One week passed and soon Hermione was once more in the empty classroom, this time practically bouncing with energy. Last week's lesson had gone well. Amazingly well in fact. She'd hit every point she'd wanted and Harry had been pleased.
This week's lesson was going to be even better.
She was expecting her students any moment, and now that Padma had satisfied herself that Hermione wasn't going to try and trap her fellow muggleborns in an intricate web of deception and lies, she could bring out the big guns. She'd been looking forward to this lesson for months.
Five minutes later, Sophie, Justin, and Kevin were all in attendance.
"Where is Dean?" asked Justin.
Kevin shrugged. "Dunno."
Just then, Dean barged into the room. "Sorry. Sorry. John is getting more difficult to shake off. I think he suspects something is going on."
Justin shook his head. "I didn't even know you and him were that close ."
Dean sighed, exasperated. "We're not! But he treats all of Gryffindor like his own personal fiefdom, and everyone lets him!"
Hermione tapped her wand on the table. "Are we all ready then?"
They all nodded.
"But,"-Sophie looked around-"where's Elizabeth? I liked her."
Hermione took out a small trunk from her pocket and held it up. "She's in here, but we wont be talking with her much today."
Sophie, Dean, Justin, and Kevin all stared.
"Inside that matchbox?" asked Justin.
Hermione smiled, put the trunk on the ground and tapped it with her wand.
The others gasped as the trunk expanded into its full sized version.
She opened the lid and climbed in eliciting yet more gasps. As her body passed through the opening, she craned her neck behind and upwards to look at the group, now looming over her. "C'mon." She said, her voice excited. "No time to waste."
The trunk wasn't the one Harry had bought for her ninth birthday. This one was cheaper, spartan and empty, but for one familiar portrait on the wall, a cupboard off to a side, and a very special object on a plinth in the centre of the room.
"Wow!" Sophie looked around the space as though it was a palace.
"Magic is insane," whispered Justin.
Kevin and Dean just stared in shock.
"You know," started Portrait Elizabeth from her frame, "The trunk walls are really far less interesting than what's in the trunk's middle ."
The four muggleborns turned to eye the object Elizabeth pointed out.
"A porcelain bowl?" asked Justin.
Hermione snorted while waving her wand over the cupboard's door. " That, is a pensieve."
"What's that then?" asked Kevin.
The cupboard door opened and Hermione carefully picked out a selection of tiny bottles filled with silvery liquid. "A pensieve is a magical artefact used to watch another's memories without resorting to high-level legilimency."
She turned and stepped to the pensieve. "What I have here are memories from the Greengrass memory library." She turned to them with a look of awe and reverence on her face. "You've no idea how privileged we are to have been entrusted with these."
"Quite right!" Portrait Elizabeth called from behind her. "Some of those memories are over a thousand years old, and no one not a Greengrass has ever seen them." She sniffed. "Be thankful Lord Slytherin is as convincing as he is."
Hermione lined up all but one of the bottles on a nearby shelf, popped open the remainder, and poured the contents into the pensieve.
Sophie fiddled with the cuff of her robes. "Err… what exactly do we have to do ?"
Hermione put the empty bottle down. "Just touch the liquid - even a finger will do - and you'll be pulled into the memory. This one is the oldest. It's nearly 1,500 years old. Ready?"
They all nodded, slowly.
"Then go for it."
Justin, Sophie, Dean, and Kevin all touched the liquid, and moments later vanished from the trunk.
Hermione took a deep breath. Ancient knowledge hidden from the world for millennia, here she came! She reached out and touched the liquid… she felt a jerk around her navel, and her world washed away like water on a fast moving car.
She fell. Further and further. It seemed to go on for ever. And then she wasn't falling.
"Hermione!" Sophie glomped onto her. "That was scary!"
Hermione nodded, still a little shaken, and took stock of her surroundings. They were in a large forest clearing. All around them, wooden bleachers stretched up and back. Wizards filled those benches all wearing white robes and shouting at each other. It gave the impression of an amphitheatre full of rather scruffy druids.
Justin, Kevin, and Dean stood to one side, gazing up at the cacophony with wide eyes.
Justin turned to her. "They can't see us?"
"Of course, not. This is just a memory." She then noticed a row of wizards and witches off to the side. "Ah!" She walked over to them and eagerly motioned her students to follow. "This is what we're looking for."
"Who are they?" asked Dean.
Hermione matched up to the witch at the end of the line. "Recognise her?"
Sophie gasped. "It's Elizabeth!"
Kevin started. "But she's, like, young and all."
"No, it's definitely her!"
"Then…" Justin looked around. "This memory can't be that old! You said it was 1,500 years old! Elizabeth is Daphne's grandmother!"
"She is. And it is. This is Elizabeth's memory of this witch's memory," she pointed to the witch next to Elizabeth-"of this wizard's memory,"-she pointed to the wizard who stood next in line-"and so on, all the way down to the last wizard in the line, who's watching the memory of one of those wizards." She pointed to the assembly of wizards, lining the many benches of the wooden amphitheatre. "This is a copy of a copy of a copy, many times over, of a memory of one of the original wizards who attending this event."
"But, why?" asked Dean.
...
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