Sell This House

You\'ll have to forgive me. I\'m in the middle of 90 hours of classes for my Real Estate Broker\'s license and I wrote this largely in my head during the boring parts of the classes. (Hey- why shouldn\'t Real Estate Agents get a story?) Places and businesses are real, but names have been changed to protect the innocent. I\'m NOT a writer and its fun to try something new. (Like Hermione with RE, ha, ha).

Disclaimer: These characters (Snape and Hermione) belong to JKR the great, I\'m playing in her world a little (and blending it with some of mine) just for fun.

Be kind with reviews- I\'m new at this.

Ch1 Granger Realty

Hermione Granger walked the two blocks to her Uncle\'s and Aunt\'s real estate office. At 9:00 a.m. the air was chill, but \"Spring had sprung\", as her Uncle said, and the early bloomers were making their appearance. Flowering shrubs were bright in many yards, bulbs were pushing up with a soft, new green. Hermione had learned, though, not to trust the lovely weather. Here in central Arizona the weather was unpredictable. Early April might be lovely, but last Spring it snowed 2 feet over Easter weekend, and the garden she planted in May was frosted the first week  of June. Her Aunt couldn\'t resist an \"I told you so\".

The middle of the state was nothing she had expected. She had  always invisioned her Uncle, her Father\'s younger brother, and his family as living in the \"Wild West\" of the USA. Well, there were some traces of western things around, and the countryside was rather wild compared to her tame English home. But it certainly wasn\'t the desert she\'d imagined. Mountains, pine trees, lakes and streams, the land was drier than her home, but still much lusher than the desert of the southern part of the state. At 5,000 foot elevation it was cold, too.

It was a small, friendly town. When she needed to get away from her life for awhile she couldn\'t have got much further. Her Aunt and Uncle were so good to take her in. They welcomed her without asking too many questions, told her to stay as long as she liked. Their children were away at college and they were glad to have her, they said.

They were interesting people, and as they talked about their office and work Hermione found a different world she had never considered before; far from England, far from the type of schooling she knew, far from MAGIC. They knew she was a witch, her Mother and Father had confided in them when Hermione had gotten her Hogwarts letter years before, but they didn\'t ask her about it. When she brought it up, showed them her wand and some of the things she could do they seemed to just take it in stride as they would any other talent. When she expressed both an interest in their business and a need to be doing something they encouraged her to get a real estate license and work with them. 90 hours of course work (NOT as easy as she expected) and a test later she was licensed and began to learn the business.

She loved meeting people and found she had a talent for listening to what they wanted and finding just the right house. The job was fun, she liked seeing the different houses. The job was never the same two days in a row, and was entirely different from what she had left.

She hadn\'t purposely made a new life, she just sort of fell into it. She enjoyed it, but now, after more than a year, she began to wonder what next. There were things in her past she finally was beginning to feel that she might be able to deal with. \"It must be Spring Fever\" she thought, and tried to shake off the odd mood.

Forsythia bushes burned gold in the sunlight as she arrived at the office. \"Granger Realty\" said the green and yellow sign. The other agents seemed to like her, teased her about her accent, treated her like a little sister. It was a friendly, welcoming place. She turned her mind to the day ahead.