Arithmancy for Muggles

Chapter One: The Bank

“Depositing or withdrawing?” The Gringott’s goblin peered up at the rather plain woman in the fusty brown robes.

“What? Oh, er, withdrawing.” She handed her pass key to the goblin who inspected it minutely before returning it to her.

“Miss Granger. Cart number four. To the left and three stations back.” Taking the key, she followed the directions to find a small platform, like a miniature train platform, with the legend: “Number Four” in gilt scroll across the wall behind it.

A plush red velvet bench sat against the wall under the gilt lettering. It was already occupied by a tall wizard wearing robes as black as his greasy shoulder length hair.

Hermione Granger recognized the man, of course. He’d been her teacher and they’d fought together against the second rising of Voldemort. “Professor Snape! I never expected to see you here.”

“Contrary to popular belief, the teachers at Hogwarts do get paid occasionally.” The professor’s snort of disdain made perfectly clear what he thought of his all-too-meagre salary. “Albus also occasionally remembers the Christmas spirit with a small bonus. Although, more usually, he gives us socks. Why should I not be at Gringott’s?”

“No reason. No reason.” Hermione offered a tentative smile, walking the fine line between condescension and ingratiation, and managing both. “I suppose I simply don’t imagine you at anywhere but Hogwarts.”

Snape sneered faintly and offered another snort.

“May I…?” she asked, indicating the bench beside him.

“That is why it was placed here,” he said with that over-careful neutrality that made it very clear he was mocking her.

Hermione blushed slightly. “I meant, is my presence intrusive? I can find another bench.”

“You are waiting for number four, are you not?”

“Yes,” she confirmed.

“Then you will sit here. The goblins become upset when foolish young witches go wandering because they are too good to sit next to their ex-professors.”

Hermione sat quickly. She realized the silence that stretched between them was very uncomfortable. “I never meant to imply that I was too good to sit next to you.”

Snape let the comment pass.

The silence stretched somewhat less uncomfortably.

He spoke. Hermione had not expected him to. She jumped slightly, but his words were completely innocuous, or rather, as innocuous as words from Severus Snape could contrive.

“I suppose now is when I am supposed to ask you how you have fared since graduating from that noble institution of learning, and inquire of your health, your career and other such trivia?”

Hermione considered these questions. “Well, well, passable and I have no other trivia. You?”

Snape nodded thoughtfully. “Much the same, but I, on the other hand, have far too much trivia. I shall spare you the recitation, howeverr I r I believe our cart has arrived.”

Indeed, cart number four, with goblin at the helm, stopped at the platform in a shower of sparks. “Severus Snape, Alton Fildooley, Hermione Granger,” the goblin called in a rusty sounding voice. “Severus Snape, Alton Fildooley, Hermione Granger.”

Snape rose, like a shadow in the evening, and presented his pass key. The goblin inspected the key and swung the door open for Professor Snape. Picking up his robes, Snape crossed the threshold of the cart and stood, looking very out of place in the low-sided conveyance.

Hermione followed him, handing her key to the goblin. He inspected it and indicated she should follow Snape into the cart. It was smaller than it looked. Hermione found herself literally rubbing elbows with her former professor. Snape gazed into space with a carefully neutral expression as Hermione shifted her weight, trying to get comfortable in the confined space.

“Alton Fildooley? Last call for Alton Fildooley?” The goblin looked to the left and the right, seemingly indifferent to the appearanc dis disappearance of one Alton Fildooley.

“What did you do?” Hermione asked in a whisper. “Scare him off before I got there? Or maybe they overbook, hoping people will get lost on their way to the platform. How are we supposed to fit three people in here, let alone four?”

“I have not seen Alton Fildooley,” Snape said. “I would not, in fact, recognize an Alton Fildooley if it bit me on the nose.”

Hermione looked up at him. “Does it happen often?”

Snape looked startled. “Does what happen?”

“Are you often bitten on the nose by complete strangers?” Hermione inquired.

Lips twisting in a bitter smile, Snape grunted to acknowledge her attempt at humor and indicate that it was not entirely unwelcome. Hermione felt more gratified than if he had let loose with a belly laugh. Professor Snape should not laugh like normal people. Hermione felt that a laughing Snape would be somehow unnatural.

Abandoning Alton Fildooley to his fate, the goblin joined Ms. Granger and Professor Snape in the cart, shut the door and started the mechanism.

The cart started with a lurch, a jolt and a near freefall down the rail into the vaults. Hermione grasped reflexively at Snape’s sleeve.

“Goodness, Miss Granger. Where is that much vaunted Gryffindor courage of yours?”

“Courage doesn’t mean you’re never scared,” Hermione gulped, gripping his elbow more tightly. “Courage means your fear does not get in the way of doing what you have to do.”

He snorted again. “Tell that to Minerva McGonagall. Reckless old bag.”

Hermione bristled and pulled away from him. “She fought like a lion during the war.”

“Yes, and she felt no fear. She should have been more cautious. If she’d used a little strategy instead of charging into the fray with her skirts kilted up and her wand blazin, she might still be alive.” Calmly, he took Hermione’s hand and placed it in the crook of his arm, seemingly oblivious to the sharp twists and turns of the cart they occupied.

The cart did not slow. It suddenly stopped. Hermione was thrown back. Only her grip on Snape’s arm saved her from an undignified tumble onto the rails.

The goblin peered at the number of the vault. “Oh, this is Fildooley’s stop. Fildooley?” The goblin waited, heard nothing and started the cart again.

“I miss her,” Hermione confessed.

“As do I.” Snape put an arm around Hermione. “Ms. Granger, in all your studies at Hogwarts has nobody ever thought to teach you a stabilizing charm?”

Hermione gasped. “Oh, is that how you do it?”

Severus Snape laughed, undignified and from the belly.

She had been right. Snape laughing simply wasn’t natural. She looked up at him, his lips drawn back over his teeth, his horrible teeth, as he made a sound halfway between a cauldron boiling over and case of the hiccups. “How was I to know?” Hermione defended her ignorance. “In the real world, banks are less like carnival rides.”

“The real world?” He sneered. “And what, pray tell, is this? A hallucination?”

The cart jolted to another sudden stop. Hermione’s nose bumped into Snape’s sternum. She drew away from him, rubbing where the buttons had pinched her face.

“Severus Snape?” The goblin swung the cart door open. “Five minutes, Professor Snape.”

Snape nodded and stepped gracefully out of the cart, his long legs negotiating the gap between rail and vault with ease.

Hermione watched him unlock the small vault box and withdraw a little cloth bag of galleons. He tucked the bag into his robes and got back into the cart. Nodding at the goblin, he took Hermione’s arm again as the cart lurched forward.

“I take it you are disenchanted, pardon the pun, with the glories of the Wizarding World, Miss Granger?”

Hermione considered how best to answer Professor Snape’s query. She opted for simple truth. “Yes.”

Snape nodded to himself and made a neutral sort of humming noise: “Hmm” that sounded more sarcastic than it ought.

The cart halted, but Hermione was ready for it. She hopped out of the cart, pass key in hand, to unlock a door in the stone not much bigger than the one Professor Snape had withdrawn his galleons from. But Hermione pulled a large sack from the vault, peered into the dusty corners and blew the lint free. She left the pass key in the lock as she lugged her sack of galleons back into the cart.

Professor Snape regarded Miss Granger with a quizzical expression. Hermione maintained a bland neutrality.

“Miss Granger, you do realize that if you leave your key here you will not be able to access this vault again?”

“Yes.” The gold was a comforting weight on her feet. “I’m cleaning out my account.”

“Miss Granger, I realize it is none of my business, and I will only ask the once, but I must ask. Are you in any trouble?”

Hermione smiled, but her eyes remained empty. “No, I’m not in any trouble.” Stabilized by the large mass of Wizard gold, Hermione found the return trip much easier, even without Snape’s steadying hand. He did not speak again. Getting out of the cart she felt rather shaky. It was the ride, she told herself.

She stopped, waited for him to disembark as well.

“Professor Snape, it was a pleasure running into you again. I hope peacetime brings you everything you desire.” Hermione stuck out her hand, muggle-style, for a handshake. Tentatively, Severus Snape reached for her practical, ink stained fingers with his own long, calloused ones. His hand enveloped hers. His skin was dry, and slightly warmer than hers.

“Likewise, Miss Granger.” His words were pleasant, but his eyes were suspicious. Hermione nodded and they each went their separate ways.

The goblin at the counter didn’t ask questions. Hermione dumped the large sack of galleons on the flat surface between them. “I’d like to change these to muggle money. Seventy percent British pounds, thirty percent euros.” The stack of bills was smaller than she could have hoped, but the exchange rate was never good. The galleon was weak against muggle money, but waiting wouldn’t help. Wizard currency, for all the magical safeguards built into it, simply had a circulation base too small for real growth. The value of a galleon had been dropping steadily against muggle currency over the last hundred years or so. Hermione didn’t see this changing anytime soon.

She put the bills in her handbag, a sensible brown leather clutch that held far more on the inside than the outsides could account for. Nobody blinked when Hermione managed to fit several stacks of bills into a space that ought only to fit one. Hermione would have to be careful once she’d left Gringott’s. In the real world, that sort of topography was considered impossiand and would attract too much attention.

Eschewing the floo bank, Hermione left Gringott’s by the front door, into Diagon Alley. The familiar scents of burnt feathers, butterbeer and Bay Rum tickled her nose. Her mouth quirked into a half smile. Hermione’s heart held wonderful memories of past visits with Ron and Harry, or with her parents. She remembered how scared she was, buying her first Hogwarts textbooks. She’d read them all before term had started, practically memorized them, hoping the books would teach her everything she needed to know to fit in to this new world. She’d studied charms, arithmancy, potions and transfigurations. She’d become a witch to reckon with, helping Harry and Ron in that last decisive battle over Lord Voldemort. But in all her years at Hogwarts, she’d never quite learned how to fit in.

“Miss Granger! Wait!”

It was Snape again. Professor Snape, Hermione mentally corrected herself. Except she was no longer his student, perhaps he was just Snape, after all.

Hermione turned and waited, but did not say anything. The tall, black-clad figure, robes fluttering behind him in the wan afternoon light, looked as comfortable here as Hermione felt in her bathtub at home. He was every inch the pureblood wizard, and quite a magnificent sight. It was almost a shame, Hermione mused, that he was one of a dying breed.

“Miss Granger.” He was breathing heavily. Up close, Hermione saw that he was just another middle-aged man who had to catch his breath after hurrying down a street to accost a young lady. This close he was not the inscrutable teacher who had towered over her in childhood, the dungeon-dwelling bat who had terrorized her friends even as he worked to save them. He was just a man. He smelled faintly of slugs and dog hair and sweat. “Where are you going? There is nothing in that direction but Muggle London.”

“I’m going home,” she told him. “I have a rented flat in Hammermsmith. I’ve got a job as a loan officer in a bank.”

He didn’t understand. “But Gringott’s is behind you.”

Hermione smiled at the irony. “Yes. Yes it is.”

“Miss Granger,” he began.

“Hermione. Please. Call me Hermione.” She felt sorry for him suddenly. She wanted to pat his shoulder and tell him it would be all right. And maybe for him it would be. Witches and wizards weren’t going to vanish away suddenly. They lived long, but that was part of the problem. Wizard society was stagnating. Iotheother generation or two, who would be left? Wizard enclaves like Diagon Alley more and more tasted of desperation. Hermione was reminded of a video she’d seen about American Indians on the reservation. A dying culture, calcifying in place, hardly able to move and quickly outpaced by the more robust hybrid cultures thriving in the larger world.

“Hermione, what are you doing?” Ah, the spark of understanding. Severus Snape was not a stupid man.

“I’m leaving the Wizarding World,” she told him pla. “. “I let them snap my wand. There is nothing left for me here.”