A Little Devil at Hogwarts (Follow-up to Harry Potter - Hellion)

Hermione was moved to St-Murgo's, where she stayed in the metal ward infirmary for a month, before there finally was a breakthrough and she was allowed to return to Hogwarts. By then the summer session was in progress and she had missed a lot of lessons and the winter session exams. She dove into her studies with ferocity, but was hindered every step of the way by her obsession with being perfect in everything. Intuitive magic just was not her bag, and that was what kept her back. Her parents tried hard to explain to her that belief in oneself was the core of every aspect of life, even a dentist had to trust in his ability to do the job, but she just could not grasp that notion. Finally, Doctor Granger decided to give her a life lesson he had intended for a later date: car driving. He asked permission to bring his car to Hogsmeade and teach Hermione how to drive.

"Why that?" asked Minerva.

"Simple: to become able to drive, you need to develop the intuition of displacement in space at high speed, such as when to turn and by how much, when to brake, how to back up, many actions which must become second nature or you end up in the field rather than on the road. She will end up in the field more often than not, but I trust Magic will help fix her up... to a certain point. She will over-analyze everything, miss the curve, miss the bridge, miss the stop, accelerate at the wrong time, collide with everything. I am sure there is a way to protect her, others, and the car so nothing gets banged up."

After giving some thought to the idea, Minerva talked to the Commander, whom wholeheartedly encouraged it.

"Minerva, the magical people rarely know how to drive. This, in turn, stops them from integrating properly in the mundane society. It might even be a good idea to extend the lessons to the other students, to teach them basic mechanics."

"We will see. I will let Doctor Granger teach his daughter."

"I think I will ask one of our guys to do the teaching. Parents are bad teachers as they expect perfection from the get go. We have vehicles designed to teach, especially warded against collisions and loss of control. Admittedly, a Hummer is not a street car, especially the military type! But then, she will be able to drive anything, shift-stick or automatic, after she is done learning."

The reference to shift-stick and automatic left Minerva at a loss, but she was already too overwhelmed to bother asking questions.

The arrival, by helicopter lift, of about thirty Hummers in the Quidditch pitch did not go unnoticed. The mundane-born immediately recognized the type and pawned over seeing the military version close up. They climbed on everything, crawled inside every cranny, and under the trucks like rats in a labyrinth.

"I see I will not lack volunteers to learn to drive!" said a rather huge-looking Royal Marine, that could probably compete with Hagrid for size, in a booming voice.

The announcement was met with hurrays from the mundane male population and skeptical smirks from most magical pure-bloods.

"When I said volunteers, I meant everybody!" thundered the training sergeant. "No one is exempted. And I mean no one! Break a leg if you wish, but all that will do is get you trained with a plaster cast!"

The Sergeant pulled a long scroll and made all the noises of thinking about names from that list when in fact he knew quite well whom would be first: Hermione Granger.

"Okay..... First batch, Hermione Granger, with me; Harry Potter with Timmy Rand; George Weasley with Peter White; Fred Weasley with Danny Row; Draco Malfoy with Tobias Whisk; and finally, let me see... two more..., Suzan Bones with Roger Davis, and Neville Longbottom with Armando Dips. The others, move back to the steps of the castle. The other cars will be available when we need to simulate traffic, idiotic drivers, and near-misses."

Hermione froze the moment she heard her name and could not move. Drive? Her? She wanted to die before even sitting in front of the wheel!

"So, where is Miss Granger?" thundered the sergeant, not helping one bit Hermione overcome her fright.

The other students moved away from her, leaving the hated know-it-all exposed to the giant man's gaze. He walked to her, the ground shaking at each step he took, and looked at Hermione expectantly from his ten feet six inches massive body (he had been on the Marines' basketball team for ten years until he got tired of the game; where is the fun of putting a ball in a basket that is lower than your neck?).

"Come with me, miss Granger... I do not eat children... raw yet! I prefer to cook them first!" With that he lifted Hermione, stiff as a board, off the ground and walked to the biggest Hummer that had been lifted to Hogwarts. He opened the door, sat her, still as frozen as an ice cube, into the driver's seat, and began explaining the seven point seat belt installed into the driver's seat. Doctor Granger noticed his daughter was just not there: the sergeant might as well be talking to a doll. Then came the explanations concerning safety measures, followed immediately with the principle of the clutch and shift-stick, the driving mechanism, and the brakes. Nothing he said produced even a blink off Hermione. The sergeant then moved to the other side of the Hummer, climbed in and began demonstrating live what he had told her about, still not getting a reaction. Lesson done, he climbed out and left the truck.

"If I did not see her breath, I would think she is dead," the instructor commented. "I have never seen such a case of fear in my life."

"What do you suggest?"

"We leave her in there. She will eventually need to untie the belt, and get out of the truck on her own. To do this, she must overcome at least a bit of her fear-induced paralysis."

---

The other students fared much better; Harry was his usual daredevil self and gave his instructor a run for his money. The moment he understood the principle of the double-clutch, he took off for the Forbidden Forest, entering it at full throttle and zig-zagging between trees and bushes, jumping off bumps and diving in streams. He even collided with a dozen Acromantulas, leaving behind body parts and innards, along with the instructor's lunch!

Supper time came and passed without Hermione showing up. Flitwick checked on her and found her still frozen in place at the wheel, unmoving.

"What will you do?" asked Minerva to the giant Marine.

"Me? Nothing. She will have to overcome her fears. No one can do it for her. Nature will see to it. After all, hunger and the need to desist from waste will push her to action."

"What if she does in the truck?"

"She cleans her mess up, that is what."

The next morning, Hermione was still sitting at the driver's seat, eyes wide in terror, but stuck in her own refuse. The truck smelled terrible. The sergeant decided to add to her misery and produced an aquamenti maxima jet of water that drenched Hermione from head to foot and washed the waste down the drainage holes found at the bottom of the floor plates. She did not even sputter or react to the icy water.

"Jesus! Talk about fear!" said the Commander of the Royal Marines as he watched the instructor drench Hermione with super-cooled water that covered her in a sheet of ice. "She does not even shiver!"

"Since this does not work... Electrum!"

The water was replaced by a lightning flash that shook Hermione, making her hair stick out in all directions as the similarly-polarized hair strands repulsed each other. Finally, Hermione sputtered, shrieked and looked around herself.

"Damn it, lady, you are the ultimate example of the freeze side of the panic reflex!" said the instructor.

"Where am I? Who are you?"

"You are at Hogwarts, and I am your driving instructor. Now, who are you?"

"Her... Hermione... Hermione Granger..."

"And what are you?"

"A... A witch..."

"Good. Go shower, change, and come back here."

"Why?"

"Because it is your second driving lesson..."

"I took one?"

"Yes. And you had twenty-four hours to assimilate its contents."

Hermione pulled on the release lever without even looking and scrambled out of the seat to head toward the castle in a daze. Once she had left the seat, the instructor drenched the seat and washed the cabin under high water pressure before drying everything up with a whisk of his wand and sitting back in the instructor's seat.

Hermione returned to the rear castle yard to find other students busy practicing basic driving. She climbed in the truck and looked around, baffled.

"So? You had a day to contemplate these controls. What first?"

Hermione adjusted her seat so she could reach the pedals and see in front of her between the dashboard and the driving wheel, then the mirrors. Finally, she tied the seat-belt and tightened its straps in place. This done, she looked at the instructor.

"And now?" he asked, ironic.

"I start the engine..." With that, Hermione gave a bit of gas, pressed on the brakes, and shifted to neutral before starting the engine. Everything went well, exception made of a few false starts as she either released the brakes too early or forgot to release the clutch before shifting into first gear. Once the first gear engaged, the truck began moving, but stalled again during the shift to the second gear as she forgot once again about the double-clutch principle: once to leave a gear, once to enter the next one... It took her an hour and a lot of gear-grinding before she managed to reach fourth gear. Eventually, she did manage and the instructor was satisfied, or was tired of getting a bronco ride!

The next few days saw the children spend their breaks learning to drive. Some took to the task easily, but Hermione was, by far, the worst driver of the lot. She just spent too much time thinking and systematically reacted to changing conditions a tad too late. She landed in the lake, slid off the stream banks, braked in the middle and sank in the mud to the axels; missed the curves, stopped on the trees, got a whipping from the whipping willow, sent a few statues flying from colliding with them, and took a dive into the lake from one of the cliffs overhangs. The Hummer, being a front-wheel drive except when it was set to four-wheel, had a bad habit of over-compensating turns on the rear and swinging head for tail if you did not compensate for the over-spin, which Hermione either did too much and ended up going straight when she should have turned, or not enough and she found herself entering the curve back in front! She just could not let go of the analytic aspect of the question and, however quick your brain thinks, it is reflexes that must take control at some point. She also forgot that you do not, ever, engage on a slope cross-wise without the risk of roll-over, much to her shock. She landed on the top and slid down the hill to the lake' beach, gaining speed to the point she skidded on the water for fifty feet before the hummer came to a grinding halt in the sandy turf.

What she did not know (and could not hurt her according to her instructor) is that the road conditions were set to push her to her limits... mud with a layer of water right under that made it as slippery as ice; grass slopes that hid suds; the bridge set to break at her passage, not anyone else's, the works! Road shapes changed constantly and had hair-pin curves at the worst places: at the top of the hill, at the crux of a valley, around a bend, anything to make a non-intuitive driver miserable. Some times, to climb a hill, she had to push the throttle to the floor, only to find that, at the top, she flew off and fell some 20 feet down and fifty feet away, if she did not stay like a swing on a fulcrum, all wheels spinning in the air! Even hard surfaces like concrete or asphalt had hidden traps: oil, water, and a combination of both. More often than not, she ended up doing a three-hundred sixty flat spin or completely missed the curve, caught the curb and did a roll-over before landing back on her wheels to continue.

Madam and Mister Granger watched her train from the Astronomy tower and, sometimes, Madam Granger let out a cry of fear, while Mister Granger let out a roar of laughter, much to her chagrin.

"Come on! Get over your fears! She is protected by magic and a ton of mundane protection features!"

"So you say, so you say... Given your propensity at driving like a cowboy on narrow roads, I am not surprised. What surprises me is that you have not tried to drive these coffins on wheels!"

"Who said I did not?" smirked Mister Granger. "I never had so much fun in my life... The only thing is, I found out I was not as good a driver as I thought. I raced the three monsters and I finished last."

"The three monsters?"

"Yes: in order of finish, in first place, Mister Harry Potter; in second place, Mister Draco Malfoy, and in third place, Mister Neville Longbottom. These three flew the race in the Forbidden Forest and even managed to catch up with me on the second run of the circuit... I never figured out how they did it, as from what I was told, they did not bother using magic. Apparently, the instructors blocked magic use so things could be fair for me."

It took Hermione the rest of the summer session to catch up magically and finally release her over-control of herself. The moment was epic as she finally entered in a towering rage during a race and finally let herself be driven by intuition. Albeit she did not win, she did keep up with the other three competitors, a marked improvement of her intuitive grasp of reality. It also helped that, as she got out of the hummer, she noticed she had recovered her clothes.

"What happened?" asked Minerva.

"I decided that the hell was with clothes, they were secondary to reality. The moment I realized that I told myself a finite Incantatem would probably solve the issue; just thinking of it had it activate."

"Do you understand what Mister Potter meant when he said to keep it simple?"

"Yes, I am not stupid!"

No one said anything about that point. Hermione would figure it out in time!

---

The leaving feast went well, and the Grangers accompanied their daughter on the return trip to London, glad, as she was, that the year was done. Harry made sure to distribute his friends to their respective manors, with plans being set to do a trip to South America during the summer vacation and explore, with the help of one of the older Weasleys, Bill, old Inca magical sites to get a feel of ancient magic. Harry promised him an interesting site under Machu Picchu he had discovered while exploring the abandoned Inca stronghold. Bill had not been pleased with what happened to his mother, but understood there are things that can not be done, and physically attacking the King of Magic is one of them. Sad as he was for the loss of his mom, Bill understood Harry had not chosen to do so but was forced by Magic to proceed that way. His repeated contacts with the foundation of Old Magic had ingrained in him the importance of many neglected rules that had been pushed on the wayside by Mages over time. High Elves, such as Harry, were to be respected at all costs, and his mother had forgotten this very important behavior. He took the time to talk to all his brothers and his little sister, and to Arthur, as soon as he learned of the drama.

"Does everyone understand there are things that are not done, ever?" he concluded.

"All I understand is I am spending 10 months a year under the same roof as a murderer!" exploded the younger brother, Ronald.

"He choose restraint over anything else, Ron."

"Restraint? You call murdering mom restraint?"

"He could have ordered Magic to be removed from our entire family, you moron! Or removed it from our world! Magic is a gift from his family to humanity, you dumb ass, not a right, a gift! We need to realize the power of High Elves far outstrips ours. We are their Mundanes, little twit! Even the Mundanes realize the importance of Harry James Potter because their own government is held in place by HIS power, nothing else! Do you know what Mom did? She assaulted, physically assaulted, what amounts to a God. The High Elves are what on which we base the notion of godhood, dimwit! From what I have heard, George and Fred played with fire, and got a bit hot, but not burned, luckily for them, but mom just could not think things out before using Harry as a punching bag. I am quite sure Lord Potter was enjoying the prank war until Mom dumbly smashed his head on the Headmistress' desk, otherwise you two would have been in a world of pain! And he sure does not hold anything against our family, contrary to some of you. He invited me to a trip in South America with his friends. And, no, oh God, no, you four are not coming even if he asked! I do not want to worry about your stupidity and short tempers during a dig! Even you, Percival! Your stiff neck will not allow you to bend down far enough to travel in narrow passageways! Also included in that trip, apart from his retinue, is Hagrid and Charlie. He says there is a variety of Dragons in the deep jungle of South America that needs to be properly documented, so who best to deal with it than two Dragon lovers. I hope Minerva gets over her steel rod up the rectum before next year, because, had she not called upon Mom to deal with a prank war, Mom might still be alive! She closes her eyes on you two bullying because you are from her old house, but bullying is bullying, whether she likes it or not! Maybe she needs to retire!"

"But I did nothing!" whined Ginevra.

"Not yet, little sister, but you suffer from a serious problem that will eventually get you in deep trouble. You have a terminal case of Pottermania, something that is more likely than not to get on his nerves. From what I have seen and heard of him, Mister Potter harbors a deep-rooted hate for that kind of attitude. I can easily see you end up as fish bait.... or snake bait for the Quetzalcoalt flying Snakes!"

"And what did I do to be ignored?"

"Percy, did you ever sit down with him to talk? Do you even know his middle name? Or his real status in the Mundane and Magical worlds? Oh no, you did not bother, too focussed on your navel, not to mention anything lower. He, Harry James Potter, a first year so powerful most teachers in Hogwarts crap their robes at the mere idea of crossing his path, is below your contemptuous attitude! He is the King of High Elves, for Merlin's sake! A direct descendant of Enron, the last known King of Magic in this plane of reality! Did you bother to look outside of your windows, this year? All those soldiers were there not because he asked for them, but because the House of Windsor, the Mundane Queen's line, considered him vital to the survival of the Mundane world, and he presides on the Round Table of Camelot as King, and the Queen sits there with him at his pleasure, not the other way around!"

"How do you know of my attitude?"

"I work at Gringott's, you pompous ass. Everything even rumored about the King of Magic is talked until the next pebble rolls under his feet! I am sure the day he decides to jack off, we will know if he is a lefty or a righty before the cum touches his belly! So your lack of even moderate acknowledgement of his passing by you is noted and commented, much to my shame!"

"But he ignores me!"

"When he said hello the first day, you snubbed him, oh mister Perfect Prefect! He now answers in kind. You torpedoed your own boat by commenting on his lack of proper clothing to Clearwater. The portraits heard, and he, in turn heard, albeit not because he was listening, but because it was hard to miss all the portraits talking about your comment, Percival. We, as a family, have a tendency to talk before thinking, and it comes from Mother, it seems. You should know by now that Hogwarts is a glass castle. Everything is known the moment it occurs, even behind closed wardrobe doors. Percy, doing the deed doggy style will not prevent Miss Clearwater from getting pregnant if she does not use contraceptive spells, unless you aim too high and hit the rear door!"

Percy became red, purple, violet, puce, white, and a whole slew of other colors as the three younger boys began laughing their head off.

"What does he mean?" asked Ginevra.

"Do not ask, I will not tell!"