Harry groaned. "Must we continue with the Indiana Potter thing?" he asked as she looked through a book on Dark creatures.
"We could always go with the romance novel angle but a bullwhip so much easier to find than a sword," Hermione chuckled. "I could always dye my hair red, rip your shirt half off, and lounge all over you but I don't think my father would approve."
"You might be surprised!" a voice popped up beside them suddenly, shocking them both. It was Hermione's dad. "Have you seen this?" he asked, showing them a book on transfiguring your own teeth. "These people are so mad they make me look sane. I swear they should charge admission. Oh! You think they'd let me buy some robes? I want to go as a wizard to the Halloween party at the hospital your mother and I always get dragged to. Everyone'll know what I am but only your mother will get the joke. It'll be hilarious."
Harry laughed but Hermione looked at her father like he'd lost his mind, something he thought might be a common occurrence.
"I don't even want to think of you with magic," she said seriously.
"A wand might be a bit much," he nodded, "-but maybe one of those pointed hats!"
Hermione rolled her eyes.
"So what are you two up to?" the frizzy-haired man asked.
As Hermione described the 'ethical malfeasance' of their new Defense professor, Harry wondered if he'd have to intervene again. She didn't look ready to storm off to confront the man but sounded very determined to establish 'an alternate curriculum because we shouldn't be expected to condone such inappropriate behavior.'
"And so you shall 'cause no you shouldn't," her father said with a smile. "Damn the Man and fight the power," he said, raising his fist in cheery triumph before spinning around to peruse the wall of books.
"Do we still have enough money from last time or should we wait until after the bank?" Hermione asked.
"I've got a couple of those bricks left and some silver ingots," her father answered. "Though if we may have to saw one of them in half if we need any of the bronze cuff links. But why wait to start judging books by their covers? I always was good at that," he confided to Harry. "I once did an entire term paper at uni just going off of five or six books I plucked off the library shelf at random, though I fudged a bit on the bibliography," he admitted with a wink.
"Dad," Hermione said, scandalized. "That's academic dishonesty. You could've been expelled for it."
"Bah," the man said as he flipped through a book on defensive magical theory. "I was more concerned with the fact it was already three days late when I started. Got a B though," he said, as if it settled the whole thing.
"And you could have gotten an A if you had done it properly," his daughter chided.
"Well if I had done it properly then I wouldn't have been in the library that day at all," he said, tossing magical theory aside. "Then I never would've seen your mother, never transferred to dentistry, and you never would've been born - so I really don't see what you're complaining about."
Harry looked to Hermione to see if she had a comeback but she'd settled for a dignified silence as she checked out the werewolf section of her dark creature book.
"How about this one?" Mr. Granger asked, showing them The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection .
"We had that one last year," Harry said.
"Oh, well, I suppose you can use it again then," Mr. Granger said, a bit discouraged. "It's slim pickings otherwise. Looks like Lockhart's loathsome legerdemain locked-down literary… lobbyists," he said with a straight face even if he finished rather weakly.
Before Harry could even begin to fathom how anyone could spin a sentence like that on the drop of a hat Hermione interjected.
"I don't think 'lobbyists' goes there," she noted as she added a copy of her dark creature book to the hexes and jinxes he already had.
"Well, not in the strictest sense, no," her father agreed, adding a thin book of dueling basics. "But in context-"
"-In context it means you couldn't think of an L-word for 'rival' and had to abort," she said, determined to puncture her father's balloon as he perused another shelf. "If I were playing - which I'm not - I would've gone for 'license' meaning 'options' instead."
"Yes, well, hindsight is twenty-twenty," he said stuffily. "But you didn't have to spell everything out like that, did you?" he asked rhetorically. "There is such a thing as subtlety."
Hermione rolled her eyes.
"Ah! Here you go Harry," Mr. Granger said as he plucked another book of the shelf. "A book on the most tenacious enemy you're ever going to face - or if you think of an L-word for a rival and don't want to abort." On top of the other books he placed a copy of Twelve Fail-Safe Ways to Charm Witches and gave his daughter a meaningful look.
"OH MY GOD!" Hermione cried, snatching the offending book before Harry even had the chance to react.
"Yes, I know!" Gilderoy Lockhart's silky tones answered as they wafted back from the front of the shop. "Five times in a row, such an honor, really, but nothing the likes of the Order of Merlin, Third Class."
Just as Harry envisioned Hermione pulling a Mr. Weasley and attacking her father with the book, his three favorite redheads arrived to save the day.
"Oi! Here he is," Ron told the twins. "Told you that was her voice."
"And we told you he'd be here," the twin he was pretty sure was George said as Mr. Granger hid himself with a Practical Runemaking book and Hermione rid herself of the witch-charming manual.
"Odd choice of reading material there, Hermione," the twin he thought was Fred said as he picked up the odd book. "Especially considering-," he left the rest hanging as he nodded to Harry.
"It's not mine," she said acidly. "And it's not Harry's either," she said to the other one.
George pulled a face and held his hands up in surrender, though Harry thought it might've been to cover the book being covertly slipped into his twin's robes. Harry shook his head in a most Hermione-like way, though he got a wink from the felonious Fred.
"So what're the odds your dad's been banned from the place?" Harry asked.
"Pretty good," George said, "though Flourish is notoriously forgetful."
"He's banned us for life twice and still lets us in," Fred grinned.
"And what did you do to get ban-," Hermione began scolding before her balloon was quickly popped.
.....
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