The Grunnings Man

The Grunnings man nodded shortly at the secretary and, sitting down behind a magazine, immediately began to make faces. He laughed several silent laughs--conspiratorial, uproarious, mildly offended, mildly offensive--and then tried on several more attitudes, smiling brightly, nodding politely. The spare skin in his heavy, wrinkled face flapped around and seemed to blow around the pages of the magazine he'd chosen--Boy's Own!, a bright one with a watercolor image of a smiling sun setting over the Thames--with every startling transformation. This routine continued for a while until, satisfied, he set the magazine down atop his samples case and made a face that must have looked pleasant from the inside but was distinctly unctuous from without.

And then the girl in the operating room recognized immediately who she was looking at.

The Grunnings man checked his watch. The doctors had told him there would be no morning appointments.

Hermione was sitting, reclined, in an empty dentist's chair, spinning slowly and trying with some difficulty to disguise her own laughing face without the benefit of Girl's Own!, which sat uselessly on the coffee table in the waiting room. Through the wide window into the waiting room she could see Mr. Dursley making eye contact with her parents' dizzy old secretary every five minutes, exactly. He did this three times and then looked, finally, into the operating room.

Hermione stopped her chair spinning with one trainer and, with some apparent regret, got out from beneath the air conditioning vent above her perch. She slid out of the chair like a bit of parchment caught in a breeze and opened the door into the waiting room. It was the peak of July and for her trouble--for moving to see Mr. Dursley in when she did not want to move a single inch to see anybody at all--she caught a blast of hot, wet air against her face. Her bushy hair seemed to fight involuntarily back toward the air conditioning in the operating room.

Mr. Dursley nodded hello and made one of the faces. "Hot enough for you?" He said. Hermione smiled politely and he added, suddenly concerned and put-off sounding, "Well, I was told these two didn't have any patients for another hour today."

Hermione's breath caught for a moment and she brought her hand reflexively up to her front teeth. "Oh, no! I'm--" she paused and put her smile back on, mouth closed. "I'm their daughter, Hermione. They're caught out running some errands, I'm afraid, but they'll be back soon."

"Oh, yes," he mumbled. He leaned down to pick up his samples case and when he came back up to face Hermione he looked like someone being forced by the Imperius curse to be the fun uncle. "Hermione! What a lovely, unusual name! Rolls off the old tongue. My name is Vernon Dursley, and I'm here to sell your parents some drills."

"Lovely," she said.

"Oh, I know you kids don't like to see 'em, but--" he unbuckled the sample case to reveal something that looked second cousin to a pneumatic drill. Big and heavy-looking, its bit seemed only reluctantly resigned to chewing up teeth instead of bits of sidewalk. "Our first dentist's model. We're diversifying--getting bigger, that is."

Hermione knew quite a lot about dentistry--she liked to know quite a lot about anything that might eventually become relevant--and it was, with no exceptions, the worst dentist's drill she'd ever seen.

"No cavities, then! Ha, ha!" He pressed a button at the top of the case and the drill squealed loudly enough to rouse the Grangers' secretary, who, startled, briefly caught her bearings before readjusting an oscillating fan and falling back to sleep.

"I have one about your age, I'd wager. Dudley's his name. You've heard of Smeltings? Very exclusive school."

"I'm not sure I have," Hermione said. Before she'd gotten her Hogwarts letter Hermione had taken very detailed notes from a book called Schools And Scholars Of Smart Britain and sent extremely polite letters of introduction to each one. "I don't know all the smaller ones..."

"School years," Mr. Dursley said, unmoved. "Best years of my life, Smeltings. The chums you make at school... why, it brings a tear to my eye even today. Dentists make a good living--very good living--where is it you go? St. Lucretia's, maybe?"

I go to school with your nephew. To Hermione it seemed, every July, like the Hogwarts Express would never come. To mention it even to this man would be as much a relief as to walk back into the air conditioning and sleep for an hour. But after a moment she nodded.

"Good school, that."

The wizarding world disappears so thoroughly from the Muggle world that to leave it even for a few months requires a very firm conviction that it will come back for you when it's ready. Hermione felt somehow betrayed when she realized that the first contact she'd had with it in three weeks was Harry's terrible uncle and his absurd drill.

While she thought about Hogwarts Mr. Dursley went on about nearly everything Dudley had done in his three years at Smeltings. He spoke of his wife and his boss and the man he'd sold some drills to yesterday. And before she could stop herself, feeling suddenly isolated in the oppressive heat of the waiting room, Hermione asked: "Does Dudley get along well with his cousin?"

It felt good but she regretted it immediately. Mr. Dursley turned very white and informed her that Dudley had no relatives, none at all, thanks, and--gritting his teeth--said he would be fine in the waiting room, thanks, perfectly fine. Hermione, a little sick to her stomach, felt like she had given a troll Harry's home address. She had heard all about Mr. Dursley's temper.

From her perch in the operating room she watched Mr. Dursley fume in the waiting room. He had stopped making faces except for the furious one. The Grangers' secretary, if she had been awake, would have been very unnerved indeed.

Finally Dr. and Dr. Granger's Mondeo Estate rolled quietly into employee parking. Mr. Dursley, still not composed, got up to open the door for them. Her father shook his hand and her mother, having apologized for the delay, rushed through the other door and gave Hermione an equally apologetic hug.

"It'll only be a few minutes, Hermione," she said. "Then we can go to lunch. If you still feel like eating this late..."

Over in the waiting room Hermione heard Mr. Dursley launch into his speech. "Outside my usual territory, of course, but," and here he made the conspiratorial face, "with certain customers--partners, really--only the best..." But his heart clearly wasn't in it. She watched with a strange horror as Mr. Dursley stumbled over every third word and even, once, over his sample case.

Hermione's father, now, was the one who was hardly able to avoid laughing. "Mum," Hermione said. "Please tell him you'll think his offer over."

"Hermione, are you watching the same sales pitch I am?" Mr. Dursley was now berating the Grangers' secretary, who didn't even have any teeth. He had pulled the oscillating fan out of its socket and begun shouting something about central air conditioning.

Hermione turned her eyes down, away from his outburst. "I feel sorry for--him. Just tell him, so we can get out of here."

Hermione's mother watched a little while longer. "You're a nice girl, Hermione. Very well brought-up, if I do say so myself. He'll just--have to stop waving the fan around, first."

Hermione's mother left her alone in the operating room once more. "You've got a strange place, here, Grangers," Mr. Dursley told her, by way of a greeting.

While the doctors Granger--mild-mannered to a fault, even for dentists--did their best to defuse the situation Hermione took one more spin in her chair before lunch.

She knew life at the Dursley household would be especially unenjoyable that night, and for a few minutes the endless, pleasant afternoon that stretched out before her seemed sad and gauche. In her head she was writing Harry a letter, but what she really wanted to do was take him on a picnic, or to visit relatives up north, or just out to pick up some fresh milk at the market while the sun set on some uneventful Friday night.

Because as she watched Mr. Dursley thrash around the waiting room she remembered that there was nothing Harry would ever want more than the chance to wait around for his parents before lunch.