Hermione Granger studies harder than you. (her_my_nee) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2014-02-12 11:59:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, elizabeth weir, hermione granger |
Who: Hermione Granger-Kirk and Elizabeth Weir
When: Mid January, before the AU plot
Where: Elizabeth’s place
What: Chatting and catching up
Rating/Warning: Low/None
Status: Complete
Elizabeth had been pleased to hear from Hermione, glad that their double date seemed to have gone well. She loved Leonard, and Hermione and Jim were a large part of his life, so she wanted to be friends with them too. She finished wiping the kitchen counter, laying out the cups for tea or coffee when Hermione arrived.
There was a loud CRACK sound right outside the front door. Then a brief pause, and finally the doorbell rang. Hermione was standing on the front step, carrying a couple of grocery bags, and shivering a bit. She really should have thought ahead and put on a sweater.
The crack at her front door drew her attention before the doorbell. Frowning, she made her way to answer the front door, pulling it open to find Hermione on the other side. “Hermione, you alright? I heard a noise out here,” she peered out onto the small front garden and road to see if there was anything to explain said noise.
“Oh, yes.” Hermione responded, breaking into a smile. “I brought groceries. I figure we can do some cooking, some baking, or you can just send me home with all of this stuff.” She added. She’d brought lunch fixings and some cookie-making stuff. “The noise was… um… magic.”
“Magic?” Elizabeth asked, eyebrows raised, letting Hermione move past her and into her home. “What do you mean magic?” she turned, shutting the door and following Hermione to the kitchen.
Hermione set the groceries down right on the floor, then twisted on the spot, and there was another loud CRACK! She disappeared. A number of seconds passed, and then a third loud CRACK! as she reappeared, just a few feet from where she’d been standing some seconds previously. “Magic.” She said, grinning softly.
“I...umm...I…” Elizabeth gaped, eyebrows raised. “Right, magic...umm...where...how...how did you find out? About it?” she asked cautiously, trying not to offend her friend by her reaction despite being a little bit freaked out by the demonstration.
Hermione broke into a grin. She kinda loved that reaction, actually. It was how Zuko responded. But then he got his own magic, so they were able to compare. Elizabeth looked like she was struggling for words, so Hermione came over to try and reassure her. “It’s not a big deal. I learned it in my dreams. I’m a witch in my dreams, and I go to a magical school. One morning I woke up and my wand was there. I’ve got a massive collection of Spellbooks, too.”
“You have a wand too?” Elizabeth asked. “And you can just...disappear at will? What else can you do?”
“There are a lot of things I can do,” Hermione said, softly. She reached into her wand pocket and drew it out, holding it out so that Elizabeth could see. “You’re not terribly frightened, are you?”
"Frightened? No, just...shocked I guess," Elizabeth quirkd a smile at her friend. "It's uh, just a little surprising when someone disappears then reappears in front of you," she laughed. "Does it...I don't know...hurt?" she asked.
“Sorry, I should have explained a bit better.” Hermione said, apologetically, but she was still smiling. “No, it doesn’t hurt. The first few times are a bit disorienting, and a bit… nauseating. But really, it’s just about focus. I had dreams where I was a witch studying at a school of magic. My wand appeared one morning, and I dreamed about learning to apparate.”
“So this is your wand…” Elizabeth said, reaching out to run her fingers along it, pausing just before she made contact to look up at her friend. “May I?”
Hermione nodded. The wand wouldn’t do anything for Elizabeth, if she was a muggle like Hermione suspected. Even if she was a witch, secretly, the wand was Hermione’s, and likely wouldn’t do anything when Elizabeth took it. She held the wand out so her friend could take it.
Elizabeth picked the wand up, admiring the elegant vine carving running up the length of it. She ran her fingers along it. It wasn’t at all like she expected a wand to look like. “It’s beautiful, what is it made of?” she asked, handing it back to her carefully.
“Vine Wood. With a Dragon Heartstring Core. The wand chooses the wizard, and this one chose me when I was eleven.” Hermione responded, then accepted the wand back. She gave it a little flourishy wave and a jet of gold sparks erupted into the living room, putting on an impromptu fireworks display.
Elizabeth jumped back as the sparks shot up from the wand, putting a hand to her chest in surprise. "That's amazing," she shook her head and gave a little chuckle of amazement. "It chose you? How did it do that?" she asked, referring to the seemingly inanimate object in Hermione's hand.
Hermione couldn’t help but chuckle, too. She hadn’t meant to frighten her friend. “That’s just how it works. Wands show off their magic when their wizard picks them up.”
“Ok, so, show me what you can do,” Elizabeth grinned at her. “Can you make the tea with magic?” she pointed to the kitchen counter and the cups she had laid out.
“Oh yeah. Sure.” Hermione beamed. She moved with Elizabeth into the kitchen, motioned toward the kettle with her wand and gave it a flick. It filled with water, and the water started to boil. “I can’t manufacture tea out of thin air, but I can prepare it if you have some.” She said.
"Gimmie a sec," Elizabeth ducked into the kitchen and pulled out her mum's old teapot and put it on the counter, removing the lid and dropping a teabag from the side board in it. "Ta da," she smiled. "Just be careful with the pot, my mum gave it to me," she told her.
“This is fun. This is more than I’ve done in a long time.” Hermione said. She lifted her wand and moved it carefully and gently, levitating the kettle with the boiling water from the stove. It floated through the air toward the teapot, and gently poured it full of tea. “I typically do things the Muggle way at my house.”
Elizabeth gave her a strange look at that. “The Muggle way?” she asked, realising that Hermione had probably used the term without really thinking about it.
“Oh, sorry.” Hermione said, using magic to put the kettle away, and put the lid on the teapot. “Muggle means ‘non-magical folk’... so, for instance, my parents are muggles. They don’t have a magical bone in their bodies. But I’m a witch. Part of the Wizarding Society that’s kept secret from most Muggles.”
“So how did you find out? That you could do all of this?” Elizabeth asked, referring to the seemingly self-pouring teapot as she moved to sit on one of the bar stools at the centre island.
“I learned the spells in my Dreams.” Hermione explained. She moved with Elizabeth to the island and slipped onto a barstool. “And then one morning I woke up and my wand was on the bedside table. I tried using it the way I’d learned in my dreams, and it worked.”
“That is amazing,” Elizabeth shook her head as she reached for the sugar pot. “Sugar?” she asked Hermione. “At least your dreams seem to be useful for you. Mine seem to be filled with advanced technology, most of which I can’t even use,” she told her friend as she pulled the cups towards her.
“Sure.” Hermione flicked her wand, and a teaspoon full of the sugar flew from the sugar pot and settled into her teacup. “They’re very useful. I’m sorry to hear about yours, though. Is there anyone else here or on Valarnet who has the same dreams that you do?”
“Yeah, Sam shares them and she met a woman called Vala who remembers the same universe. They’re even on the same ‘team’,” Elizabeth told her, smiling as she watched the sugar levitate into the cup. “Although I’m not telepathic in my dreams, that was a lovely leftover from the meteorites,” she joked, picking up the teapot and gently moving it in a circle a few times, a habit from her mother to ensure the tea had steeped enough. “What about you? Are there any others on the Net with powers like yours?” she asked, pouring the tea into their cups.
“Oh, yeah. I’ve met my enemy in the dreams. Well, two of them. One of them is a friend here. He and his husband and I are very close. And in the dreams he’s a dick.” Hermione said, then gave a little laugh. “And there are a lot of others, too. My professor from Hogwarts, my best friend’s Godfather… tons of witches and wizards about.”
“Wow, so you’ve got a lot of people to talk to about them then,” Elizabeth said as she handed the cup over to her friend. “Are you friends with them? Do you meet up?”
“Yeah, I do. I mean, I talk to them on Valarnet. Sometimes we meet up. There’s a woman about my age named Fleur. She’s a few years older than I am in the Dreams. She’s pretty wonderful.” Hermione said. “I meet up with Professor Lupin, too. I’m a bit intimidated by Professor Snape. I wish I had more friends around, though. I miss Harry and Ron.”
“Harry and Ron? They sound like they were important to you,” Elizabeth said, getting up from the stool to grab some biscuits from the cupboard.
“My best friends.” Hermione replied. “Well, we didn’t really like each other at first. But they grew on me. And I suppose I grew on them… after they saved me from a Troll.” She added, breaking into a smile at the memory.
Elizabeth’s eyebrows rose to her hairline in surprise. “A troll?! And this was all at school? I’d love to see their risk assessments,” she joked before taking a sip of her tea.
“Well, to be fair it was a magic school.” Hermione said, breaking into a smirk. “But the Troll was released by the darkest wizard of all time. So, there’s that.”
“Yeah, but were you supposed to have a practical exam on them?” Elizabeth joked. “Ooo, a dark Wizard? Sounds ominous,” she said, frowning.
“Yes. Perhaps the darkest wizard of all time. I wasn’t alive during Grindelwald’s time, but I hear he was dark, too. They seemed to share a common belief that Witches and Wizards are inherently better than Muggles. And wanted to put themselves at the top of the food chain. But Muggles fear what they don’t understand, and there would be terrible trouble if the Magical Community was made public knowledge to Muggles. As of my time, it was still secret.”
"Your world's a secret too?" Elizabeth asked, intrigued. Despite one being filled with magic and the other technology, their lives sounded very similar.
“Oh, yes. You have to have codes and magic to get in to places in my world. There are a lot that are magically guarded against non-magical folk.” Hermione responded.
"I always dreamed what it would be like to have magic when I was a kid, is it as great as I dreamed it?" Elizabeth asked over the rim of her cup.
Hermione chuckled. “It’s better.” She said, then lifted her cup in a toast.