To which she had to jump over a log, then duck a soaring boulder. The massive rock thudded into the wall behind her, then grew into a forest with trees and vines which reached out and she had to skip out of reach.
"I could take my NEWTS, but I don't give a damn at the moment what qualifications the department of education have set out. I'm so fed up with them. I just want a real job, helping real people."
She slashed out a hand and a force bludgeoned into a pillar. Threw it back, then rebuilt it in the middle of the room, wider and stronger, with an external lattice structure to improve the support of everything above. She watched it form, high above herself and the mentor she'd been ranting at.
Flitwick removed all of her enchantments from the room with one sweep of his arm. The cracks in the floor and walls repaired themselves. Silence hung over them as she panted and he looked infuriatingly nonplussed. Not a hair out of place. His clothes free of dust and feathers and steam which rose off her own.
She looked down at hers, then back up at him. The half-goblin was still smiling with his teeth. That grin had only grown as she railed against the bureaucracy which seemed to exist, not to place students with apprenticeships, but with as many road blocks as possible.
He stood before her, his magic built to the point he looked five meters tall. That gold goblin magic swirled and hardened. When Filius Flitwick spoke it came low and slow.
"By taking you into my family, I am allowed to pass on any knowledge I have." His teeth glinted in display, "How do you feel about being the first human apprentice to goblin ward-craft in 400 years?"
Wards. Land level wards. The techniques which kept the goblins in their homes despite 420 years of a fascist government trying to stamp it out. A government who wanted to acquire the resources, but still control the currency. A government who wanted their goods, but wouldn't buy it for reasonable prices. Who wouldn't let a single goblin, werewolf, or elf representative into a Wizengamot seat.
Which Sirius ranted about all of the past week, because he'd like to separate his votes up, but apparently wasn't allowed to appoint "certain" people to the electorate seats. Completely bonkers, he'd ran his hands through his hair till it stuck up, charged with excess energy. Sirius Black, more and more, with each legal notice he received from different ministry offices looked on the verge of trying to murder them all. That's why he went to therapy, he said.
Ward-crafting, she could learn ward crafting. Her breath caught. The ramifications of how many people this would piss off wracked a list worthy of a scroll in her head.
"Could I? Is it possible?"
"Legally, they couldn't do a thing about it. By accepting me as a part of the Granger family, by not throwing me out the very minute I stepped into the DMLE with you, they accepted the status."
He grinned, all teeth, "I'm going to show you how to draw up wards capable of hiding islands and whole countries."
Hermione grinned, just as vicious. The people she could hide. The people she could offer asylum to. Yes. She didn't realize she said it out loud till she repeated it, again and again.
"Yes. Let's do it."
"I'll have to visit our communal library. Brush up on your reading and rune skills. None of them are in human languages. When I get them, I'll send them to you, it'll be a good use of your summer."
She thrummed with anticipation. Her chest still heaved from its exertion, "France, I'll be in France."
"I'll meet you there. Prepare your grandparents with some light hints. If you want them to know, about you and your work..." He grinned leading and then paused for his statement to sink in.
He let the hope and anticipation bloom across her face, before enlightening, "I thought you should be informed that goblins do not hold to the international law of secrecy."
Some tea dreams swept over her with vivid clarity. Became a surreal cognizant moment where reality blended into sleep. She felt the older dream body slip into her as the time tea residue mixed with her magic. It was a familiar feeling, like putting on one of her poorly transfigured night shirts. As she'd done in France before she fell asleep. Yet she didn't wake up in France. The time dreams didn't work like that.
It's why Trelawney looked so solidly middle-aged, despite being born in 1962. For a magical body to age so quickly early in life it took an outside force. Trelawney had never taken two different mixtures of time drugs. She'd never had this reaction.
Lucky her. The sour thought brushed against her mind, still catching up with her transition, before she chastised herself. Just because she'd gone through something bad and no one stopped it from happening, didn't mean she should wish ill on others. It was something she often had to remind herself of, when she thought of bringing a lawsuit against the Department of Mysteries.
Hermione's back was straight and strong, posture effortless while core muscles held her poised with each breath. It mingled with the chill slipping through the window. A tiny crack of air, left there for ventilation, but unable to be pried further apart. Only enough for a slip of the fast blowing wind to come through. A fresh wind full of humidity from the Norwegian coast.
The scrape of a rough, poorly transfigured night shirt slid down from hand to wrist as she raised it. Her longer and skinnier arm corded with tight muscle. Old clothes, but a new body. Time tea and turner sand toxicity still lingered in her brain, in each muscle, and in every strand of hair like the potent drug combination they were. Her condition had improved, but clearly not enough. It brought her here.
This window and the snowy landscape, she remembered them. An unbreakable window. A very pretty and neat trap. Hermione swallowed, realizing this wasn't a normal dream, but needed to test it anyways.
Her slender, strong, dream hands rose in front of her and moved when she went to touch the enchanted Norwegian glass work. It felt so real, that bitter cold window. As it blocked winter winds blowing strong and harsh on the other side. The quake of ancient glass against her fingertips. Her own trembling hand which hadn't stopped writing all night. She felt its cramp of muscle all the way down to tendon, sinew, and bone.
Her fingers looked ghostly in this light. Skin pale after she'd been stuck inside so long and winters up north had almost no sunlight at all. Even when she could leave the room, none of it was quite as well remembered as this one. The dreams often started here. This room was as familiar to her as the bedroom her parents might still keep for her. A lamp lit the room and glowed against her skin, contrasting from the night lifting outside this place.
Her reflection in the window was of a slender woman, loose curls slick and tame with product, her face narrow and cheek bones sharp. Her face, but older. The face staring back at her had a brown line under one cheek bone. A scar Hermione couldn't remember getting. She touched the skin there. It bisected the skin and felt tender to the slightest press of her finger.
Her older self had ink stains on the fingers. Parchment and books splayed across a small desk next to the window. It was still surreal even though she knew it had happened. That it was writ to happen if she didn't change things.
Curtains on either side of the window hung thick and luxurious. Nice enough to mock the girl who only just learned wizard homes made their own draperies. Spun from cast off fibers of old carpets, wizarding home keepers embroidered their own drape patterns from the silk of abandoned closets. All automated, little programmed rune sequences to maintain the property. At least that's what this man's house did.
Hermione, not in a million years, would have ever thought she'd be somewhere like this. In one particularly odd dream, she'd relived herself in 1999, in another movie theatre with Sirius Black. They watched a movie with a character called Neo who was stuck in a dream of society's creation, until he woke up and changed things. She'd related, rather heavily, to that notion. Had to keep herself from mentioning it to Sirius Black because somethings she just didn't want to talk about. They were still too personal and he had enough problems without her crazy ramblings.
Yet this particular situation had to take the cake, once she was led out of her prison room and realized who kept her locked up here. She'd seen men before, when she dreamed this room, but she'd never met the host. Now the door opened and someone she'd never seen before waved her to follow them. She did. Mainly, because the metal manacles around her wrists had been replaced by magic and if she didn't come when someone from this house beckoned her, then she'd be tugged.
Into the elaborately expensive and understated hallway with austere coloring. Past pictures of ancient battles and mythology. Magical portrayals of those same stories which played through the most epic moments. Past a very, extremely old and crumbling copy of beowolf magicked to float on top of a preservation table. Hermione followed the man until the magic stopped tugging her wrists. At which point she stood, stock still.
She wasn't breathing, not when she saw the face of the man in the chair. Lounging in a robe thrown over casual clothes. He sat by a fire, a half drunk cup of tea beside him. Without looking up from his newspaper. The front page with large lettering proclaiming it the "Morgenbladet: den beste magiske avisen."
Not in all the computer simulations or strangest matrix movies would she have thought there was a reality with her staying in Voldemort's home. A guest, rather dubiously invited, but staying all the same. He wasn't at all the flat, spooky ghost which the stories made him out to be. He was darker. He was worse. So much so she couldn't help but panic a little every time he made a joke. Each cynical remark on their government and populace which hadn't evolved in 200 years. She hated when she slipped so easily into, sometimes and always against her better judgment, agreeing with him.
He was supposed to be pure evil. He wasn't supposed to have suffered against the predudiced system as much as any other person raised non-magically. He wasn't supposed to be insightful and have morbid jokes about Albus Dumbledore's ability to tend to children. He wasn't supposed to lament about the lack of goblin-taught knowledge in the traditional school system, or have sharp remarks about colonialism. He was mother fucking Voldemort and she shouldn't be able to agree with anything he said.
Only as the months went on, as they tend to do in the worst dreams, she found he actually had a lot of good points articulated on how things were currently run. He was still a murderous bastard, which she didn't hold back in elaborating on. The man listened to that first rant, a smile began to tilt his lips, and she seriously thought she was about to have a killing curse flung across the tea cups. Only then, sitting there in his silly house robe, and his stupid casual clothes, he threw his head back and laughed.
For an old dude, he had a really loud, boisterous laugh. That unnerved her even more. He was plain out of his mind, she kept telling herself. Like a mantra each day she was stuck in the dream. He was out of his mind.
Then why when he spoke to her did she listen so keenly? Why was she trying so hard to turn those weird, small distinctions between their mindsets into something less harmful? She spoke to him as if he were the leader of a state. Like she would speak to a minister who'd sent troops out to kill other troops on some grounds of establishing dominance across borders. Because that's how he acted. So she talked, civilly and with passion, intelligence, and all the wit left in her abused and drugged brain. Clearly, she told herself, it was wasted effort. Yet she kept speaking with him. As if she would, someday, convince him.
His effort seemed equally manipulative. As if he needed something from her. Yet so far she hadn't had that thing spoken aloud and Hermione Jean Granger wasn't crazy enough yet to ask. He sometimes mentioned their deal. As if he expected her to know what they spoke of. So she just sat silent as if she were thinking really deep thoughts. When in reality, she'd no bloody idea why he was keeping her here.
Why did he try so hard to make time in his morning to invite her to breakfast? It would have been a mad man's simulation to expect Hermione Granger to discuss wandless theorems with the scum of the earth and like it.
The fact she'd stood up from her seat this morning, leaned over the table and shouted at him about the book he wrote and lived to tell the tale. This wasn't a normal prisoner situation. The 23 year old shouldn't think the worst person in history was interesting. She shouldn't think in another life he would have made a chum of a friend.
She was stuck here and she wasn't nearly so upset as a girl should be about slumming it in the Dark Lord's manner. The man's mirrors were made of mercury and crystal. Kept pristine even after his years away. It was the nicest place she'd ever been, had the worst company, and she was getting into heated debates with the man who put Grindelwald to shame.
Sometimes she wondered if she'd have argued with Grindelwald too, right before her death. Because an evil overlord less invested in her survival through the winter would surely have killed her by now. Yes, Hermione suspected she'd have argued even more fervently with a 1940s Dark Lord. Who supposedly wanted to change the world just as much as the man currently sitting across from her.
She probably would have been just as egged on, just as enraged as this Dark Lord made her. She clutched her butter knife harder and thought about stabbing Voldemort as he laughed at her. All over tea and scones and a kitchen which he enchanted to make food for them.
Since Elves were thinking creatures, he said, and could choose to poison their own contracted employer if they had the mind too. Sure, they got magical benefits from working on the property, but that would continue regardless if the owner was alive or not, Voldemort gave her a snakey and sharp toothed grin at that. The maniacal bastard liked talking about Elves and all manner of creatures with her. Because unlike all the other stupid wizards he didn't downplay how powerful elves could be.
He told her he had, once. He'd been young and in a hurry and underestimated an elf in a cave. He had a cave story, just like her. Only in his cave story he'd been the captor not the victim.
He told her this while pouring her tea and adding milk just the way she likes it. Right before he told her he'd written a book on creating horcruxes and the nature of rebirth they all went through when their bodies left this mortal plane.
It was interesting, much too interesting, and she was his rapt audience. A guest, an honored, only marginally unwilling participant in enthusing debates over bacon and mash. He asked her why she helped people for no gain. She couldn't top herself from responding, that everyone had value and everyone deserved a chance. He asked why she spent so much of her time turner use learning elf magic. She responded that he was limiting himself by not. Those were the early days of her kidnapping. When he still hadn't seen the full value of elves and what they should get as reimbursement.
Why these conversations were some of the ones she kept reliving, she'd never know. Nor did she ever figure out why, when she arrived in Norway in her older body, she had her grubby and old transfigured clothes on her. Just like when she'd been actively dosing with the time turner. Forcing magic to take her to another time.
Each breakfast she had with the Dark Lord, where he pretended to be civil and not like he wanted something from the Speaker Black, she hated it. Yet she also loved it. Because there were moments when his eyes would flicker and she knew she'd convinced him of something. She'd swayed one of the big baddies in their world into not being so terrible, if only fractionally.
During one particularly heated debate her nostrils flared and she stared him down. Claiming in her highest and mightiest way a prisoner could, stating he was acting like all the old generationally wealthy families he hated.
"How so?" He was at his most dangerous when he was calm.
She cut a grin full of teeth as she all but hissed, "Your contract with the elves is taking advantage of the people in your employ. Or hadn't you realized they're not taking scheduled leave and saving for retirement? You say you're different. Then be so."
Voldemort looked thoughtful. The very next day he sat calmly over their steaming plates and announced he'd started paying his house elves and giving them time off. The first deposit already went to their Gringots accounts. The man was infuriating and reasonable.
Just. Just. Unreal coming from a society who had so willingly pulled itself apart, these were the thoughts which wracked her as she stood in front of the grandiose window. After she'd lived months here, in this house, she felt the time drugs wear off. It began slow, the transition. Till she reached out, touched the Norwegian window pane and it no longer felt cold. The blowing wind and incoming snow storm weren't audible anymore.
Beyond the clouds grew dark and ominous, raising into a powerful wall and rumbling thunder to shake glass panes kilometers in every direction. Condensation formed inside the glass, the window still cracked from where she tried to pry it further open earlier. The expensive room began to fade. It started with the sound a rooster makes in the morning, a sharp cry as the sun rises. She couldn't see the window anymore or the snow storm. Could barely hear as the door of her elaborate room opened.
Behind her someone knocked on the door, "Speaker Black are you ready?"
That scene whiplashed her tired mind. Her body compressed from all angles. As it always did when the turner pulled her somewhere else at such different speeds across a vast distance. Then she slammed back into a mattress. Those once distant farm noises abruptly loud and present. Her dream ended and she woke up flushed, embarrassed, and scared. The time sand had begun to wear off. A sweaty and lingering experience. Something she likened to a deep craving. Each day was a little better.
Her system burned through it and attempted to adjust. Since stopping with the time turner her body seemed to be experiencing withdrawal. A nasty, clinging experience, and the dreams still felt just as real as they had when she'd been double dosed on time tea and sand. The experiences and chemically dependent quakes wracked her. Her legs shook.
Hermione swallowed and looked again for her water. At least these dreams didn't last so long. They were short in length, but still intense. As if a system purging itself of time magic dredged up the worst of what might happen. The farthest, the most toxic events were presenting themselves with a vengeance.
Her certainty grew for some scenarios. Someway, somehow, she'd be the Dark Lord's unwilling guest. He'd be interesting and human and she or her loved ones might die for it. Hermione's breath came fast. The knowledge she would end up a prisoner in the Dark Lord's house and with no way of knowing how to stop it was terrifying.
She stumbled out of the tangled sheets. Her body no longer wore the transfigured pajamas she'd made for herself. But were draped in luxurious unisex pants and a long sleeve silk shirt. Both deep emerald green and smelling of the automated laundry processes the Dark Lord seemed to delight he was better in than her. As if mental supremacy were indeed the pinnacle one could reach. Regardless if applied to a household's laundry or not. She was shaking too bad to truly notice her scrappy, poorly transfigured night clothes had disappeared months ago.
The gold swirl of magic she'd been seeing since her first overdose clung to her and twisted from the tips of her hair, to her scalp, down her chest and all the way to her bare toes. Her hands instinctively went for a spinning time turner, but it wasn't there. Clammy fingers brushed the silk shirt and bare neck. Searching, searching for the chain, but it wasn't there. She blinked once and then twice. That small window of the smallest guest room overlooked a rusted barn roof. The cawing of three roosters tried to compete with each other across the nearby French farms. A familiar sight. She knew that roof. Hermione knew this room. Had slept in the bed often enough as a child, even if she was almost too tall to fit in it now. Her toes brushed the end of the bed, even as her legs were curled up.
They'd given her the choice of sleeping in the children's room or in taking one of the bunks in the barn. The memory of arriving the previous night, their previous night. For her, that had happened months ago. Hermione's head swam. She was hungry, but not terribly so as Voldemort wasn't that cruel a warden. He'd fed her three times a day as if the food schedule of Speaker Black, and the conversation he'd press her for, was the most important thing he had to do that day. His lackeys would come and go and he seemed terribly bored with them all. Actually put up with her somewhat barbed comments. He of course, wasn't letting her go. The glass and the walls and the floors and the roof were shatter proof. She'd tried.
Being back in the safety of her grandparent's house wasn't all that reassuring. Not when she wasn't sure when she'd next be pulled forwards. Not when she didn't know the events which would lead to her capture. Her hands quavered on the pink and green children's blanket. A printed rendition of Archibald le Magichien, a cartoon she'd watched over and over again about a magic dog. Which had largely helped her learn French, childish as the words had been. She'd loved that cartoon and loved this blanket even more when she got it for a birthday one year.
Her sweaty feet hit the cold floor and found their own way to her grandparents' bathroom. She grappled with the faucet, pulling it's nob with a jerk. Then pooled water in her hands so the coldness could fill up. Her face submerged once, twice. Then gripped the edge of the sink till her eyes rose to see the dripping face she was used to.
"I'm 21, not 23. I'm 21." Hermione stood, frozen with realization. Whispered aloud to herself, "Maybe I should check." Her hand raised, about to perform the age spell. Then she chickened out when she heard the creak of someone walking along the old hallway.
The voice of an old woman with a slight Dutch accent to her French rose up, loud enough to be heard yet hushed enough not to wake the still sleeping doctors, "Hermione vous allez bien? Ça va?"
"Bien grand-maman, tout va bien," Hermione too, she'd been told, had an accent. She tended to over pronounce the last part of each word, when they instead should be smooth and light.
Her grand-maman switched to English as she often did when speaking with her, "If you're sure everything is alright."
"I'm fine," she spoke softly, aware of the creak of the floorboards from the room next door.
"Your grandfather'z up, would you like to feed the chicks with him? And the goats, did you visit them yet? I bought three new babies last week. They are ads-" She paused, formed her mouth again and corrected, "Adorable."
Hermione, still feeling knackered, stared at the tall blonde woman. The happy wrinkles never quite disappeared yet turned sideways when her grand squished her face for particular pronunciations. All in all, the woman's accent was light compared to the farmers around them who didn't have regular access to English speakers calling their landline every week.
Hermione blinked when a light blue towel, the likes of which matched the wooden shades perfectly, appeared in front of her face. Eyes crossed and nostrils flared, the faint sent of lavender and remnants of heat from the dryer hit her face. Her grandma loved drying most clothes on a line, thought it was the responsible thing to do, but always had a guilty pleasure for towels fresh out of the drying machine. So warm she could feel it's heat on her face as her grandmother pushed it her way and gathered her up. The woman was so much taller than her, a giantess for this part of France. She'd always claimed it was the rich dairy diet from when she was young.
Which might be true, because milk had only been a part of Hermione's diet once she came to Hogwarts. She guessed she'd never know if it was folklore or fact. The towel shook a little as her grandmother smothered her in the hug. It woke her up. The grandma who looked nothing like her smiled and Hermione sheepishly grinned back.
"You are troubled. Maybe a mocha will help." The older woman winked.
"You just like mochas."
"Yes!" Her beloved grand-mère stage whispered, a poor attempt at not waking up the rest of the house.
"Hermione dear, don't forget to live. Wine before dinner and good coffee in the morning. Don't-" She booped her on the nose with a finger, "Be so much inside your own head and worries."
"The clouds and what they might hold will always be there. They'll be on us soon enough."
Hermione's eyes widened, the redness made them a little sore, stiff enough to feel.
"How did you?"
"Your father, the brilliant man, worries much. He drifts off and sometimes we have to pull him back, remind him he likes it here and in the end," her grand-mère finished in prozaic tones as if it were the most natural thing in the world, "tout est bon."
And maybe, Hermione thought, everything would be alright. The tall granny was grinning at her like she'd survived a thousand anxiety inducing events and lived to tell the tale. Her old hands raised the blue towel and patted her dripping face dry.
"There, now you can go with your grandfather and make sure he stays out of trouble."
Hermione released what might have been a giggle. Only a little too hysterical and pent up. Definitely too loud for this early in the morning. A sole sound which escaped her, the serious weight of her dream slipped from the bathroom.
The older woman just gave her a kind smile and encouraged, "If you don't go, he'll be out there for hours finding new things to do."
So Hermione went, ushered out into the hall and after the lovable little man who married a giantess from the border of Belgium. Antwerp women were tall, much taller than the farmers in Southern France. He was a little poppi, robust, and agile and always ready to smile as the sun peaked the first glimmer above the hills. Hermione followed him out and let him chatter to her.
She trailed after as he gave attention to one goat and then the next. Chattering to each of them in turn. They lined up along the pin, clearly expecting their early morning head pats and loving. All 30 of them there, waiting for him along the side of their pin. Hermione smiled at the old man and his furry friends. Then he unlocked the gate and encouraged them all to move about. He grabbed a bit of fresh bedding hay and then a tin full of food.
The sound of her grandpa as he used the goats and threw out chicken feed through the bars of the nearby coop. More little noises, "Tak, tak, tak." He went on and then cooed at the chickens. He spoke next in English, his head tilted and there on his wizened face she recognized the expression as he tweaked a grin at her. The crooked smile over his shoulder. He spoke as if the chickens understand his encouragement.
"There, there, isn't this nice?" Grand-père told them, "Make me many omelets my little loves."
Hermione snorted.
He pointed the tin at her, "You'll give them performance anxiety, don't look."
"Bon-papa!"
"I mean it!" He became more outrageous. Glanced back at her and lit up with triumph, "There's the smile I know. Now tell the chicks they'll all be ok and that you'll love them even without eating their babies."
"Papa," Hermione squealed, a half laugh choking her.
"Or maybe don't tell them you're eating their babies. Who knows," He shrugged.
Hermione hid her eyes behind a hand and wondered how the twins would react to this man.
As it turns out the twins became suave, poised, upstanding gentlemen in the face of a non-magical old man who stood as tall as their chests. When under the eye of her grandfather's assessing gaze they stood straighter, they greeted him with great respect. Then they ruined it by each raising a single hand, holding two fingers to the foreheads, and saluting him.
"Capitaine Granger!"
"We're here to assist you in anyway necessary."
"Particularly if it involves throwing your granddaughter in the canal."
"We hear youngsters do wonders for irrigation."
"Water her once and she'll grow all season."
"Fred," Hermione protested.
"One good watering-"
"A quick dip in the canal-"
"George," She protested. It was a lost cause. By the smile on little grandpa's face he'd been well and truly swayed to their side.
Yet the day passed and Hermione thought she was safe. They had breakfast, second breakfast, then lunch. They lazed about in the sun and helped collect chicken eggs. Their feet led them down a little path her grand-mère promised had a row of delicious berries. The sun beat down on her shoulders and for hours Hermione forgot about all of her worries. Including the devious tendencies of her two friends. Who thrived on silliness and inducing chaos into a structured order of things.
George commented to his brother, "Hermione's hair looks nice today doesn't it?"
Agreement reached her ears, but she was at that moment picking the best berries from a particularly full bush. They were perfectly situated, near the waterway and in the shade of some big trees. It was a very happy bush and raspberries were Hermione's favorites.
In that moment she didn't know then how many waterways in the Provençal region would become peri-urban with an addition of one Hermione Granger tossed in. How she'd spend the next few hours running from two twins taken demon form. That their pleasant, peaceful, and sedate nature walk would soon turn into a sprint. As the twins remembered the promise they'd made her grandfather.
"Oi George! Look at all the canals!"
"You're right Fred, how could I forget?!"
He lunged at her, with her hand raised mid bite with a pile of berries she'd collected along the path. With an eep she ducked. His arm swooped over her head. Her berries got jumbled and shoved into her mouth as Hermione tried to dissuade them. Both stepped closer, grinning that same evil look of those who really just wanted to mess something up. Forlorn and chewing furiously she realized that something was her hair. It would not survive a dunk in that muddy trench they called a stream.
"Don't you dare," She warned.
They ignored her. Hermione swallowed. They lunged as one. Her dual core computer theory proving more and more accurate the longer she ran tests on them. One went high, the other went low.
Her smaller form tried to dodge the quick duo. Twisted her body at an angle she wouldn't have managed if she hadn't been practicing with Flitwick flinging boulders. Then she ran. Her toes barely touched the dirt. Her flip flop sandals forgotten somewhere along the edge of the trees. She tore through the field, kicked up a number of things along the way. An old, muddy field where her grand-mère had been letting weeds grow so nutrients would be rotted away into the top layer of soil. Meaning it was full of decaying things and muck. She felt it squish in her toes and sprinted faster.
Deep, ringing laughter sounded behind her. Two tall, quidditch trained 16 year olds intent on messing up her very clean, very well managed set of curls. Rampaging twins was very good incentive to run faster. It was all well and good until they realized they could tag team her and herd her in a single direction from opposite sides.
Hermione was faster for a bit, but they had her on stamina. 3 fields later, 12 minutes of sprinting and dodging, she once grabbing Fred's shirt and pushing him into George's clutching hands. Till they finally herded her into a corner with the murky water at her back. She couldn't out maneuver them, not here. The intersection of those irrigation canals too wide to jump across.
And, she was tired. Her body still felt as if it had lived months at a home on the Norwegian coast, arguing Voldemort into being less of an asshole. The twins, in comparison, just weren't that scary. Hermione gave up.
As if they could see the surrender in her drooping arms, George sprinted forward with a whoop and swooped her. Hermione was upright at first, then she found herself upside down. Nose brushing his back. She closed her eyes.
With a witch lugged over one shoulder George sprinted, gained speed, then jumped with a war cry. Eyelids clamped tight she felt him throw himself. With this young woman over his shoulder George jumped into the murky agricultural water. She forgot to close her mouth. It was muddy and probably had runoff of all kinds of things from the many farms. Tasted absolutely vile and she was pretty sure it was more mud than water.
Or so it seemed after her fifth plunge of the day and her sodden walk back. She took a quick shower, divesting herself of all the gross clothing, then stared at her hair. Wandlessly heated her hands and held them in her hair till the curls dried. Wandless charms did wonders for her curls.
She stayed in there as long as she could in the sanctuary of her grandparent's hallway bathroom. The old woman sitting in the chair 5 meters away was a very good twin deterrent. Hermione was soaking up the situation for all it was worth. That was until the old woman stood, stretched her hands over her head, and announced it was late. Dismayed she watched her grandmother make her way to bed. Hermione's shoulders drooped. The social barrier of an old woman was about to be removed. She needed a contingency.
There was no way in any hell or dark lord nightmare dungeon she was going to let the twins throw her in the water again that evening. Distraction it was. When they crept up the hall, acting as if they weren't the ones making those old wood floorboards squeak.
Fred looked around the bathroom door and George sidled on in, seemingly intent on picking her up again. He was absolutely covered in mud. She stiff armed him. The sort a rugby player does as they run to hold off the much bigger guy and the pile of bodies about to jump them.
"I have a plan."
"Oh?"
"Some fresh air and water for our best tiny friend."
"A midnight dip?"
"No," she stepped back and reasserted the stiff arm when her other one was pushed aside. Then wandlessly merged the soles of their muddy shoes to the floorboards, just in case.
Only then Hermione continued, "Better. At least, if you think you can handle it."
"Granger, we are the ones who handle everything."
"Proprietarily."
"Does it have to do with making money?" George asked.
Hermione groaned. They were singularly focused on the idea of a joke shop, something they knew their mother would hate, and since the ban of everything fun in their lives they'd ramped up as if this were simply a challenge to overcome. They'd been such nice, smart, manageable boys when she started working with them on potions.
Now they'd a frenzied edge about them. As if everything they had would soon be taken away. George was the first to notice she'd stuck their shoes to the floor and took them off. His socks plopped against that old wood varnish. His wet socks wiggled at her. A manic grin and magical energy still thrummed around him. So silly, so young and carefree.
Her shoulders drooped a little at how much enthusiasm he still had. As if an entire afternoon of play wasn't enough. She sighed, wondering when she'd become too old for their shenanigans. They were exhausting her.
Only one more day, Hermione promised herself. Then Neville, Harry, and Sirius would be here. Flitwick would come eventually with the books he'd promised. Then she could hide herself away at the kitchen table and read to her heart's content. Until then, distraction it was.
"No, I have an idea. But," She looked at their clothes.
Slimy, boggy, silty brown, and drying. They flaked with each move they made. The hallway, which had already been a mess from her grandfather's boots, now was a disaster. From where they'd been hiding as her grandmother walked up the stairs and closed her bedroom door.
With a snap of fingers she cleaned the floor. The spell worked better, much better for Winno, but at least the hall and the boards beneath George's soaked socks weren't pooling any longer. The twins who'd been dragging her in farm irrigation canals all day remained covered in mud. Just as Hermione had been before she peeled her clothes off and replaced them. If she'd let it dry off any longer the mud might have cemented onto her.
She pushed them towards the bathroom carefully, trying to avoid the worst of the hardening slime, "But first you're going to shower and change."
George's hand went for her shoulder, trying to give her one last hug. All over her very dry and clean shirt. She scooted to the side just in time. Her hand moved from holding him off to poking him in the chest.
"I'll go grab some clothes for you. You have ten minutes."
Hermione found she was rather vindictive. Fit in almost too well when she told Voldemort about the fate of his diary, when Lucius Malfoy had been present in the room. Used it as a teachable moment as the man screamed and the Dark Lord's fury was on her side. Asked the man for the umpteenth time, "Do you really want to spend eternity with idiots around you?"
He hadn't answered her. Just then standing in her grandparent's hallway, she realized letting Voldemort know about his follower's mistake was vengeful. Useful. It served a purpose, but vengeful. The warm light of her grandmother's faded glass lamps pulled her back. This wasn't a dream. She wasn't trapped in an expensive house in a frigid landscape. She was in France and nowhere else. She was in her twenties. 21, 23, she was too afraid to verify which. The warmth of her grandparents house soothed her. She wasn't a prisoner here.
The vengeful feeling eased. There was a ginger haired teenager in front of her, whose only offense was throwing her in some dirty water. Not a grown man who'd tried to kill a school full of children under his care and locked her in petrification for months, wondering if she'd ever get out. That strong emotion eased back into playfulness.
Still, she had more than enough of the demon twins chasing her for one day. They only had one form of effective communication, Hermione recalled. Screaming and ranting wasn't it. No, they needed to be shown she was willing to keep them, to play with them, but not anymore just now. Her eyes gleamed with payback.
"Oh Granger's come out to play again has she?" George grinned in anticipation.
Seemed all too curious at what she'd do. Fred vibrated next to his brother. The two of them looked eager, the lovable idiots. They stood there and let her curse them.
"Shower. You have ten minutes." She waved her hand and a spark of magic flared above George's head, "You don't want to know what happens when that timer stops."
With that she apparated to the barn. Unceremoniously flipped one of their suitcases on the bunk bed, then rifled through till she found socks and a pair of boxers with purple hearts on them. Grinning, she grabbed those and the rest. It was a lot more than they needed, but she didn't really feel like digging through half dirty socks and pants of teenage boys. Arms full of odds and ends and probably two pairs of shirts she apparated with a soft pop back into the hallway.
They did, to her enjoyment, take longer than ten minutes. When the ding on her glowing countdown chimed softly it wasn't this gentle noise but the shrieks of two otherwise deep voiced young men which turned her focus into a full blown smile.
Ahhh. That felt good.
"Blimey."
"Crazy Little-"
"Ahhh she can hear you."
"I don't well care, do I?"
She knocked, "I have your clothes."
There was a long pause on the other side of the door. A silence bearing two minds deciding if they'd retaliate or not. It was George's voice, the sound of reason, which she recognized win out over whatever communication or looks they'd shared.
"Granger, truce for now."
Hermione agreed, "I think I can handle that."
A hand opened the door. The crack opened wide enough for a pale freckled arm to snake out, grab the pile, and dart back in.
It was with some great amount of hassle at Fred doing his hair in different styles and hogging the mirror from George that they were finally declared, "acceptable".
Grabbing their arms each looked at her dubious and on edge. Hermione grinned.
"Are you scared?"
Fred admitted, "A little. But know whatever it is we'll get you back two fold. Until our owl order business starts up later this summer we have all the time in the world to think of something."
She chuckled, "Ready, set, hold on."
They didn't, she was sure, expect her to apparate them to the city center of Toulouse. The thumping of a club and melodic rapping of someone going to town on fast lyrics over pumping bass. Its sound filled the plaza.
George turned sly and elbowed her in the ribs, "So good behavior gets us this?"
She couldn't help her cheeks as they rose and smiled back, "Hm. I promised, didn't I? Ages ago," It was rather vague to her now when exactly that had been, but the twins lit up at the reminder.
"You're buying us alcohol."
"No."
"Granger."
"Ok, one drink each. I'm not going to be responsible for corrupting you."
George sniggered, "Our mother would faint if she knew where we were right now."
Fred added, "Which is why we said we were visiting Bill in Manchester."
George stepped to her other side and slung an arm around her shoulders. He winked at a pretty person they passed and tugged her along. His twin kept up, jostling her curls from the other side. She grinned wider, feeling their happiness and excitement in their magic.
"Granger you can take us out anytime."
Hermione snorted. It was platonic and full of teasing and she loved every minute of it. As it turned out, they made excellent dance buddies.