Wand-Leader & The Spy

7- Trigger

Watford, Hertfordshire, August 21st, 1999, 12.11 hours

Wand-Leader Hermione was breaking the law again. It couldn't be helped though - without muggle money, sneaking on a muggle train to Euston Station at Watford Junction wearing an invisibility cloak was the only way to board it. The only way to board it without drawing attention from either muggles or wizards, that was.

It was also educational, to see how muggles traveled. They traveled so slowly, they must be wasting years of their lives traveling! After a quarter hour on the train, to travel such a small distance, Hermione couldn't understand why purebloods and half-bloods voluntarily used a train to travel to Hogwarts. Though they certainly had the time to waste on such frivolity - many of them seemed to waste their years in Hogwarts as well, she thought, with a smirk.

Her mirth vanished quickly though when her thoughts returned to what she had seen two hours earlier. How those Obliviators had acted… she knew they were part of a conspiracy, but she didn't know how far this conspiracy reached. They had mentioned that there was no need to fake abuse, since Brendan - who had to be Brendan Babcoke, one of the caretakers in the orphanage for muggleborns - wasn't on duty. That meant they had co-conspirators who were on duty. It implied that the others handling young muggleborns were in the know, but Hermione couldn't believe that everyone involved in raising muggleborns would be party to the crimes she had observed. They had raised her as well, after all. No, it was more likely that the others were less diligent. More prone to trust the Obliviators. Probably.

She closed her eyes and sighed. She was making the same mistakes her instructors had warned her about: She was assuming things, trying to fit facts to her theory. A theory born from her own desires. She was a Wand-Leader though, not some silly girl with delusions about her future husband, like the younger Greengrass!

She would uncover this conspiracy, and each and every last one of those involved. Her duty would not allow anything less. The Minister would expect nothing less. And if she had to break into sealed records, or interrogate an Obliviator with veritaserum, so be it!

The train arrived in Euston Station, and she sneaked out. She had planned to take another train to central London, but those trains were more packed than she had thought - the risk of a muggle stumbling into her was too big. Her lessons in shadowing people in Diagon Alley during the Hogwarts rush were still quite fresh in her mind. She would have to walk until she was close enough to the Leaky Cauldron to apparate to the Corps Headquarters without getting tracked.

Granted, the odds of getting tracked were slim - it wasn't as if they could find her once she was in Wizarding Britain again, nor was there much of a chance of her being suspected - but the Obliviators might grow suspicious, and stop their crimes, delaying the investigation. And, if she was honest with herself, she was curious about the muggle world, after what she had seen so far.

She stepped into a toilet stall, and removed her invisibility cloak, and her robe. The muggle dress she wore underneath was the most modest she had found in her source material, but it still felt rather indecent to her. On the other hand, this 'cocktail dress' would not hinder her should she need to run or fight.

Half an hour later she was still not used to muggle London. Every street seemed as packed as Diagon Alley on a busy day. There were so many people, and they dressed so differently! If they had wands they'd look like the Quidditch World Cup camp. Nothing in the books she had read at Hogwarts had prepared her for this!

At a crossing, she checked her map again, to ensure she was not lost.

"Do you need help, Miss?"

She looked up and saw a man smile at her. "I'm just checking where I am." She couldn't let a muggle lead her to the Leaky Cauldron, even hidden as it was.