Welcome back, and thanks again for the feedback. This chapter was particularly satisfying to write, because it spotlights the real Hermione who was Harry's greatest asset in the first five books. Our favorite witch's greatest strength is not her magic, but her incredible brain. If you missed that aspect of Hermione in HBP, scroll down and see if this version is more to your liking.
Even with The Three Broomsticks nigh deserted, it was a miracle that Hermione made it to the door without blundering
into someone, so distracted was she over Justin's words to Harry.
"It's not true," she muttered thickly as she stumbled out into the street and immediately fell against a dustbin to keep from collapsing. Her legs seemed suddenly unable to support her weight. "Justin was just guessing...he didn't know what he was saying..."
Then why did Harry go all red? echoed the voice in the back of her head. Why didn't he deny it? Why didn't he simply tell Justin that his innuendo was just that and nothing more?
"No," Hermione shook her head, coming perilously close to dislodging the hood of her Cloak. "I won't believe it...not without proof."
Then get it, the voice retorted. You have the means at hand -- or rather, on your hand.
Hermione bit her lip sharply, the resulting jolt of pain bringing her thoughts back to the reality of the moment. She lifted her left hand and sent a mental command to her ring, which instantly began to hum softly. Hermione Disapparated an instant before a hag with an eye patch stumbled into the dustbin, dropping a half-empty bottle of firewhiskey so that it shattered on the stone sidewalk.
In the wink of an eye, Hermione found herself standing on the edge of a narrow backstreet in Muggle London. She saw at once that this was not one of the better neighborhoods in the city. The sidewalk under her feet was cracked, and tufts of straggly grass and weeds struggled their way toward the sunlight through these gaps. The buildings on either side were in no better state, varying only in the degree of shabbiness which hung on them like an old and tattered cloak. A few looked as if they might crumble to dust before Hermione's eyes.
Coming to herself with a sudden jolt of awareness, Hermione was barely able to fling herself out of the path of a quick-striding pedestrian, who had no slightest notion that the seemingly empty sidewalk before him was in fact occupied by a witch wearing an Invisibility Cloak. She ducked into a deserted doorway and ran an appraising eye up and down the street. Harry was undoubtedly in one of these buildings. What he was doing there was a subject on which she feared to speculate. Blocking out such thoughts, she gave her ring a mental prod, whereupon it jerked her hand forward to point at the building directly across the street from her hiding place.
If the other buildings were disreputable, this one was abject in the extreme. In was five stories in height, and its windows were boarded up from first to last. Here and there a board hung askew, revealing window glass either black with grime or missing altogether. Hermione watched as pedestrians passed in either direction. Not a one of them gave the slightest notice to this building. This was not unusual of itself. The inhabitants of this neighborhood may simply have seen it so often that it had long since fallen beneath their notice. But Hermione's suspicious nature left her less than convinced. Something about this building reminded her of St. Mungo's Hospital, the secrecy of which was maintained by a facade of abandonment not unlike that presented here. Hermione had seen Muggle-repelling spells at work in many forms in her short but adventurous life. When a wizard structure must needs exist in full view of Muggles, it was common to place spells around it prompting non-magical folk to ignore it altogether. This was easily accomplished in respect to a single structure. Safeguarding an entire village such as Hogsmeade, however, was quite another matter.
Without realizing she had done so, Hermione found herself opening the flap of her bag. Her hand emerged with a large envelope of yellow parchment on which both the Ministry seal and the word "Classified" were emblazoned in red. From this she extracted a sheaf of glossy photographs, their surfaces glinting in the afternoon sun even through the fabric of the Cloak. As she tucked the envelope under her arm to free her hands, her eyes fell on three words inscribed in black ink across the flap: Suspected Polyjuice Brothels.
Hermione flipped through the photos slowly, her eyes shifting back and forth between the images thereon and the building standing ominously before her. Abruptly she stopped, her hands trembling as she clutched the stack of photos with steely fingers. She scrutinized the topmost photo with unblinking eyes for nearly a full minute before turning it over. As with the envelope, the back of the photo bore the legend "Suspected Polyjuice Brothel." Pulling a stubby pencil from her pocket, Hermione scratched out the word "Suspected" and wrote underneath it "Likely."
Returning the photos to her envelope and the envelope to her bag, Hermione dashed across the street on unsteady legs, checking for traffic both motorized and pedal, and approached the front door of the tomb-like building. It stood at the head of a low tier of crumbling steps, and though boarded up in like manner as the windows, it appeared to be an ordinary glass door of the type common to office buildings throughout London and the world. As Hermione pondered her next move, her peripheral vision detected movement on her left, and she dodged aside to avoid a pedestrian who was strolling along at a leisurely pace with a vapid expression on his face and a tuneless song on his lips. As she awaited the man's passage, Hermione reminded herself not to become so distracted as to forget that she was still invisible. A collision with an unseen person was not a common occurrence in Muggle London; of course, she could always modify the man's memory at need (for which she was duly qualified, even if she was not a designated member of the Obliviator Squad) -- but that would mean additional paperwork at the office tomorrow morning, and she already had enough on her plate without an additional trip to the buffet.
But as Hermione stood beside the iron railing which clung precariously to either side of the steps, waiting for the man to pass, she was startled to see him stop dead in his tracks, look quickly in either direction, and bound right past her to the foot of the blocked door. As his unseen watcher's eyes narrowed, the man plunged his hand inside his jacket and drew forth a wand! He quickly pointed this at the door and murmured, "Alohomora!" The boarded-up door swung open noiselessly, and the wizard -- for such Hermione now knew him to be -- entered the building with the smooth confidence of one following a routine of long familiarity.
As the wizard disappeared from view, the door closed slowly behind him, drawn back into its frame by a common spring-arm. In that instant, Hermione acted with the decisiveness which had been her trademark since her first year at Hogwarts. She bounded up the steps and slipped inside, narrowly avoiding catching the hem of the Cloak on the corner of the door. She heard a click behind her, and she knew that the door had sealed itself automatically from aught but magical intrusion. Even had a Muggle seen the wizard enter, he could no more have opened the door without a wand than pick up the building and fling it into the Thames.
Hermione was only mildly surprised at the sight which met her eyes upon her entry. The dilapidated outer shell of the building was, as she had surmised, merely a camouflage. The corridor in which she now stood was nothing short of immaculate. The walls were eggshell white, interrupted at precise intervals by framed paintings and an occasional potted plant.
Notable by their absence were doors of any kind. Naught but unbroken wall showed between the regularly-spaced paintings. This might have given Hermione pause for thought, but her foresight and inspiration at following the wizard inside rather than entering at a later (and presumably safer) time bore instantaneous fruit. As Hermione stood discreetly by the door, she watched as the wizard walked slowly along the left-hand wall, nodding at each painting as he went. Hermione was struck by the indelible impression that he was counting the paintings as he passed each in turn, and this was confirmed in her eyes when he stopped abruptly, looked back along the line of paintings as if recounting them, and nodded with a satisfied smile.
As Hermione crept silently up the corridor (grateful for the plush carpeting which muffled her footsteps), she fully expected to see the wizard extend his wand again in yet another bid for magical ingress. Instead, he returned his wand to its pocket in his Muggle jacket and, to Hermione's surprise, extended his index finger toward the painting before which he stood. Though her point of vantage was less than ideal, Hermione could see that the painting was of a small village, which skyline was dominated by an ornate clock tower. His hand moving with sure confidence, the wizard touched the numbers 12, 6, 3 and 9 on the painted clock in rapid succession. This done, he paused, his face screwing up as if in deep thought. After a few seconds' concentration, his features relaxed and he touched the clock face one last time between the 8 and 9. His smile broadened as he took a single step to his right -- and promptly strode through the blank wall as if it were naught but milky white fog.
Alone now in the hallway, Hermione approached the place where the now departed wizard had stood. Not daring yet to emerge from the Invisibility Cloak, she extended a single finger past its concealing folds and touched the wall through which the wizard had disappeared. She was entirely unsurprised to find it solid once more. With a knowledgeable nod, Hermione drew back her hand and touched her finger to her chin thoughtfully. This corridor was undoubtedly Charmed in like manner as the barrier between platforms 9 and 10 at King's Cross Station. The difference here was that each hidden "doorway" was clearly accessible only upon entry of a number code transmitted via the paintings. This seemed reinforced by her observation that, though no two paintings were alike, each one bore, in one form or another, the face of some kind of timepiece, be it mantel clock, pocket watch, or even (in the midst of a garden landscape) a sundial.
But a frown was now spreading across Hermione's unseen features. As certain as she was of her hypothesis, she was equally certain that to enter the wrong sequence of numbers must raise an alarm of sorts, dooming her mission almost before it was begun.
The first four numbers entered by the wizard had been rudimentary. They were nothing more than the four compass points, North, South, East and West, in the order in which most people were wont to recite them. These were undoubtedly a priming sequence to set up the key fifth number. And here was where Hermione was stymied, for the angle of her observation had made it impossible for her to see precisely where the wizard's finger had touched the clock face to enter the crucial last number. It was somewhere between the 8 and 9, of that she was certain. But there were no true numbers in that space, merely tiny dots. Which of those dots had the wizard touched to gain entry to the chamber beyond? She dared not trust to guesswork. If she did not choose correctly the first time, she would almost certainly get no second chance -- not today, and perhaps not ever.
"Think, Hermione," she muttered vexedly. "Just do what Ginny said. Use that brain that got you all those O.W.L.'s and N.E.W.T.'s! The answer is right in front of you! Think!"
Hermione walked back and forth between the painting and the wall through which the wizard had vanished, muttering under her breath and heedless of the Invisibility Cloak as it whipped about her ankles.
"The number probably changes regularly, for security reasons. Otherwise, there'd be no safeguard against unauthorized entry -- like mine, for instance," she added with a short, hushed laugh. "But if that's so, how do the patrons know what number to use each time? While there are undoubtedly regular visitors who might be able to memorize a sequence of numbers, for the most part wizards must come and go at random. Yet they must use the correct number each time or be denied entry! So now do they know?"
Hermione continued to pace, her right hand now fisted and gently slapping her left palm.
"That wizard! He didn't get that last number from a piece of parchment or anything. He got it from his mind! He paused to think! And it only took him a moment to reason it out. That means it's something simple. But it can't be too simple or it would be useless as a safeguard."
Hermione was beginning to feel like her tea kettle at home, primed to boil over at any moment. This was clearly a problem of logic. She remembered telling Harry in the Potion Chamber guarding the path to the Sorcerer's Stone, "A lot of the greatest wizards haven't got an ounce of logic...They'd be stuck in here forever!"
"I'd bet my Ministry pension that a Muggle-born came up with this," she hissed with a sort of grudging appreciation. "Well, what one Muggle-born can devise, another can crack! And that other is going to be me,, or I'll -- I'll drink tea without honey for the rest of my life!
"Come on, big brain! A number! A number that changes regularly -- a number that's so -- so obvious that no one would give it a second thought..."
And it hit her like a Bludger between the eyes!
"The date!" she rasped triumphantly. "Of course!" Heedless now of the Invisibility Cloak, Hermione raised her arm and looked at her watch, her eyes locking onto the tiny square framing today's date. "The 19th...could it really be that simple..."
Hermione studied the painted clock thoughtfully. If her analysis was correct, she would have to touch a point on the clock face representing the number 19. But where to begin her count? Nominally, one would begin at the 12 and proceed clockwise a total of 19 spaces. But such a course would fall far short of the place where the wizard had touched the clock face with the results Hermione had witnessed. Should she count backwards? That would place her precisely within the space where she knew the magic number lay. And yet, would an everyday, logic-challenged wizard have the wits to fathom even so transparent a subterfuge? Hermione gave her head a metaphorical shake of dismissal.
And then it hit her. Hermione thrust her face forward until her nose was nearly touching the canvas. The time represented by the painted hands was precisely 12:23. She was absolutely certain that the position of the hands had not altered since her first observation, proving that this was not an animated wizard painting, but the common Muggle variety. The time represented was therefore exactly the same now as when the wizard had entered the final number of the entry code. Dismissing the nearly upright hour hand, Hermione placed her finger just above the minute hand and ticked off the numbers one by one with slow, measured precision, taking the utmost care not to touch the surface. When she had counted off precisely 19 spaces, her finger was hovering directly over the second dot following the number 8.
"Yes!" she breathed with ill-suppressed excitement. "Yes! That's it!"
But was it? Reason and logic argued that no other answer was possible. But there was only one way to know for sure.
Moving quickly, a-quiver with nervous excitement, Hermione methodically touched the 12, 6, 3 and 9.
"So far, so good. Now to go for the Snitch!"
As her finger poised to touch the fifth and last number, she considered what might happen if her logic had failed her and she was wrong after all. It was not out of the question that the paintings might be hexed to do more than sound an alarm. Hermione had her own experience with hexed objects, dating back to the list of secret D.A. members in Fifth Year. Thanks to Hermione's clever Charm-work, Marietta Edgecombe's betrayal of her fellow members had resulted in the manifestation of a string of purple pustules across her face spelling the word SNEAK. Hermione had no idea what would happen if she entered the wrong number here. She might find herself stunned, paralyzed -- or worse.
"Well," she thought with a grim smile, "might as well be hanged for a dragon as an egg." And, holding her breath, she touched the final number.
Nothing happened.
"I'm still conscious, at any rate," she chuckled, her nervous tension ebbing away. "And I don't feel any pustules on my face." She laughed again, then quickly sobered. "Now let's see if the dragon flies..."
Taking one step to her right, Hermione held her breath once more and extended her hand toward the blank, white wall. A smile of satisfaction spread across her face as her hand disappeared to the wrist. She drew it back quickly; after all her stealth, it wouldn't do for the occupants of the chamber beyond to see a strange hand hovering suspiciously in the magical doorway thereto -- though, she reflected now with a wry grimace, the witch and wizard on the other side were undoubtedly far too distracted by "other concerns" to have noticed her momentary "intrusion."
Her way now clear, Hermione returned her attention to the primary focus her her mission: Harry. That he was in this building was certain. But where? Once again, Hermione turned to her wedding ring. She raised her left hand and concentrated on her ring finger. Without hesitation, her hand jerked up and to the left. Harry was not on the ground floor, then, but on one of the floors above.
And this presented a new problem, one which Hermione should have seen the moment she entered the hallway. For just as there were no doors in the unbroken walls, so was there no sign of a lift, nor stairs, nor of any other means, magical or otherwise, by which she might ascend to the upper levels.
But even as her stomach tightened with this revelation, Fate intervened once more. The front door opened to admit another wizard, Muggle-dressed like the first, yet just as clearly identified by the wand in his hand. Unlike the first wizard, however, the newcomer did not count his way down the corridor painting by painting. He strode purposefully down the hallway, his eyes fixed straight ahead. Hermione flattened herself against the wall and watched as the wizard walked to the very end of the corridor, where he turned crisply on his heel and stood with his back to the wall so that he was facing the door through which he had just entered. Whereas Hermione had expected the first wizard to employ his wand earlier, she had been disappointed. Not so now. The second wizard lifted his wand and held it before him, the gesture not unlike one signaling the Knight Bus from a street corner. And, in similar fashion, the wizard's summons was answered, though in a manner which brought a quiet gasp to Hermione's lips.
"Floor, please."
The voice reminded Hermione of the one which greeted guests of the Ministry in the phone booth which served as the visitors' entrance. Like that voice, this one seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere. But if Hermione was surprised by the bodiless voice, the wizard at the end of the hallway was not. He cleared his throat in a dignified manner and said, "Third floor, please."
Hermione's surprise now became unbridled wonder. For at the wizard's command, a section of the carpeting under his feet, a square roughly two feet to the side, rose up like the floor of a mechanical lift -- except that, insofar as Hermione could see, it was attached to nothing whatsoever. Smothering her wonder and replacing it with critical appraisal, Hermione watched as the wizard rose upward and disappeared through the ceiling quite as easily as the first wizard -- and Hermione's hand -- had passed through the wall only minutes before.
Walking forward now, Hermione saw that the square of carpeting, which upon rising had left the floor underneath exposed, was now restored without the merest hint of a seam. She nodded in spite of herself, impressed, as always, with any and all demonstrations of skilled magic. Stepping onto the space where the second wizard had stood, Hermione checked her watch, marking sufficient time for the just-departed wizard to have left his "lift" and entered the chamber of his choice on the appropriate floor. It was still for the best that she remain unobserved if at all possible. Though the two wizards who had preceded her were likely to be occupied for some time, there was always the chance that an earlier visitor would emerge from a blank wall without warning and discover her, invisible or not. The unknown was always a factor in any equation. But that was something to be dealt with if and when it arose. For now, her path was clear, as was her purpose. Standing in place now, she poked her hand out from the folds of the Invisibility Cloak and raised her wand before her.
For a stomach-tightening moment, Hermione wondered if the enchanted "lift" would respond to the presence of someone it could not "see." Or was her weight on the appropriate space -- or her upheld wand -- sufficient? Hermione expelled an audible sigh of relief when the magical voice once more entreated, "Floor, please."
"Second floor," Hermione said in a clear voice. She feared momentarily that any uncertainty in the timbre of her voice might prove her undoing. But she quickly laughed at this notion. Given the nature of this "establishment," there must inevitably be first-timers whose demeanor was far more apprehensive than any momentary quaver in her voice might suggest. No, she was safe from that avenue.
As she rose up and passed through the ceiling -- which, like the wall before it, parted like smoke at her entrance -- Hermione thought distractedly of the clumsy and outdated lifts she rode every day at the Ministry. When she composed her report on this day's excursion -- as she most definitely would, Harry's as yet undefined involvement notwithstanding -- she would include a strong recommendation in the area of magical transportation. If something so reprehensible as a brothel could employ such up-to-date magicks, there was, in her judgment, no excuse for the seat of magical government in Great Britain to continue to wallow in the mire of wizardry that was obsolete when Dumbledore was sitting his O.W.L.'s.
Hermione's lift stopped smoothly on the second floor, which stretched out before her a virtual mirror of the level below, excepting only the main entryway. A glance downward showed that the carpeting under her feet was as smooth and unseamed as if it had never been other than a single unbroken strip. "Yes," she murmured with an embellishing nod, "I'll drag the Ministry into the 21st century kicking and screaming if I have to."
Raising her left hand, Hermione gave her ring a mental prod. As before, it tugged upwards (its angle now right rather than left, owing to Hermione's reversal of perspective). She lowered her left hand while raising her wand with her right.
"Third floor, please."
With each level she gained, Hermione's ring continued to beckon her upwards. When she reached the fifth and last floor, she frowned. She knew from the evidence of her own eyes that this building was only five stories high. Why, then, was her ring still pulling her hand up? Suddenly her furrowed brow relaxed as a knowing smile curved her lips. In the wizarding world more than anywhere else, eyes could not be trusted. Was not she herself wearing an Invisibility Cloak at that very moment? It would, she knew, take potent magic to erect and maintain an invisibility barrier around an entire building. Simple Muggle-repelling spells were much more practical. But a single floor was another matter entirely. A floor, perhaps, reserved only for the most elite clientele? Patrons with heavy purses -- purses weighted down by hundreds of Galleons -- perhaps even -- a thousand?
Stifling the primal scream rising in her throat, Hermione raised her wand for what she knew would be the final time.
"Penthouse, please."