Hermione Granger and the Year Hidden from Hogwarts

Chapter 20

Hermione Granger and the Year Hidden from Hogwarts

Harry Potter Fanfiction

Chapter 20

A/N: Hermione's got her hands on some books and some answers. She's ready to take off into this new world. Unfortunately, she needs some time to process, so this won't be the Diagon Alley visit yet if that's what you were hoping for. But that should be the chapter after this, so don't despair!

April 23rd, 1992

Inside her dorm, Hermione pulled the locket free from beneath her jumper, eyeing it for the thousandth time since she got it five days ago.

Her enthusiasm for the trip had dulled significantly after she'd gotten some concrete answers to her most burning questions, courtesy of one Professor Flitwick. So it didn't even bother her that supposedly one of the most haunted places in England had only boasted about four lost spirits—faded to nearly nothing and unable to interact with her.

She wouldn't have been able to get answers out of any of them. They existed within their own bubble, trapped in their past, unwilling to let go. If the place was powered by any Stonehenge ley lines, she hadn't seen evidence of it.

"Are ley lines even a real thing?" she whispered out loud.

She hadn't seen information about them in the magical texts she'd absolutely devoured.

She'd cycled through the eight texts she had the ability to read, even though one of them she was positive she'd misunderstood some parts because it was in old English. Still, the information in there had pulled the curtains back on some of the mystery surrounding this elusive Wizarding World, though most of the books had been on the subject of charms. Considering he'd introduced himself as the Charms professor, that made sense.

Still, since these texts were the most advanced and current practices on the subject, they referenced other classifications of magic, such as transfiguration, potions, jinxes, hexes, spells, and curses. While it would've been nice to have an introductory book on some of these, Hermione was no slouch, especially when backed with the full, unstoppable force of her burning curiosity.

She slogged through, using context and taking diligent notes until she felt she had a basic understanding of what each was. Charms added characteristics to things, such as making a tome tap dance. Transfiguration changed matter into something entirely different, like what Flitwick had done to make the chairs, but he'd used some sort of conjuration spell to make the table out of nothing.

And then jinxes, hexes, and curses were dark magic or malintent based spells from level of severity in that order.

She sat up, scratching Ignis under his chin when he was dislodged from his nap on her pillow, soothing his angry chatter.

"That pest is a menace," a voice growled.

Hermione glanced across the room to the shelf Erl had turned into a bunkbed, near the ceiling. The one crowning point to visiting that haunted place was that they'd definitively tested out Erl's ability to work with them as a team. When one of the ghosts threatened to drift to close, he'd gotten somewhat overprotective, snarling something in Erkish, a hissing and guttural language that brought the hairs raising on the back of her neck.

She knew the ghosts weren't strong enough to be a danger, and in fact, the actual threat in the room was the erkling himself, so she'd switched to her metavision to observe him.

Aggressive cords of his natural azalea energy, whipped around him, acting as an offense. And it was affecting the ghosts. They'd shied away. Then, when Erl switched to the human language, the hints of dark earthen brown mingled into the mixture, and he, essentially because he'd not been half so nice about, had told them they were dead and to get on into the afterlife.