Chapter Text
Mr. and Mrs. Granger were normal parents, with normal jobs and a normal life. They were loving and caring, and they never missed their daughter’s school plays nor her dance recital. Hermione loved them but they didn't knew she wanted something different, not a flat, monotonous life where the greatest adventure was going to the beach once a month despite the weather, but an existence full of exciting experiences and always new discoveries, which would overwhelm her unbridgeable thirst for knowledge. But, for her misfortune, her parents were the last people in the world you could expect to be dealing with strange or mysterious things; they liked documentary and old movies, and listen to their daughter reading her books out loud, impersonating each character like she was the only actress in a theatrical representation. Furthermore they owned a dental practice, which made everyone think the only daughter would follow their footsteps and become a dentist, and she would’ve done it, because, after all, being the owner of a modest dental practice wasn’t that bad, although already at the age of eleven, Hermione considered it the most boring job in the world. But she would have done it, for no other reason than to not disappoint her parents; she hated even the idea to made them somehow sad and her mom always seemed so proud when she told her friends about her interest in the medical field that it would break her heart to know the truth. Sure, she would have done it while dreaming for something different, more exciting, but she would have done it, because, when you’re nearly eleven, like her father liked to remind her, the only think you’re supposed to want is to be like your parents. She would have done it if strange things didn’t started to happen in the 1990′s summer, the first on 19 July, two months before from her birthday. She was at the beach with her parents and she spotted a corpulent and wiry man with a long bread that made it seem like he had no neck. He had a long pair of mustaches too that seemed to be smooth and curled up again without needing him to touch them. It was nothing, compared to what happened next, but in retrospect, with the clarity that only the understanding of something that was believed impossible can give, this was the very beginning of everything.
The next strange thing happened when she was coming back from the library. It was one of the few places where her parents let her go without accompany her, due to the fact that it was only one block away from their dental practice and that it was a pretty secure block. Furthermore, Hermione seemed older than her age and they wanted her to be independent as soon as possible, because she dreamed to go to a summer camp, when she would have started secondary school. She saw this strange woman, and, in her eyes, she seemed to shine with a particular light, making her different from all the other passers-by. It wasn’t her physical appearance: she was thin and her neck looked more giraffe-like than it actually was thanks to the fluffy blonde short bob, so she looked almost like all the middle-aged women of the UK, and not even her clothes, even though the dress’ factory was a little too eccentric for her tastes. Hermione didn’t like to call herself a nosy girl, nor she had ever felt that way, yet she slowed her pace and followed with her gaze the woman who literally disappeared into a shadowy alley. The girl barely noticed that, in her place, a sphinx with a precious pearl collar, just like the necklace the woman wore, had appeared.
The third, strange thing happened a month after the mysterious disappearance of the woman in the alley. Hermione was at her parents’ best friend’s house. The couple were really boring and due to the fact that he was a plastic surgeon and his wife was his pretty and empty secretary, Hermione had permission, when they went to visit them, to close herself in their boring but extremely well-stocked personal library, to settle comfortably on one of the soft sofas and immerse herself in her favorite world, that was between stiff and dusty covers, imprinted in small dark typefaces on pages that would inevitably turn yellow. Sometimes, when the conversation between doctors was too technical for her to understand, the homeowner put her head into the library, asking Hermione what she was reading or whether she liked something to drink or eat. It rarely happened that woman entered more than two, maximum three times, and usually she went away quickly. That day, however, conversations in the other room had to be truly incomprehensible to a simple mind like hers, as she had been visiting Hermione five times. At first, Hermione had reacted as always, telling her that she would like a glass of cold tea, with a slice of lemon and ice, just to make her absence longer and allow her parents to quickly change the subject. When she returned, Hermione had kindly asked if they had ice cream: no one was allowed to eat in the library but she was an exception. The woman had returned with an elegant little bowl and a miserable vanilla ice-cream ball inside. Hermione had thanked, understanding how that woman could be so thin, even though she had been over her thirties. To Hermione, the thirtieth birthday seemed an unattainable goal, yet in novels, at thirty life didn’t seem to be over, only at a time when the slow and inexorable changes of adulthood were beginning to be evident even in third parties’ eyes.
Hermione felt like she was the only one in the entire England to hate vanilla ice cream: it was too sweet, and in summer she wanted something refreshing, not a dessert made to make her parents richer. Therefore, she ate just a few spoons than she put the bowl on one of the antique tables that enriched the already lavish furnishings of the library. That couple had everything they could wish for and more, every stupid luxury, every little madness they wanted to do, they could afford it. Hermione, however, found it extremely sad: the only thing she wanted in life couldn’t be bought, not even with the entire Queen’s money.
“Sorry if I interrupt again” said Mrs. Smith acute voice, tearing her from her thoughts of self-pity. Hermione wanted to throw the bowl, full of melted ice cream, at her face. She just wanted to read and escape from reality before the start of her first secondary school year. She knew if she still wanted to have excellent grades, she had to study harder than she ever done in primary school, so she wanted to relax during the summer.
“I saw you’re reading Matilda and I though you could like Frederica. It’s a bit old, I know, but it was my favorite book when I was younger.” she said, giving her a nearly destroyed copy. Hermione smiled a little, thinking that maybe, when she was younger and she didn’t discovered that much makeup yet, she was someone like her. A little more romantic and silly, based on her reading tastes, but still someone she could have liked to spend time with.
“You can bring it home and give it back to me when you come visit us again, just promise me to return it.” said, with the softest smile her face let her have. Her features was so pointed and her lips were really thin, despite her enormous front teeth.
“I promise” she said, trying to keep to herself a pissed comment on the fact that she had already read that book and didn't liked it that much; it reminded her of Jane Austen’s plots but for the whole time it took her to read it she wasn’t scared for the character’s well-being so she ended up finishing it in nearly a week despite having nearly 400 pages.
The fifth time Mrs. Smith entered the room, Hermione rolled her eyes so hard: she was at the part where Matilda reveals her powers to Miss Honey and she wanted to end it without any sort of interruption, but it wasn’t what was on the woman’s mind. Hermione didn’t raised her head when she heard the door open but she knew it was Mrs. Smith. She jumped on the sofa, however, when the women started screaming. Hermione never saw something like that: all the books was floating in the room, making her the center of their creepy slow dance. The girl was frozen, everything was the most wrong type of wrong. Things didn’t float in real life, not when there’s no trick behind it.
“What…” Hermione clearly heard Mr. Smith started to talk, but he froze, like his wife, the books, and the ice cream bowl, which was a few inches away from a very expensive Persian carpet.
“You should have noticed sooner.” said a female voice she was sure she never heard before. It was coming from the kitchen, and despite she was scared for her parents, Hermione didn’t moved. She was terrified by Mrs. Smith’s immobility. She almost didn’t breathe, as if she was petrified. “Sybill warned you about a Muggleborn girl with great powers. She said…”
Someone made the women shut up: “We can’t know if this is the girl she was talking about. There’s only one way to discover it and is with time and patience. I don’t want to put on another teenager’s shoulder a weight heavier than she’s able to carry.” a male voice said. Based on the tone, Hermione supposed it was someone older than the woman that was talking before.
“Let me take a look at this mess…” the woman muttered, and Hermione heard the sound of her rhythmic steps approaching. She wore heels, probably, which ticked on the marble floor like the hands of a clock ready to mark the moment of judgment.
When the women entered the room, avoiding the petrified figure of Mrs. Smith like the plague, she seemed impressed, like the floating books and the ice cream bowl nearly flipped upside down on a priceless value carpet were positive things. The woman didn’t take long to meet her hallucinated gaze. Hermione didn’t move, probably even stopped breathing, praying that the intruder believed she had been petrified too. Her face was stern, and yet in her eyes there was a light so understanding that made Hermione believe this was only a dream, that she fell asleep on her parents’ best friends’ sofa while reading. Then, suddenly, she smiled at her in the same way her grandmother used to do when she found out she was making some complex prank at someone else’s expenses. She held her index finger to her mouth, and for a moment Hermione wasn’t afraid, because it meant that together they would share a secret, like two children revealing, hidden under the kindergarten tables, those that seem to them to be very serious mischief. And then, without saying something or moving her hands, things started to come back in their places, in a dance that reminded her of The Sword in the Stone, when Merlin put his hovel in order with his magic.
“Everything done, here” said the male voice. Hermione widened her eyes. She didn’t know if that woman’s companion would be as benevolent as she was.
The women extracted something from her floating cloak, and for a moment, she was afraid it might be a gun, and she began to fear for her parents again. However, in the next room, she had heard no odd shots or noises of any kind. The woman, blatantly moved in a completely measured way a wooden stick that she held in her hands. It was of two different colors, with a finely worked handle, and it resembled the chopsticks she had imagined using the magicians of the books she loved most.
“Oblivion” whispered the woman, pointing the wand at Mrs. Smith head. She didn’t turned to watch Hermione again and the girl stood silent when the couple started talking again, till the time started again, and Mrs. Smith looked at Hermione, confused.
“I didn’t recall why I’m here…” she whispered to herself, looking around. In her eyes there was something different from the usual, as if she had just woken up.
“Why are you standing?” asked the women, perplexed.
“I need to go to the bathroom.” lied Hermione, nearly running away from the room and the woman’s inquisitive look.
They left the house less than half an hour later and in the backseat, Hermione studied her parents’ expression. They looked like Mrs. Smith, as if their eyes were kneaded with sleep. They all forgot what happened, Hermione was sure. However, she wasn’t sure about why it all happened and why she was the only one who wasn’t frozen in time and who can remember. She had a theory about the last part: she saw the woman with the cloak point her wand at Mrs. Smith head and maybe what she whispered was an order, but she didn’t do the same to her, so maybe she could remember because she did wanted her to. However, how someone could delete someone else’s memories with only a word was a mystery to her. Some theorized that it could be done with hypnosis but to Hermione it looked like a real nag. Furthermore, what the woman did to Mrs. Smith didn’t seemed like hypnosis. She needed to investigate and she wanted to start to do it right when she would have arrived home.