AN:
- Nna = Igbo for 'dad'
- Don't worry about trying to remember all the names here - most of the side characters won't be appearing again.
.
Aguda Surulere, Lagos, Nigeria
28 August, 1995
Hermione spent much of the taxi ride pondering how stitchcraft might be used to imbue one's undergarments with cooling charms. And maybe sweat-vanishing charms as well. The soft inner lining of her wand-holster might as well have been glued to her left forearm inside the loose sleeve of the akwete cloth dress Maman had bought last-minute in Peckham - the geometric patterns of which she dearly hoped were dark enough to conceal any sweat spots. At least she'd foregone a headwrap in favor of displaying her braids; Maman's hair was bundled up in a tichel, and her forehead was already shining.
The taxi jolted over a pothole, and for a moment seemed to bounce along to the Highlife lilting out of the radio— Ìgbò lyrics over fingerstyle guitar and electric keyboard, drums both skin and synthetic played polymetrically along with cymbals and Udu…
A bicyclist blurred past her window, down a street lined with colorful awnings and storefronts in front of sun-bleached square buildings, driveways spilling beige dirt onto concrete, iron-barred gates and corrugated aluminum fences —some streaked with corrosion and leaning lopsidedly— and here and there the occasional palm tree, fronds swaying in a breeze Hermione couldn't feel with the window rolled up to shield her from dust. What seemed a rather excessive number of telephone wires striped the cloudless sky overheard, so many crisscrossing they almost seemed tangled. Newer flats dominated the skyline,all earthy reds and yellows - though in the distance she could still see the minarets of that mosque they'd passed earlier, and every so often she spotted another great cross poking up above the rooftops.
Every so often they the cab passed another woman sitting on a stool or a chair or an upturned bucket, selling food out of a pot or an insulated delivery bag. A group of teenagers loitered around the edge of a many-colored, multi-styled mural, watching a few of their friends expand it with spray-paint and stencils.
At Nna's direction the cabby turned down a side street, marked as wholly residential by its lack of storefronts. Grass grew along the seams between sidewalks and walls, bright green amid the pale concrete. Hermione remembered this - remembered plucking plucking weeds out of that grass, remembered green smudges staining the pristine pages of Things Fall Apart and tears blurring her vision, remembered dark calloused hands wiping away those tears and showing her another book, ancient and yellowed and worn, but still cherished.
The taxi shuddered to a stop near a black fence-gate little different from any others they'd passed, save for the pair of skinny arms reaching through it, rested on the middle cross-bar. The boy they belonged to, no older than twelve, made eye contact with her through the black bars and cab window for a moment before pulling back and running off towards the house beyond, mostly hidden by concrete walls.
As Nna and the cabby got the luggage out of the trunk, a small crowd of people bustled out of the gate, mostly adults, filling the sidewalk and spilling over into the road, all in traditional formalwear - isiagu shirts and akwete-cloth dresses, headwraps and okpu-agụ̄, bright beads around wrists and necks…
Out of the crowd came an old woman, bent-backed but dignified, who took one look at the Grangers, raised her bead-laden arms, and cried out:
"Praise Jesus!"
Ah.
"Missed you too, Auntie." Nna began to kneel - but Great-Aunt Chigozie was faster than she looked. She strode across the pavement and pulled him up into a hug, wizened hands fluttering over the gold-on-blue lion print of his shirt.
Some in the small crowd called out their own praises. Hermione spotted several crucifix pendants gleaming in the merciless sunlight. Her magen david amulet felt rather large and heavy all of a sudden, its chain hot on her bare neck.
"Auntie." Maman bent forward so the old woman could tap her back, and said in oddly French-accented Ìgbò: "It's so good to see you well. We can't thank you enough for hosting us on such short notice."
Great-Aunt Chigozie hummed approvingly. "You have been practicing. Good."
Then she aimed her stern, weary gaze at Hermione - and some of that weariness eased out of her dark, wrinkly face.
"Amadi!" She said. "Who is this beautiful woman? Where is little Ijeoma with her giant books?"
Hermione hesitated, staring. The air seemed to thicken as everyone's attention closed in on her. Behind her the taxi rolled away, grinding gritty dirt under its wheels.
"The books are in the luggage," Nna called from amidst the crowd of uncles and cousins. "She brought even more this time o."
Hermione stepped forward and bowed for a back-tap. "Má-ḿmá Chigozie."
"That fancy school has made you formal," the matriarch tutted, and embraced her.
She felt so much smaller than Hermione remembered. Thinner. Fragile, almost.
When they parted, one of her Great-Aunt's leathery hands slid down to grasp her left, brushing over wand and holster through her sleeve on the way; Hermione's heart skipped a beat, but Chigozie didn't seem to have noticed, peering dourly at her right arm in its bandages and sling.
"I'm alright," Hermione said in Ìgbò. "It rarely hurts anymore."
(Only when she stretched it or bumped it, really. Or pressed on it too hard. Or tried to lift anything heavier than a pamphlet with it. And the numbness was more of an annoyance than an affliction.)
"I'm already writing just fine with my left."
Her Great-Aunt hummed again, inscrutable, then turned to a gangly boy that looked roughly seventh-year-age. "Do you hear this, Nonso? Through diligence she has overcome o."
Nonso like someone had trod on his foot. "Hello, cousin."
What followed was a marathon of re-introductions that made the words 'Auntie' and 'Uncle' feel meaningless in her mouth - though that particular custom did somewhat spare her the work of matching nearly thirty names and corresponding degrees of relation to nearly faces that didn't look quite as she remembered them.
And after a year spent almost entirely around mages (and then Veela ) every day, being surrounded by ordinary people was… disorienting. Their auras appeared to be mostly internal, radiating outwards only around their heads and hands, waxing when they spoke and gestured. She wasn't sure what to make of it - but felt oddly certain that there was something to be made of it. Later. When she wasn't surrounded by family that were essentially strangers, all dressed up just to greet her, speaking to her in much faster Ìgbò than she was used to and looking at her useless, ruined hand—
Logically, she knew that dressing so formally to welcome someone was a show of high regard - an honor, as the purebloods would put it. Physically, her palms were feeling profoundly sweaty. Their familiarity with her only made her more anxious.
(The last time she'd seen any of them had been several years after she'd started summoning books and lighting candles, but she'd mentioned none of it during that visit because her parents had told her not to, had promised to buy her a copy of Les Damnés de la Terre if she kept it secret, had made it seem like a game—)
Then she was being ushered through the gates and into Aunt Chigozie's house, which was filled with a blend of savory scents— white soup, Okpa, coconut jollof, some sort of roasting meat…
Despite everything, she found herself relaxing just a bit.
.
Some time later, over steaming bowls and platters, Uncle Uche said to Nna: "So! What has convinced the prosperous Mister Granger that he simply had to come visit as soon as possible? Have you missed me so much, little cousin?"
She supposed less than two months in advance was rather abrupt for visiting family on a different continent (especially if that family didn't have as much disposable income - or extra room ).
Hermione's father set down his fork, and took a sip of water before answering.
"As you know," he said, "several years ago Hermione was invited to attend a very old and prestigious boarding school, because she is gifted. They even offered a scholarship."
In his defense, it would have been rather tricky to explain the treaty that guaranteed first-generation mages admission to Hogwarts without raising a slew of even trickier questions, but…
"We agreed, of course, and she has spent the last four years at the top of her class."
Well, near it, anyway—
"Unfortunately, her academic excellence has… displeased certain people. Very wealthy and privileged people who did not appreciate someone of Hermione's heritage attending their fancy school - much less outperforming their spoiled, entitled children." His voice did not rise, but harshened in a way she had only heard a handful of times. "She has refused to let the bad behavior of those children dissuade her, of course. But then their… more zealous relatives got involved. Relatives that have friends in government. In law enforcement."
His hands clenched into fists atop the tablecloth. "They attempted to frame her for an imaginary crime. They arranged for the police to come question her at school. In the middle of a meal, in front of all her peers."
Various disgusted, disapproving sounds were made around the room (not everyone fit at the dining table).
"They couldn't pin anything on her, of course, but the damage to her reputation…" he paused, brows furrowed and lips pinched together. Sipped some of the fancy wine they'd got from the Delacours. Very carefully set down his glass. "And that wasn't enough for them. One of them, a man that should have been in prison, a man that roamed free due to corruption and incompetence, got into the school due to a special event and—"
He cut himself off, nostrils flaring. Hermione's mother laid a hand on his right fist, and squeezed.
"Attacked her," she said. "He attacked her."
Which was technically true - he did cast the first curse, the instant she'd gotten that door open…
The attention of individual moyens felt… lighter than that of mages, but with over a dozen of them all looking at her arm…
At least she had bandages between their eyes and the mottled, melted-looking skin.
"I'm alright now," she said. "He was - quickly dealt with. It could have been much worse."
"But what did he do to it?" Little cousin Akachi called across the room, and was quickly hushed by no less than three Aunties. Hermione stared down at her plate.
"As I said," her father went on, "some of these people are… influential. We had reason to believe they might attempt to persecute us in other ways. In London. So. We've chosen to take some time away from England. We have already arranged to stay in France for a while, after we leave here."
The moment after he finished speaking was the quietest Hermione had ever heard his side of the family. She kept looking at her plate, trying to keep her expression neutral.
She'd never heard him lie before.
Except he wasn't lying, was he? Not quite, just… omitting certain details.
Numerous, important details.
How much thought had he put into this?
"So." Uncle Ikenna's chair creaked as he slouched back, arms crossed. "You have allowed your enemies to triumph."
Aunt Nneka reached out and smacked him in the back of the head.
"Did father let his enemies triumph when he brought us south?" She sucked her teeth and shook her head. "You see your life."
One of the kids snickered, and promptly received their own scolding, but Hermione didn't look. She…
Well, she may have re-read the Art of War a few times since those thugs cornered her at Heathrow.
(Since she slit that man's throat with just a flick of her wrist—)
"A well-executed retreat is itself a victory," she blurted.
Dozens of eyes aimed at her.
"Uncle," she added with a slight nod of respect - perhaps she'd been too assertive - "We still have our lives and our health, and we'll live to challenge them another day. Is— isn't that a sort of victory?"
"Mmm- hm." Aunt Nneka peered at her curiously over the rim of her glass. "You hear this? She has outrun the devil and still let wisdom catch her o."
That was… certainly one way of looking at it.
"We have Joëlle to thank for much of that wisdom," said Nna. "Anyway, we decided to take the opportunity to re-acquaint Hermione with her roots."
She'd spent too much time with Parvati to not recognize a diversion when she heard it - and a deft diversion it was. Every Auntie and Uncle and even a few older Cousins soon chimed in with something she just had to know - some of which she already knew, but feigning ignorance was easier than lying, even by omission. She smiled and nodded and did her best to ask insightful questions, and for a while she almost managed to forget about everything she was keeping from them… but every so often a little gold or silver crucifix would catch the light, and she would remember Nna's stories about the exorcisms he heard of as a child.
I doubt they'd call for a priest, he'd said, that last day in the Delacour villa, but why risk it? We'll only be there two weeks.
She couldn't fault his reasoning, it just felt so… cynical. And also rude, somehow?
And he didn't even know about the rituals she'd performed - the goat and the acromantula and the glyphs drawn in blood...
Then again, he had seen her kill a man.
(They still hadn't talked about that.)
(Every so often, she would catch him looking at her in a way she'd never seen before, with the slightest frown and an extra crease between his eyebrows. But then he'd smile and ask about her studies, or reach over and give one of her braids a little tug, or tell a joke so awful that she was too embarrassed by association to think about anything else for a bit.)
.
That evening, very full and more than a little sweaty. Hermione stopped him in the hallway on his way back from the the loo.
"You made it sound like I'll be going back to France with you," she said en français.
Her father stopped, glanced up and down the hallway, and sighed.
"They would not have believed that there could be a better school in Uganda or the Congo or… wherever it is," he said quietly, "than in England or France. It would have raised more questions."
Well. That was… depressing. And likely not unreasonable, given all the expropriated wealth concentrated in Europe and the various societal paroxysms that tended to occur when you violently penned people into arbitrary borders without regard for their cultures and/or religions, impoverished them, and then left them without a common enemy. Not exactly the ideal conditions for academia.
(Did Nigeria have its own Hogwarts? Doctor Ezkibel hadn't said anything about magical schooling in West Africa…)
"Hermione?" Her father looked worried.
"The exorcisms you heard about," she said. "Do you... know what any of them were reactions to, specifically?"
Her first thought had been 'accidental magic', but any such outburst significant enough to attract that sort of attention would be quickly suppressed by the local Statute-enforcement corps - and a great many ordinary people had been killed in the European witch-trials…
"No," said her father. "No, I don't."
Hm.
"Do you…" she shook her head. "No, never mind."
"What is it?"
"I… don't suppose you would have heard of any exorcisms performed by Muslims, living in a predominantly Christian community."
"I'm afraid not," he replied - and then, with a slight smile: "You know, I think you speak even more scholarly in French than in English."
Really? "Says the one that introduced me to French philosophy."
His smile grew. "Yes, well. When some tiny person you helped create starts reading faster than you in two languages, you can either shell out for ten books they'll finish in a month or find one book that'll keep them occupied for just as long."
She had needed a dictionary to get through Discours the first time…
"Get some rest, yeah?" Her father wrapped one strong arm around her shoulders and gently squeezed her into his side. "Big day tomorrow."
Which was his fault, tossing her to the lionesses like that with that 're-acquaint her with her roots' comment.
"Yeah," she huffed. "G'night."
With another shoulder-squeeze he kissed her head, and then padded off down the dimly-lit hallway. She watched him go, wondering.
None of the books she'd read in preparation for the first visit she could remember clearly went into much detail on pre-colonial Nigeria (and Maman had used what little they did say to teach her about bias), but their oral history stated that Islam had arrived in the region centuries before Christianity.
Had the Muslims brought witch hunts with them, or were those yet another lovely European export?
Had west African mages resisted christianization like Celtic mages did? Surely they must have. And surely they must have their own Hogwarts. Multiple Hogwartses, even - Nigeria alone was nearly four times the size of Britain…
But why, then, had Doctor Ezkibel not mentioned any west African schools? Mjiwazamani was still three thousand miles away.
(Hogwarts classes were taught in English. She'd rarely heard anyone at Hogwarts use its Gaelic name —its original name— aloud.)
"Mon chou?"
Oh. She'd wandered back into the guest room. Maman looked up at her from the vanity, paused in the midst of brushing out her hair. Frowning, slightly. "What is it?"
Hermione closed the door behind herself as quietly as she could. Tugged the strap of her sling a bit further up her shoulder.
Maman set down the hairbrush, and turned to face her fully.
"It feels wrong." Hermione hesitated. Bit her lip. "Doesn't it? To just - assume that the odds of them reacting badly are high enough to warrant…"
Maman sighed. "Your father knows his family better than we do."
Right, but…
"He's just trying to protect you." Her mouth twitched into a slight smile. It didn't match the tightness around her eyes. "That's how parenthood is supposed to work, you know. Not the other way around."
Ah.
"Is he…" Hermione glanced around the guest room - faded rug, ankara-print bedcover, screen window, big wooden crucifix hanging on the wall… "Has he said anything about… what I did? A-at Heathrow?"
"Killed a man," said her mother —voice and expression neutral, color faintly fluttering through the meagre corona of aura around her head— "You killed a man. No use dancing around it."
Hermione froze, a heavy feeling settling in her stomach.
Maman stood, stepped over to sit on the left-side bed, and patted the covers beside her. "Come here, darling."
Hermione did, and was promptly wrapped up in another side-hug, head resting on a cotton-clad shoulder.
"I'm sorry for keeping you in suspense," said her Maman.
"What?" Hermione started to lift her head, only for a gentle hand to coax it back down.
"Ted and Andromeda's warnings were one thing. Actually being… corralled like that, seeing magic used like that, was quite another. Your father and I needed time to process. The incident itself, and our thoughts and feelings about it."
Oh. That made sense.
"And…" Hermione swallowed. "Have you? Processed them?"
"I'd like to think so," said Maman. "And I've decided that it was a fairly clear case of Pikuach Nefesh."
— Behold, the commandments were given to Israel that they might live by them, and not die by them. Nothing takes precedence over saving a life, save idolatry, sexual sins, and murder—
But—
"Din Rodef, as well."
Law of the Pursuer - Moses and the taskmaster - Active threat with deadly weapons -
Defense of self and others.
"We may not know exactly what those men had in store for us," said Maman, "but I rather doubt your father or I would have come out of it alive."
Another pause. Another sigh.
"I'm… actually rather proud of you. Not - for the act itself, necessarily, but for your preparedness. I wish it hadn't been necessary, but I do not think any less of you for it. If anything, I think more of you. You did what you had to do, and held yourself together until you'd gotten us to safety. You did well, darling."
Hermione blinked several times, and let out a breath she felt like she'd been holding for weeks. "Oh."
But I could have stunned him, she thought. Bound him. Something other than—
"Okay," she said - and then, again, hesitated.
It's like pulling off a plaster. Just get it over with.
"What about Nna?" She forced herself to say. "What does he think?"
And the dainty halo of Maman's aura did something she had no word for - neither a ripple nor a flutter, but something in between, something that shrank it down so much that Hermione had to lift her head off Maman's shoulder to see it at all, so much that it looked like nothing more than a light that had been switched on behind Maman's head - and that light was gray.
Much like Ginny's had been, when Hermione first mentioned blood magic.
"Your father," she said after a moment, "is a man. He imagined he'd be intimidating prospective boyfriends by now, not dealing with deadly peril, though… ever since the Tonkses explained things to us, he's feared that he might have to do for you what his father did for him during the war here. He expected to be the one doing the protecting."
That… made sense. It didn't actually answer her question, but—
"Beyond that, you'll have to ask him yourself."
What?
"But…" Hermione looked down at the carpet. "You've talked about it with him. Surely—"
"Hermione." Maman's voice was gentle, but firm. "You'll have to ask him yourself."
But he'd had over two weeks to bring it up, and hadn't. Maybe he didn't want to talk about it. Maybe he didn't want to even think about it. Maybe he was angry that he'd needed his teenage daughter to defend—
"You know," said Maman, "I haven't often envied your abilities."
What?
"Sure, being able to summon things and light candles with a wave of your hand seems useful - but everything that comes with it? Coerced assimilation into a society that hates you, adjusting to their archaic, pseudo-feudal paradigm, the bigotry, living under a blatantly corrupt government, terrorists walking free…" She paused. Took a deep breath in through her nose and out through her mouth. Her shoulder relaxed under Hermione's head. "The little marvels just didn't quite seem worth it. So no, I didn't envy you. Not until Heathrow."
Hermione - blinked. Stared at the carpet, replaying the last minute or so in her head. "You didn't envy me… until you saw me kill a man?"
"To defend yourself ," said Maman. "And us. I would gladly have done it myself, if it spared you the— well. Whatever you might be feeling about it."
Ah.
Well.
Hm.
"I - well, I - suppose that I…"
Maman shushed her. Gently, but still! "It's alright. We don't have to talk about it now."
Hermione may have slumped a little bit, just then.
"We've had a long day, haven't we?"
They really had. Nine hours of sitting was a very long time when the most interesting books on her List were illegal to read around your fellow passengers.
"Right," said Maman. "To bed with you, my sleepy cabbage."
(It sounded perfectly normal in French.)
"In a minute." Hermione lifted her heavy head off Maman's shoulder, padded over to her luggage, and slid her journal out of an outer (but not outermost) compartment. A careful tap to eight glyphs in sequence and a whispered Kpọghee onwe gị unlocked the clasp and temporarily dispersed the shimmery little currents that pulled its covers together. She flipped past her own warnings and reassurances and Harry's account of that farcical hearing to her latest exchange with Parvati, her ramblings about Veela harmonic wardcraft and - there, Parv's reply, written in her slanting, almost calligraphically elegant hand…
I haven't heard anything about Veela & anti-apparation wards… but neither have I ever heard a Briton credit Indians for inventing chess or shampoo or 'Occlumency', so I suppose that doesn't mean much, does it?
It was shameful, the way some people treated Delacour and her friends while they were here. Half the Old Houses like to hint that they're descended from the Fae, so where do they get off being so beastly to metahumans?
Anyway, your enthusiasm is charming as ever, but I'm afraid harmonic magic is nothing new to us. What do you think the Pranava is? Or that bell in our shrine? You felt its effect. That's a tiny version of some of the great bells of Ujjain , which do the same thing— except further. Riots have supposedly been stopped by its sound. Others strike fear into all who hear them (to stop would-be invaders), & some repel lesser demons— Dementors & such.
They're all inspired by the legendary Bell of Durga, which was crafted by the divine smith Tvashtr to mimic Her battle-cry. It's said that ringing it would repel demons —& even especially awful people— from miles away.
Also, I realized while reading up on Veela (in hopes of understanding why previously pleasant people suddenly started sounding like Malfoy whenever Delacour was mentioned) that some of the stories of them sound sort of like Kinnara/Kinnari— half-bird people that show up in the Mahabharata & Jatakas. They're all about music & love & stuff, so… vaguely similar to Veela? I can't say anything for certain, becau
That was where it ended.
Hermione blinked down at the unfinished word for a moment, waiting for more letters to write themselves across the page.
None did.
Only then did she really look at the gossamer web shimmering through the journal - and found it fading from the paper, weak and flickering. A quick check of the glyphs and binding revealed nothing amiss; nothing had changed except for—
Distance.
Thousands of miles of distance and the curvature of the earth across it, living water and rock and soil and forests all radiating ambient magic - which interfered with the spells linking the journals because the Protean Charm was only an imitation of true material Sympathy, invented because properly, permanently duplicating any material was mastery-level transfigurative witchcraft and thus horribly expensive in the exclusive, apprenticeship-based artisan economy of magical Britain - and she hadn't wanted to return even a fraction of the fortune Sirius had given her to that system. And she'd thought her work would be good enough.
Like an idiot.
Hermione put her face in her single working hand, and bit back a scream of frustration.
.
Four days later, the three of them clambered out of another cab in a much more metropolitan part of the city, full of shiny new cars and well-paved roads and great crowds of pedestrians bustling about. In many parts it looked like a sunnier, more colorful London - and somewhere among the banks and shops was Lagos' version of the Leaky Cauldron.
Hermione stepped under a nearby awning to get out of the foot traffic, and looked down at the letter in her hand. A moment's concentration thinned the iridescent haze of the glamour disguising its contents enough for her to read.
(Apparently the spell couldn't tell mage from moyen by some innate quality evident via touch alone; it required action, however small.)
The instructions led them off the high street, to a smaller but still normal-looking intersection… and there they skipped right to ' once inside, proceed to Armistice Plaza'. Yet there was no blank space where the missing steps should have been…
"May I see?" Asked her father - but she could barely hear him over the sudden, electrifying feeling of foreign magic washing over her, somehow hot and cold at the same time, spreading goosebumps across her skin… and it was coming from her left.
She turned, and thanked G-d for her magesight. Sure, she would have found the spot by sensation alone eventually, but the kaleidoscopic haze of blues and greens and purples pulsing out of what otherwise looked very much like a mundane café.
"Hermione?" Asked her father.
(They still hadn't talked about what happened at Heathrow.)
"This way," she said, and strode forward.
"Ẹ káàbọ̀!" An older man waved from a table by the counter, and went back to playing Ayò with two others. All three were mages, their auras projecting well outside their bodies - as were the two younger men sitting in chairs against the far wall, whose auras expanded seconds after Hermione walked in, faint phantom colors evening out into calm orange. Rather like Tonks immediately before a mock-duel, actually…
Between them was a doorway draped with strings of beads that glowed in her sight. Afrobeat was playing out of a gramophone on a table in the corner.
"There you are!" One of the men called over the music, smiling like an old friend. "Took you long enough."
None of the customers looked up from their drinks or games or conversations - and as she glanced to check, Hermione saw that only most of them had externalized auras; here and there sat moyens, chatting away with mages that seemed perfectly at ease with their presence.
The two men remained seated as she crossed the cafe towards them, almost lounging, but their eyes tracked her every move. As she drew near, one held out a hand for the letter. The beads around his wrist glowed with not-light - as did one of his rings, momentarily, as he grasped the parchment. He gave it a quick once-over and nod, at which his companion tapped the arm of his chair - which somehow raised a veil of lazily swirling magic between them and the rest of the room.
No one else seemed to notice.
"Identification?" He asked just loud enough for her to hear, still smiling carelessly.
Hermione fought the urge to glance over her shoulder as she slid her passport out of the pocket of her denims. Her parents handed theirs over as well. The man took longer with those, glancing at each of their faces in turn… and lingering on her mothers', something subtle rippling through his aura—
"Ijeoma," he said. "Good name."
"Yes, I thought so too," Maman replied.
He handed back their passports, looking at Hermione. "Welcome home, sister."
…alright, then.
Past the curtain of beads was a narrow hallway, the walls of which might well have been painted neon pink and Hermione wouldn't have known - she couldn't even see what they were made out of through the sheer potency of spellwork woven into it, completely unfamiliar glyphs pulsing out little waves of light that blended together into new colors that flowed along countless intersecting threads—
Hermione blinked hard and forced herself to focus on the door at the end of the hall —which was just as heavily enchanted and thus just as intense— and keep walking, one foot in front of the other, until she was close enough to knock (for lack of a doorknob). It sounded like solid hardwood. In the long moment before it opened she felt like she could almost hear the enchantments as well, pulsing and humming…
Then she was squinting against sudden, green - tinted light. The two wizards guarding this doorway nodded as she stepped between them out into…
"Oh," Maman murmured. "Oh, this I like."
A tree-lined avenue curved past them, broad enough for three auto lanes but filled instead with pedestrians - people in brightly patterned wraps and robes and sashes and vaguely sari-like garments Hermione didn't recognize, all strolling through vast triangles and rectangles of sunlight dyed green and orange and yellow and blue on its way through sections of the vast sunshade stretched over it all - the weave of which was threaded through with countless luminous lines, brighter where they intersected. The trees that lined the avenue, each a different species than the last, appeared to be thriving despite the lack of direct sunlight.
"Go left," one of the door-guards said in thickly accented English. "Down main street, past the silver bazaar. It'll take you right to the Plaza."
Right. More prudent to provide the final directions after identity verification than to send it through the post.
"Thank you," she said. Then she clumsily hooked her bandaged arm around her Maman's, exhaling through the initial wave of half-numb tingles and the twinges of pain that followed. Once Maman had gripped Nna's hand, Hermione strode forward into the crowds.
She'd barely gone five steps when she started feeling watched - the phantom brush of magical attention on her front, her back, her legs…
What a day to wear denims.
They were the lone spots of drab, barely-decorated cotton —of European clothing— in a parade of vibrant color. Amulets and bangles waist-beads and braid -beads glowed in her magesight - though none so bright as the old-fashioned mage-staves she could see some elders using as walking sticks or resting their hands on as they sat in the shade, surveying the crowds like monarchs in richly-adorned robes and wraps. At second glance, some actually appeared to be modeling for the younger mages beside them, who were singing the praises of the bolts of akwete cloth and aṣọ-òkè and such hanging from the awnings of their shops.
"Little sister!" Called one of them, a matronly woman draped in red-patterned white, flapped a hand in her direction. "Yes, you, sister - those clothes do not flatter your beauty! You cannot go to school like this!"
Which— rude?
"Come let me make you the most elegant in the class, ah?"
Hermione ducked her head and hurried onward - thankful, for once, for her lack of height; easier to hide in the crowd.
"Oh, but those shawls… " said her mother, slowing down.
"On the way back, Maman." Though now that they were here… "But keep an eye out for bookshops and stationery, please."
With any luck, they'd at least be able to point her to someone that sold proper sympathy-bonded journals.
It didn't take long to discover that every banner, plaque, and sign was written in what appeared to be the same system of glyphs used to enchant that hallway - and, unable to read a single one, she found herself much more interested in the buildings they were attached to. She saw a few plain, square storefronts with broad glass display-windows, but they were far outnumbered by earth-toned walls covered in complex geometric designs and verandas held up by pillars of lacquered wood - some exquisitely engraved with stylized animals and flowers and what almost looked like celtic knots, others sculpted into stylized humanoid figures that reminded her of the British Museum's trophies.
Many roofs were slanted, either thatched with raffia or tiled with what looked very much like some sort of iridescent scales , while others were flat and home to gardens, all sorts of green leafy things somehow thriving despite the colored cloth above blocking what had to be a significant amount of sunlight. Between some buildings were stairways leading up to what she assumed were flats, some with balconies from which people watched the crowds go by. Here and there bright ribbons and banners hung from high archways, marking the entrance to side-streets, bustling marketplaces, courtyards that also held gardens, and one alley that was just… dark, not simply shaded, but as if it was nighttime beyond that particular archway - which was fittingly adorned with the phases of the moon. In that darkness Hermione could see hanging lanterns and indistinct shapes moving about beneath—
"Wo ibi ti o nlọ!"
She narrowly avoided colliding with someone, and forced herself to look only forward.
For about two minutes.
Every so often she passed a mural depicting scenes from what she could only assume were folklore and history, some heavily stylized, some lifelike. And everyone, everywhere, wore what she assumed was traditional attire; none of it looked quite like what Nna's family considered traditional, but she hadn't seen so much as a button-down since she'd stepped out of that hallway. She supposed it wasn't really much different than the archaism of British mages, fundamentally… but it felt different. Purposeful , even. And it wasn't just clothing; it seemed she couldn't go more than a few moments without seeing a face or a bare shoulder intentionally scarred - many in straight, parallel lines, some horizontal, some vertical, others following the curve of a cheekbone or brow. A few sets of scars even gleamed faintly silver or gold. One older, stave-wielding man was positively striped from hairline to chin.
Maman poked her in the side. "Don't stare, dear."
Right. Eyes forward. Plaza. Embassy. Pre -orientation, whatever that meant…
Fifteen-ish minutes down the street stood the largest archway of all, curving over nearly the entire avenue at least a dozen metres high, made not of stone but of living wood - two large trees, bent together with their thick branches tightly interwoven, and several supporting the sunshade by ropes at its end looped around them. Most of their leaves were out of sight above the fabric, and the sheer concentration of magic…
Trees were one of the few things the books about magesight agreed on; all trees were at least a little magical, drinking it up out of the earth along with water and minerals, but they only channeled a relatively tiny portion of that magic outwards in order to gather more nutrients from the soil and ward off especially troublesome pest - so only the most magical trees actually looked it.
The two that formed the archway appeared striped , lines of nearly-blinding light flowing up along every wrinkle and furrow in their trunks, emitting what looked to her like moonlit mist that drifted lazily into the space between them to form a shimmering, translucent veil - and there swirled together into a loose net of concentrated, tendril-like currents that bent to reach for the people walking through. They pulsed with ghostly color on contact, and drifted weightlessly away to await the next. None of the pedestrians seemed to notice.
It was clearly some sort of ward - but what kind? British magical folklore contained plenty of stories about trees —special fruit plucked from magical trees, fae mischief incurred by harming sacred trees, people taking refuge from murderous muggles in the shade of them, et cetera— but she'd never heard or read anything about wards anchored inside trees.
"Hermione?"
She'd stopped walking at some point; Maman was watching her worriedly while Nna looked from her to the archway and back, frowning.
What did it look like, to them?
The thought that they could look at something like that and only see trees was…
Something to ponder later.
"I'm fine," she said. "Just - different culture, different magic, I suppose. Fascinating stuff. Shall we?"
She didn't wait for their agreement, which was rude, but she barely knew how to explain auras to people, let alone… whatever it was that she was about to walk through. The people ahead of did so without a second's hesitation, and she was already one of three people in the entire neighborhood wearing mugg— mundane clothes. She refused to stand out any further. Besides, those guards had let her through.
It's fine. It won't hurt us.
It's fine.
The archway loomed high in front of her, the trees and buildings beyond rippling mirage-like through the veil, the fading ends of those tendrils reaching for the spot she was about to walk through—
She closed her eyes.
It's fine, it's fine, it's —
Warm?
Yes, she suddenly had goosebumps, every tiny hair on her body standing on end as the air seemed to thicken around her - but it also felt as if she'd stepped through a wide beam of sunlight, and… that was it.
What sort of ward was that?
She opened her eyes to what could only be Armistice Plaza: a vast ring of flat cobblestones around an island of trees surrounded by statues - a man and woman holding hands with each other and with a variety of magical beings, a short and vaguely elf-like figure wearing a mask with a mane of leaves, what appeared to be some sort of orangutan-bat hybrid hanging by its hooked foot-claws from a branch, a sleekly reptilian mer-person, and what looked very much like a Veela in flight-form - but with a broad, flat nose like Hermione's and a cascade of tight braids instead of the sleek hair of the Delacours.
"Huh," said her father.
The buildings surrounding the plaza were a study in contrasts - here a grand lodge with more of those lacquered statue-pillars, thatched with iridescent scales, there a large dome of a hut with whale-sized bones framing its entryway and the skull of a full-grown dragon mounted above; an edifice with a striking resemblance to the Great Mosque of Djenné (save for the banners flying from its spires) was half-visible behind the island of trees, and beside it was a court of what looked like those Bedouin tents she'd seen on that one BBC special, only striped with bright, fluctuating colors.
As Hermione and her parents made their way around the circle of statues and greenery, another tree came into view: a baobab bigger than Patil Manor, with curving platforms suspended in its thick, sturdy branches and a natural-looking archway leading into its broad trunk. Veins of slow-flowing magic shone out of every whorl and furrow in its bark, radiating a mist-like, swirling haze of potential that Hermione had to squint and focus through to see the emblem on the banner hanging down the tree's front - the very same emblem that was stamped on the letter in her pocket: a stylized flame tucked into an upside-down V with a sunlike halo around its peak, eight star-points radiating outward from it.
"What is it?" Asked Maman. "What do you see?"
Hermione assumed she didn't mean the emblem… which, she realized, her parents could probably see more easily than her.
Hm.
"I'm not sure," she replied. "But I'm almost entirely certain it's safe."
"Well then," said her father - and started walking faster towards the tree, several strides ahead of her. Hermione lurched forward, but Maman didn't - and their arms were still hooked together.
"Maman—"
"Let him do this."
It was a rather tense walk.
The amulets she'd cobbled together in that nameless henge seemed like perty trinkets compared to the… well, everything. She wasn't sure they'd stop a cutting curse, much less whatever a proper set of wards might unleash on anyone it deemed a threat or an intruder.
"Two pairs of guards let us through," said Maman. "We were invited . Breathe, darling."
Twenty deep breaths later, Nna stepped into the mist-like magic - and kept walking without so much as a twitch as it seemed to condense around him, but otherwise did nothing that Hermione could see.
"You should look into art lessons at Mjiwazamani," said Maman. "I'd like to see what you see. Or a rendering of it, at least."
Hermione refrained from speculating as to how little free time she'd soon have between cramming a new language, adapting to a new academic system, and learning every bit of defensive magic she could.
The baobab's wards felt much like the grand archway, like stepping into not-quite-sunlight, a strange charge in the air - and the instant she did, two figures seemed to materialize, one standing to either side of the entryway. Both wore wooden masks carved in the likeness of some sort of mammal, black snouts and jaws and bared fangs, white from the forehead up, and armor — sleek plates of what looked like wood enchanted in the same way as the baobab, no glyphs in sight but magic flowing through it in silvery threads— over a loose tunic and trousers near in color to the bark behind them. From their belts hung short sabers, sheathed in dark leather. Their auras blended smoothly into that of the tree. Both nodded to Nna, but said nothing.
Through the not-carved doorway and the short tunnel beyond was a large hollow space, a dome of living wood curving over floor covered by half a dozen overlapping antique rugs, and on that dome was painted a map of Africa with significantly different borders than Hermione had ever seen - way more countries, labeled in a dozen different scripts, from the one she'd seen on the shop signs to what had to be some form of Demotic Egyptian given its position to Arabic throughout much of North Africa - which was upside-down, because the center of the map, the apex of the dome, was somewhere in Central Africa - and painted there, glowing brightly enough to light the entire room yet somehow still gentle on the eyes, was the same emblem from the banner and the letter, the haloed - mountain , she realized—
"Ahh, these must be the Grangers!" A portly older woman rose from one of the low settees arrayed around the circumference of the room. The sash wrapped over her richly-patterned robes had the haloed-mountain embroidered on it in silver thread. "Welcome, welcome! Please make yourselves at home - the envoys will see you shortly."
She then turned towards the nearest of the others in the room–
"Allow me to introduce Jatau, Zainab, and Musa Danjuma…"
–a man who appeared to be in his mid-twenties seated beside a young woman in a hijab with her arms wrapped around the young boy in her lap, who was the only definite mage of the three - his aura proportionally broad and full of shifting colors, while the man's and woman's radiated less than a foot from their bodies, neither as large as that of the average mage nor as internal as that of a moyen.
"...as well as Adaeze and Ifa Sȧjuyïgbe and their daughter, Uloma Ifátiṣe Sȧjuyïgbe."
Adaeze and Ifa were two women in mundane clothes - a dress and a denims-and-blouse combo, respectively; Uloma, a girl of perhaps nine or ten, sat between them, intently focused on the large wooden spinning-top she was levitating above her cupped hands. One woman watched and murmured encouragingly; the other greeted Hermione and her parents with a smile and a nod, before turning back to her child and… co-mother? Girlfriend?
…wife?
(Two women couldn't legally marry in magical Britain, but the rationale for that legislation was all about 'ensuring the continuity of magical lineage' - if rituals that allowed women to have children with no male participation weren't banned here…)
The woman bustled over to another doorway straight across from the entrance, and disappeared through curtains woven entirely from thread that glowed in Hermione's sight.
Maman led the way to the next settee over from the Danjumas, and greeted the young woman - Zainab, presumably - with a soft "As-salāmu alaykum."
Zainab startled slightly, blinked a few times, glanced at Maman's tichel and Hermione's uncovered hair and Nna and back at Maman– "Wa'alaykum-salam."
She couldn't have been much older than Hermione, by the look of her - the very tired, frazzled look of her, like a seventh-year during NEWT week.
"Quite a lot to take in, isn't it?" said Maman, taking a seat.
Zainab nodded warily. "You're not…?"
"Mages? No, just Hermione here."
She gestured to Hermione, who attempted a friendly smile and waved awkwardly with her good hand before sitting down next to her mother.
"Oh." Zainab's shoulders eased down ever-so-slightly, even as she looked Hermione over as one might an incantation written in unfamiliar glyphs. "How long have you known about…?"
"The better part of ten years, now," said Maman. "But it's still hard to wrap our heads around, sometimes. For example, do you know about Veela?"
"They won't be called that here," Hermione interjected, digging the little foil packet of Ibuprofen out of the pocket of her denims. "Different tribes."
"What you did?" Little Musa asked from Zainab's lap - and was immediately hushed.
"Sorry?" Said Hermione.
"He means your first… incident," said Jatau, beside Zainab. "
"Accidental magic, you mean."
His jaw clenched. He nodded stiffly.
"I'm not actually sure." Hermione raised the packet towards her mouth to substitute her invalid hand with her teeth, only for Nna to pluck it from her grasp and tear it himself. "Maman?"
"She started pulling books off the shelf from across the room when she was five," said her mother.
"And the candles," said Nna, placing the pills in Hermione's palm and offering his thermos of cool water. "Don't forget about that."
"Oh yes, she used to make them dance on shabbos," said Maman.
"Jewish sabbath," Nna translated.
"Of course, we did think we were imagining it for a few years…"
"But… when you realized you weren't imagining it," —Zainab glanced at Hermione's bandaged arm— "you weren't—"
She cut herself off.
"Frightened?" Maman asked gently.
Zainab blinked several times in quick succession. Her eyes were rather shiny all of a sudden. Her throat bobbed. Jatau shifted a bit closer on the settee, so that their shoulders pressed together.
"Our parents," he said quietly, "they say it is a blessing, what Musa can do, but…"
—he glanced over to the Sȧjuyïgbes, who weren't looking, murmuring to each other over their daughter's head—
"…some of our neighbors might… disagree. You know what people say, that - that things like this are the work of devils, that they are sin. Even if the Imams agreed with our parents, some people…" he shook his head, lips pursed.
"We've been trying to help him stop," said Zainab, looking down at Musa - then looked back up and saw something in Hermione's expression, or Maman's or Nna's, because she quickly added: "Nothing bad! Only strict practice - self-control, you know? Since it mostly happens when he's emotional. But…"
"It hasn't worked," said Maman.
Zainab sniffled, and daubed at her eyes.
"The government men said that's normal," said Jatau, looking at his - niece? Sister? There was definitely some resemblance between them… "For witches."
"Mages," Musa said without looking up.
Jatau's expression underwent several brief, slight changes.
"What else did they say?" Hermione couldn't help but ask. "Did they mention any schools that aren't… you know, halfway across the continent?"
(She understood why Doctor Ezkibal hadn't - McGonagall hadn't mentioned any of Britain's less 'prestigious' magical academies, after all, but…)
"Yes!" Musa said loudly from Zainab's lap. "There's Okan Issy... ee-say…"
"Ọkàn Ìṣẹ̀ṣẹ," said Jatau, "here in Yorubaland. And the Hall of Anyaanwū out in Igboland. Both sounded very focused on… the 'Old Ways', that's what they called it - old religions. And they said that the Hausa Kingdoms , because those still exist but only for witches, apparently - some of them are Muslim, but they don't have big formal academies for - for magic, they teach in their local communities."
"Musa would have to go live there," said Zainab. "And we couldn't go with him. So. We decided we might as well hear about this great… 'Old City' in the mountains, too."
"What did they say about it?" Asked Hermione. "Sorry, I just - all we've heard about it came directly from an alumnus and a faculty member of two of its schools."
"Oh." Zainab blinked, a bit taken aback - which was fair, it was unusually fortuitous that Doctor Ezkibel's ostensible fact-finding mission to Britain had coincided with Doctor Clarke's visit. "They… called it a 'great crossroads of magical Africa'. Said it has a good university."
"And that the people there would take us in along with Musa," Jatau added, "even though we aren't—"
He cut herself off, looking at the curtained door - out of which the matronly greeter had just stepped, followed by two more men in that strange wooden armor but no masks, their faces focused as they carried a wooden crate engraved with several familiar sigils made of un -familiar glyphs between them, into the center of the room, where they set it down. One of them tapped several glyphs in quick succession, little bright pulses in Hermione's magesight, which caused the four sides of the box to split apart along the seams and fall flat on the rug-covered floor, revealing…
Alright, she had no idea what that was, other than heavily and thoroughly enchanted - a glass sphere wider than her arm was long, adorned with faint curving, curling veins she suspected were only visible to her, roughly one-third full of pale, glimmery powder, and mounted on a three-legged wooden pedestal oddly devoid of any glyphs.
"Good afternoon."
Hermione jolted, and looked up.
The guards had stepped back to either side of the curtained doorway while she was gawking, and two more mages had entered - a round-faced, greying, cheerful-looking man draped in sunset-colored robes, wizard-staff in hand, and a tall woman just this side of gaunt, her hair in short twists, wearing a sleeveless ocre-red tunic that bared the lines of tiny, luminous glyphs running down her dark arms - which were also adorned with enchanted bicep-cuffs and bangles.
Hermione found herself standing almost involuntarily - and she wasn't the only one.
"I am Dithebe Yeukai," said the man, "envoy of Mjiwazamani's Council of Immigration, and I have the honor of being joined by acclaimed historian Ayani Kalenga."
The woman gave a little bow of her head to each family in turn, one hand half-raised in greeting - displaying the softly glowing sigil tattooed across her palm.
"She is here today representing the Council of Education, which arranges academic placements for new students - among many other things."
Kalenga smiled warmly at the two children. "We're going to make sure you get to go to a good school, with nice helpful teachers."
Zainab's odd in-between aura rippled. "Teachers of…"
"Magic?" Said Kalenga. "Only some of them. We cannot let the youth go ignorant of history or art or science, after all."
Through great force of will, Hermione managed to stop her hand from shooting into the air - though she clearly failed to hide the impulse entirely, because Kalenga met her gaze and smiled a bit wider. Her eyes were an oddly bright shade of brown - almost golden,though it could've been a trick of the light…
"Please, be seated," said Yeukai. "We have much to tell you."
.
