Chapter 5
An Infinite Ability to Ask Questions
“Jayden’s awake,” Nicole announced, leaning over the infant carrier her nine-month-old brother was strapped into. “Hi, baby!”
Minnie and Jessica, her friend with the braces, also leaned forward to coo over the baby boy as Nicole somewhat clumsily lifted her slightly fussing brother out and placed him onto the floor.
Minnie knew she was no longer officially grounded after today. Mrs. Thompson, Jessica’s mum, had suggested the three girls get together for a play date, even though she herself was too busy to host it in her own home. With less than a week until school started, though, there would be very little time left for things like these. So instead, the girls were brought to Nicole’s house, and her mother, Ms. Lee, promised to watch the girls. That, of course, did not last very long. Ms. Lee rushed out of the house ten minutes after everyone had arrived to do some sort of errand, not even bothering to say what it was, leaving the three friends and baby Jayden home alone.
Nicole hadn’t been worried in the least, though. With such a flighty mother, Nicole would often find herself without a ride or someone to change Jayden’s nappies. “It’s all part of the bohemian lifestyle,” she would say all the time. And it was very much a bohemian sort of lifestyle the Lee family led, trickling down all the way till it even reached baby Jayden.
Nicole was a very artistic girl in every sense of the word. Her house had no television, but there was no need for one. Nicole painted, played the guitar, and quite often, there were also dishes that needed to be washed, garbage that needed to be taken out, and a baby that needed to be cared for. Besides, television programs today were so ‘passé’, according to Nicole.
Most of Nicole’s clothing came from boardwalks and bazaars, places where you couldn’t put together a matching outfit even if you tried, and her sleek black hair was always worn up in chic styles that a person would need to devote a day and a half to practicing before its execution could be successfully pulled off. She had boney wrists, usually covered in paint splotches and her fingertips were callused from musical instruments.
Jessica, on the other hand, came from enough normalcy for all three of the friends put together. She had the mummy, the daddy, the brother, the sister, and the yard with the swing set and the fence. Whenever the girls would visit, Jessica’s dad would grill hotdogs, her mum would bubble around, but not really do much of anything. Jessica’s older brother, Brendan, would tease and torment them, while her older sister, Samantha, would yell at them to get out of the room that the two sisters shared while she globed on more make-up or tried on an obscenely short skirt.
Appearance-wise, Jessica was as different from Nicole as a person could possibly imagine. Jessica had never quite outgrown her baby fat, nor had she given up on her favorite hairstyle of pigtails, which only added to her childish appearance. And then, as though just to shock people, there was the intricate metalwork crisscrossing over her teeth, courtesy of Minnie’s own father.
Looking at these girls and how different they all were from one another, Minnie often wondered to herself how they all managed to be such close friends. Moreover, how would they manage to stay friends now that Minnie had learned how different they really were, thanks to Hermione Weasley, her new big sister.
“Who was that lady that brought you here, Minnie?” Nicole asked, wiping a bit of drool from Jayden’s chin. She and Jessica had noticed her when Hermione had been the one to drop Minnie off at the Lee house.
“Oh, that was Hermione Weasley,” Minnie quickly explained. “She’s an old friend of my parents from England and she’s here visiting.”
“Hey, you two have the same name!” Jessica remarked in a light sort of tone.
“Yeah, I’m named after her.” Hermione had told Minnie to say this whenever anyone seemed particularly interested in the fact that the two of them shared such an unusual name. It was a far better explanation than their parents really liked the name Hermione, and had forgotten that they already had a daughter whom they had already given the name to.
“She must have been a very good friend,” Nicole reflected as she began scooting across the floor, following her crawling brother.
Minnie nodded nonchalantly, though the act was near torture. She wanted so badly to tell her friends that Hermione wasn’t just a good family friend, but her older sister who she had only just learned existed two days ago. Of course, she also wanted to tell her friends that her older sister was a witch from England that had come to Australia to lift the memory charm she had placed on their parents so they would not remember they had an adult daughter. But more than anything, Minnie was dying to tell her best friends that she was a witch as well, complete with the story of her falling through her attic bedroom to the guestroom below and how she learned this was completed through magic.
She wanted to, but she knew that Hermione would have her head if she did.
Last night, Hermione had sat Minnie down to tell her all the ‘rules’ she would now have to follow when it came to magic. And the biggest one was that she could absolutely not tell any Muggles (a word for people without magic) that witches were real, or the real reason why Hermione had come here. Minnie was even forbidden from telling anyone that she and Hermione were sisters, though this one she understood. Minnie couldn’t very well go telling the whole town that she and Hermione Weasley were related when their parents couldn’t even remember this.
Though, Hermione hoped this issue would be resolved by the time Minnie was old enough to start attending a wizarding school herself, which had brought up another rather frightening side-point for Minne: it was also illegal for children under seventeen to perform magic outside of school”wizarding school, that is.
This rule had caused Minnie a great deal of panic at first, recalling the incident of her falling through her bed, until Hermione assured her that the law only applied to magic done intently and with a wand. Children who hadn’t started school yet were given a grace period on accidental magic that ended once they got their wands.
This, of course, had led Minnie to wonder a whole new series of questions, all about school. When would she be getting this letter? Would she be going to Hermione’s old school since their parents were British, or would she be going to school in Australia? Was there even a wizarding school in Australia? What would she and her parents tell everyone in town after Minnie had left? But Hermione tried to assure Minnie that there would be plenty of time to sort all these things out later; which, in adult language, meant that Hermione did not know, Minnie had come to learn.
But something else Hermione had told Minnie was to make the most of the time she would have left with her Muggle friends before she went off to school. Apparently, after Hermione had left her home for Hogwarts, she saw her old Muggle friends less and less until finally, they just stopped associating all together. Minnie liked to think she was close enough to Jessica and Nicole that that wouldn’t happen. All the same, it felt good just to have the added excuse to have fun with her friends.
Though even that did not last very long, signaled by a soft knocking at the door. Scooting across the floor, Minnie peeked through the living room blinds to see a head of bushy hair and a body that had still not learned to dress for the Australian climate.
“Hermione’s here!” Minnie pushed herself up off the floor, beginning to gather up her things.
Both girl’s groaned at this, though Jessica’s was quite a bit louder as Nicole was somewhat occupied with her baby brother. “Aw, do you have to leave already?”
In a way, Minnie couldn’t believe herself. Never before would she have been so eager to leave her friends just to be taken home, where she would likely be all by herself.
“Yeah, I do,” Minnie told her friend. “My parents have something planned.”
She didn’t even feel bad about lying to them. She just rushed for the door, throwing it open with everything that she had.
Waiting on the pavement, Hermione shifted on her feet as she waited for her little sister to meet her outside. Their parents had been somewhat confused when Hermione had offered to pick Minnie up from her play date, but they both had full days of appointments, so they weren’t about to turn away help when it was offered.
Besides, she felt nearly obligated to do this sort of thing, almost out of guilt. And the fact that it was out of guilt and not out of any sort of love for her younger sister just made her feel even guiltier.
And these feelings of guilt weren’t just confined to Hermione past relations with her sister. Really, what had Hermione done these past years to support the family she claimed to love so much? Saying she was hard at working researching ways to undo the memories charms placed on them on them only went so far.
And now that Minnie was also a part of the ‘Granger’ family, Hermione could only assume the little girl was part of a package deal. And there came the guilt again for thinking of a member of her own family in such plastic terms.
She and the little girl might have shared a few pleasant moments, among the numerous loud and uncomfortable ones, but that was hardly enough to build a relationship on.
However, Hermione was soon given a welcoming distraction from her circling thoughts, though in a rather unwelcome way, as she found herself nearly doubling over as some force attacked her from behind.
“Hi, hi!” Minnie exclaimed, hugging Hermione tight around the middle.
Hermione struggled to remain steady on her feet as the little girl’s tackling hug took her center of gravity. “Hello, Minnie,” she managed to say rather dryly. “Ready to go?”
But as cold as Hermione believed she sounded, it didn’t seem to have any effect on her younger sister, who was still smiling broadly up at her.
“So what are we going to do today?” the girl suddenly asked, beginning a tightrope-like walk along the ledge of the curb.
Hermione was confused. “I’m sorry?”
“Are Mum and Dad going to be especially late tonight?” Minnie clarified. “What are we going to do in the mean time?”
“I’m not sure,” Hermione told her, staring absent-mindedly up at the sky. “They just asked if I could come and get you from your friends, but I don’t know if they plan on working late tonight or not.”
“You can call them Mum and Dad around me, you know,” Minnie suddenly said, still looking up at her sister with that same smile. “I don’t mind.”
Minnie was clearly trying to be kind, but all the young girl had really succeeded in was making Hermione feel extraordinarily uncomfortable. Minnie might have been perfectly ready to accept Hermione as a member of her family, but Hermione was not quite sure she was ready to make a place for herself in this family that was so different from the one she had left eleven years ago.
“It’s such a nice day outside,” Minnie remarked suddenly, looking up to face the sun. “I should take Chunga for a walk.”
It was at this sudden statement that Hermione found herself shocked into sudden attention. Hermione could not help but become instantly horrified at the notion of her sister’s monstrous reptile being allowed off their parents’ property, free to roam the city streets.
“You take that thing for walks?” she exclaimed, eyes going wide. “Is that even legal?”
“It is if you keep him on a leash,” Minnie answered. “He likes it.”
But Minnie barely gave her sister a few seconds to consider that thought before moving on, fast as lightning, to another subject.
“Hermione, have you ever seen a bug that spins around and around like a top?”
Hermione’s head snapped down suddenly.
“I’ve been seeing this bug for weeks, and none of the books I have looked in know what it’s called,” Minnie explained her dilemma. “It’s really brightly colored, and it somehow seems to know when it is about to be photograph. I’ve asked nearly anyone who will sit still long enough, but nobody seems to know what I’m talking about. Is it a wizard bug?”
Hermione stared off thoughtfully for a moment or so. “It sounds like a Billywig. It’s a magical creature that is native to Australia.”
“Is that why no one else can see it?” Minnie asked. “Because I’m a witch and no one else around here is?”
“That could be,” Hermione told her. “Wonthaggi doesn’t seem to have a large magical population, but if there are magical creatures running around, it is possible that the Australian Department for Control of Magical Creatures has cast some kind of disillusionment charm over the city so Muggles won’t be able to see them. But as a witch, of course, you aren’t effected by such charms.”
Minnie took in the words thoughtfully and looked up at her sister. “Did you learn that at your school…what’s-it-called?”
“Hogwarts,” Hermione reminded her.
Minnie snickered at the name. When she saw that her sister wasn’t laughing along with her, though, she did her very best to stifle her giggles from behind her hand.
As the two sisters made more distance on their walk down the pavement, Minnie began taking on the role of tour guide and started pointing out the various sites and attractions of Wonthaggi, Victoria.
“That’s the park where they caught an escaped kangaroo when I was five,” Minnie said, pointing off towards a city park across the street. “It was supposed to go to a zoo in Melbourne, but the little bugger broke out of its cage when they were driving through Wonthaggi.
“A bunch of kids wanted to try climbing inside its pouch. I did too, but Mum and Dad said that would have been the stupidest thing I had ever done.”
This time, Hermione actually did laugh at her little sister’s words. It did sound like the sort of thing a small child would think was a good idea, and she almost wonder if she would have tried to do the exact same thing at that age.
“That house,” Minnie said, pointing to a butter-colored home, “that’s where the Kelly sisters live. There’s Martina, Melinda, Maxine, Marcella, and…Magdalene.”
Hermione couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow at the long string of names.
“They aren’t there now, though,” Minnie added as they moved further down the pavement. “Their parents send them all away to this boarding school. But the older girls used to babysit me when I was younger and they were home on holiday.”
“Where do they go?”
Minnie just shrugged her shoulders. “Their parents are kinda weird”really old fashioned, I mean”so I don’t really talk to them if I don’t have to. I only talk to the girls.”
But it took no time at all for Minnie to launch off on another tangent.
“And there,” Minnie pointed to another house on the opposite side of the street “that’s where the Hatchers live. The twins, Ty and Tigue, will be in class with me this year. I can’t stand them!”
Minnie then launched into a long series of stories detailing the true horror of these ‘Hatcher twins;’ stories about teasing and hair pulling and stealing things from colored pencils to pets.
“Have you thought of anything new to try?” Minnie asked suddenly, going off on a completely different tangent.
It caught Hermione off guard. “What?”
Minnie elaborated, “What are you going to do to help Mum and Dad remember who you are that you didn’t try before? If it turns out they are going to be staying late at work tonight, it might be a good time to do some planning.”
Even though Hermione now understood what her little sister was asking, she still wasn’t quite sure how to go about answering the question. Reversing memory charms was a complicated subject, even for Hermione. Although she and Minnie were cut from the same cloth”Hermione might have been flattering herself more with that thought than she was with Minnie”but there was no way of telling whether the theory of it all would be completely over the girl’s head.
In fact, Hermione even found herself a bit concerned about the fact that her sister seemed completely unable to focus on any given subject for an extensive period of time. How would she ever be able to study as a witch with this weakness, much less be of any help in recovering their parents’ memories?
There was one aspect of it, however, that Hermione had only begun considering recently that seemed like something Minnie would understand quite well, and even be able to help with.
“Something I have been reading in more recent Healing journals is that Healers are beginning to see that when people subjected to memory charms are put through reenactments of major life events, memories begin to return in small doses.
“No one has been completely cured through this method,” Hermione stressed, “but you and I have a unique opportunity here, Minnie. Just like when I was growing up, our parents are both dentists and they believe they have one daughter named Hermione. Maybe if we have enough matching events from our childhoods, it will at least give us a foundation to begin with.”
Minnie’s eyes were bright and a broad smile was spreading across her face. “You really think so?”
Hermione nodded and tried to think positively. “Let’s try and find out what we have to work with. Let me see…when I was nine, I won a national essay contest back in Britain. And our town library would always have summer reading contests for primary school students to see who could read the most books over the holidays; I actually won that twice.”
But Minnie just shook her head. Apparently there would be no useful angles to tie in on this point.
“Oh! I had my tonsils taken out when I was eight!” Hermione suddenly remembered. “Have you ever had an operation?”
“Yes, but not for tonsils.” Minnie opened her mouth wide as though she thought Hermione would want to check. “I was in a climbing contest with Tigue Hatcher and I fell three branches from the top. They had to reset my arm with pins.”
Hermione couldn’t help but cringe at the idea of metal pins being put in her arm. The wizarding world has finally convinced me that all Muggle medicine is entirely barbaric, she mused. But she was also beginning to see how very different she and her sister were, despite that fact that they had been raised under near-identical circumstances. Certainly Hermione had been in her share of dangerous situations; it was an occupational hazard of being friends with Harry Potter, but she could never imagine herself doing any of those things before she had begun attending Howarts, when she was still Minnie’s age.
“Well, our parents weren’t in the room watching the actual operation. I think it could work.”
Minnie had a differing opinion. “But at the end of it, you got ice cream and I got Mum yelling at me about how I could be so stupid!”
Hermione couldn’t help but laugh just a little at this statement. “We’ll count it anyway.”
“Okay, now I get to ask you questions,” Minnie said, her eyes drifting upward as she considered possibilities. “Did you ever ask Mum and Dad for a pet monkey?”
Once again, Hermione found herself completely surprised. “No!”
“What about a sugar glider?” Minnie tried.
“What on earth is that?”
“A flying marsupial native to certain parts of Australia,” Minnie explained, “but I’m going to guess no to that too, right?”
Hermione nodded. “Clever girl.”
But Minnie wasn’t done yet. “What about a ball python?”
Hermione was beginning to wonder just how many animals her little sister was going to name off, although she did feel she was gaining a great insight into the character of Hermione Wilkens.
“Minnie, you’re going to grow up to have a zoo in your own house, I think.”
Minnie smirked up at Hermione in a cheeky manner. “I know that!”
Hermione sat in the bedside armchair, a book draped over the arm of it and a tablet in her lap, quill in her hand. Most of her notes seemed to be useless and, for the most part, they were things Hermione already knew when she first arrived in Australia, but sitting still and doing nothing was certainly not an option either. Even if it was just for herself, she had to keep herself busy.
No one had blamed Hermione when she came back from Australia the first time, when she had not been able to break her own memory charm. She was flooded with ‘It’s alright, dear’s’ and told her that anything done out of love could have no wrong, but deep down, Hermione supposed she had never really believed it. She was the one who lived with the burden of knowledge in knowing exactly how much effort she had put into the task of reviving her parents’ memories and the exact circumstances under which they were living, namely their newest child who no one in Britain even knew existed.
Frankly, Hermione wasn’t even quite sure how she herself was doing to deal with these changes. She had not even begun thinking about how she was going to introduced her little sister to all the friends and family members Hermione had back home, and that, she supposed, Minnie had as well.
Hermione still couldn’t ignore the fact that she still felt a bit at a distance from her younger sibling, and she wasn’t quite sure how she was going to get over that hump. She knew that she and Minnie were related, and how it was a mutual knowledge between the two of them, but Hermione still couldn’t help but feel there was still no real emotional connection between the two of them. The little girl still felt only slightly above a stranger in Hermione’s mind. Granted, a stranger that had no apprehensions about sneaking up and hugging Hermione from behind and felt as though she had perfect permission to barge into Hermione’s room without even needing to knock.
Much like she was doing right at this very moment.
Just like on the night Hermione had arrived in Wonthaggi, Minnie was dressed in her pajamas, her hair still damp from her shower. She was walking in a very odd manner, and very soon Hermione noticed it was because the girl had both her hands locked behind her back.
“Hi,” Minnie greeted in a coy manner, her hands hiding behind her back.
Hermione couldn’t help but feel just a little uneasy, because, of course, whenever she had seen a similar expression on the face of the Weasley twin when they were young, it usually meant some prank at her expense was about to follow.
“Minnie,” Hermione asked cautiously, “what is it that you have there?”
Minnie did not play any games with the question. “I brought someone to meet you,” she answered plainly.
When Hermione took further note of the mischievous smile on her sister’s face and the odd way she was wrinkling her nose, and her past experience with things Minnie considered entertaining or funny”and the fact that they also tended to have four legs”Hermione found herself subconsciously back up against the headboard of her bed.
“It’s not Chunga,” Minnie assured her, finally showing what she was hiding behind her back.
In her arms was a black-spotted rabbit, and peeking in and out of her mane of bushy hair were a pair of green and pink birds. Minnie invited herself to take a seat on Hermione’s bed. “This Spot-Spot, my rabbit,” she introduced, “and these are my birds, Bidgie and Bickie.”
Setting the rabbit down on the bedspread, Minnie held both her hands up so the lovebirds could step up onto them. “You can hold them if you like.”
But Minnie didn’t even wait for an answer before she set the birds on either of Hermione’s shoulders. Hermione felt two sets of claw feet slinking their way across her shoulder, and very soon after that, a very painful bite on her ear. “Ow! Bloody”” Hermione caught herself before she could finish the statement.
“Oh, yeah,” Minnie said apologetically. “Bidgie bites, but I’m working on training her not to.”
Minnie had barely finished that sentence, however, when Hermione felt another bit on her other ear. “Ouch!”
“Bickie!” Minnie exclaimed, shocked that the other little parrot was joining in as well. “I’m sorry. I guess they just don’t like you.”
Minnie held her hands out to the birds, who both climbed on without protest, each climbing up Minnie’s arms so they could sit on her shoulders.
“Here, why don’t you take Spot-Spot instead?” Minnie placed the bundle of black and white fur into her sister’s arms while she turned her attention back to her parrots, whom she began to scold softly.
Academically, Hermione knew it was ridiculous to be afraid of holding a rabbit, but given her past experience with Minnie and her creatures, she couldn’t help it. When the fuzzy little creature finally settled into Hermione’s arms, Minnie moved on to what she really must have come to Hermione’s room to do.
“You promised me that if I helped you that you would tell me everything I needed to know about becoming a witch,” the girl said, shooing the birds away from her hair. “We spent the afternoon talking about what you needed, so now we’re going to talk about what I need.”
“Alright,” Hermione agreed immediately, scratching the rabbit behind its ears. “What would you like to know?”
Minnie’s eyes went slightly wide, as though she didn’t quite expect her sister to give into her demands so easily. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I don’t know the first thing about real witches. I don’t even know where to start with asking questions.”
Hermione stroked Spot-Spot’s head thoughtfully. “Why don’t you try telling some of the things you think you know about witches, and I’ll tell you whether you’re right or wrong?”
Minnie looked as though she didn’t know where to start. Her eyes drifted up to the ceiling for a moment as she pondered, but then came back down once she finally settled on a question.
“Have you ever eaten a human child?”
Hermione found herself offended once again. “Minnie, I’m not a hag!”
“Ah! So there is a difference between witches and hags!” Minnie exclaimed, as though she had made a great discovery. “Does that mean there are different levels of witches? What level of witch are you? Do you have to take some sort of test to pass to a different level””
Hermione held out her hand to stop the rush of questions. “Minnie, I’m going to tell you right now that the questions you’re asking have nothing to do with the wizarding world as it is. The things about witches luring children into gingerbread houses and melting when you pour water on them are all just from ridiculous fairy stories that are told to Muggle children.”
At this explanation, Minnie appeared to be slightly disappointed. “So there are no fairies?”
“Yes, there are fairies, but that’s not the point.,” Hermione told her. “It’s sort of like visiting a foreign county when you have only heard of it through books and television. You go there having your own preconceptions about it, but you have to learn that not all of those are right and you need to learn about what this new place really is like. It’s something of a process.”
Minnie nodded thoughtfully at the answer before she began thinking about more questions to ask her sister and what sorts of things were most likely made up stories about witches. Hermione didn’t even stop to acknowledge the fact that she probably thought the exact same thing about witches when she was Minnie’s age.
“What were some of the things you did before you knew you were a witch?” she moved on. “You know, like when I fell through the ceiling, things like that.”
Hermione took a few moments to ponder this question. So many of her classmate talk about certainly the more outrageous events of them performing unintentional magic, but the honest truth was, Hermione had none to speak of. Of course, after getting her letter to Hogwarts, could recall plenty of incidents of herself perform magic, like the often event of the pictures in her books starting to move on their own, locked doors she normally wasn’t allowed through suddenly swinging wide open, but most definitely nothing that she thought might have been of interest to Minnie. Especially given the fact the first instance Hermione had witnessed of the girl’s magical talent was something so…so…
“Did you ever get the Muggle Excuse People to come after you?” Minnie interrupted once again, completely butchering the name of the agency.
“Not that I know of,” Hermione said. “It is possible that there were a few incidents that needed a great deal of help from the Muggle-Worthy Excuse Committee, but what I did was just so huge and massive, they had to erase my memories and the memories of everyone around me because we all just weren’t ready to learn about the wizarding world!”
Hermione had meant for that story to be just a teasing sort of joke. She had seen the Weasleys do the exact same thing with one another on so many occasions. But when she saw Minnie leaning back like a spooked animal, Hermione rethought the current circumstances, and decided that jokes regarding memories charms would likely always be quite inappropriate with her family.
“But no, not that I remember,” she finished quickly. “And I assume you have never been involved with them either, and I hope that you never will. Needing to have the Ministry of Magic to clean up after your messes is not something to brag about.”
In an instant, whatever reservations Minnie might have held evaporated as she moved on to her next series of questions.
“What about all the school things I asked last night?” the girl pestered. “Why haven’t I gotten my letter yet? We both know I’m a witch. Are you sure that I’m going to be going to school in Australia? You, Mum, and Dad are all British; maybe Hogwarts will want me. Shouldn’t you know all this stuff already? What if…”
Something Hermione had learned about her younger sister just last night was that the girl seemed to have an infinite ability to come up with question after question on any different subject. It seemed like it wouldn’t even matter if Hermione were able to answer all of them or not, because Minnie would have come up with something brand new to ask and completely forget the question that had come before it or the answer she had not yet received.
Hermione could not help but laugh when a sudden, random thought entered her mind. “Oh, Minnie, it’s a good thing Professor Snape won’t be around to meet you!”
Minnie wrinkled her nose, confused. “Who’s that?”
It was odd. Hermione had always been convinced that it wouldn’t be possible to miss such a miserable human being, but now that his name had been brought up, she couldn’t help feeling a pang of sadness for her former teacher and the fact that he was no longer among them.
“Professor Snape was my old Potions professor who died during the war,” she told Minnie. “He could never stand me, and he used to call me an insufferable know-it-all. And with your ability to ask a thousand questions a minute, he would have likely gone mad after the first day of class.”
“It’s too bad he’s dead,” Minnie replied, solemnly but lightly at the same time. “That would have been funny to see.”
Hermione knew it was terrible of her, but she still could not ignore the fact that watching Professor Snape lose his mind would be something she might be able to sell tickets for.
Of course, Minnie’s talent for asking questions then shifted to the subject of Professor Snape. It was funny how things that seems so tragic and unjust when they were happening to her as a student now came off as being completely hilarious.
And the night went on like that for what must have been hours. And true to her talent, Minnie was able to come up with question after question, some ridiculous, some serious and thoughtful.
What Hermione did fail to observe was as the night went on, the two sisters inched closer and closer to one another, began touching one another on the shoulders and the knees. And then they were laughing, smiling, even leaning against one another. Any other casual onlooker might not have known the sisters had been apart for ten days, much less ten years.
Hermione by OliveOil_Med
Chapter Notes: Hermione picks Minnie up from an afternoon with her Muggle friends, and the two sister bond of the guise of trying to revive their parents' lost memories.
Thank you to Apruva and Riham for all the lovely work they did on this story!