Hermione Granger and the Year Hidden from Hogwarts
Harry Potter Fanfiction
Chapter 20
A/N: Hermione's got her hands on some books and some answers. She's ready to take off into this new world. Unfortunately, she needs some time to process, so this won't be the Diagon Alley visit yet if that's what you were hoping for. But that should be the chapter after this, so don't despair!
April 23rd, 1992
Inside her dorm, Hermione pulled the locket free from beneath her jumper, eyeing it for the thousandth time since she got it five days ago.
Her enthusiasm for the trip had dulled significantly after she'd gotten some concrete answers to her most burning questions, courtesy of one Professor Flitwick. So it didn't even bother her that supposedly one of the most haunted places in England had only boasted about four lost spirits—faded to nearly nothing and unable to interact with her.
She wouldn't have been able to get answers out of any of them. They existed within their own bubble, trapped in their past, unwilling to let go. If the place was powered by any Stonehenge ley lines, she hadn't seen evidence of it.
"Are ley lines even a real thing?" she whispered out loud.
She hadn't seen information about them in the magical texts she'd absolutely devoured.
She'd cycled through the eight texts she had the ability to read, even though one of them she was positive she'd misunderstood some parts because it was in old English. Still, the information in there had pulled the curtains back on some of the mystery surrounding this elusive Wizarding World, though most of the books had been on the subject of charms. Considering he'd introduced himself as the Charms professor, that made sense.
Still, since these texts were the most advanced and current practices on the subject, they referenced other classifications of magic, such as transfiguration, potions, jinxes, hexes, spells, and curses. While it would've been nice to have an introductory book on some of these, Hermione was no slouch, especially when backed with the full, unstoppable force of her burning curiosity.
She slogged through, using context and taking diligent notes until she felt she had a basic understanding of what each was. Charms added characteristics to things, such as making a tome tap dance. Transfiguration changed matter into something entirely different, like what Flitwick had done to make the chairs, but he'd used some sort of conjuration spell to make the table out of nothing.
And then jinxes, hexes, and curses were dark magic or malintent based spells from level of severity in that order.
She sat up, scratching Ignis under his chin when he was dislodged from his nap on her pillow, soothing his angry chatter.
"That pest is a menace," a voice growled.
Hermione glanced across the room to the shelf Erl had turned into a bunkbed, near the ceiling. The one crowning point to visiting that haunted place was that they'd definitively tested out Erl's ability to work with them as a team. When one of the ghosts threatened to drift to close, he'd gotten somewhat overprotective, snarling something in Erkish, a hissing and guttural language that brought the hairs raising on the back of her neck.
She knew the ghosts weren't strong enough to be a danger, and in fact, the actual threat in the room was the erkling himself, so she'd switched to her metavision to observe him.
Aggressive cords of his natural azalea energy, whipped around him, acting as an offense. And it was affecting the ghosts. They'd shied away. Then, when Erl switched to the human language, the hints of dark earthen brown mingled into the mixture, and he, essentially because he'd not been half so nice about, had told them they were dead and to get on into the afterlife.
It'd worked. Once they disappeared, he'd calmed down, and glanced back at her with his calm, expectant gaze.
It'd been enough to convince them to allow him more freedom, such as he could share her dorm room, strengthening the bond, provided he wore a remote-controlled electrical collar and tracker in case he went rogue.
Hermione had been the one to plead his case, knowing instinctively that he wouldn't be able to break his bond or act against her in any way. It sickened her. He'd stick his hand in a bed of coals if she asked him to. The guilt weighed on her soul, so she didn't feel not even a drop of shame for not telling Ms. Walker that something about their magic had interfered with the shock collar, disabling it after five minutes of wearing it.
Erl scowled at the fire salamander who only grinned back, tilting his head.
"Be nice, Erl. You know Ignis gets grouchy when we disturb his sleep," Hermione quipped, forgetting herself for a moment that he took everything as a literal act of law.
He straightened up. The wood carving he'd been whittling dropped with a loud clatter. "Yes, mistress."
Hermione winced. "Sorry, sorry. I didn't mean that as an order. You can be grouchy if you want to so long as you're not harming anyone."
Erl nodded, but it was as if he were trying to assimilate both orders, and so he didn't return to his previous task.
Hermione could've kicked herself. It was the most personality he'd shown since the bonding, albeit and unpleasant one, but that was his prerogative, and she'd ruined it. She frowned at the locket, yearning to reach out to Professor Flitwick. "I'm going to figure out how I messed you up, and then I'm going to fix it, Erl."
Surely the Wizarding World would have books about creature to wizard bonds.
Erl didn't reply, but she knew he wouldn't. It would be hours before he spoke again.
She flopped back on the bed with an angry sigh.
It'd been near torture that Professor Flitwick reached out to her on a Saturday, and then told her to contact him on a Saturday. That meant she'd have to wait, at the very least, a week with eight books she could understand, and five she couldn't.
Not wanting to waste more time mentally scolding herself, she popped back up and approached the desk, picking up one of the Goblin books.
She'd been unable to crack the code on them. It was a terribly backwards way to learn a language. Even if she somehow sorted out what the symbols and characters meant, she would still have no idea how the words were supposed to sound.
It was an impossible task, one of the few she'd ever faced.
Of course, she'd only glanced through them a few times throughout the five days in her possession, but her impatience was getting the best of her, especially when her logical mind said there was no possible way to decipher a language from text alone—not from another species. There was no guarantee that they followed any rules from human languages.
She snapped the book shut. "This is impossible."
"Mistress?" Erl called in a timid voice, shocking her into nearly falling from the desk chair. Maybe he was getting better and just needed a bit of time to analyze her words.
"Um, yes, Erl?"
"You are angry, yes?"
She sighed. "Not from anything you did, Erl. I promise. I'm just frustrated that I can't read these tomes."
Erl's hairless eyebrows lowered. "Why not? You are not unable to read."
"They're not in my language," she replied.
Erl shrugged. "Human tongue is not my native language, but I can speak to you."
"Yes, but you learned the language over time. I'm not sure I can do that with just the text."
Erl shook his head. "No, use the energy. Do you think I spoke English to Russian offspring?"
Hermione stilled, but her heart took off at a rapid pace. "What are you saying? Do erklings use magic to communicate?"
"Of course. Erlkings can persuade and entrance, but it is weakened without our prey's native tongue."
"Is that why you hunt children? Because they are easier to hypnotize?" Hermione tried her very best to ignore her own memories of being entranced and oblivious to her surroundings, in danger from this very creature.
"That is a misconception. Children are not weak. They have protections, connections to their parents given at birth when they bond."
Hermione blinked, the goblin book forgotten in the face of this new magical theory. "Even if the parents are not magical?"
Erl nodded. "Yes, mistress. Your parents are not invisible in your special vision. All living things have their own type of energy, that, with enough intent, can do things. Parents' connection to their offspring helps shield them from the unseen dangers of the world until that connection weakens as they grow and develop their own protections as juveniles. But those early bonds protect their innocence, their youth, and makes them oh, so—"
"Erl, if you say 'delicious,' I will be very cross." There, not quite a command to cut off this new confidence, but definitely a warning.
Erl sniffed and returned to his point. "Erklings evolved, gaining the ability to match any language. I can show you if it pleases you, mistress."
Hermione nodded so hard and fast that her neck popped. "Yes, please!"
The erkling scaled down the wall, used to living high in the trees for shelter. He approached her desk and crawled up, refusing her hand up. "Look at me."
"I am."
"Mistress, I ask you look at me with your eyes."
The light dawned on Hermione. "Oh, right. My metavision."
She switched over, the full-color image of Erl being replaced by the technicolor of his energy and magic. "Okay, I'm ready."
"I'm already doing it, mistress."
"You are?"
"You understand me, yes? So I am not speaking in Erkish."
Hermione slapped her forehead. "Of course. Sorry, that was an awfully dimwitted question." She frowned, taking in the swirls of Earthen brown before it clicked in her head. "I thought the brown was part of your natural energy since it's there often enough, but that's because you use it nearly nonstop to communicate."
"Natural energy?"
"Yes, my natural energy is a bluebell color, whereas yours is azalea when you use it. That was why it took me so long to—" she broke off because she wasn't about to rub his slavery into his face by bringing up the botched bond. But it had taken her longer to solve that riddle when she'd wrongly assumed his natural color.
"Azalea, mistress?"
"Yes, it's a pale, reddish pink color, like salmon. All magical creatures have a zero state. I've theorized that when we perform magic, we move in either direction of the light spectrum from that point, and the magic closer to own natural color is easier than others."
"That is interesting, mistress," he replied, but the phrase sounded rote, almost placating.
"So, this brown is the color you use to manipulate language," she concluded. "But how do you get it to work? Can you try it out on the books and interpret for me?"
Erl shrugged. "I do not read, so it would not work."
"Then how do you know this will even work if you've only used it for spoken language?"
"I don't, but if there is anyone who could figure it out, it is you, mistress."
Hermione's brows furrowed in concentration. "Do you have to be around the person speaking another language for the magic to work?"
"No," he said, and then switched to Russian, but she didn't understand much of what he said, so he switched back. "I have used Russian before, so it is easier to slip into it, but I do not need to be around a person using the language to change after that."
Hermione glanced down at the book. "Well, I've never been around goblins, so this might have to wait until after our trip to the bank." She bit her lip. "Have you heard Chinese before?"
Erl thought about it before nodding. "There were several men on your expedition that spoke it."
Oh, of course. "How about German?"
Erl paused before shaking his head in the negative.
"Okay, I'm going to speak to you in German so that I can watch exactly how it works with a new language."
Erl nodded.
"Hello, my name is Hermione Granger."
Erl replied in kind. "Hello, Hermione Granger, mistress."
"Do I need to speak more for you to finish?"
"No, I have it."
Hermione switched back to English. "Well, it didn't shift colors. Not even a little bit. I was wondering if there was another shade for each language. I've got the shade and pattern down—and with it pointed out, I notice the magic centers around your mouth."
Hermione did but with no success. After five failed attempts, she went back to her mental drawing board.
"Mistress, if I may?"
Hermione turned to him. "Of course, Erl. I love learning, so you never have to ask if you can help in that manner."
"As you wish. Mistress, you are very smart, but perhaps you overthink this. It is like the bond I mentioned between adults and their babies. They don't expressly set out to protect their children from forces they don't even realize exist, but it happens all the same because they want their children to be safe."
"So, focus on the intent."
Erl bowed his head.
Hermione released her breath in a long whoosh and pulled one of the goblin books over and stared at it, a matador staring down his bull.
I want to read this book, she thought.
Then, because it couldn't hurt to say it out loud, she did so. "I want to read this book written by the goblins."
She switched to metavision, coaxing the energy to her hands so that she could fine tune the exact shade of brown, before manipulating it in the same patterns.
After three minutes, she dropped the energy, panting. "I don't think it worked." She rolled her eyes at herself before turning to Erl. "But I could test it out with spoken language to see if the problem is just me. Could you speak Russian again?"
He began to speak, and Hermione rushed through the process again, a little bit faster than before, and it was like a waterfall flowed over her skin.
"eto potrebovalo bol'shogo masterstva i--and that is how I lured two childr—"
"Erl!" Hermione scolded, scandalized.
"It worked, mistress!"
"I—it did?"
Erl nodded. "You're speaking Russian right now."
"Oh." She felt her magic snap back into her core as her joy split her attention too much with the unfamiliar hue and pattern. "Erl, can you imagine the implications? Every language at my fingertips!" She trailed off, her mind sparking. "You know, when you use this magic, you concentrate it on your mouth, which makes sense given its spoken language. If I shift it to my eyes..."
Words escaped her as the words rearranged themselves on the page to look like English.
She grinned. "I love magic."