Chapter 9
The International Floo Network
Minnie didn’t feel like she really spent that much talking on the phone, but it seemed like every time her older sister stumbled upon her, that was what she was doing. And she probably should have cut back on her phone time, considering every time Hermione did end up catching her, Minnie ended up in some sort of trouble.
Today was one such day.
“…yeah, there were a bunch of pirate ships all held together by this big, big octopus, and sea turtles dragged us there in these little rowboats,” she spoke casually into the mouthpiece as Hermione stepped into the living room. “And Hermione bought me a bunch of books….Oh! And I got a cat!....Black. I named him Snape.”
Minnie soon found herself joining in the laugher that was bursting through the other end of the line. “Yeah, Hermione didn’t think it was very funny, though.”
Hermione rushed towards her little sister, leaning over the edge of the sofa. “Minnie, don’t you remember what I said about you not being able to tell your friends about the wizarding world?”
“Relax,” Minnie said, without making eye contact, waiting for the boom. “I’m talking to your husband.”
Minnie peeked over her shoulder, just barely, but it was enough to see her older sister turn ghostly pale and (even though Minnie was pretty sure it was only an expression) the outline of a lump appear in her throat.
Minnie didn’t know a lot of about her family in England, but she now knew that Hermione had never told her husband, Ron, about Minnie, and that before the ten-year-old girl had picked up the phone, Ron had probably never even imagined that Hermione even had a little sister. Minnie couldn’t help but feel a little insulted at this scenario, but at the same time, it was funny to imagine her husband on the other end of the line, drumming his fingers and biding his time, waiting for Hermione to be put on the phone while Minnie chatted on about Buruwangnuwi and everything else she had learned about the wizarding world.
“Minnie, give me the phone,” Hermione faintly ordered her sister.
Minnie finally looked up, turning her head around completely. “No, I’m having a conversation with my brother-in-law. We have a lot of catching up to do.”
The first time hadn’t really been a request, and on some level, Minnie knew that, so she really wasn’t all that surprised when, instead of just asking again, Hermione simply snatched the phone out of her sister’s hand, much to Minnie’s protest.
“Hello, Ron,” Hermione spoke into the phone, visibly tense.
Even from the couch, Minnie could hear the voice of her brother-in-law almost as clearly as Hermione probably could. “Hermione, you have such a sweet little sister. I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t tell me about her. It’s not as though she has a difficult name to remember!”
The conversation started out as though he was trying sound pleasant, but his tone quickly rose into angry frustration. Minnie turned around, watch with her elbows on the back of the couch and her chin resting on her hands. Sooo much more entertaining than television ever could be!
“How much has Minnie told you?” Hermione’s fingers went to her forehead as she tried to sound calm.
“Oh, let’s see,” Ron recalled. “How you were present at her birth, how you got her grounded”that wasn’t very nice of you! Then there was….”
As the conversation went on, Minnie watched her sister’s expression change as she heard her husband tell her everything that Minnie had been telling him over the course of their phone call. Hermione expression would have just a touch of hope at the end of every sentence, but that hoped would be dashed as Ron revealed a new story that Minnie had told him. She had a very strong feeling Hermione was going to continue to be disappointed. Minnie had given her sister’s husband a very full and very complete account of what had happened since her new older sister had come into her life.
Even though the phone conversation must have been far from pleasant”at least for Ron”Minnie had actually enjoyed talking to her brother-in-law. Once all the awkwardness of it all wore off, and Minnie had explained exactly who she was in relation to Hermione and Ron explained how he had gotten Minnie’s number and how he had ever learned to use a telephone, they had actually had a very nice conversation. He had told Minnie about her niece and nephew, about Harry and Ginny Potter (who were apparently very close friends of the family), and even a few short yet detailed war stories that Hermione had left out for some reason.
“Yes, Ron, yes; I understand,” Hermione said, interrupting Minnie’s train of thought. “Yes, well, I’ll take care of it as soon as I can.”
But even more entertaining was watching Hermione squirm, even though Minnie did feel a small twinge of quilt for thinking this way.
Hermione held her hand against her forehead, still appearing quite distressed, even as the conversation came to a close. “It was nice talking to you too. Give Rosie and Hugo each a hug from me. Good-bye.”
Minnie watched her sister hang up the phone, her shoulders suddenly looking a lot heavier. She glanced in Minnie’s direction as though she wanted to be angry, but knew deep down that she had no justification. The secret of Minnie’s existence had been officially spilt and now Hermione would have to find a way to dance around that as well.
“So…,” Minnie looked up at her older sister with a practiced, innocent yet knowingly, devious smile on her face, “how much trouble am I in?”
Minnie was doing her very best to write as neatly as she could. It would have been a lot faster to type her letter on the downstairs computer, and a lot easier to send a letter through email. Her parents had promised her a while ago that she could get her own laptop for Christmas the year before she was to start Year Seven. Though considering where she was going to end up attending secondary school (Hogwarts or Coomalong), she probably wasn’t going to end up having a lot of use for it.
Not that she still didn’t have every intention of holding her parents to their promise anyway.
Last night, Minnie had been quite shocked to go up to bed and see an owl at her bedroom window, trying to peck its way through the glass. At first, she had been worried that it might have somehow caught scent of the feeder mice that Chunga had never touched, but when she had gotten a closer look, she could see, blending in with the breast feathers, a yellowed envelope addressed to Minnie in bright purple ink. Once she had opened the window, and had been able to distract the owl by shaking a gummy worm in front of its face so it looked alive, she had opened it to find it had been sent from the Kelly sisters. And ever since, the owl had been taking roost in Minnie’s room, most likely waiting for a response to take back to Coomalong, so that was exactly what Minnie was doing.
Snape, the kitten, however, was not making this an easy task. Ever since sitting down to write, Snape had become obsessed with the eraser atop the moving pencil, and had decided he was going to catch it by any means necessary, even if Minnie’s letter turned out looking as though it had been written in Thai.
Minnie grumbled to herself. She wouldn’t have had this problem if she were writing an email!
“Snape, no! My pencil!” she scolded the animal for the fifteenth time, but to no avail. “Hey, cat! Stop it!”
But once again, proving a cat’s complete inability to respond to orders, Snape bit down of the top of the eraser, snatched it right out of Minnie’s hand, and took a flying leap off the desk.
“Hey, that’s mine!” she continued to shout and she tried and failed to pounce and catch the kitten. “Not for sharing!”
It was too late, however. Snape made a mad dash under the bed, into the furthest, darkest corner that was just out of Minnie’s reach. However, Minnie wasn’t allowed a vast amount of time to fish for it.
“Minnie!” she could hear a very loud shout from two floors down call for her. “Hermione Monica Wilkens, come here right now!”
Collapsing against the floor, Minnie cringed as she breathed in peppermint-sized dust particles. It was her parents, and she could recognize their ‘you’re in trouble’ yell, even if she heard it shouted from two neighborhoods away.
“MINNIE!”
“Coming!” Minnie yelled back, cringing inwardly at where she was about to be summoned.
All the way down the attic steps, down to hallway, and to the stairs, Minnie’s stomach crawled as she wondered what her parents could have found and just how incriminating it could be against her. Several different things came to mind, but she couldn’t quite be certain which was the most likely. All the same, she could have recognized their ‘trouble’ voices anywhere and prepared herself for the worst.
At the bottom of the staircase, Minnie could see her parents standing shoulder to shoulder with expressions that were difficult to read. Her mother’s arms crossed with an envelope poking out of the crook of her elbow. Minnie squinted her eyes in an effort to see if it was from the school, or from a neighbor, or….
“Minnie, why didn’t you tell us you applied for something like this?” Minnie’s mother began waving the envelope with pinched fingertips. “Wouldn’t you need the signature of one of your parents?”
Minnie wrinkled her nose in a confused sort of expression. Applied? Signatures? Permission?
“She didn’t apply, Monica,” Minnie’s father told her. “They invited her. I’m fairly certain they don’t need parental permission just to invite her.”
Nothing her father said offered any more clues. Could a letter from Hogwarts or Commalong have come already? Minnie made her way down the stairs in an attempt to get a closer look.
“Don’t be nervous, Minnie,” her dad told her. “You should be proud of yourself. I have a feeling you’re the only girl in Wonthaggi to be accepted here!”
Now things were just getting to confusing for words. Minnie snatched the letter out of her mother’s hands, which was met with absolutely no resistance, which made matters even more confusing.
To the parents of Hermione Wilkins,
We are pleased to inform you that your child has been selected for attend the Keurong Science Camp, a week-long science camp sponsored by the National Foundation for Australia’s Future Scientific Thinkers. Through a combination of excellent grades in science and the recommendations of teachers, your child has been chosen by our foundation committee to attend this intensive, hands-on learning opportunity, as well as the opportunity to highly qualified science professors and make future connections within Australia’s scientific community.
The children who are selected for this camp may attend at no cost to their families. The purpose of this camp is to identify early children who show an aptitude towards science and offer them an early advantage towards a future towards scientific education and careers.
The camp begins February 16th, and all students will be returned home on February 22nd. Transportation to and from the camp will be provided, and housing will be provided by the University of Sydney, where the camp will also be held, along with access to all the university facilities.
This is amazing opportunity to gain a vast amount of educational enrichment, and it would be consider a privilege on our behalf if you would allow your child to attend.
Sincerely,
The Selection Committee for Keurong Science Camp”Primary Level
The National Foundation for Australia’s Future Scientific Thinkers
Minnie read over the letter again, and then read it a third time. She had never heard of The National Foundation for Australia’s Future Scientific Thinkers, and she certainly didn’t think her teachers had been watching her to see if she ‘showed potential to become a future leader in the scientific community’. Her fourth grade teacher had kept her after school one day for accidently dumping a jar of fresh earthworms down Isabella Meyer’s shirt, but she really didn’t think that counted as ‘scientific potential’.
“It would be during school,” her dad said, taking the letter to read over it himself once more, “but from the looks of things, you’ll be spending a great deal of your time in classes anyway.”
“It would also be something that could be mentioned on Minnie’s college applications,” her mother said, looking at Minnie but not really sounding like she was talking to her. “That’s not so far away.”
Her parents tittered back and forth between one another, the only questions directed towards Minnie sounding as though they were actually asking Minnie’s permission for her to go to this place. Granted, her parents had had a bit longer to think over this over, but they still seemed a bit eager to let her run off to this camp without really knowing all that much about it.
“Do you want to go?” her dad finally asked.
In the living room, off to the side and out of her parents’ line of vision, was Hermione, whose eyes were completely on Minnie. She was continually nodding with the slightest movements of her chin and her lips were just barely mouthing the words “Say yes!” Hermione knew something about this letter and this supposed camp, and she wanted desperately for Minnie not to muck up the works, even if she did know what was going on.
So, for reasons Minnie couldn’t quite put into concrete words, she decided to go along with whatever plan her sister might have had. “Yeah,” she finally agreed. “Okay. It sounds like fun.”
Very suddenly, Minnie felt the wind being crushed out of her. “I am so proud of you!” Minnie dad hugged her tight. “I always knew you were special, and now it seems like the rest of the world is beginning to realize it too!”
When Minnie peered over to where her sister stood, there was just the faintest trace of a sneaky smile on Hermione’s lips, as though she were doing her very best to keep from spilling the secrets of a plan that was going so well. She then made her way towards the kitchen, so that she didn’t betray that secret by accident. And, squirming as best she could, Minnie finally managed to wriggle out of her parents’ tight hold to follow her. Her parents offered no form of protest.
“Hermione!” she called out for her sister. “Hermione, what’s going on?”
In the kitchen, Hermione was pouring herself a glass of cranberry juice. “I don’t know what you mean.”
This time, it was Minnie’s turn to curl her lips into a smile at the tingle going down her spine at the secret, whatever it might be leading up to. “There’s no such thing as the National Foundation for Australia’s Future Scientific Thinkers, is there?”
“You can’t prove there isn’t,” Hermione snapped back at her. “And more importantly, neither can anyone else who might get a bit too curious.”
“You sent the letter, didn’t you?” Minnie asked, though Hermione didn’t have to answer her for Minnie to know that she was right. “Why?”
Hermione said nothing, sipping casually at her juice, as though she were waiting to hear Minnie come up with the answer all on her own. Eventually, however, she seemed to get tired of waiting for Minnie to give her the answer, and just had to blurt it out.
“Because…” she finally spoke, “you are going to be spending your little school holiday in Britain, meeting all the relatives you keep complaining that I am keeping you from.”
Minnie’s eyes went wide at the sudden declaration. Of course, her sister had promised, and Minnie had never believed this to be an empty promise on her sister’s part, Minnie though Hermione might take her after Christmas, while she was on her summer vacation, or one of her other school breaks.
“Y-you really mean it?” she finally managed to sputter. “You’re really going to be taking me to meet my family?”
Hermione smiled as she continued to sip at her glass. “If I don’t, I will be tormented about every detail about your existence to no end.” But her tone didn’t seem to imply the dread the actual words might have.
“And I get to miss school?” This certainly was another high point in her sister’s plan. “Have you told anyone that I’m going to be coming back with you?”
“Not yet,” Hermione’s voice became low, but still with a slight hint of amusement, as though she still wasn’t quite sure how to feel about this plan of hers. “I’m almost debating not telling Ron, make it a surprise for him.”
Her glass empty, Hermione quickly rinsed it out and began to make her way towards the living room. “Pack for the cold, and Minnie,” she said in a warning tone, “no animals! Chunga, Spots, and BeeGee and Pickie can all stay home with Mum and Dad!”
Then, as though a sudden though had come to her mind, her head snapped to look back over her shoulder. “And I don’t care if you’re a witch, Minnie, Snape stays too!”
When Minnie’s parents left work, they left Minnie with two very large suitcases packed so heavily, Minnie wasn’t even sure how she had managed to zip them up, much less how she was going to go about carrying them.
In the days leading up to leaving for Britain (or the University of Sydney, the location of Minnie’s supposed camp, to everyone else), the two of them had been spending almost every spare moment they had making sure Minnie had anything and everything she could possibly need for leaving home. It was almost as though they were somehow aware Minnie would be leaving for the wizarding world, a place as foreign as Tanzania or Brunei, instead of just a camp a few hundred miles to the north.
“Minnie, do you think you’ll need a computer for your camp?” her dad had asked three days before.
The question had caught Minnie off guard. She knew from talking to Hermione that wizards couldn’t use most Muggle electronics, but computers were a necessity most Muggles couldn’t live without, especially for schoolwork. What kind of suspicions would be cast if Minnie told her dad she wouldn’t need a computer while she was away at a science camp? “Um…they didn’t say.”
“She’ll be at a college, Wendell,” her mother had said to him. “I’m sure there will be plenty of computers there for her to use.”
“And she’ll have to fight all the university students there for a chance at them.”
Minnie squirmed where she stood. Even if she wasn’t really going to be at the University of Sydney, the idea of fight grown-up students for a chance at a computer did seem a bit frightening.
But before Minnie could offer anything further, her dad had pushed a leather case into her hands. “Here, you can take my old laptop,” he told her. “It’s a bit dated, but you’ll be able to do typing and graphs, and you can get wireless internet on it.”
“Thanks, Dad.” Minnie decided it would just be easier to go along with all this rather than give her father more reason to ask questions.
And so, Minnie continued on with allowing her parents to do whatever they wanted in terms of getting her ready and giving them no reason to question anything about the entire situation. Finally, however, the day came for Minnie to ‘leave’, a car service supposedly coming to take her to Sydney. They didn’t seem to be all that concerned about the fact that the ‘service’ would be coming for her after they had left for work, but more likely because Hermione had promised to stay and make sure to see Minnie off.
“Wendell, we’re going to be late!” Minnie’s mother snatched up her briefcase and rushed over to her daughter, giving her a quick hug around the shoulders and a kiss on the top of her head. “Good-bye, Minnie, learn a lot!”
Her father quickly joined in, hugging Minnie at her side. “Make us proud, alright?”
As she peered over the shoulders of her hugging parents, Minnie was almost certain she could see just a hint of jealousy on her sister’s face, but any trace of it vanished as soon as they turned back around. “I’ll make sure the car service gets here and that Minnie leaves alright.”
“I’m so sorry you have to leave so suddenly, Hermione,” their dad directed his attention to the woman. “They really must not be able to live without you.”
“And I’m sure her family misses her a great deal too,” their mother added.
Minnie wasn’t sure how her parents could really be so upset. Hermione had been staying with them for almost a month now. Minnie also wondered how Hermione was going to go about returning to Australia afterwards since her parents seemed to be under the impression that Hermione was heading back to England for good. Their parents still hadn’t retrieved their past memories, and Minnie was quite certain that Hermione was just going to use this as an excuse to stay in England and never come back…at least she hoped not.
The two sisters waved out the windows as their parents rushed towards the door and pulled away from the driveway. Once they were gone, however, the pair of them stood in silence, as though they never imagined they would get this far in their plans; a plan that Minnie took it upon herself to end. “Are going to take the fireplace Floo again?”
Hermione, startled back into attention, nodded, extracting the sack of Floo Powder that Minnie remembered from their trip to Sydney, and setting it on the brick foundation of the living room fireplace.
Minnie looked back and forth between the fireplace and the two very large suitcases just to her right, comparing the size between the two. “What are we going to do with all these?”
Minnie’s question was soon answered by her sister extracting her wand from her pocket. One by one, each of the heavy suitcase shrunk to the size of a matchbox”Minnie couldn’t even imagine how small her clothes were now”and then went whizzing into Hermione’s open purse. That certainly works, Minnie thought to herself.
When Hermione began to climb into the fireplace, Minnie quickly joined her, becoming much more aware of the tight fit than she was the last time they traveled through the fireplace. “I wanna throw the Powder this time!” she suddenly insisted.
If Minnie was going to be a witch, after all, she needed to get used to using things like Floo Powder and traveling through fire.
At first, Hermione seemed rather reluctant, but eventually relented, handing the sack over to Minnie. “Now say what I say,” she instructed. “Sydney International Floo Network.”
Minnie took a fistful of the glimmering green powder, and through it down towards the hearth with great gusto. “Sydney International Floo Network!” she shouted at the top of her lungs, even though she had no idea what this place was.
Green flames shot up all around them, just like before”only Minnie actually managed to keep her eyes open this time”though Minnie couldn’t exactly pinpoint the time when her living room faded away and the new surroundings they were transported began.
Once the flames died down, they stood in an immensely long, yet narrow chamber, with sharp corners hiding the further contents of the stone-walled surroundings. The ceiling was pitch-black, but he walls reached high, so high, Minnie could not be certain there was a ceiling.
“Wow!” Minnie gasped. “What is this place?”
“This is the International Floo Network. The one for Australia, anyway,” Hermione told her, stepping out of the hearth which was notably larger than the one in the Wilkins’ living room. “Think of it as the wizarding equivalent of an airport.”
As they walked further into the chamber, turning a few corners, Minnie found herself in a long hallway made up entirely of fireplaces, one after another, all in a straight line like rows of ants on either side. Witches and wizards were constantly jumping out of fireplaces only to rush off to another.
A thought suddenly entered Minnie’s mind. “But wait…why didn’t we just go straight to your house? We didn’t have to come to this place when we wanted to go to Sydney.”
“Any ordinary fireplace Floo has its limits,” Hermione explained, as though the explanation was obvious. “You can imagine how much magic and effort it would take to create a home Floo that could take you from Australia to Brazil.”
Actually, Minnie didn’t know. She still thought of herself as more a Muggle than a witch, so being able to have a fireplace that could take her anywhere was still somewhat beyond belief.
“Most Floos can only allow a person to travel within their own nation, maybe a short distance outside the borders, but if a witch or wizard truly wants to travel abroad, the simplest way is to take the International Floo Network. Most countries have their own.”
“Alright,” Minnie agree, deciding to just go along with the reasoning she didn’t quite understand. “So which one will take us to the English Network?”
Hermione bit down on her bottom lip. “It…won’t be quite as simple as going to my home in Britain. See those numbers above all the fireplaces.” Hermione pointed, and Minnie glanced down the corridor to see long lines of fireplace, one after another, each with brass place with engraved numbers bolted above them. “Not every Floo Network connects to every country in the world. That would be completely impossible. So instead, there is just a bunch of different Floo fires that only take a person to one place, which is a lot easier to do. We’re going to have to take several different Floos to different countries, and when we finally do get to England, we can take one of the domestic Floos to home.”
More seemingly aimless walking down the corridor led them to a section of wall displaying a giant map of the word, with each country assigned a different color and number to it. Off to the side, Hermione began scanning through what had to be hundred of slits in the wall, until finally coming across what seemed to be ‘the right one’.
It was a very long piece of paper.
“We need to take Number Sixteen to Indonesia, then from there, we take Number Forty-one to Laos, Number Six to Iran, Number Twenty-two to Morocco, Number Nine back to Tibet, Number Twelve to Estonia, Number Twenty-five to””
“It sounds like it would have been easier to take a plane,” Minnie interrupted. “Isn’t being a wizard supposed to make things easier?”
Hermione sighed. “It won’t be so bad, I promise.”
Minnie had heard that tone before. It was the sort that adults used towards children when they knew something was going to be awful, but wanted the children to play along anyway. Minnie could only imagine what awaited her that might have prompted this tone.
At first, the whole ordeal was just tedious and boring, going through Floo after Floo, occasionally having to stop in some country to buy more Floo Powder. Also, sometime after arriving in Morocco, Minnie was beginning to find that taking Floo after Floo after Floo was beginning to make her queasy, along with the feeling that her brain was shaking around inside her skull. Hermione told her that she was experiencing ‘Floo Sickness’ and that it always affected younger people first.
“Just one more, Minnie,” Hermione assured her. “This one is going to take us straight home, I promise.”
Minnie nodded weakly, but didn’t put much substance into this promise, most of her effort going into launching vomit into another country.
“Minnie,” she suddenly heard her sister say, gently shaking her by the shoulder, “we’re at the last Floo. One more, and we’ll actually be home.”
But upon seeing that all Minnie could manage was a weak smile, Hermione decided, “Maybe we should sit down for a bit first, though.”
Her sister took her by the hand and led her over to a stone bench in the middle of the corridor, making sure she say down slow and easy before taking a seat beside her. Minnie felt her sister begin to rub her back, and she leaned against Hermione’s shoulder, breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth as Hermione instructed. It was probably the closest contact the sisters had shared in all the weeks they had known each other.
It only took a few moments before Minnie began to feel better, but Hermione made her sit of few minutes longer than was probably necessary, just to be absolutely certain the Floo sickness had passed. “Ready to go now?” she finally asked when Minnie knew she was more than ready.
They made their way to one of the domestic Floos, like the one they had first arrived in. Stepping inside the hearth, Hermione handing Minnie the sack of Floo Powder and told her, “Now, just say ‘My sister, Hermione’s, house’.”
Minnie did start to wonder about just how aware any given Floo Stop was, but the rush of thoughts after that just made Minnie feel dizzy all over again. It was probably better to just go along with it. “My sister, Hermione’s, house!”
One last time, green flames shot up all around the sisters, and finally, the traveling was over. Hermione stepped out into the room before them quite comfortably (of course, this was her home), while Minnie remained behind.
“It’s alright,” Hermione called back to Minnie, setting her purse on the coffee table. “You can just make yourself at home”
As she stepped out of the hearth, Minnie took on the role of the quiet observer, feeling very much like a scientist, more so than she had ever felt before. Minnie had never been in a witch’s home before. Sure, she had been to the Kellys’ plenty of times, but she wasn’t completely sure that counted.
At first, it appeared just to be a very ordinary British household (though Minnie had never been inside one of those either). There was carpet, and curtains, and couches and armchairs of matching fabric spread around the living room. The house was clean, or as much as it could be with two small children living there, with the toys of toddlers and infants scattered about. Minnie also took note of several moving photographs that were placed on tables and hung on walls, which were all moving, either smiling and waving or some other sort of captured activity.
Other than that, the living room at least appeared to be a fairly ordinary house, and Minnie found herself rather disappointed.
Suddenly, a very loud shout shattered Minnie’s observation. “Hermione, please tell me that’s you!”
On an instinctive impulse, Minnie stepped back out of sight while Hermione made her way closer to the kitchen until she almost crashed into the body that stormed into the room like a whirlwind, a man who stood an entire head over Hermione with blazing red hair that hardly seemed natural. He was holding a wailing baby boy in his arms, with a toddler clinging to his leg, screaming some sort of three-year-old’s babble.
“Hermione!” he gasped as soon as he saw his wife. “Help!”
Hermione sighed and shook her head; her husband had not even noticed the little stranger in their home. “Minnie, sit down, will you?” she called back over her shoulder. “I’ll be back in just a minute.”
Still, Hermione’s husband didn’t notice Minnie’s presence. All he seemed to care about was the fact that his wife was finally home and was here to help him. “Oh, it’s alright, Hugo-lovey,” Hermione said to the boy in a hushed, soothing voice. “Mummy’s here. Mummy’s back home.”
Almost instantly, the tears began to subside, and the baby boy settled against his mother’s shoulder. Minnie was absolutely shocked at the effectiveness of which she soothed the baby. It was one thing to know her sister was a mother, and quite another thing to see her in the act of being one.
“Mummy!” the little girl screeched, holding her arms up, demanding to be held as well. “Mummy! Mummy! Mummy!”
Hermione stared down at the little girl, trying to decide what to do, for even someone as multitalented as Hermione couldn’t hold an infant and three-year-old at the same time.
“Rosie, you go into the kitchen with Daddy. Maybe he’ll give you some pumpkin juice.”
The man seemed to be somewhat relieved that his load had been so lightened, and took up his mission of getting his daughter juice with a smile on his face and a song in his heart. Hermione’s husband wandered awkwardly into the kitchen with Rosie once again clamped onto his leg.
Hermione made bouncing steps further back into the living room, whispering to her little boy in a soothing, sing-song tone. After watching her sister and the baby for a few moments, Minnie came to the conclusion that her nephew was so adorable, she just couldn’t stand it anymore!
“Oh, I wanna hold him! I wanna hold him!” Minnie held her arms up with reaching fingers, almost looking exactly like little Rosie.
At the sudden request, Hermione seemed very unsure. It was as though even after as long as she had known Minnie, she still couldn’t be sure her sister could be trusted to hold her son.
“Alright,” she finally relented. “Go sit on the couch first.”
Minnie bounced over to the sofa, taking a very steady seat and holding her arms up for the baby. Hermione very carefully set her little boy on her lap and made sure she had a good hold on him so he could just fall over onto the floor. Once all of it was over with, Minnie took the opportunity to survey the large bundle in her lap. Hugo was just starting to get a few speckles of freckles on his face, his hair just a little bit darker than what it had been in the photograph Hermione had shown her all those weeks ago. He was round and quite fat, almost more like a little bolder than a baby.
He was a lot bigger than Nicole’s little brother, Jayden”not that Minnie was ever allowed to hold him on a lot of occasions, either.
“Hi, Hugo,” Minnie tried her best to mimic the nurturing tone her sister had taken towards the baby. “I’m your Auntie Minnie. Can you say, ‘Auntie Minnie’?”
“I can say ‘Auntie Minnie!’” came the loud protests of Rose running into the living room with a sippy-cup full of some sort of orange liquid. “Auntie Minnie, Auntie Minnie, Auntie Minnie!”
Rushing out after the little girl was Hermione’s husband, and once he arrived in the living room and his eyes rested on the couch, it seemed as though he had only just noticed that there was someone in his house who didn’t belong.
Hermione was the first to adress the tension in the room. “Ron, this is Minnie, my little sister,” Hermione introduced before turning her sister. “Minnie, this is my husband, Ron.”
“Hi, hi,” Minnie called over to him.
“Hello…hello,” Ron replied, unsure if he was required to say the greeting twice as well as he made his way over to the couch. It was hard to tell whether his shock came from the fact that even Minnie’s accompaniment back to England had been kept a secret or if he was still taken aback by the notion that his wife had a younger sister she had never told him about.
For the first time in quite a long while, Minnie found herself feeling unusually shy, especially at the concept of meeting a real wizard. Somehow, it seemed like Hermione didn’t really count, since they both came from Muggle families. Hermione had told her about how the Weasleys were an old wizarding family, as old as they came. It was almost like a wizard born into an actual wizarding family was a completely different species from a Muggle-born (such as Minnie, Hermione, and the five Kellys).
Minnie noticed again that Ron was very tall, at least a head taller than Hermione. His hair was bright orange and his face was dotted with what seemed like hundreds of freckles. He wore burgundy robes that seemed tailored somewhere between a Muggle silk suit and the robes that Merlin wore in drawings.
Meekly, she reached her hand out to shake her brother-in-law’s. “It’s good to meet you…Ron.”
Ron’s grasp around Minnie’s hand was weak. “It’s nice to meet you too, Minnie.”
The entire introduction was immensely uncomfortable for everyone involved, with everyone silently begging for something to being an end to it.
“PRESENTS!”
Every head in the room turned towards the sound of Rose tearing opening brightly wrapped packages, sometimes even with her teeth. At some point, Hermione must have un-shrunk Minnie’s suitcases, and Rose had dug her way through them until she found the brightly wrapped parcels from the Australian Museum of Wizarding and Natural Magical History.
The interruption was unanimously welcomes, and everyone immediately rushed over to Rose, dragging Hugo along too, though the baby needed his sister’s ‘help’ in opening most of them. And for a little while, it didn’t seem to matter that a ten-year-old who was essentially a stranger was making herself completely at home
Eventually, the awkwardness in the Weasley household died down to a tolerable level and Minnie was able to have an enjoyable evening with the family she had never met: making faces at Rose and Hugo from across the table and running her mouth a mile a minute, asking every conceivable question there could possibly be about the wizarding world. Minnie had even snuck a jar of Vegemite in her suitcase, convincing Ron it was delicious and that he had to try it, but neglected to tell him you were only supposed to spread a thin layer on toast, not gulp down a giant spoonful in one bite.
But then Ron got his revenge by pouring Minnie her first glass of pumpkin juice, and the one sip she took ended up being sprayed an impressive distance across the kitchen floor.
At a later point in the evening, the children had been ushered into the living room while Hermione and Ron remained in the kitchen. Rose had enlisted her ‘Auntie Minnie’ to the task of bedtime reading, taking advantage of the older girl’s lack of knowledge to make her work her way through half a dozen different picture books. Hugo had been laid to nap on the couch bed that had been made up for Minnie, chocolate smears in the corners of his mouth and his eyes nearly covered by the hood of his bright orange Kangaroo Poncho (which, Hermione had to admit, was adorable).
“Mum is going to go bloody mad when she finds out about this girl,” Ron brought up as he stirred his tea. “I’m…not exactly sure what she’d be called in terms of relation, but don’t you think little Hermione’s not going to get just as spoiled as any of her grandchildren.”
Eyeing her husband from behind her teacup, she knew what he was saying was true. Molly Weasley was notorious for spoiling her grandchildren, as well as Harry’s godson, Teddy, with treats. And this was with the children she saw on a regular basis. With Minnie, who had missed out on ten years of attention and indulgence, Hermione wasn’t completely convinced Minnie would even survive her short visit to her family.
From the other room, Hermione could hear Minnie’s voice was becoming quieter and more sluggish as she started on yet another picture book.
“She looks like you, you know?” Ron remarked suddenly.
Hermione’s eyes turned back towards her husband’s. “Hmmm?”
Ron expanded further. “Your eyes are the same shape, and so are your hands. And you have the same mouth; you smile the same way.”
Hermione couldn’t help but smile, though she wasn’t completely sure why. “So I take it you’re over my not telling you about her.”
Exhaling deeply, Ron said, “Well…I’m still not completely sure why you did it. I mean, it’s not as though I wouldn’t understand parents having more kids.”
The husband and wife chuckled together before Ron began again. “But I wouldn’t say I was ever mad. It was a shock to hear about her, but I would say most of the shock has worn off by now.”
Off to the side, a tiny bird popped out of the kitchen cuckoo clock, piping in a high pitched voice, “Why aren’t your children in bed yet?”
Hermione suddenly became aware of just how late it really was (later than Rose and Hugo had ever stayed up in their short lives), and pushed herself away from the table before making her way into the living room.
“Rosie, Rosie, Rosie,” Hermione said as she picked up her daughter, sounding completely exhausted herself. “It is time for bed.”
Rose whined and complained all the way up the stairs, that Auntie Minnie was just getting to the good part, and she promised she would read as many books as she wanted, but Hermione could not be reason with. On the way up the steps, she was also quite certain she heard the little girl breathe “Thank you” as she lay slumped up against the couch cushions.
Behind her, Ron had picked up Hugo and was following Hermione up the stairs. “You are going to have a terrible tummy ache tomorrow, Hugo,” Ron told the baby boy.
For as much of a fight as Hermione’s children put up about going to bed, they fell right to sleep as soon as their heads touched their pillows. At this point, Hermione and Ron probably would have gone to bed themselves (the Hermione before she had children would have seen absolutely no logic in how merely taking care of two children could exhaust a person to the point where they would share the same bedtime as said child), but Hermione then remembered that, with the absence of Minnie’s own parents, Hermione would have to be the one to make sure Minnie went to bed, ate her vegetables, brushed her hair and teeth, and all those assorted things.
As she made her way down the stairs, it suddenly occurred to Hermione that when Minnie had been born, she had been the exact same age as when Harry’s parents had had him, and when Ron’s parents had had their first son, Bill. And Hermione was already a mother, so why did it seem so strange that she was also now responsible for caring for a ten-year-old child?
“Minnie, time to wake up,” Hermione said, gently shaking the little girl by the shoulder.
Minnie didn’t seem to regain consciousness, although she did bat Hermione’s hand away.
“Minnie, we have the guestroom upstairs made up.”
“No,” the little girl protested, pulling the blankets tighter around her.
Hermione shrugged. “Alright, if that’s where you want to sleep.”
Minnie, apparently perfectly content with this plan, almost immediately began to snore softly, her eyelids blinking rapidly in the grips of a dream.
When Hermione finally turned around to make her way back to the staircase, she saw Ron waiting for her, so that he could offer one last bit of friendly advice. “But take my word for it, Hermione. Come morning, there won’t be a thing we can do to stop everyone in the world who could know about this from knowing about this.”
Hermione by OliveOil_Med
Chapter Notes: Hermione finally makes good on her end of their bargin, and Minnie is on her way to England.
Thanks go out to my beta, Apruva!