Chapter Text
The air in Diagon Alley was different. As soon as they stepped through the incredible mutating archway (Hermione wanted to crane her neck backwards to see if the bricks rearranged themselves back into a wall in the same order – clockwise – as they’d opened, but she was immediately distracted by a harried looking woman on an actual honest-to-goodness flying broomstick) the exhaust and metal smell of London was replaced by something richer. More exciting. A little like electricity, a little like that time Mum took them out to a Thai restaurant and the smell of burning chilies made Hermione double over coughing. A little like very, very fresh, cold air. A little bit like...beer?
“Mum,” Hermione said. She had to take hold of her mother’s arm and shake it a little to get her attention. Both of Hermione’s parents looked rather stunned. “Mum, do you think this might be the courtyard of...well, a bit of a dingy pub?”
It really did smell like beer. And she could hear raised voices from inside the building.
“Not dingy, love,” her mother said. “It looks quite respectable, really.”
Hermione’s father snorted softly, but didn’t comment.
The woman – Professor McGonagall – who had so smartly opened the archway for them, raised one thin eyebrow at Hermione.
“Welcome to the Leaky Cauldron,” she said. “Come along, then.” And she led them through the little back door.
Hermione had never been into a pub. They weren’t a pub family. Her friend Mandy’s parents were – that’s where Hermione recognized the beer smell from. The Leaky Cauldron would have been a new experience for her anyway, though. It was crowded (which made sense, if everyone who came to Diagon Alley had to pass through the building) and loud, and the clientele...Hermione couldn’t stop staring. Her parents, for once, were too busy staring themselves to tell her off. Professor McGonagall, Hermione saw now, had not been a good introduction to magical fashion. She was so sensible. She’d been wearing a kind of billowy black dress thing when she first came to the house to explain about magic and Hogwarts, but on her it had looked almost regal. The people in the Leaky Cauldron were wearing bright, fanciful costumes. Actual witch’s hats, star-spangled cloaks, elaborately pointed boots and odd, floaty veils. There was a toad on the bar top, happily crouched in a saucer of dark amber liquid, and at least three live owls were perched in the rafters. And everywhere Hermione looked people were doing magic like it was nothing – levitating their drinks, siphoning mud from their ridiculous clothing, shooting out sparks and water and loud bangs to the cacophony of sound.
Several heads turned at the sound of the door opening, and Hermione blinked at the sudden attention, but the faces were disinterested.
“Muggles,” muttered the man seated next to the toad. He said it the way Hermione’s mother might have said, “Cavities.” There was the same vague disapproval, the same little shake of the head, even. But he had been looking directly at them when he said it. She gave her parents a sneaky glance as they made their way through the pub, but they didn’t seem to have heard. Professor McGonagall, though...
Was it Hermione’s imagination, or did the stern line of that mouth look a little more pinched than it had a moment ago?
“Excuse me, Professor,” she said, “but what is a muggle?”
There was laughter from the bar, but Hermione ignored it.
“A non-magical person,” Professor McGonagall said evenly.
So it was her, then. Hermione was the cavity.
She opened her mouth to ask if the word was a pejorative, but then they were stepping out into the alleyway proper, and her mouth was too busy gaping to form words.
The next two hours passed in a glorious flurry of wonder. They exchanged money at the wizarding bank (Goblins, it turned out, were real) and she purchased a magic wand (vine, with a dragon heartstring core, because it also turned out that dragons were real, and Hermione was holding a piece of one now, and that made her own heart thrum) and was fitted for robes, and had an ice cream, and bought an adorable little cauldron and a bunch of fanciful potions ingredients, and then...
And then they were standing outside a store called Flourish and Blotts, and Hermione was crying.
“There, there,” Professor McGonagall said, passing her a handkerchief. “It isn’t unusual to feel a little overwhelmed.”
“She always cries in bookstores,” Hermione’s dad said. “Give her a moment.”
Hermione mopped her face. She touched the door handle, then looked up at her parents. “Please, Mum,” she said. “Please can we take back those expensive scales we got? Maybe there’s a secondhand shop somewhere? And we don’t need new robes, really. Only...only I really do need more books than are on that list. I really, honestly do.”
Her mother was smiling. So was Professor McGonagall, though she appeared to be trying to hide it.
“You can get three extra,” her mother said.
So they went inside.
It was better than Hermione could have dreamed. She found all of the books on their syllabus very quickly, and threw herself into the task of choosing just three more. One gigantic tome called Hogwarts, a History was an obvious choice. If she was going to the school she’d better know a thing or two about it. Great Wizarding Events of the Twentieth Century seemed like a safe bet as well. She was perusing Home Life and Social Habits of British Muggles with amused horror when someone jostled her rather hard. Hermione dropped her books.
“Oops,” said a girl with a small, turned-up nose. She knelt down to help Hermione gather her things. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I was trying to avoid those muggles in the other aisle. They’re saying the stupidest things about Hogwarts. Honestly. Their poor child. Imagine going away to such an advanced wizarding school from such an ignorant little home. It’s not fair to them, really.”
Hermione swallowed. “Your parents are magical?” she asked.
“Oh, of course!” the snub-faced girl said. She handed Hermione A History of Magic and smiled. “I’m pure-blood. The Parkinsons are one of the Sacred Twenty-Eight. Oh dear, that’s my mother!” She pointed to a woman at the till, who was waving furiously at her, and stood up. “I’d better go. Maybe I’ll see you on the train!”
And then she was gone.
“Are you alright, sweetheart?” Hermione’s father asked a moment later.
“I am,” she told him. “But I need a bit longer here. Maybe Professor McGonagall would like it if you and Mum bought her a drink? I could meet you back at the Leaky Cauldron?”
“You know,” her dad said, “I think your Mum and I could use a drink as well.”
When they were gone, Hermione brought her books up to the front. “Can I leave these her a moment?” she asked. “My arms are getting rather tired.”
The woman looked at her. “Muggleborn, aren’t you?” she asked impatiently, then tutted. She took out her wand and muttered something, waving it at the pile of books. They floated up into the air and hovered by Hermione’s shoulder. “They’ll follow you around now.” She spoke loudly, enunciating clearly, as if...well, as if Hermione was slow. Nobody talked that way to Hermione.
And that, more than the laughter at the Leaky Cauldron, more than the disdain in the Parkinson girl’s voice, prompted what Hermione said next.
“Thank you,” she told the shopkeeper. “Actually, though, I’m adopted. Do you think you could point me towards a book on wizarding genealogy?”
It was only sensible, she thought later, as she pulled the covers over her head and let her flashlight illuminate the stack of new books she’d brought home. Lying was wrong, of course, but she couldn’t let the accident of her parentage interfere with her education. Intelligence could be a self-fulfilling prophecy, she knew. If your professors expect you to get good grades, they’re much likelier to give you the kind of focused, sustained attention that leads to good grades. She wasn’t going to let a bit of prejudice set her off on the wrong footing. And she could always come clean later, make them face up to their bias. That could be quite satisfying.
For now, though, she was going to need a backstory. A name.
Hermione flipped through the genealogy book, trying out the surnames. Abbot, Bulstrode, Burke. What she needed was a pureblood line that had petered out. Maybe with a black sheep descendant kicking around somewhere, who could conceivably have left an unclaimed baby behind. Something a bit threatening, maybe. Fowley. Flint. She liked that last one, but there were living relations to contend with. No good.
Hermione turned another page, then stopped. This was promising. The line was extinct. A decent family that had descended into poverty (so no inheritance to worry about calling into question) with the final daughter...oh, this was perfect. The final daughter had married a muggle. They’d had a baby boy, who’d wound up in a muggle orphanage...and it looked like he’d died or gone missing as an adult.
Hermione ran the details through her mind. He was about the right age to be her father, this mysterious orphan. A bit old, maybe, but that just made it likelier that he was dead. It didn’t look like he had any living relatives who could turn up and argue with her.
And the name. She said it out loud, and it felt good on her tongue. Slightly ominous, but that was alright.
She said it again. “Hermione Gaunt-Granger.”
It would do.