Accidental Encounters

Chapter Three: The Bacon House

Looking up at Hogwarts was just making Hermione pine even more for what she now called her “old life” – her, Harry, Ron and Ginny, and to a lesser extent, Neville, back in the Gryffindor common room. Ron would be begging someone to play wizard chess with him, but by seventh year he had become so good that not many people were worthy opponents, and the game would finish in minutes. Harry would be polishing his broomstick, Ginny would be asking to braid Hermione’s hair again. And she, Hermione, would be somewhere in there, probably telling everyone what she had just read in some book or another. Now Ginny would be on her own in the common room, Harry would be daily risking his life trying to catch death eaters (although, what he made it through at Hogwarts could be considered good training). Worse, Hermione knew he was plotting for some way to kill Voldemort and end it all. The very thought made her uncomfortable. Ron would be in Romania, though nobody knew why. Even Professor McGonagall had been surprised when Ron had announced that. Almost as surprised as she had been when Hermione had revealed she was planning to spend her life in the AMR Squad, nothing more than a pleb for the greater machine of the Ministry. But it wasn’t as though there were many other options.

With great difficulty, Hermione forced herself to tear her mind from her friends and from Hogwarts. She was here in her new home (though “hovel” might have been a more apt description) and she had new colleagues to get to know, and hopefully forge friendships with. Even if it was with a pair of eccentrics.

As if on cue, a loud bang and another door pushed almost off its hinges announced the entrance of Elizar and a witch who had to be Mrs Tibbetts. She was not at all like Hermione had imagined her - old, graying, and slightly gone in the head. In fact, she was not that much older than Hermione – she must have been around thirty. She had brown hair that hung only to her chin, in big loose curls. She was very pretty, but had a very tired look in her eyes.

It transpired that the witch was only about twenty-five, and her name was Penny, anu weu were supposed to call her Penny but Elizar insisted on calling her Mrs Tibbetts. Penny had been working in this house for the AMR Squad since the day after leaving Hogwarts, and had only had six months off in her life: each time she gave birth to one of her six children (“You see, hon, I started having them as soon as I left school, and I just haven’t been able to stop). That explained the tired, aged look she wore.

Elizar beamed again and squeaked happily that he was going to the kitchen to organize the tea. Perhaps Mrs Tibbetts might like to show Hermione around. As soon as Elizar had disappeared, Penny rolled her eyes and gave Hermione a small smile. “He’s a bit odd, not unlike most wizards I suppose. Still, he is a kind person, if a tad disorganized.” At this, she flung her hands about in exasperation at the state of their “office”.

“You soon get used to it,” Penny continued, “but don’t worry. Your quarters won’t be such a shambles. They are in a separate guest house at the back, and your predecessor was immaculate. Its quite funny, he was quite the opposite to Elizar.”

Hermione blinked again. “Why don’t you say something then?”

Penny shrugged her shoulders. “Well, this may be our headquarters, but it is also Elizar’s house. It has been in the Bacon family for centuries, and as far as I can tell, it hasn’t really changed much in that time. Elizar won’t move, and he is one of the best people working in Transfiguration in this area, aside from the McGonagall’s, of course. Also, being the only all-wizarding town in Britain, real estate can be hard to find, even for the Ministry.”

There was a pause as Penny examined Hermione’s face closely, watching to see how she was taking everything in.

Finally, satisfied with whatever she found, she said, “Well, hon. Onward, then?”, and putting an arm around Hermione’s shoulders, she steered her out of the door.

***

There wasn’t much more of the house to see. They went back into the cluttered hallway. On the side opposite their office was another room, Elizar’s quarters. Penny chuckled.
“I have never been in there, and don’t intend to. If the house is like this, can you imagine what you’d find in there?” Again there was the good-red red roll of the eyes. Penny seemed like a very easy-going person.

They picked their way along the hallway, until they came to a small kitchen at the bag. It was dark, but quite warm thanks to a healthy fire in the grate. Elizar had steaming mugs waiting for them, which Penny accepted quickly. Hermione held back, but the smell wafting from her mug was enticing, and she was pleasantly surprised when she sipped it. Elizar may have been hopeless at housekeeping, but he certainly could brew an excellent pot of tea.

Tea and buns saw them past six o’clock, and before long Penny was on her feet, anxious to get home to her children. (“My tribe will be ravenous by now. I’d best be off before they eat the walls…”). Hermione nodded dumbly, and waved goodbye to Penny, before summoning her things from the office and following Elizar out to the guest house.

To her relief, the guesthouse was indeed in pristine condition. It was situated in a corner of the substantial garden, it was painted white, and had ivy growing over it in patches. Inside, a simple lounge with fireplace led into a small kitchen, also painted white. There were stairs in the kitchen, which led upstairs to her suite. It was quite simply furnished, but it would suit Hermione splendidly.

Hermione put her bags on the bed, and Elizar quickly excused himself, claiming he had work to do. Although it was growing dark outside, and the wind was beginning to howl, Hermione felt quite content in her little cottage, and busied herself putting her things away.

***

When morning came, Hermione once again had a moment’s leave of her senses, but when she remembered where she was, it was back to blurrily blinking awake. Once up, she looked out of all her windows. From her bedroom window at the top, she had a wonderful view of Hogsmeade. Unfortunately, her window faced the wrong direction and she couldn’t see Hogwarts, but given her current state of homesickness, it might have been good to do without the constant reminder.

Briefly, Hermione wondered what time she was expected for work. It was only 6.30am. She had always been an early riser, but when you only had to walk across gar garden for work, surely you could have the morning to herself? Although she took her time over getting dressed and having a Spartan breakfast (there was little food in the house – and she guessed it was now her responsibility to shop for her self), she still ended up inside the Bacon house at eight o’clock.

Elizar was nowhere about, and of course Penny would not be in for some time, so Hermione settled down at her desk and examined her new office. The desk was basically bare, but tacked to the wall behind it were various memos, including “Preferred Procedure” and “Common Antidotes”. She had an in-tray, which was empty at the moment, and an out-tray. There was also a pile of forms at the back of her desk, headed “Accidental Magic Incident Report”. It suddenly dawned on her how much this job was about paper-pushing, and not potions at all!

Just as she was beginning to lose her nerve again, a bright light at the edge of her vision startled her, and she found that there was a piece of parchment in her in-tray, glowing red. She picked it up and read:

“AMR (POTIONS) REQUIRED IN FORTHAM VILLAGE. THREE VICTIMS. CONTACT WITH TRACES OF THE BREVISSAMA BREW. AREA NOT YET CONTAINED. PROCEED WITH CAUTION.”

Hermione guessed that this was how jobs arrived, but she no ino idea what the next step was. Wasn’t she supposed to receive training in this? It was fortunate that Penny happened to walk in right then, and saw a terrified Hermione clutching the glowing red parchment.

“Hon, you can do this one. Just apparate to Fortham Village. If you know what the Brevissama Brew is, then you know what to do.”

And indeed she could. Hermione knew that the potion in question was essentially a shrinking one, and could turn something into a tenth of its original size. She shuddered to think what had happened now people had been splashed with it. She found a microscope among the instruments cramming the shelves, and apparated to Fortham.

***

She arrived in front of a small house, and was startled to hear yelling and screaming emitting from within. She almost succumbed to the temptation to apparate right back to the Burrow, but puffed out her chest and walked forward. She was a Ministry official now. She had to act like it.

And with that, Hermione walked in, spent an hour locating the three miniature people (one of whom had become trapped in a particularly hideous brown shag rug), restored them to size, and gave them a lecture on the dangers of playing with potions. They had obviously not yet had the fear of God instilled in them by one Severus Snape, or they would not have done anything so silly.

When she returned to the Bacon house, Penny greeted her with a round of applause and an enthusiastic, “See? Easy as pie!” Elizar offered to make her a cup of tea whilst she filled out the paper work on the case. So from there, Hermione become a member of the SquaSquad.

After a while, the cases all became quite similar, and the paperwork piled into messy towers around her head. It was usual to be only halfway through an incident report when a new glowing parchment would appear in the in-tray, and Hermione found herself having to work long hours, sometimes well into the night, to keep up. Elizar had by far the busiest job in the squad, so it was little wonder his organization suffered under his workload. Penny, though, didn’t seem too concerned with the paperwork.

“It’ll still be there tomorrow,” she’d say to Hermione when she left at six o’clock every night. Penny was much more interested in the field work than the paper work. She loved to pull apart the mysteries that the job presented her. The Honeydukes sweets that had been on her desk were from a job in Liverpool, where some young wizards had decided to place an engorging charm on the sweets. Unfortunately, they had taken a wrong turn somewhere, because instead of increasing the size of the sweets, they made the eater swell incredibly! Penny was trying to dissect the charm, and see what happened.

“I think of it as research, which is what I would have preferred to do after Hogwarts,” Penny would say.

It was not only work – Hermione was adjusting to living by herself. She had been surrounded by others since she was eleven, and had always had house-elves to do things for her (even if she didn’t REALLY approve of it as a concept). She was teaching herself to cook, out of books from the Hogsmeade Library, naturally, and it was turning out to be a far greater joy than she anticipated, as cooking a meal was quite similar to concocting a potion.

It was four Sundays after she first arrived at the Bacon house, when Hermione decided not to cook for the night. Instead, she apparated to Ottery St-Catchpole, and wondered what news she would hear of the others when she walked into the Burrow.