Sydney
The morning the two sisters were getting ready to leave for Buruwangnuwi, Minnie was hopping up and down like a Cornish Pixie on cocaine. Up in the attic, Hermione could hear various rustling and crashing sounds coming from Minnie’s bedroom that made her worry about the things her sister might be packing that might lead their parents to suspect they would be doing anything other than touring the Sydney Opera House or taking in the beach scene.
“Minnie, are you alright up there?” she finally had to ask after an especially loud series of crashes.
“Yes,” Minnie managed to shout down the staircase just before another profound noise that Hermione could not determine, followed by the sound of Minnie’s rushing footsteps.
“You do know we’re only going for one day, right?”
“Uh huh,” the little girl replied.
Hermione huffed under her breath and began tapping her fingers against the door to the attic, all sorts of nasty little thoughts pinging her head about everything that could possibly go wrong between the two of them.
No, Hermione told herself, shaking her head in an effort to shake them all out. It will all be fine. Minnie will have a good time and I’m going to handle everything just fine. Minnie might be some wet-behind-the-ears Muggle-born, but I am not…at least not anymore. Whatever little surprises of magic that come up, I’ll be able to handle it. Hermione inhaled deeply and moved away to lean against the wall of the hallway. It will all be fine.
It took a few moments for Hermione to realize that her little mental ramblings had included nothing about retrieving what she needed to revive her parents memories while at the market.
“Ready!”
Hermione was shocked back to reality by a very loud declaration and the image of Minnie standing in the doorway in…possibly one of the most bizarre wardrobe coordinations that Hermione had ever seen. On her feet were clunky hiking boots, binoculars strung over her neck, and her backpack was stuffed so full with who-knows-what, it looked like it was about to burst. She looked more like she was going on safari than to Sydney.
“Minnie,” she had to ask, “have you ever been shopping before?”
Minnie crossed her arms in front of her chest and held her stance steady. “But Hermione, we are venturing into unknown territory. Who knows what we could come up against?”
Hermione might have tried a bit harder to protest were it not for the fact that she knew all too well from experience that Minnie was probably correct in taking everything she might have had with her to Sydney. She still had really no idea of just what would be involved in getting to Buruwangnuwi or what would be waiting for them once they got there. So Hermione simply relented and allowed her little sister to lead them down the hallway.
“How do we get there exactly?” Minnie suddenly asked. “After the Floo-thingy, I mean.”
“I’m not sure,” Hermione confessed, trying to keep her voice low so as not to awaken their parents. “The guide book didn’t have a lot of details. It just said that if we wanted to go to Buruwangnuwi, then we had to go to the Australian Museum of Wizarding and Natural Magical History first.”
“So…you are taking me, an innocent legal minor, into a situation of potential child endangerment, and you don’t even have the slightest idea of what you need to do in order to protect me?”
Hermione groaned inwardly. It was clear that Minnie had been staying up late at night watching those old reruns of Law & Order before falling asleep on the sofa. Hopefully it had nothing to do with a potential fear of falling through her bedroom floor again.
Suddenly, both girls flinched as they heard the sounds of movement and moaning coming from their parents’ bedroom. It was a combination of rumbling sheets, early morning groans, and feet moving from a warm mattress to the cold floor. “Hermione, is that you and Minnie out there?”
“Sorry, Monica! Did we wake you up?” Hermione tried to sound calm, but her stomach was bubbling ferociously, like a cauldron on full boil. “Minnie and I were just leaving. We’ll be out of your ears in just a moment.” Once again, Hermione found herself returning to her debate from last night, as to whether or not she should have dosed her parents with sleeping potions so they could not stumble upon herself and Minnie using the Floo Network. At their age, one of their parents might have a heart attack from the shock of seeing their two”even if they didn’t know so yet”daughters vanish in a flash of green flames
Hermione heard her mother make an indistinguishable sound that sounded like an agreement of some sort. Once she was confident in the quiet, Hermione continued leading her little sister down the stairs, a slight shiver still tingling on her spin. It felt so strange to call her mother by her first name, even if Monica wasn’t really her true name. But, with any luck, that sort of confusion would all be put to an end very soon.
And potentially open up a thousand other confusions to be added into her life.
Once in the living soon, Minnie stood off to the side while she watched her sister struggle with the glass covering of the fireplace.
“I actually can’t remember the last time we had a fire in this thing,” the little girl remarked. “Are you sure it will still work as a Floo-thing.”
Hermione nodded while her eyes continued to rest intently on the fireplace in front of her before finally giving up and drawing her wand. “I filed to have this fireplace installed as a stop on the Floo Network the last time I came to Australia, just in case an emergency would come about here I would need it. But I would have received a notice if the stop became inactive. We should still be able to use it.”
Finally, Hermione was able to pry the safety gate away from the fireplace with the assistance of some minor magic, although Minnie appeared quite impressed. Granted, Minnie had seen her older sister perform little to no real magic, so even the most minimal spell must have been greatly astounding. “Alright, Minnie. It’s all set. Grab the little pouch over there. It has the Floo Powder in it.”
Not hesitating, Minnie snatched the leather pouch that her sister had set off to the side of the hearth, taking a tiny peek inside.
“Now climb inside with me.” Hermione watched the little girl join her with even looking up from her investigations inside the Floo Powder pouch. “Hold on tight, Minnie.”
Her little sister obeyed promptly, grasping at her sister’s side while Hermione took the pouch from her. She reached inside, and grabbed a fair amount of the gritty, silvery powder before flinging it down to the stone ground.
“The Australian Museum of Wizarding and Natural Magical History!”
Hermione could feel her younger sister’s fingernails dig in tighter against her side as the green flames shot up around them, engulfing them.
Minnie was clearly unprepared for how fast the Floo Network truly worked. When Hermione tried to pull her out of the fireplace and into the museum, the little girl stood fast in her position, eyes clenched shut and still holding tight to Hermione, doing a fairly good job of keeping her sister inside the hearth with her.
“Minnie,” Hermione urged her sister gently, “you can open your eyes now. We’re here.”
At first, Minnie appeared reluctant to open her eyes, let alone move. But as Hermione began leading her forward, Minnie appeared to show a little more trust in her sister, and eventually peeked her eyes open, and upon seeing that nothing was wrong, followed her sister out of the sooty fireplace, clinging tightly to Hermione’s side.
As they stepped out, the two sisters noted the wall behind them lined with identical fire places. This was a new sight for Minnie, but Hermione had seen such scenes in many wizarding places that accepted vast amounts of traffic and visitors. But as they stepped out further, the wizarding influences and Muggle influences of where they were began to merge together.
The place they found themselves truly was a museum, just like any Muggle one Hermione had been in growing up. The floor was made of shiny slate that created a pleasant, sharp sound when the sisters began walking across them. The windows were set high enough on the walls that no one could have possibly be able to look through them and take attention away from the exhibits, though it was a bit odd being in a museum before the sun was even up.
On the other end of the massive hall, they could see the beginning of various museum displays. This was where any resemblance to a Muggle museum ended. All around the circumference of the circling hall were dioramas with everything from taxidermy models of magical creatures in their natural habitats. The large skeleton of a sea serpent hung fronm the ceiling, much more massive than Hermione had previously thought they could be.
More halls upon halls led to more exhibits detailing everything a person would ever need to know about how Aboriginal cultural had affected the modern wizarding world (possibly more). Long rolls of animal-skin parchment showed incantations written in the Aboriginal culture, though they were written in Roman letters, so Hermione almost wondered if the animal skins were just something for dramatic effect.
“Hermione,” Minnie suddenly asked as they walked past yet another moving diorama sculpture depicting the first meeting between British and Aboriginal wizards, “what’s going to happen when Mum and Dad get their memories back?”
Hermione found herself caught off guard. With no opportunity to think of any way to ‘sugar-coat’ an answer for her sister, Hermione found herself telling her sister the very blunt truth. “They’re going to remember that I’m their daughter, also, and not just a family friend,” she said, watching a flying spear circle the room, wondering how it hadn’t killed anyone yet. “It might be a bit odd and uncomfortable at first, but you want us to be all together as a family, don’t you?”
Hermione watched her sister as she eventually nodded slowly, the corners of her mouth twitching uncomfortably. “But what about when they realize they are the Grangers and then remember everything back in Britain?” the younger girl brought up yet another point. “Will we all be going back to England? Me included?”
The museum hall suddenly became very, very quiet, especially since the two sisters were the only ones there. Hermione deflected the uncomfortable question, almost subconsciously. “By next year, you’ll be attending school away from home for most of the year.”
Minnie looked away, but it was still obvious that what her older sister told her had done nothing to comfort her. “Am I going to be going to your school?”
Yet another complicated question with an even more complicated answer that Hermione had no idea how to respond to.
“I don’t know,” Hermione admitted. “I don’t think I have ever heard of anyone at Hogwarts being from Australia. Then again…this is a very unusual situation we have in our family. Your parents are both British citizens, and you have an older sister that attended there.”
But for as much as Hermione found herself at pause with these questions, she continued on. “If Mum and Dad do end up wanting to go back to England, it might be easier for you to attend Hogwarts anyway. But let’s not make plans just yet. Neither of us know how long it will take to revive our parents’ memories.”
“I don’t imagine that anyone in the market will be conducting business so early in the morning. What do you say we do some exploring?”
When Hermione said this, she had envisioned going deeper into the museum, and seeing everything more that just had to be there. However, Minnie’s short attention span and attraction to bright colors and strange noise soon had the girl going in a very different direction.
“Gift shop!” she screeched, immediately pulling her older sister in the direction of a very gaudy-looking arch in the wall, complete with dressed-up kangaroos and dingoes waving hello and shouting ‘G’day, mate!’ in the most painfully thick Australian accents Hermione had ever heard.
“Minnie, wouldn’t you rather see the exhibits?” she tried to persuade Minnie in the other direction. “We have the whole museum to ourselves, after all, and you could probably learn a lot of the things you need to know about the wizarding world before going off to school.”
Granted, a lot of it had to do with Hermione simply not wanting to go into the gift shop, but she hoped that she might be able to convince Minnie to abandon the pursuit on her own. There had to be at least a hundred things in the museum that her sister would find more fascinating than snow globes and gaudily-colored robes. After all, Minnie had been raised as a Muggle, and there still had to be a certain amount of mysticism and excitement towards ordinary facets of wizarding life.
But instead, Minnie just glared up at her sister with her hands on her hips. “You mean you came all the way to Australia, and you aren’t even going to buy souvenirs for your children?”
Hermione might have argued more, but she found herself being pushed in the direction of the shop with a surprising amount of force for a ten-year-old. Before she could even think of anything to say in resistance, Hermione found herself inside, Minnie trying to drag her in ten different directions at once.
One wall was entirely made up of small orange robes, complete with pairs of moving ears on the hood and a very large pouch sewn to the front, which of course, Minnie rushed right towards and began fishing through.
Suddenly, the sisters found themselves pounced upon by an exceptionally eager, over-caffeinated salesgirl. “These are our Kangaroo Ponchos, one of our most popular items.”
“Cool!” Minnie immediately began digging through the racks. “How old are your kids again?”
When Kangaroo Ponchos started winding up in Hermione’s free hands, however, she found herself quite confused. “Minnie, what are you doing?”
Minnie looked up at her sister, as though the answer was obvious. “You’re their mother. You buy them clothes. I’m going to go find toys and candy.”
By the time Hermione was able to coax Minnie out of the tacky little shop, the museum was filled with sunlight, as well as great multitudes of people. Minnie, on the other hand, was somehow managing to lug along a shopping bag half her size filled with stuffed koalas that gave hugs and boxes of candy that seemed to change colors every three seconds.
By now, there were a lot more people in the museum, crowds even. Children ran around screaming their little heads off, balloons tied to their wrists, dragging mothers and fathers the way Hermione had found herself being dragged by Minnie. And all of them seemed to have a much better idea of where they were going than she and her sister did.
“Excuse me,” Hermione finally called out to a passing man. “My sister and I want to go to Buruwangnuwi. I was told if we came here, we would be able to be taken there, but just how exactly do we go about finding out how to get there?”
The man kept glancing from Hermione, down to Minnie, then back up to Hermione, as though what he saw was something a lot more spectacular than a pair of lost siblings. “This is you first trip to Buruwangnuwi?”
“Yes,” Hermione confessed. “I’m British, you see, and my sister is Muggle-born. So neither of us has had any sort of profound exposure to the Australian wizarding world.”
The man smiled with an odd sort of twinkle in his eye, the sort of smirk someone had whenever they knew something another person didn’t.
“If you need to find your way anywhere inside the museum, all you have to do is use one of the compasses,” he said, pointing up above his head. When Hermione finally looked up, she could see several dozen glints of slow moving light flying at various levels of the hall.
At first, Hermione couldn’t be sure just what these floating things were or just how they were supposed to help them find anything. But then, of course, in typical fashion, Minnie simply reached up to snatch one such glinted object that was just passing over her head, not possibly taking enough time to consider what possible consequences her actions might have had. But Hermione found herself even too curious to bring this up.
Held between Minnie’s hands was a circular object that took up most of the space in her palms, the surface a mosaic of gold, blue, and green. And before either of the sisters could give the object any further examinations, the multicolored cover split in half and opened like the wings of a scarab beetle to reveal more engraved writing carved into solid gold.
I am a “Follow the Leader” Compass.
Please use me to find your way
through the museum.
Property of A.M.W.N.M.H.
While Hermione was still staring in awe at the shining object, Minnie broke the clasp holding the compass together and opened it to a glass surface and more engraving on the inside metal.
to find, and I will
point you in the right direction.
“Let me see that, Minnie,” Hermione said, taking the compass right out of her sister’s hands. Hermione was vaguely aware of the sound of Minnie huffing under her breath as she held the compass up closer to her face.
Beneath the glass-covered bottom half of the compass, most of the surface was covered with several different ‘wrong way’s written in bold red letters. In one small section towards the top of the compass were the words ‘right way’ in green.
As Hermione began to turn in a circle, she noticed the compass needle wasn’t moving, as though it were stuck. Then, Hermione looked back up at the engraving on the top half of the compass, and decided to give something a try.
Finally, Hermione said, sounding rather unsure, “The place that will take us to Buruwangnuwi.”
Suddenly, as though by magic (which it likely was), the compass needle sprang to life, pointing to the very vague right. Not having any better idea of her own, Hermione took her little sister by the hand and began follow in the compass in every direction it pointed, though it often did feel like they were just going in circles.
“Hermione!” Minnie whined as she trudged alongside her sister. “This is taking too long!”
As though responding to Minnie’s bored complaints, the compass snapped back to one piece and its beetle-like wings.
“Whoa! That’s more like it!” Minnie exclaimed as she sped off after the flying compass.
“Minnie!” Hermione tried to stop her, but there was clearly nothing that was going to do that, short of a spontaneously manifesting brick wall.
On shoes not meant for running, Hermione chased her little sister through museum displays, visiting families, and finally through broom cupboards and dark dripping corridors. Hermione didn’t even have any idea how they had gotten there or if they were even still in the museum. And Minnie just kept running head-on after that bug-compass, as though she hadn’t even noticed any of it.
“Minnie!” Hermione shouted after her. “Minnie, this is not funny!”
The only reason Hermione ended up being able to catch her little sister was because Minnie had come to a dead stop on a ledge of some sort with the compass-beetle hovering just in front of her. But before Hermione could read her sister the riot act, she was forced to take a closer look at their surroundings. A whirlwind of running, hard breathing, and shoe-related foot pains had taken them to a dark and dank cave with a small circle of light off in the distance. The only evidence of any human activity was the steel door at their backs, the concrete platform they stood on, and a staircase leading down to a rotting dock and several wooden boats floating on the black water.
“This is it?” Minnie was the first to speak the obvious. “How is…this supposed to take us anywhere? How is it even floating?”
Hermione chased her younger sister into the rickety boat, but as soon as she had both feet on the deck, the boat began moving forward, seemingly on its own. It was then that it occurred to Hermione that none of the boats had been tied to the dock. As the dock became smaller and smaller in the distance, and the possibility of being able to jump back simply disappeared, Hermione took an unsteady seat towards the back. The boat tilted forward slightly because of Minnie leaning over the front, trying to see just how the boat was managing to move without any effort on their part. But once they were out of the cave and into the sunlight, Minnie let her sister know, very loudly, exactly what forces were at work.
“Hermione!” The girl threw herself over the front of the boat to the point where her face had to be mere inches above the water. “Sea turtles! Come look!”
Sure enough, just below the surface of the water was a pair of sea turtles, each with ropes tired around their shells, pulling the boats forward.
“Sea turtles are endangered species. Is it okay for the wizards to use them for work like this? How do they know where they are going? Are they magic sea turtles? Is that how they know how to pull the boat, and is that why it’s okay for the wizards to use them?”
Minnie’s voice chattered on and on, not offering any really pauses where any of her questions could be answer, so Hermione allowed her little sister to continue on with talking to herself while Hermione found herself continuing to stare back the way they came, wondering just how crazy it was to trust a turtle’s sense of direction.
“I’m gonna pet one!” These words barely registered in Hermione’s mind before she saw her little sister dangling over the edge of the boat and Hermione holding tight to the girl’s shoes.
“Minnie, get back in here!” Hermione shouted, even though it seemed fairly clear that Minnie would not be able to climb back in the boat without her help.
But Minnie didn’t seem ready to cooperate. “You stopped me from seeing the shark. How could I possibly get hurt by these?”
“You don’t know that!” Hermione argued as she began dragging her back into the boat by her legs. “You don’t know what could have been done to these things to make them be of use to wizards!” Granted, Hermione wasn’t quite sure why someone would make a sea turtle dangerous to humans, let alone how they would go about doing it, but given that Hermione wasn’t sure just what sort of lie would be able to explain it away to their parents, it was probably better to be cautious.
Minnie, however, did not seem to agree. “You suck the fun out of everything! Even magic!” she pouted, crossing her arms and slumping against the edge of the boat. “Fun-sucker!”
Hermione snorted, but decided to let the argument go. There was no use in trying to use logic in a fight with an angry ten-year-old, she had learned that much already. So she left Minnie to sulk on her own while Hermione stared up at the sky, feeling the sea turtles pulling them forward and the waves rocking them from side to side.
“Where are they taking us?”
Hermione looked up to see her sister staring out ahead of them into the vast ocean. “To Buruwangnuwi, I suppose,” she told Minnie.
“Yeah, I know, but where is that?”
But before Hermione could offer any further answers, something ahead of them came into view, something very big. “Oh…my….”
“…Godric!” Hermione finished
They were ships, at least a half dozen of them, all floating in one giant circle. Hermione knew right away that there was nothing Muggle about what she was seeing. These were old wood ships, like from Peter Pan. They all floated together on the moving ocean, but none of them seemed to be going anywhere. The sea turtles just kept taking them closer and closer, and the ships grew larger and larger.
“Pirate ships!” Minnie screeched, rushing to lean over the bow of the tiny boat. “Hermione, look at all the pirate ships! We’re heading right for them!”
Hermione actually had to physically grab her sister to keep her from falling out into the ocean. “What’s holding them all together?” Minnie asked, still trying to pull herself forward with Hermione holding her back.
This was a question answered fast enough as they came closer to the cluster of ships. Floating in the center of the circle of ships was a massively massive octopus peaking out of the ocean, five of its long tentacles holding tight to the ships and keeping them held together. She certainly had previous experience with giant cephalopods, what with the Giant Squid living in the Black Lake at Hogwarts, although the squid had never been quite as…exhibitional as this creature was.
“Oh, my goodness!” she exclaimed loudly. “Hermione, look at that thing! I don’t think my school is as big as it! I don’t think the Sydney Opera House is as big as that!”
Then, the boat jolted quite suddenly before it was lifted completely out of the water. A quick glance downward revealed the reason behind it, though Hermione found herself wishing she hadn’t been brave enough to look. One of the octopus’ idle tentacles was lifting them up out of the water and was now carrying them towards one of the ships.
“Wheeeee!” Minnie shrieked at the top of her lungs while Hermione tried her best to remain a stoic calm, even though her heart was about ready to pound out of her chest.
When Hermione appeared to be taking too long to get out of the boat, the octopus gave it a shake to jolt her back into reality. Only after Hermione had stepped out of the boat did the octopus take their little boat back, dumping the sea turtles back into the water and allowing them to carry it back to the docks, while the giant tentacle slipped back underwater.
“Bye-bye, turtles! Bye-bye, octopus!” Minnie called out to it. “See you soon!”
Hermione also offered a weak sort of wave before turning around to face the Australian market place.
In many ways, Buruwangnuwi seemed no different than any other wizarding marketplace. People were all doing their very best to shout over everyone else’s shouts about everything from prices to broom models. There were even a great many of the familiar smells that Hermione could remember from Diagon Alley. But there were also a lot of ways in which the floating market was completely unique to itself. Food venders shooed and screamed at seagulls trying to steal their wares, children were yelled at for trying to fish off the sides of the boat, and concerned family members stood around those hoisted over the ships’ edges, suffering from sea sickness.
Also, there were the occasional teenage boy swinging from the various ropes and sails tied to the mast…and Minnie trying to climb up and join them, and Hermione barely hanging onto her sister by her ankles.
“Hold on,” she tried to say, somehow managing to hold tight to the little girl. “We’re not here just to have fun. I have an entire list of things I need to get in order to try different strategies of memory reviving.” By now people were starting to stare. Then again, Minnie dangling from a suspended rope, Hermione dangling from a suspended Minnie; it would have been fairly hard not to. “Unless you know of any place I might be able to get those things back in Wonthaggi.”
Swinging in the slight breeze, Minnie’s eyes drifted upward, a thoughtful expression on her face. “I don’t,” she confessed.
Hermione shot a glare up towards her little sister, hoping she wouldn’t have to convey the obvious. Finally, though, Minnie did let go of the rope, causing the two sisters to fall into a rather undignified pile on the boat deck. More staring still…even after Hermione and Minnie pulled themselves to their feet and dusted themselves off.
Although much of Hermione’s energy and focus still went towards keeping Minnie from running off in every direction, she was still given the opportunity to observe her new surroundings. The wooden planks were caked with years’ worth of sea salt, and shifted unsteadily beneath their feet. Minnie, however, did not appear to be the least bit apprehensive. Her eyes were wide and darting in every which direction, as though trying to take in everything humanly possible. And every new site drew forth even more excitement.
Most of the venders had simply set up makeshift stands along the deck, almost like an olden day marketplace. But once Minnie managed to lead her into the ship’s interior, Hermione did find something more resembling an actual shop: an apothecary. And just like the one in Diagon Alley, there were shelves upon shelves of bottled ingredients that Hermione was much better at identifying now than she was her first visit inside one of these shops. There were also a great many barrels of dry ingredients, that all-too-familiar disgusting-sweet smell that all apothecaries seemed to carry, complete with a balding shop owner standing at the counter who was nearly as wide as Professor Slughorn had been.
When Minnie asked a bit too loudly, “How is the ship still floating with that guy standing so close to the bow?”, Hermione quickly clamped her hand over the little girl’s mouth and suggested, at a whisper, that Minnie should go explore the store, and not break anything. The shopkeeper regarded the pair with a very patronizing look as Minnie hid herself behind a row of product shelves and Hermione sheepishly slid her shopping list across the store counter: all Potion ingredients that recent Healing journals had said when added to traditional Mind-Stimulating Potions, created a special emphasis on lost memories.
There had never been any mention of just how those memories had gone about becoming lost, however, but Hermione was willing to try anything that offered possible results.
While the rubenesque shopkeeper prepared Hermione’s list of ingredients, Hermione kept one eye on the constant flash of movement throughout the store signaling Minnie’s presence. In the back of her mind, she kept anticipating hearing the sound of a very expensive crash and turning around to see the shop owner’s hand outstretched to enforce the store’s “You break it, you bought it” policy. Luckily, the two of them were able to leave the ship-shop without incident, though accompanied the constant mirage of Minnie asking just what kind of potion required platypus eyes, and who would willingly drink it.
In order to get from one ship to another, you needed to cross these rickety rope-and-plank bridges that seemed older than the pirate ships themselves, something Minnie found much more amusing than Hermione did. Especially when the other Aussie wizarding children introduced her to the practice of swinging the bridge back and forth in perfect unison while all the adults around him screamed.
Despite Minnie’s constant pulling and tugging, Hermione still managed to maintain some degree of control over her little sister. That was, however, something that came to an abrupt end when the pair of them boarded the third ship, and Minnie could not be persuade to go any other way but forward.
“Books!” Minnie shouted, pointing to one of the ship stalls with a fairly obvious sign depicting a multicolored book stack hanging above the entrance. Minnie began tugging at her older sister’s sleeve, trying to persuade Hermione to follow her. “Please!”
Hermione found herself puzzled. “Since when are you a bookworm?”
The little girl looked up at her, affronted, almost as though Hermione had insulted her. “I like to read!” Minnie argued. “I just like to read about stuff that’s interesting.”
“Like magic?”
Minnie nodded her head vehemently. “Very interesting!”
And still, Minnie pulled her older sister all the way into the shop, as though it were even necessary. If only the little girl knew that, even nearly at the age of thirty, Hermione needed no prompting to enter a bookshop.
The book shop was completely under deck, utterly lacking in natural light. The ceiling was almost completely covered with tiny, glowing lanterns, which at first made Hermione question the wisdom of it all, until she took a closer look and realized that each lantern was filled with dozens of flickering lights, and upon even closer look, fireflies. Well, certainly a lot safer than fire and kerosene, but it also raised so many more questions, such as ‘How did one go about taking care of fireflies?’ ‘Could fireflies really emit that much light with the aid of magic?’, and ‘Was there really nothing simpler than this?’
At any rate, there were plenty of other little children running around the shop unsupervised and there seemed to be very little that Minnie could break or use to get herself killed.
“Go browse around,” Hermione told her sister. “I’m going to ask the front desk if they have anything that could possibly be useful in helping Mum and Dad.”
By the time Hermione actually did look down, Minnie had already vanished. She had probably even run off before Hermione had told her she could leave. After a quick glance around the bookstore and not seeing the girl, Hermione just shook her head and told herself once again that her sister would be fine as she made her way to the rather idle young clerk leaning against the counter.
Startled by having an actual visitor, the teenage girl was shocked back into attention. “Is there anything I can help you with, ma’am?”
“Do have any books specifically on Memory Charms?”
“Their execution or the after-effects?” the girl scratched her nose.
“After-effects.”
“That would be under our Healing section,” the girl informed her, pointing to an area of shelves at the far end of the shop. “You might have to dig a bit, but I know that I most certainly saw a few titles while I was dusting the shelves.”
“Hermione!” a sudden shriek was heard from somewhere in the store. “The pictures move!”
Hermione looked over her shoulder to see her little sister holding a massive tome in her arms, pressing her nose to the illustrated pages and her eyes gleaming as though she had never seen anything so spectacular. Then again, Hermione could remember how astounded she had been when she had first seen the wonders of wizarding print.
When she finally did turn back to face the counter, she saw the store employee staring at Minnie as well, along with what appeared to be a sympathetic expression on her face. “Muggle-born?” she asked, tilting her head in Minnie’s direction.
“We both are,” Hermione confided. “She’s my little sister.”
It was then that Hermione also recalled one part of the deal she had made with Minnie in exchange for helping her recover their parents’ memories: that she would teach her about the wizarding world. Granted, Minnie hadn’t done very much to help in Hermione’s quest, and there was probably very little she could do, but all the same, Hermione supposed that deal or not, helping her younger sister was still something a responsible only sibling would do.
“I guess I’m also looking for something,” she then said, “that can help her.”
Vagueness aside, the shop girl still seemed to understand exactly what Hermione was talking about. Of course, this probably wasn’t her first incident of assisting unsure Muggle-borns.
“Oh, yes; of course!” the counter clerk said, moving towards a shelf of books behind the counter. “Well, the obvious place to start would be Come Along to Coomalong. It’s a complete informative guide to Coomalong, the Australian wizarding school. Your sister looks near old enough to be getting her letter soon, especially if she’s Muggle-born. They like to give the Muggle-borns their letter a little earlier than all the other children. Give the families a bit of time to get used to the idea, even if they already have had wizarding children before them.”
“Alright.” Hermione took the deep green book, flipping through a few of the pages. “Minnie, come over her, would you?” she called, passing the leather tome into her sister’s hands.
“Also, if you’re interested, the store also keeps a list of recommended reading for Muggle-born children; books that will best prepare them for when the time finally does come for them to go off to school.”
As the stack of books became higher and higher, Minnie’s eyes began to grow wide and rather worried. “But I don’t have enough money for all of these!” Minnie protested, staring down into the stack of books in her arms.”I don’t even have the right kind of money!”
Hermione sighed and reached into her own purse. She supposed this would count as ‘helping’ as well. “Why don’t you go explore some more, Minnie? I still have some shopping of my own to do.”
Minnie certainly didn’t need any further invitation. As she bolted back into the stack, Hermione made her way to the section she had been directed to before. A few titles actually seemed to have a fair amount of promise.
“Hermione?” she heard her little sister’s voice behind her once again. “Do I have to read all these books before I go to school?”
But before Hermione could completely turn around, she found herself crashing painfully into…something, all her books going crashing to the floor.
“Oh no,” a light, dreamy sort of voice exclaimed from down on the floor, presumably to gather up the fallen bundles.
Hermione looked down to the floor to see a thin young girl in a sundress, knocked to the floor, and still attempting to gather up Hermione’s books. She couldn’t help but feel extraordinarily guilty just then. Everyone who must have seen this must have thought she was a horrible person. Hermione helped pull the girl up to her feet, hoping to somewhat redeem her reputation in the eyes of all these strangers.
Minnie, on the other hand, couldn’t have seemed to care less about what her sister had done. Once she glanced up and looked the girl directly in the face, she appeared as though her eyes were about to popped out of their sockets. “Magdalene Kelly!” she gasped.
Peaking through her overgrown fringe, the blonde girl expressed the same level of surprise as she hurried (rather ungracefully) to stand to her feet. “Minnie Wilkins, is that you?” she asked, taking Minnie’s hand so that she could stand too. “Don’t tell me that you’re a Muggle-born as well?”
Then recalling her older sister, Minnie turned to introduce her little friend. “Hermione, this is Magdalene Kelly!” the little girl introduced the two. “She’s one of the sisters who lives in the yellow house I showed you!”
“Yes, I remember,” Hermione assured her. “Who could forget that long string of names Minnie had recited?
“Wow! So you’re a Muggle witch just like me?” Minnie asked in a tone full of wonder. “So you actually go to the wizarding school in Australia?”
Minnie was completely enthralled by now. The information that her older sister had been unble to deliver before was now sitting perfectly gift-wrapped in front of her.
The girl known as Magdalene nodded softly. “Coomalong, the five of us,” she admitted. “We leave for school tomorrow. Nothing like waiting until the last minute, huh?”
Minnie’s eyes went wide. “You’re all here, then?”
“Yes, Martina is getting a new cauldron, Melinda and Maxine should be picking up new parchment and quills for us, but Maxine is probably off looking at new broom models, and if Marcella hasn’t found some boy to flirt with by now””
Now it was Hermione’s turn to become interested in the conversation. “All of you are Muggle-born witches?” she asked, her brain already becoming awash with statistical calculations. “The chances of that have to be””
“One in a thousand,” Magdalene answered for her, sounding quite proud as she did so. “They’ve even written a book about us. They call us the Kelly Phenomenon.”
Magdalene’s back became a little bit straighter and her head a little higher, showing just how proud she was of this fact. “And now it would seem we have another Wonthaggi native to be added to the ranks of Australia’s Muggle-borns! I smell another book in the works; and they are going to love the fact that there will be another ‘M’ name to add to the list.”
“Just please tell me that the Hatcher boys aren’t Muggle-borns as well!” Minnie begged the older girl to tell her.
Magdalene groaned and rolled her eyes, showing that she too was quite familiar with ‘the Hatcher boys’. “Well, the twins wouldn’t even be going to school for year six if they were wizards; they would already be at Coomalong. As for the younger two, I can’t really say, but I think knowing that Ty and Tigue won’t be going to school with us is good enough news.”
It was at that point that Miss Magdalene Kelly finally took a fair amount of time “And you’re…Hermione also?”
“Oh, yeah!” Minnie remembered. “Hermione’s an old friend of my parents. They actually named me after her. And you’ll never guess what! She’s a witch too! She told me after she caught me using accidental magic, and now she’s teaching me everything I need to know about being a witch too.”
“You know who else might be a great deal of help to you? The rest of my sisters!” Magdalene told her, Minnie hopping up and down at the suggestion. “You can help me find them after we head out of here.”
It seemed to be something of a brush-off comment, though, because as soon as she was finished, her complete focus shifted onto Hermione, as though still not sure what to think of the situation.
“I never would have thought the town dentists for knowing anything about magic,” she said. “How did you go about meeting them again?”
Hermione had told this cover story so many times to so many people in this country, it felt like absolutely nothing to tell it yet again. But somehow, it didn’t seem to trigger the same reaction of believability in Magdalene Kelly, In fact, it almost seemed like the twelve-year-old was sizing Hermione up, as though trying to decide if she had ever seen her somewhere else before.
Hermione just hoped that the going’s-on of the British wizarding world attracted very little interest in Australia.
“Soooo…,” the girl took her time to assess the story, “you just happened to decide to go on holiday in an Australian Muggle town”and not a very well-known one at that”and just happened to run into the Wilkins’, who just happen to be fresh from Britain as well. And you were such good friends that they named their first born after you, and are letting you stay in their home, even though you haven’t seen each other in more than ten years.”
Now was probably a good time to deflect. “You’ll be going to school with Minnie for the next five years. I’m sure you can used that time to ask her all the details you want.”
Seemingly satisfied with the answer, Magdalene finally relented suddenly began looking from side to side. “Speaking of which, where is Minnie?”
But before Hermione could respond, she glanced down to see a very empty spot of floor where Minnie Wilkins used to be standing. A further, more frantic glance around the bookshop showed that Minnie was nowhere in plain sight, or even hidden sight after a few laps around the shelves revealed.
“Alright, don’t panic!” Magdalene tried to assure Hermione as they rushed out of the under-deck store.” “We’re on a circle of boats, remember? Meaning Minnie can only be on one of these boats. And believe me, if she had fallen into the ocean, we would know. I have seen it happen more than once, and people go into an absolute frenzy.”
Hermione nodded, wanting desperately to believe the younger girl at this point in time. “Magdalene, you know this market. What is here that a ten-year-old would be most likely to run off to?”
Magdalene’s eyes drifted upward as she tried to remember. “Well, lots of the food stands sell sweet things, and there’s a candy shop on the ship three to the left. And then there’s a toy store right next to that. There’s a Quidditch store, but Minnie doesn’t even know what that is, I would think. Then there’s a junk shop that sometimes has cool things….”
Hermione’s feet began tapping and her fingers began fidgeting. She wished she knew more about her little sister, but none of these places really seemed like places Minnie would really run off to.
“And then there is a pet store just down the way””
It was at those last words that Hermione froze in absolute horror. There was no telling the terrors that could be unleashed if Minnie set foot in a store like that with even the most minuscule amount of money. She asked Magdalene to lead the way, but much of the time, Hermione found herself leading most of the way.
When they were just outside the sign decorated with floating fish and cat paws swinging at them, Minnie was already outside, as though she were waiting for them. When Minnie finally did see her sister and her neighborhood friend, she stood on her tiptoes and waved energetically. And luckily enough, Minnie was holding no more packages than she had arrived on the boat with.
That was, at least, until a very busy looking woman came running out after Minnie, holding a ridiculous amount of shopping bags and, sure enough, something that seemed to be moving.
“Alright, miss,” the clerk called after her. “Here you are! Remember, you have your kitty-care instructions in your bag, as well as….”
The clerk’s words slowed to a stop while Hermione stared at her, eyes agape. Minnie took something from the clerk’s arms, but even though Hermione was staring right at it, she still couldn’t process what she was seeing. It was a cat: sleek black, slender, and young. And Minnie was cuddling the thing in a matter that left no doubt that the creature was hers.
“Minnie!” Hermione stuttered and stammered. “You bought a cat? H-how did you even””
“All sales are final!” the woman shouted frantically before rushing back into the pet stall.
With the three witches left standing alone on the deck, Hermione turned her shock onto her sister. “Minnie, just”just””
“I’m a witch now, so I have to have a cat,” Minnie reasoned in a surprisingly calm voice. “Even you had a cat while you were in school. I remember you telling Mum and Dad.”
“Pretty!” Magdalene reached out to scratch the cat under the chin.
No, no, no! Not pretty!” Hermione tried to put a stop to any falling in love with the little creature. “Minnie, you can’t possibly think you’re going to be able to keep this thing, do you? The minute your mum and dad see it, they’re probably going to send it to a shelter. You aren’t the least bit worried about that?”
Minnie held the young cat up in front of her, its back legs dangling in midair. “I’m gonna name him Snape!” she declared proudly, a broad, laughing smile spreading across her face.
It was at that statement that Hermione made an odd sort of sound, sort of like a cross between a snort and a burst of laughter. She knew she shouldn’t do anything to encourage her little sister, but she absolutely could not help it. Since first mentioning Professor Snape, Minnie had been demanding more and more stories about him. For as tormenting as all the incidents had seemed when Hermione and her friends had been living them, Minnie found them absolutely hilarious now, and even Hermione did too. She couldn’t imagine what the poor cat could have already done to deserve such a fate.
“Minnie, are you listening to me?”
But Minnie didn’t appear worried in the least. “Mum and Dad wouldn’t do that to me,” she assured her sister. “Remember, I’m a spoiled only child. And Chunga’s still here, isn’t he?”
Hermione tried to start up once again, but ended up just sighing and slumping her shoulders. She couldn’t argue with that sort of reasoning.
“Magdalene,” came a rather loud voice from off to the side, “where the Opaleye digestive tract have you been?”
When Hermione looked over her shoulder, she found herself taken quite aback at the sight of four blonde girls standing in a perfect row.
“I’ve been busy, Martina!” Magdalene yelled at one of them before remembering the other witches at her side. “Oh, Hermione, these are my sisters; the infamous Kelly witches.”
“Do you remember all their names?” Minnie asked her. “There’s Martina, Melinda, Maxine, Marcella, and…Magdalene, right here.”
Hermione finally nodded, though she wasn’t even going to attempt to repeat all of those names.
“Guys, you’re never going to believe this!” Magdalene finally took her chance to tell them. “Minnie Wilkins is a witch too!”
The five sisters stood in a neat semicircle all around Minnie: each of them blue and green-eyed with hair in various shades of blond. Martina stood with her arms crossed over her chest, childish pigtails contrasting with an expression that seemed more fitting of a young woman in her twenties than a teenage girl. Melinda was the tallest, with long limbs like a spider, as well as having the longest hair of any of the sisters. Maxine was short and stocky with an athletic build, and Marcella, with her short skirt and too much makeup, easily appeared to be the most flirtatious of the five sisters, and deserving of Magdalene’s description of her. Her eyes were constantly flicking in every direction, as though scoping out the ship for any boys she might have missed.
Then, of course, there was Magdalene, who took the liberty of introducing Minnie, the Muggle-born, and her furry little friend to the lot of them. And they took Minnie as one of them, cooing over Snape the cat, telling her about school, Quidditch, and everything else that anyone their age could conceivably talk about. Even though they might not have seen each other more than a few times a year, they all stood together as though they had been close friends their whole lives.
And so Hermione resigned herself to just standing on the sidelines and watching it all take place. At the very least, if Minnie did end up attending Coomalong instead of Hogwarts, she would be surrounded by a strong circle of friends.