Chapter 6
The Last First Day of School
“Mum, I can’t find my backpack! Is it downstairs?”
These loud shouting matches had been occurring on and off for the whole morning, and Hermione was the only one who had been able to enjoy a peaceful breakfast. Today was Minnie’s first day of fifth grade, and the entire house was jumping. Minnie was especially anxious, as Hermione informed her that this would probably be her last year in a Muggle school, and her little sister was determined to make the most of it before she was sent off to Australia’s wizarding school.
Come to think of it, Hermione didn’t know anything about Australia’s wizarding school, or even what it was called. Wasn’t she supposed to be responsible for knowing these kinds of things, as a big sister? Certainly she was too old to be playing hide and seek, or gossiping about boys with Minnie without it seeming strange. But seeing as they were both Muggle-born witches, her nearly twenty years seniority should have been useful for at least giving advice, and she had none to offer.
A loud crashing sound startled Hermione back into the here and now, and she looked up just in time to see Minnie race into the kitchen, wearing her green school uniform and with Chunga, the unidentifiable lizard, hoisted over her shoulder. Hermione certainly wouldn’t say she was used to the monstrous reptile, but it no longer terrified her when she would be walking through the house and the creature would cross her path, on the hunt for whatever it was that the monster ate.
“I have to go!” Minnie gasped, dropping Chunga to the floor and snatching her backpack off the countertop in one movement. “No time for breakfast!”
Their father, who had been running around the kitchen with a coffee cup in his hand, and had miraculously not spilled a drop, shook his head and stammered, “No, no, have something!”
Before Minnie could protest, he broke off a banana from the bunch in the fruit bowl and shoved it into her hand. Minnie dropped it into the side pocket of her bag and raced out of the kitchen with their father right behind her, his coffee cup still in his hand. Their mother had slipped out of the house completely unnoticed in the bustle in a way that Hermione remembered from her own childhood on hectic mornings.
Hermione calmly glanced up at the clock. Minnie wasn’t late for school. The children of dentists never were. But they were raised in a house that kept such early hours that by the time they actually started school, they would be convinced that they needed to be dressed and out the door before the crack of dawn as well. Hermione could remember this well from her own primary school days. And the year she had found out she was a witch, her early mornings in the classroom were all the more memorable and relevant to the here and now.
With the house quiet and finally empty, Hermione at last felt safe in going upstairs to her stash of spell books and other magic supplies.
Once in the guestroom, Hermione unsnapped the clasps on her suitcase and softly let the top cover drop onto the covers of her bed before she began emptying her clothes out of the case. It wasn’t just because of her exposed wand and the sake of her privacy that Hermione had been so neurotic about Minnie going near her suitcase. Anyone who had a real idea of what to look for could see that this was not just any Muggle suitcase, no matter how it might appear.
Extracting her wand from her pocket”now that she was an official older sister, Hermione had learned the importance of not leaving anything valuable just laying around, which, oddly enough, having children hadn’t taught her”Hermione gave it a quick wave over the bottom of the suitcase.
“Peto falsus,” she recited under her breath.
Almost like the shades on a window, the supposed bottom of the suitcase snapped up to reveal the true bottom, which was far deeper than the physical detentions of the outer suitcase would have led people to believe. Hermione had always felt it was a shame that no one under seventeen was allowed to use magic once she learned the spell. She could only imagine how many times the charm would have come in handy in her younger years, and was now going to waste now that she was an adult and had no reason to hide anything she had packed”at least until now.
The bottom of Hermione’s suitcase was made up of a complete, even layer of books. Ron had joked about it, recalling the year they had gone off in search of the Horcruxes, saying it was just like her to choose books over food. Hermione snorted and shook her head. There might have been valid reason to tease her when they were kids on the run, but now Hermione was an adult with an ample bank account; it was no longer a primary concern of hers whether or not too many people saw her buying tea and scones.
Besides, how could Hermione be expected to lift a set of Memory Charms without a full arsenal of information at her disposal? Gilderoy Lockhart was still residing at St. Mungo’s, just as lost and confused as ever, and he had the best Healers in Britain working on his case twenty-four seven. If Hermione wanted any hope of curing her parents, she had prepared.
In a way that even Hermione recognized as being rather anal retentive, she stacked the books on the table in a very even column. Before leaving for Australia, Hermione had cleaned out nearly the entire British library system on the subject of recovering memory. Almost none of the more practical texts had to do with Hermione’s exact situation, they mostly had to do with memory loss due to head injuries or traumatic events. Anything remotely related to the lifting of Memory Charms was strictly theory-based and more or less written entirely by people considered ‘crackpots’ by the Healing community. Even Hermione felt a bit put off by most of the reading material, but she knew that anything they had to say would be of more use than anything she would come up with on her own with what little she knew.
Then Hermione reached into the bottom of the compartment for the most…animated book in her collection: one with the bright orange continent of Australia surrounded by waving marsupials. This certain book was actually a good luck gift from George Weasley; Around the World on a Sore Bum: Australia, by Tim Cleese. Hermione was certain that George had meant the gift to be a joke from the funny title, something to lighten the mood, but it had actually been quite informative. Tim Cleese, apparently, was an American schoolteacher who, on his summer holidays, would travel around the world on his broomstick, and then write travel books for wizards based on his own journeys.
Suddenly overcome with the need to amuse herself”as George had probably suspected she might need to”Hermione took the travel book, and settled herself comfortably into her chair as she prepared herself for a long read. But instead of starting at the very beginning of the book, as Hermione usually went about reading, but instead found herself running her thumb across the pages, moving them like a flipbook, looking for something to catch her eye. Finally, she found it. Towards the end of the book, there was a very large and colorful map of Australia pointing out everything that Mr. Cleese believed was worth seeing.
Pictures always seemed to draw people’s random attention before written words did.
The Australian Ministry of Magic was centered in the capital, Canberra, while most of the culturally significant keystones of wizarding life could be found in Sydney. There were a few colored dots signifying wizarding villages scattered across the rest of the continent, as well as what could probably be described as ‘tourist attractions’. But on the brightly colored map, Victoria was almost completely empty. Aside from some tiny specks signifying extremely small settlements, the territory appeared to be completely devoid of wizarding life…well, aside from herself and Minnie, of course.
Flipping through the rest of the book, Hermione wondered to herself if there was some sort of explanation for all of this, or if Victoria was really just a truly dull place.
Year five, Minnie thought to herself as she searched the desks for one with her name on it. Today, I am really, officially a year fiver!
And according to her sister, this would also be Minnie’s last year in a Muggle school. She wondered if she should tell anyone this. It might seem a bit strange if she suddenly had plans to attend a boarding school that no one had ever heard of (she probably wouldn’t even be able to give the real name of the school, even). She would have to ask Hermione about these things as soon as she got home.
Trailing her fingers along the rows of desks, Minnie finally found the one belonging to her, second from the back, third column; a very inconspicuous seat, Minnie noted. The desk called her ‘Hermione’ instead of ‘Minnie’, though Minnie knew from experience that it was quite rare for anyone to be called by their legal name past the first day of school.
Minnie continued to wander her new surroundings. Despite all the colorful, traditional school posters decorating the classroom, the walls were more or less bare by the standards that Minnie had come to think of in terms of primary school classrooms. Soon enough, however, it would be covered with construction paper art projects and sloppy, messy paintings. The now empty bulletin board would be covered with exceptional school work, and the dark slate of the chalkboard would be covered in a film of chalk.
Just how much would her classroom at wizard school be like this? Did wizarding children do craft projects…what did they have over the chalkboard instead of the alphabet? Did wizards even use chalkboards? What would they use instead? Minnie set her book bag down on her desk, deciding she would have to make a list of all these things to ask Hermione when she got home, just so she didn’t forget anything.
But before Minnie could get a chance to begin, she was quite rudely interrupted. “Hey, Minnie Mouse!”
Minnie cringed inwardly at the sound of the simultaneous and oh-so familiar voices before turning around and meeting with the twin forms of Ty and Tigue Hatcher, outfitted in matching green polos and khakis.
The Hatcher twins were true athletic Aussies with sandy hair, tanned skin, and who each stood at least a foot and a half above Minnie. Minnie could never remember it being any other way, and she could never remember a time when the twins did not do everything in their power to torment her. Even when they weren’t in the same class, they would still find a way to make themselves the chief torment in the girl’s life.
At Wonthaggi Primary, the grade levels were mixed. Last year, when Minnie had been a fourth grader, she had been in the same class as Daniel Hatcher, a third grader and Ty and Tigue’s younger brother. And the year before that, when Minnie had been a third grader, she had been in the same class as Ty and Tigue again. It was Minnie’s misfortune to have at least one of the Hatcher boys in class with her every year since she was six.
But at least this was going to be the last year of it all. Surely fate was not cruel enough that one of the Hatcher boys would turn out to have magic as well.
Minnie groaned to herself as the boys circled around her like a pair of hyenas. In the mean time, she would just have to do her very best to put up with the Hatcher boys until the school year was over. Not that they were making it easy.
“What’s Minnie Mouse been doing over the summer holidays?” Tigue asked, leaning over Minnie’s shoulder and speaking directly into her ear. “You haven’t been falling off cliffs or getting eaten by whales, have you?”
“Victoria’s whale population consists mainly of right and blue whales, neither of which feed on anything larger than krill.” Minnie knew that the boys didn’t really care about the Australian whale population, but she wasn’t sure of how else to respond to them. It was the story of her life.
Tigue began swinging Minnie’s long plait as though it were a jump rope. “Minnie, Minnie, Minnie…,” he drawled. “You haven’t changed at all.”
Ty took his turn, moving in a slow circle so he could meet Minnie eye to eye. “I feel like we’re gunna to have a very fun time in year five and year six, don’t ya reckon?” Ty took Minnie’s braid as his brother handed it over to him while Minnie smoldered in silence.
The teasing suddenly made Minnie remember her older sister telling her about how it was incredibly common for young witches and wizards to have incidents of ‘accidental’ magic when they were upset or angry. She wondered if anything ‘unfortunate’ were to happen to either of the Hatcher boys, just how much the…Ministry of Magic would hold her accountable.
Eyes shut tight and teeth clench, Minnie began chanting the same mental mantra in her head: Exploding heads, exploding heads…
Both of their heads were intact, but both boys did appear sufficiently freaked out. Minnie had been known for her numerous little quirks among the people of Wonthaggi, but this was something completely new entirely. Something that possibly bordered on psychotics, especially after the mental mantra developed subconsciously into a whisper.
“Minnie!” two young female voices called simultaneously.
The three bodies already in the classroom turned around to see Jessica and Nicole standing shoulder to shoulder. But the twins, for the first time in their short lives, chose not to spread the misery of their teasing as they strode away silently, heading for the hallway. They didn’t even stop to tease either of Minnie’s friends, which was most certainly a red flag.
“What’s wrong with the Hatcher twins?” Jessica asked, clearly flabbergasted when not a word was uttered about her braces.
“Um, nothing,” Minnie answered quickly, slipping into her seat. “Better sit down. Class is going to start soon.”
Three hours into the morning, Hermione still had yet to open any of the books that had anything to do with memory charms.
Hermione had already become somewhat acquainted with the Australian edition of the Sore Bum series while she was on the plane, once she was able to successfully hide all the moving illustrations racing throughout the book from the surrounding Muggles. It was a situation that proved for a rather sporadic style of reading where not a great deal could be learned about the continent of Australia. Mr. Cleese was very thorough in his writings, covering everything from dragon reserves to the Australian wizarding prison, though Hermione couldn’t imagine who would want to spend their vacation there.
Hermione supposed a prison didn’t really need guards or Dementors if the prisoners were just going to die of thirst as soon as they escaped.
But what she was most interested now was finding the Australian equivalent of Diagon Alley. A visit to some wizarding shops meant access to new information, books and journals, and the supplies necessary to carry out spells and potions. And, maybe in the meantime, she would be able to allow Minnie the opportunity to answer some of her own questions, and maybe even learn a bit about Australia’s school of magic, wherever it may be.
Hermione suddenly stopped herself when she realized that she had already decided that Minnie would be coming with her without giving the thought itself any sort of consideration. Shaking her head franticly, she turned her attention back towards the book and trying to figure out just where Australia’s wizarding market was exactly.
This, however, was the one part of the book where Mr. Cleese did not share a great deal of detail. All he had to say about the wizarding market was that their best bet was to go to Sydney, and that the Australian Museum of Wizarding and Natural Magical History would be able to take them there if that was the case, to a place called Buruwangnuwi, which was where anything that could be bought and sold by wizards could be found. Hermione had no idea what this was supposed to mean, but she had also learned long ago that when it came to the wizarding world, when you did not know what to expect, it was best not to expect anything.
Hermione suddenly felt the ear that was facing east begin to twinge, as though from all the way in America, Mr. Tim Cleese was laughing directly at her and all the frustration she was currently feeling.
“Good morning, years five and six!” the teacher greeted them, smiling broadly. “Some of you know me already, but there is a great deal of new faces too. I am Mr. Robinson. Well, I think the best place to start will be to tell all of you what you can expect from the school year.”
Minnie twitched involuntarily as she felt a small string just behind her ear. Ty and Tigue Hatcher were sitting right next to each other, and just like every other year they shared a class with Minnie, the celebrated the first day of school by finding some way to torment her without the teacher noticing.
This year, it was flicking tiny bits of trash at the back of Minnie’s head while the teacher was turned facing the board. And this was everything from wads of paper, to pencil erasers, and even a few bits of pocket change. Minnie was convinced that by the end of the day, she would be at least a pound heavier because of everything that was getting caught in it.
“In English, we will be focusing on three different stories: A Wrinkle in Time, The Secret Garden, and also the ballad, The Man from Snowy River. We will be reading these stories together in class, and there will be a variety of different projects we will complete for them. In SOSE, we will start with studying government, and then we will move on to Australian history. Science will be very exciting. We will be working our way through a variety of experiments, including incubating and hating our own chicks. In Maths….”
Minnie was quickly reaching her breaking point. He was looking directly at the class, and still, this idiot of a teacher was not seeing what the Hatcher twins were doing to her. Either that or he was just choosing to ignore it, and quite frankly, Minnie wasn’t sure which was worse.
“And that will be our year’s curriculum in a nutshell. I am hoping we can have a very productive, but very fun year. So, why don’t we start off the year with a bit of fun? How about before we actually get started on any schoolwork, we play a couple of rounds of Heads-Down, Thumbs-Up? I’ll just start by picking seven of you at random and the rest of you can all put your heads down….”
But Minnie was not about to put her head down, for a game or for anything else. With everything the Hatcher boys were doing while she was up and alert, what would they do with her head down and unable to see anything?
Why won’t you pay attention? Minnie was screaming inside her own head.
But Mr. Robinson just continued to go about the business of picking the seven people to be It first. Ty was called up to be one of these people, while Tigue was left behind, leaving one of each of them in a position of attack. Everything was in the makings for a highly miserable day of school, and it wasn’t even nine o’clock yet.
For the love of Merlin! Minnie thought to herself with the almost-swear word she had only just learned from her sister towards her new teacher. Pay attention, will you?
And that was what it finally took for the Hatcher twins to stop tormenting Minnie. But it wasn’t just the teacher that was forced to take notice; it was every student in the classroom, as well as every other human being within the walls of Wonthaggi Primary.
When Hermione finally did hear the front door open, her first feeling was one of panic. Had the whole day gone by without her accomplishing a single thing? But when she saw the clock, panic turned to confusion when the hands told that it wasn’t even noon yet. Her parents had never come home for lunch before, not when they had lived in England and not while Hermione had been visiting.
“Abdo falsus,” she recited, the false bottom snapping shut in her suitcase.
Once she reached the bottom of the staircase, the previous threat of being caught in the act of studying magic evaporated completely from her mind. Minnie and their father were standing in the entryway, and from the looks on their faces, Hermione could tell whatever had brought them home so early was going to occupy a great deal of the family’s attention for the next few hours.
Minnie’s clothes and strands of her hair clung to her, damp. Fat drops of water dripped from the tail of her plait and there was a very distinct squishing sound with every step she took in her shoes. Their father didn’t appear to have anything wrong with him, aside from the highly frustrated expression on his face. Hermione groaned inwardly. She could imagine dozens of scenarios that could have possibly led to the scene in front of her, and none of them seemed very pleasant.
“Minnie?” Hermione made her way down the rest of the stairs. “Wendell, what are you doing here? School can’t be over this early?”
Their father shook his head and Minnie’s eyes shifted down towards the floor in a very guilty sort of expression.
“School was closed early,” her father told her. “There was an incident.”
“What sort of incident?” she asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.
Minnie continued to look down at the floor in that guilty manner of hers, but their father didn’t appear to be the least bit upset. “Don’t worry, it was nothing Minnie did. There was a malfunction with the fire system,” he told the tale. “Alarms and sprinklers were going off all over the school, and no one was able to stop them.”
The wheels in Hermione’s head began turning as she began to put the pieces together. Somehow, most likely the result of accidental magic, Minnie had caused the malfunctions with her school’s fire system, and Minnie knew it. Now she could understand Minnie’s damp appearance.
“My goodness!” Hermione did her best to appear shocked. “Well, were they able to fix it? What’s going to happen now?”
Wendell shrugged his shoulders. “The kids actually won’t be going back to school until the fire department completes an investigation. With wildfires in season, they absolutely cannot have children attending school in a building without a properly-functioning fire alarm.”
“Why do they even worry?” Minnie argued, throwing her braid back over her shoulder like a damp horsetail. “The teachers are always telling us that if you can see the wildfire with your own eyes, you’re as good as dead. If the fires are close enough to the school for the alarms to go off, we’ll already know we’re doomed.”
Wendell clearly had an argument prepared in his head, though he chose not to use. A rational debate with a ten-year-old was about as rare as a purple unicorn. “At any rate, Hermione, what have you been doing with your very short day?”
“A lot of planning, mostly,” Hermione told her father as she made her way down the remaining few stairs. “I was actually planning on going to Sydney on Saturday.”
“In one day?” Minnie asked, sounding skeptical. “It takes hours to drive to Sydney from Wonthaggi.”
“No, I have my own arranged means the travel,” Hermione assured her, not sure that even she could survive that long of a car ride. “I’m going to be leaving early, so it’s no worries.”
Minnie shrugged and went back to staring down at the floor, beginning to squish in her still squelching-wet sneakers.
“But actually, the reason I’m saying so is because I was wondering if Minnie would like to go with me.”
Now Minnie’s attention had been captured once again, staring up at her older sister, her eyes wide with curiosity as tried to figure out just what her sister was planning and how magic would be involved.
“Minnie, why don’t you come upstairs with me?” Hermione then offered before her sister could blurt anything out in front of their still unaware-of-magic father. “I’ll help you dry off.”
Minnie didn’t seem to need any sort of further prompting as she raced up the staircase past her sister, and even led the way to Hermione’s room. By the time Hermione reached the guestroom, Minnie was already standing in the middle of the floor, hopping up and down in her shoes with a towel in her hand.
“Shoes off, Minnie,” Hermione ordered the little girl as she made her way in. “Put them over the air vent so they can dry. You probably won’t be able to wear them to school tomorrow.”
Minnie promptly obeyed, then rushed back to her previous spot, almost squealing like an over-excited puppy.
“Undo your plait so we can get your hair completely dry as well.”
Again, Minnie obeyed her older sister with no hesitation, as though to do so would be to delay whatever secret the woman was preparing to tell her. Hermione was actually surprised to see how bushy Minnie’s hair really was, even when damp; so much like her own had been at that age.
“So you had quite a first day of school, from what I understand,” Hermione said, taking the towel and beginning to run Minnie’s hair through it.
Minnie nodded wordlessly, but her expression spoke volumes. Her previous excitement all but vanished and the little girl went back to her previous guilt and stared down at the floor.
“Minnie,” Hermione had to ask, “did you do all that with your school alarm system?”
Minnie spun her head around fast, her eyes wide with horror at what she was potentially being accused of.
“Not on purpose!” the girl tried to defend herself. “It was that accidental magic-thing you were telling me about before! I swear!”
“Here,” Hermione directed as she gave up on the towel and extracted her wand. “Hold your arms out. I’ll dry your clothes. Why don’t you tell me what happened?”
“It was Ty and Tigue Hatcher,” Minnie complained vocally, “and my stupid new teacher!” Those boys were flicking rubbish and balls of paper at my head for nearly a half hour, and Mr. was too dim to even notice! I am so glad I’m not going to have to have him for year six next year!”
Hermione sighed and shook her head, nearly laughing at the intensity of her little sister’s emotions. “Turn around now.”
Minnie turned her back to Hermione, still holding out her arms. “Do you think the Ministry of Magic is going to come looking for me now?”
“I don’t know,” Hermione confessed honestly. “If they wanted to talk to you, they probably would have come and found you already. Mechanical systems breaking down really aren’t especially extraordinary, so they’ll probably just let it go this time…unless the people conducting the investigation find some reason to suspect something out of the ordinary.”
The corners of Minnie’s mouth began twitching from side to side. “Has anyone ever gone to jail because of accidental magic?”
Hermione sighed again, sliding her wand back into her pocket as soon Minnie appeared to be completely dry. The explanation Hermione had given seemed to be doing nothing to make Minnie feel better. It only seemed to be serving to give the girl more things to worry about.
“Let’s try talking about happy things for a bit, shall we?” Hermione plucked the quilt up off the end of her bed. “Here. Take this, wrap yourself up, and then have a seat.” Hermione motioned towards the edge of the bed.
But Minnie looked up at her sister with delightfully skeptic eyes, which Hermione previously didn’t think could be possible. Though she still did as her older sister said, wrapping herself in the quilt and taking a seat on the bed beside Hermione”leaning against her shoulder.
“Are you excited to go to Sydney?” Hermione brought up.
That was what it took to finally snap the little girl out of her worry, just as quickly as she had fallen into it. She looked up at Hermione with a glimmer in her eyes whenever anything involving magic was brought up. “Alright, Hermione,” she said. “What’re you really planning?”
Now that her little sister was finally back in her good mood, now was probably as good a time as any to tell her what was really in store. “We’re not going to Sydney to sight-see, Minnie. We’re going there so we can go to Buruwangnuwi.”
Minnie’s nose wrinkled just slightly. “Never heard of it.”
“I’m not surprised,” Hermione told her, placing her arm around the little girl’s shoulder. “Buruwangnuwi is supposedly the Australian wizarding market.”
Upon first hearing this news, Minnie was all the smiles and giggles and squeals that Hermione had been expecting, but then she suddenly stopped, as though puzzled. “What do you mean ‘supposedly’?”
Hermione shrugged her shoulders, incidentally pulling her sister closer. “Well, my guidebook only says that if we want to find this market, our best bet would be to go to Sydney.”
Minnie’s brow was furrowed. “But…wouldn’t a bunch of shops always be in the same place?” she asked. “Where else would they be?”
Inhaling deeply, Hermione considered her next words carefully. “If you learn one thing as a Muggle-born witch, Minnie, it’s that the wizarding world will always surprise you. And when your information says something that does not seem like it makes sense, you can expect it to be something you can’t even imagine.”
Minnie nodded against her sister’s side, accepting the explanation just as Hermione had given it to her. “How are we going to get there anyway?” she did ask, though. “Are we really going to be driving or taking the train? That is going to be brutal!”
“No,” Hermione told her, “we’re going to be using wizarding methods of transportation.”
Minnie looked up at her sister’s face, her interest clearly peaked.
“We’re going to travel by fire,” Hermione explained. “It’s called the Floo Network. We step into a fireplace, drop what is called Floo Powder, we call out the name of the place, and the fire will take us there.”
“We won’t get burned?” the little girl asked the obvious question.
“It hasn’t happened to me yet.” Suddenly, Hermione thought of something. “And before you ask, no, I have no idea why that is or how it works.”
“It’s just magic, right?” Minnie finished the statement and Hermione nodded in agreement, more out of exhaustion than anything else.
Hermione by OliveOil_Med
Chapter Notes: Minnie has her last first day of Muggle school, and Hermione surveys the geography of the Australian wizarding world.
Thank you to Riham, my beta, and Phia, my Australian cultural advisor!