Platform Nine and Three-Quarters, whose number would strike most people as rather odd were they ever to learn of its existence, was as always crowded with adult witches and wizards come to see us students off. The black steam engine with its scarlet carriages — the Hogwarts Express — that miraculous conveyance which had somehow, in less than a century of operation, managed to become the traditional means of transport to Hogwarts. And this in the deeply conservative society of English wizards.
Stepping off the train with Hermione's things in hand, I couldn't help but notice five or so sideways glances directed at me from certain graduating students who'd decided to cause trouble on the journey. Naturally, as a prefect, I'd had to bring them to heel — a bit of magic and a locked compartment. Words had been wasted on them; their argument had been that they were no longer Hogwarts students and I couldn't do anything to them. I thought it over and decided they were quite right — they were no longer students of Hogwarts. Which meant that any force applied to them would be applied not to students, but to wizards who had seen fit to cause a disturbance.
They were clearly nursing a grudge. Might even tell their parents about it — pureblood types, the lot of them, drowning in family pride.
Hermione came down behind me, scanning the crowd for familiar faces and waving her goodbyes. Daphne had been stolen away by Astoria at the very start of the journey, her justification for the theft being that they spent so little time together at Hogwarts, and once home they'd be under their parents' supervision and inevitably roped into something or other. She'd also drawn herself up with that particular brand of haughty indignation she had. Strange as the phrase "haughtily sulked" might sound, that was precisely what it looked like.
"Come on," Hermione tugged me towards the barrier leading to the non-magical part of the station. "Mum and Dad must be waiting ages by now."
"Coming, coming." I found Daphne and her sister in the crowd — they were already moving at a brisk pace toward the Auror-guarded fireplaces.
Good thing Daphne and I had arranged to meet in about a week's time, once we'd exchanged owls. We both understood that family came first.
I spotted the Malfoys as well — all three of them — and they spotted me. We exchanged brief nods as Hermione pulled me toward the exit.
Stepping out into the ordinary part of King's Cross, the grey drabness of the place struck the eye sharply again, a stark contrast to the vivid colours of Platform Nine and Three-Quarters. We made decent progress through the crowd — people rushing for trains or having just arrived.
"You look tense, Mione."
"No, no, I'm very glad to be seeing Mum and Dad again," she smiled, easing off her pace to simply walk beside me.
"Mm. I'd wager you're anxious about the exam results."
"Well... yes, a little. But they didn't give us our marks straight away, and now I don't know whether I made any mistakes. For instance—"
"Did you know the answer to every question?"
"Of course," she said, with a dignified little nod.
"Then you answered everything correctly. If you know something, you know it. If there'd been questions you couldn't answer, you simply wouldn't have written anything. Incidentally — do you think any of the examiners might adjust marks up or down?"
"Absolutely not!" She looked at me as though I'd said something rather foolish.
We emerged from the station and headed for the car park, searching through the evening half-light and the newly lit streetlamps for the family car or our parents themselves.
"Why not?"
"Surely you don't think the Ministry would leave something as important as the O.W.L.s to chance?"
"Hard to say, Mione," I shrugged. I'd spotted the family car and our father standing beside it, so I gave him a wave and pointed Hermione in the right direction. "Over there."
"The examiners sign temporary contracts some time before the examinations. Even if they wanted to, they couldn't inflate or deflate marks without serious consequences to their reputation and career."
"So," I said, with a slight smirk, "even Professor Snape, for all his dislike of Potter, would be obliged to give him whatever mark he actually earned in Potions or D.A.D.A.?"
"Precisely."
"Hm. And how do you know all this?"
"I looked into it before the exams. Didn't you? It's rather important."
"Honestly? Couldn't care less."
"Couldn't care less?" Hermione stared. "And yet you spend so much time studying?"
"Not for grades — for a thorough grounding in every subject, so I can understand magic as broadly and deeply as possible. Hello, Dad." We'd reached him by then.
"Hello, young talents," Dad smiled, and Hermione immediately went in for a lengthy embrace.
That would take about twenty seconds. Plenty of time to put the luggage in the boot.
Having dealt with that straightforward task, I went to receive my own share of paternal greeting — which in my case took the form of a firm clap on the shoulders and a slight shake rather than a hug.
"How much you've both grown in such a short time," Dad said, looking thoroughly pleased.
"You're exaggerating," I smiled. "I've barely changed."
"Where would he grow to, anyway," Hermione muttered.
Fair point. My height was already more than acceptable. I'd thought I was nearly done growing last year, and this year I'd picked up the last centimetre or two, mostly broadening somewhat in the shoulders. Though even in the shoulders, between training and diet, I was already well-built. Age my face a bit and you'd have quite a solid bloke — athletic rather than bulky. And Hermione, while we were on the subject, was already a fully grown young woman at nearly seventeen — a couple of months to September yet. Put her in something other than straight-cut jeans, shapeless windbreakers and other assorted unisex clothing, and she'd look the part. As things stood — an adult child. Each to their own, I supposed.
Hermione and I took the back seats; Dad, evidently, took the wheel. No need to warm the engine — the car hadn't had time to cool — so we set off for home straight away. Mum, as always, was undoubtedly organising dinner and a proper welcome.
"So then, you two," Dad glanced at us briefly in the rear-view mirror, turning the radio down to just barely audible — purely for background. "What happened this year worth knowing about? No extraordinary adventures of an absurd degree of danger, I hope?"
"Oh, nothing like that," Hermione launched in immediately, true to form. "It was very interesting — challenging, even. I wrote and told you about the incompetent Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher we had..."
And off she went at a gallop — a full account of her adventures, the tribulations of running an entire underground club, how difficult yet rewarding it was to organise that sort of thing when surrounded by people with heads full of air. And so on and so forth.
Hermione, naturally, hadn't run out of steam by the time we reached home — barely an hour's drive, and no traffic to slow us down. Though twenty years from now, this same route at this same hour would have you sitting in gridlock all the way through London and beyond, out to Croydon, before you finally hit the road proper, the bypass, the motorway...
I gave Dad my own broad summary of events and achievements in due course.
"I've been awarded an Apprentice distinction in Potions."
"Pfff—" Hermione nearly choked on her mineral water. "And you said nothing?"
"It happened shortly before the exams," I shrugged.
"No, you're simply insufferable! How does one not mention something like that?"
"What's there to mention? It's not a great achievement."
"Ahem." Dad brought the conversation back to himself. "And what does the distinction actually mean?"
"Practically speaking," I considered for a moment, putting my thoughts in order, "I can now officially brew and sell low to mid-complexity potions. In essence, it's purely a craftsman's benefit, though wizards don't actually distinguish between craft and academic distinctions. It's also an indication of aptitude and dedication at a rather young age. An Apprentice or Master in any given field might be either a purely academic type — always pushing toward new research and experimentation — or a practitioner who earned the title solely for the licence."
"And which potion did you brew for the distinction?" Hermione asked, setting aside any possible resentment in an instant.
"Felix Felicis."
"Oh! That takes months to brew properly — constant monitoring, strict adherence to the recipe. You'd have had to start near the beginning of the year..."
"That's the safe recipe," I said. "There's an 'unsafe' one that can be brewed in an evening. But there the brewer is like a sapper. One wrong step, and it'll be a closed-casket funeral."
"Hector!" Hermione's eyes went wide with the full weight of the horror. "That's incredibly dangerous!"
Dad simply frowned — I caught it in the rear-view mirror.
"Nothing of the sort. Professor Snape and Daphne were on standby. The Professor would have shielded the cauldron in the event of an unexpected reaction — he's a Master, he'd have read the signs in a fraction of a second. Daphne would have pulled me clear with a nonverbal spell — we rehearsed it. Among other things."
"Daphne this, Daphne that," Hermione huffed. "I'm simply shocked."
"At what?"
"At all of it! Dad, you say something to him."
"All right," Dad replied, turning off the motorway toward Crawley. "What am I to say? By your own account..."
He paused, observing the three D's of driving — Don't Die for a Dickhead. England or not, that particular breed of driver exists everywhere; only the concentration per metre of road varies.
"...by your own accounts," he continued evenly, as though no one had just cut across him, "Professor Snape is an absurdly strict and exacting teacher who demands the highest quality of work and every quality required to produce it. From his students. So tell me, sweetheart — would a teacher like that entrust the brewing of a genuinely dangerous potion to someone who couldn't handle it?"
"I suppose not," Hermione sighed, staring out of the window. "But it's still very dangerous. Someone could get killed..."
"Someone can get killed anywhere, at any job," I shrugged — and Dad reluctantly conceded the point, preferring to deal with me on grounds of logic rather than I'm the parent, I've said it, so I'm right. "We very nearly could have been, about ten seconds ago."
Hermione didn't follow; Dad just smirked.
"Don't exaggerate. That... individual was a prat, granted—"
"Dad! Language," Hermione said, with a slight smile.
"—but he was in a BMW, nicely sorted, and an M at that," Dad observed sagely. "Now, had he been in some American thing, that would've been a different story."
We arrived home not long after to Mum, a hot dinner, and the warm atmosphere of the house. Hermione and I spent the evening going over school life again — letters never quite capture the full picture. I produced my certificate and Apprentice Potions badge. A good evening, all in all.
Getting on toward midnight — well past the hour we should reasonably have gone to bed, yet still sitting around the dining room table in perfectly contented conversation — I decided to raise something I'd been meaning to ask.
"Have you worked out what we're doing this summer?"
"We have a few ideas," Dad said, with the careful neutrality of a man keeping a secret.
That it was a secret was evident enough from Mum's pointed look in his direction.
"You're asking for a reason?"
"Yes, Dad. Just tell me which dates I need to keep free. It may be summer, but I've got a few things to sort out — can't do that without knowing the plan."
"What sort of things, if you don't mind my asking?" Mum smiled, curious.
"Nothing out of the ordinary. I need to see Healer Smethwyck — get a consultation on my health. I may be capable of running diagnostics on myself, but it's difficult to be objective about one's own condition."
"That's entirely sensible," Dad agreed. "A healer's visit is overdue."
"Exactly. I also need to speak to him about an apprenticeship. There aren't many Master Healers I have even a passing acquaintance with, let alone a decent working relationship. I'd rather not turn up in, say, mid-August and have him think I couldn't be bothered to come sooner."
"So you want to go into medicine?"
"Magical medicine, Dad," I corrected him. "Though the substance is much the same — the methods and approach are simply different. And I need to meet up with a few people..."
"Daphne, I'd wager," Hermione said, picking idly at the last of her dessert with a spoon.
"Among others, yes," I said, keeping my expression appropriately solemn. "I need to meet with the twins."
"The Weasleys?" Hermione clarified.
"Do you know any other twins?"
"The Weasleys?" Mum and Dad exchanged a glance, and Mum continued. "Quite an unusual family. Though, if one draws comparisons to country folk running their own smallholding..."
"That's more or less accurate," I confirmed. "The twins have almost certainly thrown themselves into setting up their shop by now."
"The Joke Shop," Hermione said, with visible disapproval, finally resolving to finish off the last of her dessert. "I'm not sure it's the right idea."
"It is. Trust me. People have always wanted bread and circuses. Food isn't particularly profitable — the market's already saturated at every level. But there's only one chain of joke shops, Zonko's, and it can be pushed aside. The main thing is having enough imagination, with a streak of madness thrown in. They've got both in abundance, plus a solid head for business. And besides—"
I nodded with a smile toward her hands, where the artefacts lay concealed beneath the charms. One minor drawback of my protective work — spells already in effect don't simply vanish, and these particular ones were sustained by Hermione's own ambient magic and wouldn't lift on their own.
"Yes?"
"You've already had a go with the protective artefacts, haven't you? Even without me there."
"Well, yes, a little..." Hermione looked slightly abashed. "They're brilliant, actually. So — will they be selling those as well?"
"Exclusively to government bodies," I said. "Private individuals — bespoke orders only."
"Hmm." Hermione had clearly thought of something. "So the shop might not go under after all. Not immediately, at least."
"A little more faith in your fellow Hufflepuffs and in your brother — that is to say, in me. Especially since the twins have decided to develop some protective items of their own. They decided that a while back, admittedly, but at the time it was purely theoretical. Now they've established it's money."
"Money? How much?" Hermione still hadn't quite found it in herself to trust my judgement on these things. Because I wasn't an adult, presumably.
"In wizarding currency, the profit would be around thirty thousand Galleons."
"How much?!" Hermione stared.
"And in normal money?"
"At the current exchange rate, roughly a hundred and eighty thousand pounds."
The parents exchanged a startled look, and Dad was the one to speak.
"You do understand that's equivalent to about ten average annual salaries?"
"It's just a hobby. A contingency plan."
The net result of the evening: thoroughly staggered relatives. I, for my part, got the answer to my original question — they were planning something of their own, some family "surprise," from the fifteenth of July to the tenth of August. Which meant only one thing: part of what I needed to do had to happen within the next two weeks, and everything else would have to wait until the second half of August.
Assuming, of course, that no Dark Lords decided to make a nuisance of themselves in the interim. It was getting tiresome, having to factor the activities of a Dark Lord and his ever-growing rabble of malcontents into one's schedule — revolutionaries, radicals, castoffs, werewolves, magical creatures of the unpleasant variety. He'd managed to collect everyone who wanted riots, power, a cause, revolution, or simply fancied eating people. Irritating.
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