Hermione Granger and the Year Hidden from Hogwarts

Chapter 6

Hermione Granger and the Year Hidden from Hogwarts

Harry Potter Fanfiction

Chapter 6

March 12th, 1986

Hermione huffed in frustration, tossing down the antique pocket watch with little care.

"Hermione Jean!" Dad called out, affronted. "You can't be stroppy at not achieving that psycho-symmetry thing on your first go. It's only been two months."

Hermione sighed. "It's psychometry, Daddy, and I mastered that last month."

Interest piqued, he brought his mug of coffee over and sat at the table, picking up a lace handkerchief. "Really? What did you get from this?"

"Old lady, Ambicus Horatius."

"Unfortunate name, that."

"Her husband had it custom made for her in the early nineteen hundreds, and she treasured it as a momentum of his love until the day she died."

Her dad's face softened, and his eyes misted. "That's so...beautiful."

"Yes. Of course, I complimented Dr. Hampton on MI5's cleaning skills."

He sniffed and tore his eyes from the delicate cloth on the tip of his finger. "Why's that?"

"Well, she was an elderly widowed woman that died of a heart attack alone in her home. The neighbors called in a smell complaint before anyone realized—"

Dr. Granger's eyes had rounded with horror before he dropped the monogrammed hanky as if it'd spontaneously combusted. "Okay, okay! I get the picture."

He sat there for a moment more before he released a full-bodied shiver. "I think I need to wash my hands."

"But I already told you how well they cleaned—"

"Let it go, Tootsie Pants," her dad parried before turning and leaning back against the counter. "Did you really see all that just by touching it?"

Hermione shrugged. "The stronger memories were from when she was alive, so I was spared a lot of the gorier stages of post-mortem decomp—"

Dr. Granger closed his eyes and raised a hand as if see no evil, hear no evil were a thing. "Right, right. So those parts were...what, blurry?"

"Yes, I guess you could say that, but faded might be a more apt descriptor. Muted, even."

Her dad gave her a deadpanned look. "Hermione, bug, you're splitting hairs again. Remember we talked about—"

Hermione folded her arms and glared at the table. "Right, my being 'precocious.'"

"Now, now, your teacher said that, not us, and you're the one that came to us for advice about that. If you'll recall, I said I liked you just the way you are. Remember?"

Hermione sighed, pushing around a thimble. "Yes, but it really is better for me to learn. I know now that it's not just my peers in school being immature if the adults think it too. And a fair share of the ghosts. I could do with a little more...tact."

Her dad reclaimed his seat, reaching for his coffee, spotting how close the handkerchief had landed next to his mug, and seemed to change his mind, swallowing thickly. "Well, self-improvement and introspection are never a bad thing, pookie. In fact, some of the best philosophers got their start that way," he joked.

Hermione didn't smile, staring down at the grain of the wooden table as if committing it to memory.

He sighed. "If you're not upset about this psy-comedy—"