Beneath Appearances

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Beneath Appearances

Chapter 2

Transforming Prophesy

Hermione groaned silently as she pulled herself out of the desk she and Harry shared in Potions. This Friday had not gone by nearly quickly enough. In fact, she was ready to put it down as one of most unpleasant days of her life. Sure, she'd managed to get a full eight hours of sleep after slamming the door on Malfoy last night, and considering how little sleep she was used to getting that had nearly been enough to put her back on track. And Severus had held her through the night just as she'd asked. But a bit of peaceful rest had seemed rather trivial when she woke up that morning scarcely able to move. A bruise had grown on her chest overnight to reach from her collarbone halfway to her navel. It had been well beyond her or Severus's healing skills, so she'd brushed off his concern and staggered her way to the infirmary alone - mustn't raise suspicion - where Madame Pomfrey had gasped and demanded to know how Hermione had managed to crack two ribs. All it had taken was a tap of the Healer's wand to patch things up, but Hermione had been quite sore the rest of the day.

Even worse, every time she'd seen that foul spawn-of-a-troll Malfoy, he'd been laughing and sneering with those lugs Crabbe and Goyle, practically flaunting how chipper he was feeling. And if she'd hoped for a moment that he'd be less of a bastard spell-free than he was enchanted, a mere one of the vicious cracks he'd made at the Gryffindors in Potions would have been enough to disillusion her. Yes, he'd been a true miracle of nastiness, especially considering that she and Harry were the only Gryffindors in N.E.W.T.-level Potions. The boy he claimed to want and the girl to whom, in Hermione's opinion at least, he owed a huge bloody favor, and he'd sat there snarking at them the whole damn time. Swinish git. Enormous, thankless waste of time.

Not to mention that Harry had been shooting her curious glances all day. "What happened last night? What was that research binge about?" An unspoken but unending barrage of questions. Fortunately, Ron's class schedule matched hers and Harry's so little that she'd only had to endure a double dose of curiosity at lunch. She'd brushed them off then with, "Not enough time to explain just now," and the rest of day she'd been telling Harry, "Wait for Ron." But when she walked out of this classroom, her excuses were going to be used up, and she still wouldn't be able to answer their questions...

Sure enough, there was Ron waiting for them in the hallway, picking them up en route from his private Divination lesson with Firenze like he always did. And then, amazingly, she was saved. "Harry! Hermione!" Ron exploded, "Hurry up and get over here. Guess what!" Before Hermione quite realized what had happened, Ron was dragging them both up the dungeon stairs towards the Great Hall, yammering as he went. "Firenze spotted a new star last night. Do you know how rare that is? And here's the thing - he showed me the chart he made of it, and usually when a new star does appear, it's off on the fringes of everything because the influences it represents are just arising and'll take centuries to become important, so no one who sees a star's birth ever sees its climax, but this star just up and appeared in the middle of everything, which means it's super important, right now. Don't you see?" They were in the Great Hall by this time, seated for dinner, and Ron's excitement had captured the attention of nearly the whole Gryffindor table (Hermione expected that was why he'd been so anxious to get to the Hall as he talked). Ron looked around eagerly at his audience, but their faces were, without exception, baffled.

"Ron, dear, we'd all probably see a bit better if you took a moment to breath and let our brains catch up with your mouth," Ginny ribbed him.

Ron looked a bit deflated, but instead of taking his sister's advice, he jumped gamely back in. "Harry, you remember how I told you the stars are like chess?"

Harry did indeed remember. It had been the only way Ron had finally been able to explain to his friend the sudden passion he'd developed for Firenze's Divination class in sixth year. "But it's not like Trelawney's dodgy old carnival tricks," he'd insisted, "it's like, like chess. The stars are up there, all battling against one another, and you can pick out patterns and guess the next move and the next, only sometimes they're not battling, they're working together, and that's more interesting than chess because it's a whole other level..."

Harry had replied that he guessed he understood, but Hermione had still been unconvinced. "But you said even Firenze admits you can never be sure about what you see. Doesn't that bother you?"

"I can never be sure I'll win at chess either, can I?"

"Oh yes, you can. Harry hasn't beaten you since fourth year, and I haven't since fifth year."

"Well anyway, I'm good at it. I'm the only person in the whole school that's good at it."

"Ahh." And Hermione had thought that explained it, but as sixth year wore on, she'd had to recognize that Ron really did love his new subject. He'd not quite known what to do with himself after getting less than stellar, no pun - oh all right, a pun was intended - results on his O.W.L.S. the year before. Suddenly, he'd dropped all his classes except DADA, Care of Magical Creatures, Div, and Astronomy. Then he'd even agreed to start Arithmancy from scratch with the third years when Sinistra told him it was a very good idea. Of course, he did gripe about that class almost as much as he used to about Potions. Harry and Hermione hardly saw him in classes anymore.

Now Ron was presiding over the Gryffindor table saying, "Well, if the stars are like chess, imagine there's a game going on right now; they're right in the middle of it. And all of a sudden there's a new piece, one that's not even a chess piece, say, one that's out of a backgammon set. Or say you've got your kings set up, and your queens and bishops, and right onto the board drops the Yankee president." He paused to consider. "That's a really good way to put it, actually, because you know the Yanks'll always swan in and expect people to jump when they say, and that's just what this star's done - pushed all the other ones about."

"You're saying the stars are like Yankees?" Seamus asked incredulously.

"No! Just this one. The others are all right proper stodgy old blokes," Ron huffed. "Anyway, the stars are all mostly about the war with You-Know-Who right now, so this means there's been some big change there."

That wiped the grins and doubting looks off everyone's faces. Attention was riveted on Ron. "Really, like what?" Lavender breathed.

"Don't know, I'm going to go have a peep at the new star with Firenze tonight," Ron sang out cheerily and strategically withdrew himself from the conversation. He turned to his two best friends smugly.

"You're such a bloody showman, Ron," Harry chuckled.

"What? It is interesting, and anyway they're busy," - a jerk of his head toward the now feverishly speculating rest of the table - "so Hermione can tell us what she was up to last night."

Hermione's head hit the table. A muffled sound came out of her bushy cloud of hair.

"What was that, Herm?" Ron asked. Both boys leaned closer as the sound came again.

"Might have been 'don't ask,'" Harry remarked.

Hermione's face lifted again. "It was don't ask, because the more you ask, the angrier I'll be that I can't tell you because I have to keep a secret for someone who doesn't deserve it."

"No, you don't."

"Ron! It's about not stooping to the level of that slimy, ungrateful..."

"So it was Malfoy!"

Sometimes a *look* is worth a thousand words.

"Well, you should have known..."

"Ron," Harry broke in pleasantly, "shut up."

Ron and Firenze stood on the Quidditch pitch far from the lights of the castle and farther from the border of the Forbidden Forest, still dangerous to the centaur. It was a perfectly clear night and perfectly silent as well. The wind seemed to be holding its breath, and it was too late in the year for the drone of insects. Centaur and wizard gazed up into the southern sky where the new star hung gleaming.

"What do you see, foal?" Firenze asked. Ron was the only one of his students he still called "foal;" he'd declared the others "hopelessly human" two weeks into his teaching career.

"It doesn't seem to be allied to either of the two major forces we've been tracking. Though it definitely opposes the western force, so that's good." Ron was holding a writing tablet with a large piece of parchment fixed to it, copying down a star chart for himself as he spoke. "It forms a very strong angle with Alnitak in Orion; it actually interrupts a couple of lines between Alnitack and western force stars. And it's clearly in Gemini - wow, is it ever; it's practically invaded the constellation."

Firenze nodded. "All perfectly correct. Would you venture to speculate on its significance?"

The sound of absolutely nothing rang out as Ron hesitated, searching for a way around his conclusion. There was none. "You're going to hate this..." Firenze arched an eyebrow at him. "You always say the stars don't care about little things or individuals, but this time it's too quick, the interactions are too specific for anything else - it's someone."

Firenze nodded more deeply. "This time, little wizard, the vanity and brashness of your kind serve you well. I would agree."

They stayed there in contemplation for well over an hour, observing the way the new star moved in relation to the old as the heavens revolved above them. By the time they were finished, Ron's legs ached. The problem with centaurs, he reflected, was that they never sat down. And they were so much bloody taller than humans already that you couldn't either if you wanted to carry on a conversation without breaking your neck.

The November sunlight streaming down over the Hogwarts grounds was just barely warm, but to Hermione it couldn't have felt more perfect. She smiled luxuriously as she lay back under a bare-branched tree near the lakeshore and cracked an eye to study the scene around her. The gently rolling ground surrounding the castle was covered in dried grass, ordinarily brown but glowing almost golden in the unusually bright winter's light. It seemed the entire school had turned out to enjoy the day - something rarely seen anymore what with the Second War with Voldemort raging and tension haunting everyone from Dumbledore himself down to Mrs. Norris. But the last warmth of the year seemed to act like a Cheering Charm. Harry was stretched on his stomach beside her, looking as untroubled as Hermione ever saw him since Sirius's death. Chattering knots of students were dotted everywhere on the lawn, a gang of Muggle-born Hufflepuffs had started up an informal game of rugby in the direction of Hagrid's cottage, and a couple third years with death wishes were racing their broomsticks in risky loops around the castle turrets. Hermione reached over her head to poke Ron, seated behind her and leaning against the tree. "Head Boy, go get those nits back on the ground before they collide with a gargoyle."

"Ahh, let 'em have their fun, Herm," and with that Ron settled back more comfortably against his tree trunk. Hermione left it at that. She'd never liked or excelled at flying and since issues of broomstick discipline almost always involved chasing down the perpetrators, she and Ron had worked out that handling unruly fliers would be his department back when they were first made prefects. Of course, given Ron's soft spot for daredevil antics, very little disciplining was ever done in that area. After two-plus years, Hermione had mostly stopped pushing the point, and she certainly wasn't going to get up in arms on such a deliciously relaxing day as this. The fact was, since Harry had shushed Ron for her last night, she'd been enjoying a delightful relaxing streak.

She'd begged off after dinner to get some rest, which the boys had readily agreed she needed. Then she and Severus had spent a few productive hours in the Potions lab. Of course, he'd been anxious to hear what had brought her to his door the night before in such a desperate state - "I hope you are not so misguided as to believe I ask out of idle curiosity; I thought merely to remind you that secrets which result in grievous personal injury are not the sort, generally, it is considered advisable to keep" - but he was so often tender with her now that she quite enjoyed the chance to have a minor argument and watch his sarcastic side come out. And the experiments had been bubbling along so nicely that, left to herself, she'd have been happy to stay there working until the wee hours of the morning. Fortunately, Severus kept a closer eye on her health than she did; there'd been another productive hour in bed, a lovely long sleep, and now this gods-blessed, nearly balmy Saturday. Things were getting back to normal.

Ron's voice interrupted her reverie, and Hermione grinned - yes, things were definitely back to normal. "Hsst, Harry," Ron was whispering, "Terry Boot's checking you out."

Harry looked up from the fallen twig he'd been idly transfiguring from one improbable thing to another - it stopped as a blue fuzzy squeaky mouse, and he tossed it to Hermione. "For Crookshanks." Then he flopped over onto his back and rolled his eyes at Ron. "For Merlin's sake, you git, he's straight."

"I know," Ron replied smugly, "but he's sitting with Aloysius Smidt, who's not. So the only reason for Terry to look over here like that is that Aloysius just told him he thinks you're cute, and Terry's seeing for himself. And he's going to look back and say, 'Uh, Al, I don't get it,' but still."

"Honestly, Ron, you're worse than Lavender. Ten to one he's looking at Hermione; there's not a girl-lover in Ravenclaw that doesn't dream about her." Hermione gave Harry's leg a lazy kick, and he laughed back at her. "No, you should hear them, Herm. You're this legend they whisper about to all the firsties. I heard them after the Sorting Banquet this year, 'Now, you'll want to stay away from Peeves, he likes to get us all into trouble, and the Bloody Baron's a bear, really - oh, but see over there, that's Hermione Granger, the Ravenclaw that Got Away, and she looked really smashing at the Yule Ball a few years ago..."

"Nice to know I'm mentioned in the same breath as Peeves and the Bloody Baron." What looked like it might escalate into a full-out teasing match was cut short when a tiny, brilliantly yellow finch zipped in among the three friends and landed on Ron's knee.

"Oooh, message from Hannah," Harry exclaimed, as Ron passed the finch to Hermione.

"I can never get these little things undone," he griped, "why her parents couldn't have gotten her a proper owl for proper mail..."

"She only uses Goldie to send notes around the school, Ron," Hermione offered the familiar explanation and set to work on the tiny knot fastening a parchment scrap to the bird's leg. She chuckled thinking that after a year of dating Ron still felt the need to hide how much Hannah Abbot's notes pleased him behind complaints about the hapless Goldie. Maintaining that gruff Weasley exterior. She was tempted to tell him he didn't have a gruff Weasley exterior but decided to indulge him for another day. She handed him the note.

Ron frowned as he began reading. "That creep Zachary didn't show up to tutor some first-year in Transfig like he'd promised - I swear that git is a Slytherin in Hufflepuff's clothing; Hannah does prefect duty for both of them - so Hannah's taking it over for him and can't come down to join us - she shouldn't be so nice," Ron's face brightened considerably when he got to the next bit, "Oh, but she'd like me to go join them so I can show the firstie that cool trick I figured out for turning cabbage into Every Flavor Beans. I'd better go." Ron got to his feet rather quickly and, throwing Harry a wink and a nod toward Aloysius, hurried off toward the castle. Goldie rode along merrily on his shoulder.

"Amazing," Harry commented, "Ron excited about a Transfig tutoring session."

"It's just that Hannah knows the way to go about things with Ron so well - a little bit of flattery. But the great thing is, she means it."

"Mm-hmm." Harry rolled onto his side so he was actually facing his friend. "Is it just me, or has he gotten even worse about trying to set me up with people?"

"The happier he is, the worse he feels that you're not with somebody. What, you don't think it's cute?"

"It's a bit bloody embarrassing. I wish he'd just accept that it's not that big a school; then when you take into account the percentage of students that are actually gay, there are practically no choices."

"Then there's his taste."

Harry laughed ruefully, "It's frightening. I could never be attracted to Aloysius Smidt; I mean, he's four years younger than me," - Hermione choked just a bit there - "Really, there's nobody at Hogwarts, except...Hermione, can you really not say anything about what that thing with Malfoy was the other day?"

"Huh?" Hermione's head jerked up and swiveled toward her friend. "That's a hell of a non sequitur, Harry."

Harry's head drooped, and he reached a hand up to tug at his unruly shock of dark hair as if he wished it were long enough to pull in front of his face. "Well, yeah, it should be," he mumbled, "but, um, you remember that really stupid crush I had last year? The one I was really glad to get over? It just came back - poof, like a Summoning Spell - the day Malfoy dragged you off after Potions. So, of course, the fact that I'm insane goes without saying, and I feel an utter prat that this happened on exactly the day he was especially nasty to you, but I figured something was so obviously up with him that day that maybe..."

Hermione had struggled into a sitting position as Harry spoke, and she was now gaping down at him. "Damn, Malfoy," she hissed fervently, then continued to Harry, "If it makes you any less annoyed with me, nothing I know could get this make more sense." She fell silent and glowered out at the sun-pricked lake. So much for her normal, peaceful day. This was disturbing.

But it was surprising how the most disturbing things could get lost among the mundane daily business of Hogwarts. Or not so surprising when you considered that a good deal of what passed for mundane at the school would be considered odd, extraordinary, or even disturbing most other places.

The very next day, Charlie Weasley owled Hagrid to say that Gwydion Deagon's team of combat dragons had been injured in a raid on a Death Eater training camp for trolls. Deagon had wanted Charlie to send him some Flaming Salve for the dragon's wounds, but he'd given away his last bit when George Saint-Stalwart's team had been in a similar fix - did Hagrid have a few gallons by any chance? Or better yet, a vat?

The day after that Ron announced that he and Firenze had been wrong - they'd noticed last night that a very minor, hardly-worth-mentioning star from one of the western sectors was missing, apparently there'd been a practically-unheard-of-in-the-history-of-Divination jump. This earned Ron a couple of cracks from Seamus about expatriate Yankees.

Then Harry had one of his bad days and spent hours shut in an empty classroom practicing Defense Against the Dark Arts and muttering ruthless vows of revenge for his parents, for Cedric, for Sirius.

Ginny broke up with Patrick Wellspring, which surprised no one.

Professor Binns assigned his N.E.W.T.-level History of Magic class four rolls of parchment on "The Magical Species Protection Act: An Empty Promise for Sea Monsters."

Malfoy started a fight with Ron, which Crabbe finished by giving the Gryffindor a black eye and a bloody lip.

Hermione managed to perfect Stage Two of the experiments she and Snape were conducting. Just as she was relating the news to Severus, Dumbledore had descended on them both to announce that a first raid had been staged based on Eleftherios's advice - the information had been good; the raid went badly.

The Hufflepuffs got themselves thoroughly trounced by Slytherin on the Quidditch pitch.

Malfoy tried to start another fight with Ron, but fortunately Hannah was there to hold her boyfriend back.

The Weasley twins owled a prototype of their latest product, the Death Eater Dartboard, to Gryffindor House. It was a dartboard with many, many rings - outer ones labeled with jinxes, inner ones with curses. Whatever spell a dart hit was visited upon a quite lifelike model of a Death Eater affixed to the top of the board. A dubious sense of discretion had persuaded the twins to replace Crucio in the center circle with Disconfortare Genitalis, which caused the figurine to squirm comically in a way that delighted the Gryffindor boys.

Harry reported that Dumbledore had begun teaching him Legilimency as well as Occlumency during his weekly lesson with the Headmaster and that Legilimency was, surprisingly, the easier of the two. Hermione said it was not so surprising.

Peeves succeeded in telling a few strategic fibs and provoking all the fifth floor portraits into a vicious feud. The floor was filled with colorful shouting for days until Marilyn the Maudlin realized the Lady of Puddingshire had never called her gown "overdone," and Sir Bretwick of Entwhistle discovered that his favorite violet-tinted monocle was not residing in Tabitha Took's handbag but, in fact, was securely on his face.

Natalie MacDonald received an owl telling her not come home for the Christmas holidays; her parents were in hiding from You-Know-Who.

Malfoy began calling Hermione "Grungy," saying it was the perfect name for a Mudblood.

And so two weeks went by, and if Hermione did occasionally notice Harry gazing longingly across the Great Hall or the Potions classroom, he was so good about slapping himself on the forehead when he realized what he was doing that she hardly thought a thing of it.

"It's easy, isn't it?" He spoke softly from somewhere behind her, making Hermione start as she gathered her books and parchments after Arithmancy. She'd been sure everyone else had already left the classroom. She turned slowly and contemptuously, a scathing retort on her tongue, ready for his latest attack. It threw her off her game a bit to find that Malfoy was sitting wandless on a desk halfway across the room, his legs swinging.

"What's easy?" she asked, crossing her arms tightly and narrowing her eyes.

"School. I used to think you weren't any brighter than the rest of us, that you just had to be the best out of spite, or pride, or maybe to prove something because you're a Mudblood. So I guessed you practically killed yourself working just so you could show off and make me hate you. But it really is easy for you, isn't it? And you enjoy it."

Hermione blinked once in surprise. She was tempted to blurt out the first thing her brain had registered about his speech - that he'd said, "Mudblood" with no malice at all, as if it was simply a word he was used to saying. She sensed, though, that this was a time for larger issues. She kept her voice calm and cold, "Very impressive. So which one's the act? Malfoy the Maleficent and His Slytherin Sycophant or Malfoy at the Present Moment?"

"You know."

Hermione held a breath, then sighed a long, resigned sigh as she crossed the room to lean against a desk beside him. "Yeah, I do. And yes, it is easy. How'd you figure that out?"

"I can do it now. Understand things. Cast spells that were too difficult before. Figure out things we haven't been taught. All of a sudden it's easy for me too."

"Since the cleansing spell?"

"Of course, since the cleansing spell," he scoffed sarcastically. "I'd hardly be telling you if my gram had just sent me a Remembrall, would I?"

"Well, it makes sense. The spells I lifted off you were intended to make you more loyal to you father and susceptible to his influence," she watched him guardedly as she said this for signs of violence but refused not to voice the truth, "Essentially that translates to not allowing you to think for yourself, which puts a pretty heavy damper on intelligence."

"That's what I figured." Hermione goggled. There'd been no explosion of anger, no protest or denial, not even a snappish tone to suggest that by 'that's what I figured' he meant 'I knew that.' He was simply stating matter-of-factly that her conclusion matched his own. Uncanny. However much sense she'd said it made, Hermione had expected that Malfoy was - understandably, under the circumstances - exaggerating some pretty minor changes. He'd always been a decent student. Yet here he was telling her sincerely that he'd already figured out as much as she could tell him about whatever you wanted to call what was happening. And not to be unduly vain, but if he was matching her thought for thought, it meant he was clever. It also meant he wasn't coming to her for answers.

"Why'd you want to talk to me, if you'd already figured it out?"

"There's hardly anyone else for me to talk to, is there?"

"You want me to sit here, shrink-style, while you unload on me?"

"Ahh, but that's just what I get out of it. You are bloody dying to know what's been going on with me."

Hermione opened her mouth to argue and found that she couldn't. In what she feared may be a growing trend in this conversation, she sighed. "Too right, I am. So talk."

"'Bout what?"

"You didn't get any less annoying did you?"

Draco smirked a very unreformed smirk. "Well, no. But really, where do I start?"

Hermione hopped up to finally sit on her desk. She considered. "You're not someone who goes showing 'round his problems - not his actual ones anyway, despite how much you've been known to moan when it got Gryffindor in trouble. So there's a real and much better reason you're here talking to me."

It was Draco's turn to sigh. "When you're trying to figure out who the hell you are and all the while you have to pretend you're the same person everyone thinks you to be, nothing you figure out seems real. You have to test it, see if it's right and if it'll stick; otherwise you constantly feel like you're about to start backsliding."

"I was an idiot."

"Pardon me while I go owl some ice skates to hell."

"No, really. You don't know how furious I was the day after, thinking you hadn't changed and I'd wasted all that effort."

"Idiotic," Draco agreed, "The fact that you've just become disillusioned with your bloody powerful - am I allowed to acknowledge he's powerful without sounding fawning? - your bloody powerful, sadistic Death Eater father is hardly something you go shouting out in the midst of Slytherin House. For numerous reasons."

"Well, I see that now. And I see you've gotten over that denial about Lucius."

"Kept me up the entire first night, that; I hardly had the energy to pick on you the next day. And the second night it gave me dreams straight out of Hades. You know, if you'd wanted to brew up some vicious form of torture for me, you couldn't have done better." Hermione marveled that he didn't sound in the least as if he were pitying himself or seeking it from her. He just sounded...honest.

"For someone so arrogant, he must have had pathologically low confidence in his parenting skills to think he needed spells to handle you."

"He had his reasons," Draco replied darkly. "And he bloody worships the Dark Lord. Anytime he's expecting the old maniac at the manor, he opens three bottles of our best wine beforehand and tastes them personally to make sure only the best of the best is served. And Death Eaters' children are just as much offerings to the Master as glasses of wine. I'm sure if he could have ordered my mother to bear triplets, he would have," - a pause - "Look, we're both going to be late for dinner, which is suspicious but not as suspicious as if we miss it all together. So we should go. Could you do just one thing for me?"

"I should have known. I did know."

He stood and held out a parchment. "Could you owl this list of books to your parents and get them to send them back? I'll give you money."

Hermione's eyebrows made a stab at jumping off her head as she scanned the parchment. "Muggle books, Malfoy?"

"Can't get them in Hogsmeade."

"Yes, but Muggle books?"

He huffed exasperatedly, "When you find out the one person you've trusted your entire life has had you under magical mind control, you begin to suspect that everything he ever told you, which is to say everything you ever believed, may be wrong, and it'd be a good idea to find out for yourself."

Hermione was nodding, impressed. Her mouth quirked suddenly as she noticed the last item on the parchment. "My parents'll think it a bit odd when I ask for 'anything on homosexuality.'"

"If they're half as keen on social rights as you are, they'll be thrilled to help out Hermione's poor, closeted chum."

"And how's that going?" she asked, grinning wickedly.

"Brilliant," he replied, speaking very quickly. "It's a bloody great relief to finally be feeling anything at all, and apparently the madness those first few days was rather like what happens when you open a floodgate. I'm down to subtle admiring glances now, which helps immensely with keeping the Slytherins in the dark. Speaking of which," - he shoved her out the classroom door - "get to dinner."

"Dear Mum and Dad,

Hello and love to you both. How is everything at home? Classes are going well here, though the professors are stepping it up a bit since it's getting on toward the end of term. Since the weather turned nasty, everyone's started whispering that Hagrid's going to bring in a Yeti for Care of Magical Creatures, but you two shouldn't worry - the same rumor goes around every year. And if he does ever manage it, Hagrid's very good with monsters. The special project I told you about is coming along nicely. I've finally gotten one of the sample potions to work just right, so I've been able to moved on to a more complicated experiment.

I've got a rather strange request for you - there's a boy here at school from a pureblood wizarding family who wants to learn about the non-magical world. He gave me a list of books and some money to send you and asked me to ask you if you could send the books back. Sorry to be a bother, but he knows some very anti-Muggle people who'd make things ugly if they found out; he's having to be rather secretive about this. Also he's just realized that he's gay, and definitely can't talk to his family or friends about that (they're awful, really), so he asked for books about that, too. He didn't know any titles.

Thanks very much for the last package you sent me. Professor Vector loved the graphing calculator; she kept calling it Muggle magic. I wish they'd arrange for computers here, then I could show her a real three-dimensional program. Mum, if you're reading this aloud to Dad like I know you do, please read this next sentence twice: I have enough dental floss. I promise I'll let you know if I ever run out, but at this point, that will take years.

Love always,

Hermione

Hermione read over the letter - it was vague, but not quite vague enough to be safe if her owl was intercepted. One of the great advantages of being at war with a prejudiced, elitist opponent was that the other side tended to think messages bound for Muggle addresses beneath their consideration, but it was best to be safe. Hermione drew her wand and tapped the parchment, casting an encryption spell that could only be broken by her parents' fingerprints. It had been one of her inspired inventions - her parents would never suspect how grim things currently were in the wizarding world because the letter would already be unscrambled by the time they got it open. A wizard would never guess how to decode it, though, since detection and identification charms had saved magic kind from ever noticing the miracle of fingerprints. Hermione smiled to herself, picturing Lord Voldemort stumped by puzzle any Muggle six-year-old who'd watched a detective movie could have answered for him.