They told her. Harry took the Chamber, as before, and he handled the aftermath — the wand, the electives, the Gringotts meeting, the basilisk sale, the money.
She looked at him again — the thorough, recalibrating look. "The electives," she said. "You switched."
"Arithmancy, Runes, Care of Magical Creatures. All three."
"I'm taking all five," she said, with the calm certainty of someone announcing a decision that was, to them, entirely self-evident.
He looked at her.
"All five Hogwarts electives," he said.
"Arithmancy, Ancient Runes, Care of Magical Creatures, Divination, and Muggle Studies," she confirmed. "I've already written to McGonagall about it."
He considered this. He considered the Time-Turner, which he knew was coming because the only way to physically attend five simultaneous timetabled electives was to move through time to do it, and he considered what the experience of doing that for an entire year did to a person, and he considered the fact that Hermione Granger was twelve years old and had just spent two months petrified and was already planning her way into a schedule that would have challenged a fully grown adult with no other obligations.
He also considered that she was not going to listen to him if he told her not to.
Some lessons, the being had said, had to be learned by themselves.
"Alright," he said.
She blinked. She had clearly prepared for an argument. "You're not going to tell me it's too much?"
"Would it change anything?"
A pause. "No," she admitted.
"Then there's not much point," he said. "You're going to find out what works and what doesn't through the process of doing it. That's a reasonable way to learn." He paused. "I'll just ask that when you figure it out, you tell us. So we can help."
She looked at him with the expression she'd been wearing on and off since they arrived — the one that was still recalibrating, still building the updated model of who he was now. "You're very different," she said.
"You mentioned," he said.
"I mean it differently this time," she said, and didn't elaborate, and looked back at her notebook.
"You might also want to know," he said, moving on in the way that gave her space to process without requiring her to respond to it, "that you can sit O.W.L.s through the Ministry for subjects not taught at Hogwarts."
The information hit her the way new information always hit Hermione — like a tide coming in, fast and thorough, filling every available space simultaneously. The surprise, the calculation, the immediate assembly of implications, and underneath all of it the specific quality of someone for whom the existence of additional possible knowledge was not a burden but an immediate and profound gift.
"Which subjects?" she said.
He listed them. "Healing. Duelling. Magical Languages. Flying. Magical Arts and Music. Magical Theory. Wizarding Law." He paused. "Healing and Wizarding Law are also available at N.E.W.T. level, as they're the foundation qualifications for those professions."
She grabbed her bedside notebook and wrote them down. All of them. With the date and a small asterisk next to Healing and Wizarding Law for the N.E.W.T. notation. Then she paused, pen still on the page, and looked up.
"You can sit these without taking them as classes," she said slowly. "Self-study and then examination."
"Yes."
"So theoretically," she said, with the careful precision of someone building an argument in real time, "a student could cover the Ministry examination syllabus independently alongside their Hogwarts coursework and sit the examinations whenever they felt prepared."
"Theoretically," he confirmed.
"Without it affecting their Hogwarts timetable at all."
"Without it affecting their Hogwarts timetable at all," he agreed.
She wrote something else in her notebook. He suspected it was a reminder to research the Ministry examination requirements, the independent study syllabi, the registration process, the examination calendar, and probably the historical pass rates, as soon as she got home.
He watched her do it and thought, with genuine warmth, that she was going to be completely magnificent and also almost certainly going to try to add the Ministry subjects on top of five Hogwarts electives and two months of catch-up work, and that this was going to be a fascinating year to observe.
"Hermione," he said.
She looked up.
"The Ministry subjects can wait," he said. "You have five electives, two months of curriculum to catch up on, and a summer first. The examinations aren't going anywhere." He paused. "I'm not telling you not to plan. I'm asking you to sequence it."
She looked at him for a long moment. "I'll consider that," she said, which was Hermione's version of I'll do whatever I was going to do anyway but I acknowledge your input.
He had not expected anything different. The sequence of that particular lesson had its own timeline and he was not going to shortcut it.
"Good," he said simply, and left it there.