Chapter Text
Location: John of Saxony School for Academic Excellence, in south-east London
Monday, 4 September 1995
It’s the first day of Fifth Form for Hermione Granger (it’s the first day of Hermione’s Sophomore year)
Hermione is fifteen days away from her sixteenth birthday
It was the first day of Hermione Granger’s third-to-last year of school (before uni), and Hermione’s first class of the day was about to start.
The class was Calculus, and Hermione was eager to learn this subject. Thus Hermione had come to the classroom before most of the other students had come, and before the teacher, Miss Fahlstrom, had arrived.
Seconds later, Hermione’s friend Eleanor Chamberlain walked into the Calculus classroom, and the two friends began exchanging stories about the summer hols that just had ended. Hermione was relaxed—
—until Scarlett Shotton walked into the room. Shotton had two relatives of some sort who were amongst the Peerage, so Shotton acted as though she were better than everyone else at John of Saxony School.
Now Shotton said (loudly), “So, Granger, where’s your boyfriend Xavier? Did he decide that he didn’t want to be in Calculus class if you were in it?”
Hermione huffed at black-haired Shotton’s attempt to cause trouble. Then Hermione replied archly, “Xavier’s dad was transferred to Australia. Xavier’s family left for New South Wales in early August.”
Scarlett Shotton sneered. “I’m sure Xavier was glad to go, because then he didn’t need to pretend to like you anymore. He didn’t need to ignore you always showing off in class, and need to ignore you being so ugly.”
Eleanor said, “Hermione does not show off in class. She reads the assigned texts, takes notes in class and lets the teacher know she’s mastered the material.”
Hermione said, “Also, I’m not ugly.”
“Oh, please,” Shotton said haughtily, “your hair is ridiculously curly and your upper front teeth are gigantic. You should be attending John of Deformity School for Appearance Lack.”
Eleanor said, “Says the girl who gets her hair ‘styled’ by someone making one powerful swing with a machete.”
The teacher, Miss Fahlstrom, walked into the classroom. “Miss Shotton, Miss Granger, quiet down, please. I could hear you two in the hallway. Students come to my class to learn Math, not to engage in teen-girl melodrama. Save that till lunchtime, do you hear?”
Miss Fahlstrom said Math instead of Maths as the short form of Mathematics because Miss Fahlstrom was American, with accent to match. But last year when Miss Fahlstrom had been Hermione’s Mathematics teacher, the woman never had explained why an American woman was teaching in England instead of teaching in the States.
Meanwhile, there was the annoying Scarlett Shotton. Whilst Hermione pulled out her notebook and a ballpoint pen so she could take notes for class, she decided that whilst it was obvious that Scarlett Shotton lacked the brains that this school expected, Shotton had decided she wanted to attend here for some reason that did not involve learning many interesting things from quite knowledgeable teachers. But too bad for the other students, the Shotton parents were the sort to never refuse their dullard child anything.
****
AUTHOR’S NOTE: In the Harry Potter films, five actresses played Pansy Parkinson. Two of the five actresses were Lauren Shotton and Scarlett Byrne. I know nothing about these two actresses, I just combined their names.
****
Minutes later, still in Calculus class
After Miss Fahlstrom had taken roll and had made beginning-of-year remarks, she began her first Calculus lecture of the school year. Miss Fahlstrom had Hermione’s full attention.
Miss Fahlstrom put a big white-cardboard graph in front of the blackboard, a graph that was held up by the chalk tray so that all the students could see it. “Imagine that some machine has made this continuous graph of a racecar’s speed. The horizontal axis represents elapsed time in seconds, while the vertical axis represents the racecar’s speed in miles per hour. Notice that in this graph, there is no part of the racecar’s graphed speed that is a straight line. Now suppose I mark a point on this graph, representing the velocity v at time t, and I call this point (t,v). If I draw a line through (t,v) that seems to be going in the exact same direction that the graph-curve is going at time t—“
Miss Fahlstrom drew a line through (t,v) that seemed to be tangential to this part of the graph.
“—what would the slope of this line represent? Anyone?”
Silence from the students. Not even Hermione could guess.
“The slope of this line would be expressed in miles per hour per second, and would represent the acceleration of the racecar at time t. If the driver pushed the gas pedal down, thus increasing the racecar’s speed over time, the acceleration would be a positive number. If the driver took his foot off the gas pedal and the engine coasted slower, or if the driver touched the brake pedal, the acceleration would be a negative number. If the racecar maintained a steady speed—which I can’t see any racecar driver ever choosing to do—the graph would be horizontal there, so the acceleration would be zero. But you’ve all ridden in cars and some of you have provisional driving licenses, so you already know about velocity and acceleration, except for the ‘graphing them’ part. Questions?”
Nobody had questions.
Miss Fahlstrom said, “Now consider something else that is interesting about this graph. Suppose I make a left boundary for some part of the graph”—she drew a vertical line from the graph down to the t axis, and labelled the place where the vertical line crossed the t axis as t1—“and I make a right boundary for some other part of the graph.” Miss Fahlstrom drew a second vertical line, to the right of the first vertical line, from the graph down to the t axis; the intersection of this new vertical line and the t axis, Miss Fahlstrom labelled t2.
Miss Fahlstrom continued, “If you consider the t1 line, the t axis, the t2 line and the graph as forming a curvy-topped rectangle, the area inside this curvy-topped rectangle represents the distance that the racecar travels between t1 and t2. But if you want to know the racecar’s travelled distance, you have a problem: Since no part of this graph is drawn as a straight line, nothing you’ve learned so far has taught you how to find the area under the graph between t1 and t2.”
Miss Fahlstrom looked at the class. “Now let’s go from a real-world graph to a generated graph. You already know about functions, in which a certain value of x produces a specific value of y, and you’ve graphed functions. This year, you will learn how to calculate the slope of the line that is tangential to point (x, y) on the function graph, and you will learn how to calculate, between x1 and x2, the area under a curvy function graph.”
****
At the end of the hour, as the students were packing up and leaving the Maths classroom, Hermione thought, I learnt so much today. I am so glad I’m attending John of Saxony School for Academic Excellence, where the teaching always is academically excellent indeed.
****
Fifteen days later: Tuesday, 19 September
Hermione turns sixteen today
Rupert Tring, who was a Fifth-Former member of the John of Saxony School chess club, sauntered up to Hermione and Eleanor (and their friends) in the lunchroom.
“Oi, Granger,” Tring said, “I hear you turned sixteen today.”
Hermione wondered, Is he here to wish me a happy birthday? How strange. After all, he and I aren’t friends.
Aloud, Hermione replied, “Yes, I’m now sixteen.”
“Which means you now can consent to shags. You must feel needy now, since your boyfriend is in Australia. So how about you and I skive off classes this afternoon and get wicked in the Custodian’s Room? I know how to pick locks.”
Hermione huffed. “Rupert Tring, listen well. I am a virgin now, and am content to stay so for now. I don’t know when and with whom I will have sex for the first time, but it won’t be soon, and it won’t be with you. And in the Custodian’s Room, really? Go away.”
Hermione did not tell Tring that neither would she easily shag Dan Cliffarde—Cliffarde who was on the school footy team, was called Goldfoot because he scored goals so often, and who had blue eyes that could see into Hermione’s soul. Hermione had no plans to shag Dan Cliffarde anytime soon, but she would happily snog Dan Cliffarde mightily, if she were given a chance.
****
Four weeks later: Tuesday, 17 October
Again at the beginning of Calculus class, JoSSfAE
Today’s class had not yet started. As soon as Scarlett Shotton and Hermione both were in the classroom, Shotton marched over to Hermione’s chair and ordered Hermione, “Show me how you worked Number 24.”
In this Calculus textbook, homework problems within a chapter ranged from easy to hard to killer. Yesterday, Miss Fahlstrom had assigned the even problems between 2 and 24 as homework. In a few minutes, when class would start, the students would work some of the homework problems at the blackboard, then everyone would hand in their written homework.
Problem 24 had required that Hermione use a trick: the Chain Rule. Until Hermione had thought to try the Chain Rule, she had thought that Problem 24 was unsolvable; so it was no surprise that Shotton had not been able to work Problem 24.
Now Hermione huffed as she looked at Shotton. “In case you’ve forgotten: At the beginning of the year, right here in this classroom, you called me ugly. But now you want to copy my work for Problem 24 that either you were too lazy to do yourself or were too gormless to do yourself.”
Eleanor, as she was taking her seat, smirked at Shotton and said, “I vote for ‘stupid.’ Shotton, I often wonder why you are in this school when you struggle in many of your classes.”
Shotton glared at Hermione. “Why shouldn’t you help me? The only thing you’ve got going for you in your pathetic life is being a mega-swot, and what’s the use of being brainy if you keep it to yourself? Also, the fact is, you are ugly! If you were at a regular school instead of this school for the swottiest of swots, none of the girls would talk to you, and no boy would come near you. Now show me how you worked bloody Problem 24!”
****
Hermione was beyond furious now; and she felt something happening inside her chest. Now Hermione commanded Scarlett Shotton, in a voice full of power: “Leave me! Go to your desk, sit down, face the front, and do not talk to me. Change that: do not speak to anyone in the class except Miss Fahlstrom. Go.”
The front of Hermione’s rib cage painlessly opened up, left and right—or at least, this is what it felt like to Hermione—and the thing that was moving about, within Hermione’s chest, now blasted out the front of her chest. The last time angry Hermione had felt like this, in 1986, the whatever-it-was that had been moving inside her chest, had made the family television explode. But now in 1995, the whatever-it-was blasted Shotton, full force.
Oh, nothing happened that could be seen, and nothing happened that could be heard, but the invisible whatever-it-was really, truly blasted Scarlett Shotton, startling her. The results afterwards?
Without a word, Shotton walked over to the desk she always sat in, sat down—without removing her backpack—turned to face the blackboard and clasped her hands together atop her desk. Shotton now began trembling, but Hermione could not guess why.
By now, Miss Fahlstrom had entered the classroom and had taken her seat behind the teacher’s desk. Hermione had no guess when the teacher had entered the classroom.
Miss Fahlstrom was looking at Hermione with an expression that Hermione could not read.
****
A minute later
After the teacher had taken roll, Miss Fahlstrom said, “It’s time to work homework problems on the board. Miss Shotton, go work Problem 2.”
Problem 2 had been the easiest problem assigned. Hermione wondered, Did Miss Fahlstrom give Shotton the easiest problem to work at the board because Miss Fahlstrom thought Shotton couldn’t work the rest of the assignment?
But meanwhile, Shotton’s trembling now was worse. She said, “Miss Fahlstrom, I can’t leave my seat and I can’t walk to the blackboard. My muscles aren’t listening to my brain! I’m scared, ma’am.”
Miss Fahlstrom again looked at Hermione for some reason that Hermione could not guess.
Then seated Miss Fahlstrom brought both of her arms down, below the top of her desk. If Hermione had to guess, Miss Fahlstrom’s right hand was stroking her left forearm for some reason. Then with both of Miss Fahlstrom’s forearms hidden from students’ sight, the teacher did something—which Hermione could not see.
As Miss Fahlstrom did mysterious things with her hands and forearms, she said, “Miss Shotton, I’m sure your paralysis will end if you calm down. Take a deep breath slowly, then let it out slowly. Then repeat. Deep breaths, slow breaths. Relax your mind. Be c-a-l-m.”
Hermione noticed that all the students were watching Shotton, to see if she could get out of her chair; but Hermione was watching Miss Fahlstrom.
Whilst Miss Fahlstrom mainly was watching paralysed Scarlett Shotton, Miss Fahlstrom several times looked at Hermione with a thoughtful expression. Once again, Hermione could not guess why.
Meanwhile, Miss Fahlstrom’s right lower arm did something that Hermione could not see. Next, the teacher murmured two or three words, too quietly for Hermione to hear.
Shotton gasped, and her clasped hands came apart. She twisted her seated body to the left, then to the right. “I can move again!”
Hermione saw Miss Fahlstrom do something with her right hand to her left forearm, but exactly what this was, was hidden from view.
Meanwhile, Miss Fahlstrom said, “Miss Shotton, I’m glad you no longer have your hysterical paralysis, but I still want you to work Problem 2 at the blackboard.”
****
At the end of this Calculus class, Miss Fahlstrom held Hermione back from leaving. When the classroom had only two people in it, Miss Fahlstrom asked, “Miss Granger, in what city and county do you live?”
“Crawley, West Sussex. Why do you ask?”
Miss Fahlstrom said mysteriously, “You might have a problem this summer. What the problem is, I’m not allowed to tell you now. But I’ll try to find you help when you need it.”
Hermione felt puzzlement whilst she walked to her next class.
****
Six days later
Monday, 23 October, at lunchtime
In the JoSSfAE lunchroom
Hermione, Eleanor and three other girls (Heather, Jessica and quiet Joanna) were sitting at a table together.
Eleanor said, “May I just say it is annoying to waste my money on a bad book, even if the book cost only two pounds?”
Heather asked, “What’s the bad book?”
Eleanor took off her backpack and opened it. She took out a slim book and showed the book to the group.
Jessica read the title aloud: Harry Potter and the Vampire Village by Roy Locke. Then Jessica asked, “What’s the book about?”
Hermione asked, “Why is the book not worth two pounds?”
Eleanor replied, “I found this in a used bookshop this weekend,” presumably in Kent. Then Eleanor went on a rant—
• The hero of the book was a seven-year-old boy who could do magic. He not only could do magic, he had Merlin-level magic, so that the boy had killed an evil sorcerer when Harry had been only fifteen months old. (Alas, Harry’s parents, who had not been given Merlin-level magic, had been killed by the evil sorcerer that same night.)
• The boy now lived in a blue palace in Wales, raised by his father’s magical sixth cousin George Potter, George’s wife Rowena and the family servant Rappy, who was a “house-elf” who talked funny. (However, the book did not explain how a “house-elf” was different from a Tolkien elf or from one of Santa’s elves. This lack of explanation offended Eleanor.)
• Harry’s closest friend was a green dragon. The dragon also was from Wales, was named Firewings, and “spoke the most proper English with a dragonish accent.”
• When the boy was told about a village in Hungary that was being menaced by a coven of vampires, Harry immediately flew to that village on Firewings’s back. George and Rowena Potter were not taken along because young Harry wanted to keep them safe.
• Harry proceeded to serve the vampires a stake dinner. Harry’s only problem in the book was when the leader of the vampire coven, Count TuTenne, kidnapped Firewings near the end of the story.
• Seldom in the story did young Harry even need to break a sweat. The only complications for Harry in the story, other than the kidnapping of Firewings, came when there were things that a seven-year-old boy did not know.
Eleanor ranted, “In this story, life for Harry Potter is too easy. In a good story, the hero must always be at a disadvantage, compared to the villain, the reader must have good reasons always to worry about the hero, and at the end of the story, the reader must fear that the hero will die. But not here—nobody makes threats of death in this book. My first big complaint about this book: Harry Potter is never more than inconvenienced in this story, except when his dragon is taken.
“Secondly, the book addresses readers as though they likewise were magical children, just like Harry Potter. I suppose this makes the fantasy more real to child readers. But whenever the book shows nonmagical people, the nonmagical characters are shown as stupid and murderous. Also, the book calls nonmagical people Muggles.”
As Miss Fahlstrom was carrying her food tray from the serving line to the teachers’ lunchroom, she happened to be walking past Hermione’s table right then. Now she stopped, blinked, and asked Eleanor, “What are you girls talking about?”
Eleanor held up the book as she scowled. “I’m ranting about an utterly wretched book that is a complete waste of both my time and money. Really, the publisher should be ashamed of himself for publishing this.”
Miss Fahlstrom asked what the book was about. Eleanor gave Miss Fahlstrom a brief summary, followed by another Eleanor rant—
“Just because I cannot climb on a broom and ride it through the air, does not mean that I’m a moron who struggles to recite my ABCs. Nor does it mean that if I met seven-year-old magical Harry Potter, I’d try to tie him to a stake, then burn him to death.”
Miss Fahlstrom surprised Hermione—and judging by their facial expressions, she also surprised the other girls at the table—when Miss Fahlstrom asked to borrow the book.
“Borrow it?” Eleanor snarled. “You can keep it!”
Eleanor thrust Harry Potter and the Vampire Village towards Miss Fahlstrom. “Get this written rubbish out of my sight!”
As Miss Fahlstrom took the book, Hermione wondered why Miss Fahlstrom, Hermione’s much-admired Maths teacher, would want the thing. Hermione trusted her friend Eleanor’s judgement when it came to fiction, and Eleanor had said the book was stinky rubbish, not worth £2.
****
The next day (Tuesday, 24 October), at the end of Calculus class
Miss Fahlstrom said, “Miss Chamberlain, please stay after class. It’s about your book I borrowed.”
To show support for her friend—and to satisfy her own giant curiosity—Hermione stayed behind too.
When the classroom was empty except for Miss Fahlstrom, Eleanor Chamberlain and Hermione Granger, Miss Fahlstrom said, “Um, I hope you were serious about not wanting the book back.”
“Why?” asked Eleanor.
“Because when I’d read the book about halfway through, my dog chewed up the book. It’s gone.”
Hermione was sure that embarrassment was the reason that Miss Fahlstrom did not look Eleanor in the eyes.
Hermione said, “ ‘The dog ate my homework’—you mean this actually happens sometimes?”
****
A bit over five months later
Saturday, 6 April 1996
At London Heritage Academy
John of Saxony School students were attending a festival for drama, speech and debate that was being hosted by London Heritage Academy, which was a school for aristocrats’ children.
The drama-club students at JoSS had taken a chapter from Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations and had adapted it for the stage, and would be performing their adaptation, competing against other private schools’ dramatists.
John of Saxony School’s hopefully-someday MPs and hopefully-someday captains of industry were at the festival to give speeches. Xavier’s funny friend Henry was doing something in the category of “Original Humourous Speech.”
As for Debate Club, Hermione and the others had come here to win—which meant, out-debating their Debate rivals, Eton College.
****
John Of Saxony School’s drama troupe did middling—they did not win anything, but neither did they suffer any onstage disasters in front of the audience.
Xavier’s funny friend Henry won first place in his Speech category.
JoSS’s Debate Club took first place in the Debate category. Even better for Hermione, she personally had left her Eton College opponent, Justin Two-Names, groaning on the floor (metaphorically speaking).
****
When the competitions had ended, the winners’ plaques had been handed out and the John of Saxony students were riding a chartered bus back to their school, somehow a discussion began about British saints before the Norman Conquest of 1066. Many Anglo-Saxon saints’ names were mentioned, none of whom Hermione knew anything about.
Somebody mentioned Saint Frithuswith, who became the patron saint for the University of Oxford, where Hermione planned to attend in two and a half years.
Hermione contributed what she knew about before-1066 British saints: “I looked up our school’s namesake. John of Saxony was not a saint per se, but he was the confessor for King Alfred the Great, he was the first abbot of Athelney Abbey, and he wrote poems in Latin. Someone who knew him described him as ‘a man of most acute intelligence, immensely learned in all fields of literary endeavour, and extremely ingenious in many other forms of expression.’ So it’s only right that he was whom our school for swots and for geniuses was named after.”
A boy in the Drama troupe said, “The real John of Saxony heard a king’s confessions? I bet that was mad.”
Hermione smirked. “He heard a proactive king’s confessions. Behind the confessional screen, John probably facepalmed a lot.”
This discussion about before-1066 British saints was a completely impractical discussion. At best, Hermione would be able to answer one question on her GCSEs or A-Levels that she would not be able to answer, had she not taken part in this discussion. The only other time this information would be useful for Hermione would be if she somehow were tasked with naming a newly constructed Anglican church.
No, the information being shared was not useful or practical, but it was information that was new to Hermione and interesting, and this was information that Hermione was learning from friends. Also, the topic was being discussed because many other students besides Hermione who were on the charter bus to John of Saxony School, thought that the topic was interesting.
Hermione was smiling. Moments like this showed her, once again, that John of Saxony School for Academic Excellence was the right school for her. Then happy Hermione got a new and happier thought: Oxford will be like this all the time.
****
Almost ten weeks later
Thursday, 13 June 1996
In Miss Fahlstrom’s Calculus class
It was Hermione’s last day of Fifth Form, for all practical purposes. By now, Hermione had sat her GCSEs, and by now, Hermione had sat the final examinations in all her JoSSfAE classes.
The purpose of this particular Calculus class, the very last one, was not to teach mathematical knowledge but to go over the final examination. When all the problems in the examination had been worked, which was about forty-five minutes into the hour, Miss Fahlstrom dismissed the class—
—except she asked Hermione to stay behind.
“Miss Granger,” the American woman said when they were alone, “I suspect that this summer, you will get a surprise visitor.”
Hermione raised an eyebrow. “What sort of surprise visitor?”
Miss Fahlstrom replied, “This visitor will make a presentation to you and to your parents, then will press you to make a choice that he or she recommends. You will not be willing to make that choice, I’m sure. Then your visitor will inform you that he or she will reluctantly accept you making a certain other choice. Both choices will be awful; your choice will be ‘I choose neither! Now leave!’ Your visitor will insist that you make one of the two awful choices, and will refuse to leave until you choose.
“Your visitor’s demand that you choose will create a problem for you. By then you will have been told the secret and you will become subject to the law to keep the secret. You will want your visitor gone, but by then you will know that your visitor is powerful enough that if you telephone the police and the police try to arrest your visitor, all that will happen is that some policemen will be hurt and the visitor will remain in your house. In your despair, you’ll be tempted to make one of the two awful choices. But don’t do that.”
“Why not?” Hermione asked. “Miss Fahlstrom, you’re frightening me! And you’re being maddeningly vague.”
The teacher sighed. “I’m vague because I’m subject to a law that says I can’t tell you a certain secret, so must stay secretive till someone else who is qualified to judge, decides that you are qualified to be told the secret, then he or she tells you the secret. Right now, I’m sure that you qualify to be told, but I don’t have the authority to tell you the secret.”
Miss Fahlstrom pulled a business card out her pocket and handed the business card to Hermione. “Instead of phoning your local police in Crawley, phone this man. He’s a policeman too, and he’s like me. He knows the secret.”
Hermione read off the business card, “Mark Cromford, Police Sergeant, Prime Minister’s Office of Special Treaty Enforcement.” Hermione again looked at Miss Fahlstrom with a raised eyebrow.
Miss Fahlstrom explained, “The secret that I’m forbidden from telling you, luckily the president of the Republic of Ireland, Queen Elizabeth and the United Kingdom’s prime minister may tell to anyone they want. This makes it much easier for Police Sergeant Cromford to do his job. Anyway, don’t lose that card—I think you’ll very much need it, very soon.”
As Hermione dropped the business card into her knapsack, she asked, “May I ask you a question that I’ve wondered about for two years? Why are you, an American, teaching in an English school?”
Miss Fahlstrom laughed. “An ancestor of my mother named Antonius Selwyn”—Miss Fahlstrom paused—“had a birth defect, so he was thrown out of the Selwyn family at age eleven—”
Hermione huffed. “He was ejected from the family for having a birth defect?”
“Silly, right? Anyway, Antonius Selwyn lived homeless in Liverpool till he was fifteen, which was when he bought passage on a ship that took him to the English colony of Virginia.
“Centuries later, Antonius’s descendant, I an American, graduated high school, and was given a two-month vacation in Great Britain as a graduation present. The modern-day Selwyn family still is full of despicable people, but Britain is beautiful and it has so much history. Eighteen-year-old American-I fell in love with the British Isles.
“Years later, after I earned a Mathematics doctorate at the University of Minnesota with teaching credential, I came back here to Britain. I wouldn’t have been able to find work here if my degree had been in American Literature or in American History, but ‘two plus two equals four’ is just as true in Britain as it is in the USA.”
“One last question,” Hermione said. “It wasn’t your dog who destroyed the Harry Potter book, was it? It was you, right?”
Miss Fahlstrom grinned at her student. “You are indeed clever.”
Hermione replied, “Ha. I can’t figure out why you would destroy the book. Was it because the book was so badly written?”
“No, I destroyed Harry Potter and the Vampire Village to preserve the secret that I’m not allowed to tell you.”
****
Eleven days later: Monday, 24 June 1996
At the Granger house in Crawley, West Sussex
Hermione was in her family house, reading a book—but this book was a Regency romance, a bit racy, with zero scholastic value.
Hermione heard knocking at the front door. Hermione wondered, Why doesn’t whoever-it-is use the doorbell?
Hermione got a bad feeling about her visitor. She dashed upstairs to her bedroom, grabbed the business card for Police Sergeant Cromford, shoved the business card in the pocket of her jeans, and walked downstairs.
As Hermione was descending the stairs, she heard the visitor knock on the door again. The second group of door-knocks was louder than the first.
Hermione’s visitor turned out to be a woman in her fifties, whose grey-streaked black hair was pulled back into a bun. The woman was wearing a green dress that—even Hermione could see this—was decades out of fashion.
The visit was brief. The visitor spoke with a brogue whilst saying to Hermione, “When will your parents be home, Miss Granger? I’ve information that all three of you need to hear.”
****
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I wish to thank slytherinsal, who was a fount both of knowledge and of writing advice when I was writing this story. This story is fifty times more believable than it would have been, without her help.