Hermione learns a thing

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Spoiler: Fanfic Disclaimer

The fanfiction I write is entirely for fun, with no commercial use implied, intended, or permitted. All original copyright holder's rights are acknowledged.

More specifically, as a basic, non-exhaustive disclaimer for main line or omake story elements currently used to date:

The Harry Potter universe is the property of J K Rowling.

Basically, if you recognize it from a movie, comic, book, or other published work, it's owned by the rightsholders for that work. Anything else is my fault.

Reader contributed Omakes may incorporate other elements not listed above, and are otherwise © their respective authors. And much thanks is due to those authors for adding to my and your enjoyment!

Does anyone even read these? Does anyone even care about these?

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This introduction may change as time goes on, as I will answer common questions and address issues here, as well as announce the status of the story should it change. Check here first if you have any queries. I can't promise that you will always find an answer, but I'll try

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So once again I start a new story, after popular demand. Millions Thousands A couple of people suggested this product, yet again, of my random odds and sods thread required fleshing out. I decided why not? What's the worst that could happen? Another story I randomly update as the whim takes me, that's what. And as a result, here we are.

Hermione Granger learns this one simple trick they don't want her to know. Or something like that. And things go a bit sideways...

As always, I will say the following, my standard boilerplate for a story:

I'm always open to corrections, typo spotting, math error checking, and all sorts of things like that, and I like hearing ideas about the way things could go and suggestions for interesting scenes. Or even simply discussing the story. Make a good point and I will probably use it in one way or the other if I agree with it.

On the other hand I will ignore demands to change parts of the story to fit your particular likes. This is not in any way meant to be rude, but the first rule of fanfiction is the same as the first rule of life, which is:

It's entirely impossible to please everyone at the same time with anything.​

Trying to do so is an exercise in frustration for all involved and therefore pointless. I would rather concentrate on writing the story rather than arguing about how to write the story, especially as that is a zero-sum game in the first place.

Bear in mind that this is an alternative universe, which means that some of the canon powersets may work in slightly different ways if it made it more convenient for the story. Most are meant to be more or less unchanged, though, so it's not impossible I made a mistake. If you aren't sure, don't worry about asking for clarification, I don't mind at all. I respond well to polite questions and genuine interest in why something happened the way it did.

 

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"How does it do that, Daddy?"

Michael Granger looked to where his seven, almost eight year old daughter was peering into the display cabinet, her face pressed against the glass and her bushy brown hair surrounding her in a halo, then through the glass to what she was gazing at. The display was of a large number of electronic toys and such things, the one that she was specifically peering at being some sort of small robot with little lights blinking all over it that was walking along a track. When it reached the end, it stopped, turned around, waved at them, then walked back. Over and over, the little mechanism happily stomped along, small motors and gears visible through the mostly transparent plastic casing.

"How do you mean, dear?" he asked, squatting down next to her to put his head next to hers.

The girl pointed at the thing. "Those lights are really tiny and not light bulbs. And how does it know to turn around at the end, instead of falling off the track?" She kept watching intently. "Is is magic?"

He chuckled tolerantly. "No, it's not magic, Hermione. It's science. Or in this case, electronics. The lights are called LEDs, and that robot has a really small computer in it which is making it move like that."

"A computer?" she echoed, glancing at him, then turning back to the cabinet. "Like our one at home?"

"Indeed, like that one, yes," he replied.

"But our computer is a great big thing and he's ever so much smaller. How does it fit?"

He put his hand on her back and smiled as she watched, her expression intent and curious. "Electronic technology is getting better and smaller all the time. When I was your age, a computer like ours would have filled a room. Now it fits on a desk. By the time you're my age it will probably go in your pocket." She nodded slowly, listening while still watching. "The computer inside our friend here is much simpler, though, so even now it's very small indeed. You see that little green thing in his chest, with all the shiny bits on?" He indicated the printed circuit board which could be made out through the transparent plastic. "That's the electronic circuit that makes him go."

"How interesting," she commented, the remark making him grin. His daughter had an oddly formal vocabulary at times, as well as knowing a lot more words than most eight year old children did. But then she was firmly in the gifted category, which they had the paperwork to prove. Her IQ was so high it put her well into the top fraction of a percent, which was a double-edged gift at times. She unfortunately found that most of her peers were not all that friendly for various reasons, and that had left her rather lonely.

He, and his wife, worried that she might not enjoy much of her schooling if this was the case as she got older. Hopefully she'd meet other gifted children who could keep up with her incessant desire to know how everything worked and why. Or at least teachers who understood that sort of thing. At her age, most children were much more interested in running around outside, or playing with toys, or other such activities, whereas Hermione would normally prefer sitting down with a good book.

And often picking holes in it, he'd noticed with amusement. Especially fiction, although she wasn't above finding apparent logical gaps in textbooks and becoming annoyed that someone had made a mistake. Sometimes she was actually correct, although mostly it was due to things she hadn't learned yet. Which in turn invariably led her to looking up those things so she could understand where she'd gone wrong.

Michael was fairly convinced his little girl was going to end up in the scientific arena in the end…

Hermione kept watching for another few minutes, while he stood up and looked at his wife as she approached, a couple of boxes in her hands. He walked over to join her, keeping an eye on the girl as he did, and said in a low voice, "Find anything nice?"

Helen sighed a little. "She is a very difficult person to buy gifts for," she said with a long-suffering smile at him. "Her toys need to be educational. And her idea of that is… a bit more involved than most toy companies seem to think about."

He snorted with humor as he looked at the things she was holding. One was a complex mechanical puzzle, the sort of thing that needed half a dozen small pins and bars to be put in the right order one after another to disassemble or reassemble it, and the other was a card game that the box claimed taught interesting facts about nature and science. 'For ages 10 to 14!' it proudly proclaimed.

Taking the box from her as she held it up, he read the back, then shook his head. "You realize she'll play it once, memorize all the cards, and then never touch it again, I hope?"

His wife sighed again. "I know, I know, but what else can we find? It's her birthday tomorrow and we've rejected everything so far."

Michael looked around. They were in Hamley's, the biggest and oldest toy shop on the planet, and in four hours of wandering around, they couldn't find anything that either of them thought one eight year old girl would like. He pointed this out to a rather resigned wife.

"The downside of having a daughter smarter than either of us. Probably put together," she mumbled, shaking her head. "Do you have any ideas?"

He started to say no, then glanced back at Hermione, who was now peering very intently at another little electronic toy, watching the lights on it spin and blink while apparently tracing the action in the air with a small finger. "Hmm. I might have, actually," he replied with a small smile. "You look after her, I'll be right back." He walked rapidly off, trying to remember on which floor he'd seen what he was after.

It took him about twenty minutes, but he found his goal, and smiled broadly. "That should do it. I hope," he said as he took the box off the shelf and headed for the nearest till.

Half an hour later they were outside and heading for a bite to eat, Hermione casting curious glances at the large package under his arm but being polite enough not to prod him about it. His wife had been a little startled when he'd told her very quietly what it was, but after thinking it over, had agreed it was probably the best solution to the problem of what do you get a possibly-genius-level small girl for her birthday.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Hermione peeled the tape away from one end of the gift in her hands, having already deduced it was a book. She slid the paper off and looked at the thing, smiling a little. "Thank you, Granny," she said as she admired the hardcover copy of Mort, the latest book by Terry Pratchett. She had all the rest of Mr Pratchett's so far published books and found them very funny as well as thought provoking, even though her mother had said more than once that they weren't really meant for children. She'd pointed out that some of them were, it said so on the cover, and regardless, any book she could read was one she wanted to read. Age didn't come into it.

Her father, once he'd stopped laughing at her lecturing tone, had shaken his head at her mother who was looking resigned again, then agreed.

"I know you like this sort of thing, Hermione, and your mother said you hadn't read it yet," her grandmother replied with a smile. "Hopefully it won't be too advanced for you."

The girl raised an eyebrow at the much older woman even as her father started snickering. "I think I can probably manage," she said calmly. Her grandmother, who seemed to be suppressing a laugh of her own, merely nodded and picked up her teacup.

Putting the book down on the stack of several others that she'd received, Hermione turned her attention to the biggest present. It was obviously what her father had bought in Hamley's, although she had no idea what that was. Intrigued she picked it up and gently shook it, listening to the rattling and shuffling sound from inside.

"You could just open it, you know," her father remarked tolerantly.

She grinned at him. "I'm trying to work it out from the sound," she replied.

"You probably won't," he chuckled.

After another thirty seconds, she decided he was right, and put it down on her lap, before starting to remove the gaily colored paper wrapping it. A brightly colored cardboard box was revealed, with a number of pictures on the top that made her pause for several seconds in surprise.

"Ooooohhh," she breathed as she read the lid. "250 electronics projects kit?"

"It was the biggest one I could find," her father said, as she looked at her parents, then back at the box. "We thought that because you were interested in that little robot toy, you might want to learn about how that sort of thing works. I think this will probably let you learn all sorts of things about electronics. In the future that sort of knowledge is going to be even more important than it is now, after all."

"It's hardly a girl's toy, though, is it?" her grandmother commented with a slightly confused look.

"I doubt our Hermione is all that interested in girly toys, Mom," her father replied with a laugh. "She never has been up to this point at least."

Hermione shook her head a little. She'd removed the lid and was now staring at the contents of the big box. The lower part was a heavy duty cardboard structure containing one large compartment and several smaller ones on the side. Those were full of differently colored pieces of insulated wire with bare ends, each color a different length, all in plastic bags to keep them together. The large part of the box had a whole series of color coded rectangles with symbols at the top, and in the middle of each one was a small component. She studied these, wondering what they all were and what they did. Each little section had a number of small vertical springs sticking up out of the cardboard, and it only took her a moment's thought to realize that the springs could be used to connect the wires to the parts. At the top right of this large section was a clip that you could fit some batteries into, like in a radio.

Feeling rather excited, she picked up the A4 manual which was sitting on top of all this and opened it, scanning the introduction. "Wow," she mumbled after reading the first page. "You can build a radio, and a thing to make sounds, and all sorts of other stuff."

"I've seen those before a couple of times, one of my friends had one years ago but it wasn't anything like as complicated as that is," her father remarked from where he and the other two adults were watching her with smiles. "You use those little bits of wire to connect all the parts up according to the instructions and you can make all manner of interesting devices. It's a good introduction to electronics, I think. And if you enjoy it, we can certainly find more books on the subject."

Hermione nodded absently, turning the page again and continuing reading. This was something genuinely new and not at all anything she'd thought of learning about before, but it looked fascinating.

Almost like magic, she thought with an internal giggle.

After a few more seconds, she put the thick instruction book down, hopped to her feet, and hugged her parents. "Thank you, I love it," she said happily.

"I hope you have a lot of fun with it, dear," her mother replied. "Shall we have your cake now?"

"Ooh, cake! Yes, let's do that." She grinned broadly. She didn't get cake all that often but her parents always said they could make an exception on birthdays. One just had to brush one's teeth very well afterwards.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Carefully bending the little spring sideways so the coils separated a bit, Hermione pushed the final wire into place and released the pressure. The spring clamped the wire firmly and she gently tugged on it to be sure. "Good, that's done… Now all I need to do is connect this battery and…" The girl plugged a nine volt battery into the clip, then beamed when a loud tone sounded from the speaker in her electronics kit. Carefully adjusting the variable capacitor, she listened to the pitch change with satisfaction. The oscillator circuit worked perfectly, so she'd followed the instructions correctly.

Nodding to herself, she unplugged the battery, then moved a couple of wires, before reconnecting it. The pitch this time was much higher, but again followed the movement of the control. Turning the volume down she picked up the manual and carefully read the description of how the circuit worked, having to resort to the dictionary a couple of times to figure out the meaning of certain terms, but in the end she thought she had a decent understanding of what was going on.

Smiling, she turned the page and inspected the next project. It was rather more complex, but looked easy enough. Unplugging the battery once more she spent ten minutes removing all the wiring before she began again, occasionally nibbling on the last of the birthday cake.

She was rather pleased with how her birthday had worked out, and she still had three books left to read.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

"Are you sure this is the one you want, Hermione?" Michael asked, as his daughter put the box on the counter. She nodded.

"It's a nice one, and just the right size," she replied happily. The clerk on the other side of the counter was watching them with a slightly amused expression, as he had been the entire time Hermione had been wandering around the shop.

"They're starting young these days aren't they?" he commented to Michael with a wink at Hermione, who huffed slightly but smiled as well. Michael put his hand on his daughter's hair and ruffled it.

"That might be my fault," he admitted. "I came up with the idea of an electronics project kit for her last birthday, and it seemed to strike a nerve. She's been learning about electronics ever since, for the last eight months. And now she wants something more complicated."

The man laughed a little. "That's how it tends to go, yeah. Although not usually quite that young. I was about twelve when I got one of those things. Good fun, they are."

Hermione nodded vigorously. "I want to learn how to solder now." She pointed at the soldering iron in its box. "I think that will do nicely."

"It's quite a good one, although if you stick with the hobby you'll want something a little more powerful sooner or later," the fellow replied tolerantly. "Temperature controlled, that sort of thing. But this is fine for a beginner. Remember that the end gets very hot indeed. Don't pick it up by that end."

Hermione put her hands on her hips and sniffed. "Who would pick up a soldering iron by the hot end?" she queried briskly.

He laughed and showed her his right hand. She and Michael studied the scar on his index finger that he pointed to with the other one. "It happens sometimes if you get too involved and forget, trust me," he said, smiling a little. "Hurts like the dickens."

Slightly wide-eyed, Hermione nodded. "I should imagine it would. I'll try not to do that."

"Best if you don't," he agreed. "All right, then, let's see what you have here." The clerk started ringing up their purchases. "Remember that this solder is made of lead as well as tin," he warned. "Don't eat anything while you're using it, and wash your hands after, OK?"

The girl nodded seriously. "I shall do that, thank you."

Looking like he was suppressing a smile, the man kept working. When he'd finished ringing up, Michael looked at the total and sighed very faintly, but pulled out his credit card. It wasn't much in the grand scheme of things and his little girl did seem to be enjoying herself. He made a mental note to make damn sure that there was nothing flammable where she was going to work, just in case. "Forty six pounds and eleven pence, please," the clerk said.

Handing over his card, Michael waited for the transaction to finish, pocketed the receipt, and picked up the bag full of tools and a couple of basic starter electronic kits. "Thanks," he said.

"You're welcome, and Maplin thanks you for your business," the other man replied with a smile. "Come back any time."

"I suspect you haven't seen the last of us," Michael said over his shoulder as he and his daughter left the shop, hearing a laugh from behind him.

"Have fun!" the guy shouted before the door closed.

Hermione waved back, then they headed for the car park. She looked rather pleased with the shopping trip, and excited to get home.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

"Ow." Muttering to herself, Hermione sucked her finger for a moment, then looked at it. A tiny pinprick of blood showed where the resistor lead had poked her. They were awfully sharp when you cut them with the wire cutters, she ruefully thought. And she'd also discovered the hard way that it was vitally important to make certain that none of the little bits of cut off wire ended up on the carpet, because they always seemed to then end up in the bottom of your feet.

That really hurt.

Going back to what she was doing, she carefully snipped off the last of the excess wire, then put the offcut into the bag that had contained some of the parts in the latest kit she was making. It was now half full of bits of wire and insulation stripped off the various leads. Putting the tool back into the box she kept them in, she picked up the finished circuit board and admired it. Gently straightening a couple of transistors from where they'd been a little bent when she put the board upside down on her desk, she inspected the project for anything missing or shorted out. Satisfied that all was in order, she nodded happily and dug around for a couple of AA batteries. Snapping them into the holder, she did one final inspection then flipped the switch to on.

There was a short pause, followed by a nasty crackling sound and a horrible smell. One of the two transistors emitted a puff of smoke, making her yelp and switch the circuit off again as fast as possible.

Unfortunately she was far too late. The smoke slowly dissipated into her bedroom as she stared in dismay at the damage, a ring of blackened goo surrounding the former transistor which was blatantly obviously no longer among the living.

"Oh no," the girl whispered, cautiously touching the dead component, finding it was cold again, then picking the board up once more and turning it over and over in her hand. "What did I do wrong?" She spent nearly twenty minutes going over the board part by part, checking them against the instructions and the circuit diagram, but could find no error at all.

"Why did it go wrong?" she shouted, finally at her wits end and very annoyed at failing after two solid evening's work. She glared at the faulty kit, her eyes a little wet from frustration more than anything else.

Those eyes widened in shock when a moment later the board shot off the desk and smacked into the wall on the other side of the room.

"Wha… what happened?" she finally said, looking between the empty spot on the desk and the ding in the plaster where the corner of the PCB had hit it, before the thing dropped to the floor. Suspiciously staring at the now-still board, she finally got to her feet and walked across the bedroom, kneeling down on the carpet and staring cautiously at the thing in case it suddenly attacked her.

First it burned up, then it flew away? What was going on?

Hermione was nothing if not observant, and she was completely sure this was a real thing. There was no string attached to the board, no one was playing a trick on her, it really had just jumped off the desk and shot off like it was in a hurry to be somewhere else.

Which was, as far as she knew, impossible.

On the other hand, she'd seen it with her own eyes, and therefore it was possible. Because it had happened.

Raising her eyes she reached out and felt the small gash in the plaster, then looked at her fingertip which had plaster dust and fragments of buttercup yellow paint on it. Bending down, she studied the printed circuit board on the floor, and the corner of it which also had the same materials on. Several of the capacitors had bent sideways from the impact as well. All the evidence proved that what she'd seen happen had definitely happened.

Hermione might only be a month from her ninth birthday, but she was absolutely sure she was old enough to be able to distinguish reality from imagination. And she certainly hadn't thrown her broken project across the room, because that would have been immature even in the face of frustration.

So what had happened?

The girl sat there on the floor for nearly fifteen minutes, thinking hard, before she finally picked the kit up and took it back to the desk to see if she could find out what had gone wrong with it. Working out how it had suddenly developed a requirement to leave at high speed she put off for later consideration as it was making her head ache.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

"Daddy, can people move things with their minds?"

Michael looked up from his morning reading of the Guardian to see his daughter looking at him across the dining table. She seemed serious. About to answer flippantly, he caught the look in Helen's eyes and instead thought for a moment.

"I… don't think so, dear," he replied after a moment. "I've never seen any evidence of that, certainly. But there are stories, and some people think it's possible."

"Oh." Hermione pondered the answer. "Stories?" she asked a moment or two later.

"Well, it's a staple of fantasy books, and some more serious science fiction," he said with a smile. "It's called telekinesis, from the word tele meaning something happening over distance, like in television, and the other part meaning..."

"Motion, or moving," she finished for him, looking intrigued.

"Exactly. Motion at a distance." He nodded. "But whether it actually exists or is just a concept from fiction I couldn't tell you."

The girl slowly nodded, then went back to eating her porridge. She had an expression that showed she was working on a problem in her head, something he was more than familiar with. Glancing at Helen he shrugged a little, his wife shaking her head slightly, before he returned to reading about the latest idiocy of Thatcher's government.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Very cautiously, Hermione flicked the switch while leaning a little back from the desk, just in case. Nothing happened other than a small red LED lighting up. She smiled, pleased that her work in replacing the transistor that had gone off pop was successful. Having spent some time trying to figure out what she'd done wrong she'd finally come to the conclusion that she hadn't done anything wrong and the only explanation was that the transistor had been faulty. Luckily she'd found another BC548 in one of the older projects she'd built, and had managed to remove it from the circuit board and swap it for the bad one without damaging anything.

The result showed she'd been right. Which was gratifying. Gently turning the volume knob up a little, she picked up a pencil and poked several of the tiny little DIP switches that lay in several banks, jumping slightly when she got a weird sound out of the speaker without warning. "It works!" she said with excitement, turning a couple of the knobs and listening to the sounds change to something even odder. It was the most advanced kit she'd built so far, based around a sound effects chip, and it was rather fun to play with.

She spent a happy couple of hours flipping little switches and turning controls, writing down any combination that produced a particularly interesting sound. At one point she got a very convincing burping noise that made her collapse in a giggle fit, pressing the button that set it off over and over until she tired of it. Another setting made something a lot like a steam train, which was fun.

Eventually she turned it off and moved to her bed, lying on it and smiling to herself. Electronics was really interesting, and she was definitely beginning to understand how some of it worked. She needed some better books though, the kits while fun didn't explain all that much of the theory behind them, only how to build them and roughly how they worked.

It was her birthday in a week, so she decided that asking for some good electronics books this time would be a sensible idea.

That settled, she turned her mind to the other thing that had been occupying part of it for the last month. Looking across the room her eyes settled on the small mark on the wall near the door. It was proof that something really had happened.

And the only thing she could think of, that she'd been able to come up with to explain it, was something her father claimed was a concept out of a fantasy book.

That or simply magic, but she felt that if magic really existed, it would be a little more obvious. It also seemed even less likely than telekinesis. She'd found a couple of her father's science fiction books which mentioned the idea, after he'd commented on her question, and they appeared to match what she'd seen pretty well.

And when she'd started thinking about it, she found she could recall a few times before when something strange had happened that might also have been the same thing. Nothing as obvious as what had happened that time, but looking back, it was a better explanation than anything else she could come up with. A glass that had mysteriously jumped off a table when she was seven, and upset about how some of the children in school had been nasty to her. Her mother had thought it was the vibrations of a lorry going past in the street that had done it.

Or a window that had slammed shut when she'd been five and tripped over the vacuum cleaner hose in the living room and banged her head. The wind had done it, her father had told her. It was possible, certainly, but…

She went over every incident that might match what she'd seen. There was no way to prove it, but she was getting fairly convinced that at least some of them weren't what she'd thought they were. All stuff that could be explained by perfectly normal events, and had been, right up until she'd watched a three inch square piece of electronics motivate itself across her bedroom fast enough to dent the plaster, right in front of her eyes.

That was not a perfectly normal event no matter how you looked at it.

So what had caused it to happen? Was it something she did? Or was it something else that did it? If so, what? And why? And how for that matter?

Lying back on the pillows she closed her eyes and thought hard, yet again. She'd been over this process many times but so far had not come to any conclusions, at least testable ones, and she'd always been told that ideas had to be testable to be proper science.

If she assumed that the event with the kit was in fact not the first time something like that had happened, merely the first one she could not explain in any other way, what was common to all the other times and this one too? Her presence was obvious. Her parents had been around for the other occasions, but she'd been alone the last time, as they'd been downstairs getting dinner ready. The time of day had been different each time, the time of year had also been different, the weather wasn't the same… Hermione went over every variable she could come up with and finally decided yet again that the only one that she was certain was the same in all the odd events she could remember was in fact her.

So probably it was something she was doing. It certainly wasn't something she was doing on purpose though. Which was bizarre, how could you fling something across the room with your mind by accident?

Sighing the girl got off the bed and trotted off to find an apple or something. That might help her think. Then she went into the garden to sit under the oak tree at the side and ponder the problem some more, as it was a nice day for September. Shortly she was leaning on the old tree and nibbling her apple as she tried, yet again, to come up with an explanation for something that defied being explained.

By the time she finished her apple, she was no closer to an answer, which was immensely frustrating. She knew she was bright, and she normally was far ahead in her schoolwork, which sometimes caused problems with the other children but there was nothing she could really do about that. Was she supposed to pretend she was stupid or something? But right now she felt like Jimmy Clovis, who was as thick as mince. She just couldn't figure it out.

Feeling very irritated she tossed the apple core away, knowing she was going to have to pick it up but right now not in the mood. Her eyes widened as instead of plopping into the grass, the thing instead turned at right angles six feet from her and went straight up!

Hermione gazed upwards in disbelief, seeing no sign of the apple core, then looked around with a baffled feeling. What on earth?

Getting up she walked over to where the piece of fruit had decided gravity was optional and stared at the ground. It looked perfectly normal. Scratching her head she looked around, then up again, just in time to receive the core between the eyes as it made a reappearance. Yelping in surprise she fell over, then felt her forehead which was sticky and covered in little bits of apple.

"What happened?" she said out loud, completely confused. "How did that…" She found herself unable to vocalize her thoughts and just dropped her head to the grass and stared up at the clouds, trying to understand.

She was now absolutely positive that something funny was going on. Twice now, right in front of her, something had done the impossible and gone against everything she'd been taught was true. There was no doubt about it. But how?

Again, she was alone, and that had to mean the common factor was her. But she hadn't tried to make an apple core fly, it had just done it. All she'd done was get angry and throw it…

Her eyes slowly widened as a daft idea hit her out of the blue.

She got angry. Frustration boiled over and she lost her temper. And when that project PCB flew across the room, she'd been frustrated then too because of the bad transistor. Thinking back on the other times she'd seen something strange happen, each of them was also associated with her being angry, or upset. Was that it? Did she make things happen when she was in a bit of a mood? How? Why?

And if that was the case, could she do it on purpose? Without being angry, since that seemed like a bad idea, and far too close to turning to the Dark Side of the Force, as that silly film put it.

The girl briefly grinned, recalling how much her father loved Star Wars and how he got all upset when she pointed out all the plot holes. Then she went back to thinking.

Maybe it was the force?

No. That was silly. But then that film was another example of what she was considering, again fictional, but it showed that the concept wasn't a new one. Did she have some sort of telekinetic ability for real, or was she somehow imagining everything?

Reaching up she wiped her brow, then studied the apple pulp on her finger, even tasting it to be sure. No, that certainly wasn't a figment of her imagination. It had happened, and now she was all sticky.

Sitting up, Hermione looked around, then settled on an acorn she found in the grass. Picking it up she held it out on her palm and stared hard at it, concentrating. "Move," she commanded.

Nothing at all happened.

Frowning, she kept glaring at the obstinate seed, trying to make it fly away, or jump up and down, or do anything other than just sit there. After nearly ten minutes of effort, causing her to even hold her breath and force her will at the thing, she was no closer to her goal. Possibly she really was imagining it all?

"This is silly!" she finally snapped to herself, annoyed at her failure. "Why won't it work when I want it to?" The girl gave the acorn in her palm a filthy look as she huffed, then squeaked in shock when without warning it rocketed away, bouncing off the living room window twenty feet from her with a loud clonk. Her mother's inquiring face appeared moments later, peering out to see what had caused the sound, and Hermione waved a little guiltily at her. The older woman gave her a look for a few seconds, then waved back before going off to do whatever she'd been doing.

Hermione herself let out the breath she'd been holding and grinned like a lunatic once her mother was no longer in sight. She'd done it. Somehow. And her mother had heard it, which proved beyond doubt that it was a real thing and not some waking dream.

Now all she had to do was work out how she'd done it and what she'd actually done in the first place. How hard could that be?

Quite hard, it turned out.

But, crucially, not impossibly so.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

"Happy birthday, sweetie," Helen said, smiling at her daughter as she passed over a present. Her husband did likewise, as did his mother who had visited once more.

"Thank you," the now nine year old girl replied politely to them all, looking pleased. Helen wished she could have a proper party with other children her own age, but that wish had died a horrible death on her seventh when none of the people invited bothered to even respond.

Hermione was, sadly in one sense, too mature for her age. And the other children seemed to realize this, which manifested in many ways, ranging from ignoring her to actively bullying the poor girl. Which in turn left her feeling that other children weren't worth the bother, which was understandable even if possibly excessive. Helen worried she'd grow up very lonely, and hoped that one day she'd meet people her own age who could keep up with her. The girl was fearsomely intelligent although she still lacked the experience of age, which would come in time as it always did.

On the other hand, once she'd more or less given up on her peers, she'd gone through a fairly short period of depression before apparently deciding that she had better things to do, and just got on with her life. Which manifested in reading even more voraciously, and over the last year delving into her new hobby of electronics. Helen was a little surprised that she'd stuck with the subject, but Michael had been right, or possibly lucky, in finding something she could sink her intellectual teeth into.

Whatever else their daughter was, she was certainly not someone who gave up on a problem just because it was hard. If anything that pushed her onward even more effectively, with the exception of dealing with her peer group. Helen wondered if she was destined to be an engineer of some sort, as she certainly seemed to have the right sort of mind for that type of work. She was undoubtedly going to end up in some academic pursuit. And recently she'd seemed even happier than usual, so she didn't appear to be having any real trouble with her young life.

Now, Hermione started unwrapping her presents, as she always did doing so carefully and with thought. The one from Nancy, her grandmother, was as usual a book, and as had become tradition over the last four years, she got the latest Terry Pratchett one. Hermione loved his books, as for that matter did Helen herself and her husband. She admired the cover of Sourcery, before turning to her grandmother and saying, "Brilliant. Thank you very much, Granny."

"You're more than welcome, Hermione. I hope you enjoy it."

"I will, I'm sure." Putting it to one side, she moved onto the next present, Helen's one. It was a book that her husband had suggested after some research and went with what he'd got their daughter. Peeling the paper back Hermione revealed a large format paperback book with a silver cover. Her eyes widened as she pulled it out and read the title out loud.

"The Student Manual for the Art of Electronics, second edition," the girl said with excitement. Nancy looked at it, then at Helen, seeming a bit taken aback, but Hermione was clearly pleased.

"Isn't that the sort of thing more suited for someone in higher education? Hermione is nine, Helen."

Hermione herself made a slightly amused huffing sound. "Honestly, Granny, I'm not thick. I'm sure I can learn a lot from this. People are always saying on telly that you have to start young if you want to make something of yourself, after all."

Michael started chortling and Nancy sighed faintly. "You are one of a kind, my girl," she said with resignation.

With a cheeky grin that lit up her face, Hermione nodded happily. "I do try, yes," she said firmly, causing Helen to giggle. Nancy chuckled and patted her hand.

"You do, indeed. Well, I hope you can make good use of that book. I'm sure I couldn't make heads or tails of it. I can barely change a fuse in a plug."

"No, you get me to do it for you," Michael laughed. "Open my one, Hermione."

The last present was larger than the rest, being a box about a foot square and half that deep. Hermione dug into it, opening the top to reveal a now-familiar silver cover. Reaching in she pulled out a much, much thicker hardback book, which was large enough to deserve the word tome being applied. "Wow!" the girl said with an impressed look. "The Art of Electronics, second edition."

"Be careful with that one, it's quite expensive," her father cautioned as she opened the book and flipped through it. "But Nigel at Maplin, your friend there, said it was more or less the best book there is on the subject." They'd been back to that shop quite a few times in the last couple of months, as it was only just down the road anyway and seemed to have a very helpful staff member. "I suspect even you will take a while to read it. And understand it."

"Thanks, daddy," Hermione said after closing the book and putting it down gently next to the box. She looked inside the latter again, smiling at the collection of odds and ends. "More tools, some more solder, lots of components… even a multimeter!"

"He said you'd need one sooner or later and recommended that as a starter model," Michael commented as she pulled out a smaller box and inspected the description on the back. "Hopefully it'll do what you need. Out of my field, I mostly do teeth." He grinned as she giggled.

"This is all brilliant. Thanks for everything," she said, looking around at them.

"Enjoy it, and learn from it," Helen advised. "If you end up wanting to study it as a career, you're off to a good start." She sighed melodramatically, her hand to her brow. "I had hoped you would follow in our footsteps, so we could pass on the Granger Dental Practice when we were old and infirm, but perhaps this is not to be."

"Oh, Mummy, don't be silly," the girl giggled. "You've got years to go before you're properly old." She looked mischievous as Helen gave her a narrow-eyed stare, which held until Michael burst out laughing his head off. Nancy was smiling, as she sipped her tea and enjoyed the whole thing.

When Hermione had finished inspecting her gifts, they all went back into the box and off to the sideboard, while they finished lunch. Having taken the afternoon off from work, they all went out after that to the zoo, as it was a nice day and everyone wanted to see the tigers.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Turning the page, Hermione carefully read the beginning to chapter 3, Field effect transistors. She found some of the concepts in the previous chapters rather tricky, but in conjunction with the Student Manual companion work, she was beginning to get a reasonable grasp on the principles involved. She made a mental note to visit the library and get some books on maths which she thought was probably required to properly understand some of the equations in this one, but for now she could read the chapter and think about what she could understand.

Turning pages, she kept going, occasionally stopping to pick up a pencil and try a couple of exercises in her notebook. Eventually she reached the end of the chapter and decided she'd had enough for now, and needed to let her mind go over the things she'd read and make sense of them. There was no hurry after all.

Putting a bookmark on the page, she closed the heavy book and put it down, then scratched her nose for a moment. Paying a visit to the bathroom was next on her list of tasks that needed doing, followed by running down to the kitchen, asking her mother when dinner would be ready, sneaking a couple of apples, then returning to her bedroom and closing the door.

Biting into one apple, she put the other one on her desk, then sat on the bed cross-legged and looked at the fruit. When she'd finished the one in her hand she put the core into the bin next to the bed, wiped her hands on her jeans, and concentrated.

"Up…" she whispered, staring unblinkingly at the innocent apple four feet away and trying to summon up the odd feeling inside her that she'd slowly become aware of in the last couple of months. At first it had only been present when she was angry, although it had taken her some time to realize that what she was feeling wasn't just anger but something quite different. When her experiments in making herself annoyed had slowly begun to produce actual results, she'd then tried to get the same effect while keeping her mind calm and controlled.

It turned out to be very, very hard, but as she watched the apple twitch, then very slowly lift into the air, she thought that it had also turned out to be possible. Still hard, true, but getting easier each time.

The young girl kept concentrating but couldn't prevent a massive grin crossing her face as the hovering fruit slowly turned in place, then as slowly flipped end over end. Getting the thing to fly had almost been the easy part. It was getting it to fly at speeds not so high it splattered on the ceiling that had been the really difficult challenge. Her first experiments had resulted in a broken window pane, several bits of apple all over the room, a very upset crow when she'd made sure the window was open the next time and it hadn't ducked quickly enough, and some sharp words from her mother about being more careful with her tools. She'd blamed the window on slipping with a screwdriver and accidentally throwing it, because until she could properly do what she was learning to do, she didn't want to tell anyone about it.

It was her own secret, something she could do that other people couldn't, and she felt it needed to be perfect before she let her parents in on it. Hermione didn't like doing a bad job and embarrassing herself.

If something was going to be done at all it was going to be done correctly in her opinion.

Hermione, eyes locked on the floating apple, slowly put her hand out and held it palm up, then ever so carefully guided the fruit to hang in the air directly above it. Feeling a slight headache coming on she got it positioned perfectly, then stopped doing what she was doing and grinned when the apple dropped neatly into her hand. She was tired in some hard to explain manner, as if what she'd managed was taking a lot out of her, but it wasn't really a physical tiredness.

Whatever mysterious energy she was somehow manipulating was easily exhausted, she'd found during her experiments. She seemed to have slightly more of it available each time, but so far couldn't keep the apple floating for more than about thirty seconds no matter how hard she tried. And it had taken a lot of effort to get this far in her attempt to teach herself practical telekinesis.

It was strange, though. Fine manipulation like she'd just done was harder by far than firing the apple through the window like it came out of a gun, but surely the amount of power required for the latter task was more than for the former? She bit into the apple as she pondered the question. She knew that energy couldn't be produced from nothing, she'd learned enough about science to understand that, so whatever was powering this process had to have some sort of source. The girl had no idea what that source was, except that it replenished itself over a period of time. She knew she was close to exhausted for the moment as far as moving things with her mind went, but give it a couple of hours and she could do it again. Each time it was easier, and she could do it for a little longer, but it still ran down.

Pondering the problem she finished the second apple then dropped the core into the bin next to the first one, before flopping back on the bed with her hair a halo around her head as she tried to make sense of it all. She'd read quite a lot of science fiction and fantasy books over the years, and more since her father had answered that question at breakfast a while ago, and she was more and more convinced that she had some sort of psionic gift, like in those old Lensman books, but she didn't need an alien wristwatch to pull the trick off.

Or maybe she was like those children from the television show she'd seen, the Tomorrow People? Was she going to be able to read people's minds and teleport around the place?

She considered the idea with interest. It sounded like something that might be useful, if nothing else, and probably fun. But that was a show on the telly, right? Like Doctor Who, it wasn't real. Hermione snorted a little at the idea of a container that was bigger on the inside, which was ridiculous. Fun, but silly.

No, she probably wasn't an alien, or some super advanced new sort of human. She could float an apple, not fly in space or something like that. On the other hand… she'd managed quite a change in only a couple of months of hard work. How far could she take it?

Closing her eyes after a little more thought, she quietly concentrated again, this time not trying to lift a fruit, but attempting to see if she could feel where the source of how she did it came from. Surely if she did have some sort of psionic power she should be able to sense that sort of thing? Breathing slowly and steadily, she did her best to get into the state of mind she managed when she was actively lifting something, then hold it right on the edge before anything happened.

Quite some time passed with her breathing the only sound other than a faint clatter of dishes and talking from downstairs. She tuned that out and tried to look inwards into her own mind. Eventually, she thought she was beginning to feel… something. Not anything she was used to, at all. And… she frowned very slightly. It wasn't coming from inside her, it felt more like something was surrounding her. Like there was a very faint current running over her entire body, as if she was floating in warm water and something was gently stirring it around…

She began to think she was right on the verge of understanding something really interesting, until there was a bang on her door that made her jump violently, it was so unexpected.

"Hermione! Dinner's on the table!"

The girl opened her eyes and felt her heart racing from the shock, the odd sensation she'd been chasing disappearing entirely without trace. Somewhat disappointed, she called back, "I'm coming, Daddy," then got up and straightened her clothes before heading downstairs for food.

She'd try again another time. Sooner or later she'd work it out.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

It took her nearly two and a half months, in the end.

"Ohhhh… I see…" Hermione smiled slowly, her eyes shut, as she gently waved a hand over her stomach, not quite touching her body. She'd managed after many, many attempts to come up with a method to sense the mysterious energy she was somehow manipulating when she did her floating small objects trick, and as her first insight had suggested, it was almost entirely external to her. In her mind's eye she could almost see a faint glow surrounding her, extending off in all directions like a halo that followed the contours of her body. She could also feel how a tiny amount of the omnipresent field was going through her, and when she exerted her will in the right way, as if floating a pencil or something, that field changed detectably. Opening her eyes she looked around, then fixed them on the empty water glass on her bedside table. Reaching out with her mind she lifted it into the air, something that had become easy enough now it was second nature, then closed her eyes again while holding it in position.

Yes. She was right!

She could sense the energy surrounding her forming a little knot around the glass, which must be what was doing the lifting. That little knot was connected to her, somehow, and the power to do the work was going through her to the glass. Her body had to be taking in external energy, like a plant takes in solar radiation, somehow converting it and allowing her to directly manipulate it, then performing the action she desired. It was absolutely fascinating.

Not opening her eyes, she moved the glass up and down, 'watching' with the new sense she'd managed to invent, and was able to tell exactly where it was. When she pointed without looking then opened her eyes to check, sure enough she was pointing right at it.

"That's amazing," she whispered, moving her finger around and keeping the glass at a constant distance from it while grinning like an idiot. It was much easier now, her… reserves, or power handling capacity, or whatever it really was, had kept improving as she practiced. By now she could float something this size for ages without strain, and when she'd experimented, found she could make the entire bed lift an inch off the floor before the effort wore her out. Which seemed like quite a thing, although she didn't know how much it weighed. Quite a bit, certainly, she couldn't lift it with her hands.

Keeping the glass in the air over her chest, she looked around, then tried lifting a pair of pliers from her desk. It twitched a little, slid sideways, rose slightly into the air, then everything went wrong and both pliers and glass dropped. The glass bounced off her stomach and she grabbed at it while wincing a little. "Ow."

Well, that was the next thing to practice. Lifting one object was fairly easy now. Clearly she needed to work on more than one at the same time.

Nodding determinedly, she sat at her desk and put an array of a dozen new pencils on the surface in a neat line, then scowled at them. She was going to practice and practice until she could not only get all of them in the air at the same time, but could write her name with one of them while doing so.

That took another two months, but she did it.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Michael looked up from his book as Hermione came down the stairs carrying a notebook and a tape measure, with the sort of analytical expression he knew so well on her face. She came into the living room and looked out at the garden, then turned to him. "Daddy, how much does a car weigh?"

He studied her, wondering what on earth she was thinking about this time, but answered, "Perhaps a ton or so? Possibly twice that for a large car, or a van. Why do you want to know that?"

"It's for an experiment," she replied, writing something in her notebook.

He shook his head fondly. She was a great one for experiments, Hermione was. Definitely academic material, just like his father had been.

"What sort of experiment?" he asked.

"A secret one," she said, grinning at him for a moment. Then she left the room, heading for the kitchen. He looked after her, a little bemused, but in the end shrugged and went back to his book.

About five minutes later there was a distinct thump and the house very faintly shuddered. He looked around, puzzled, then got up and went to the front window to see if anyone had managed to drive into a tree or something. Not seeing anything, he decided it must have been his imagination and went to get some more coffee. While he was filling the kettle, his daughter came out of the garage writing in her notebook once more, kicking the door shut behind her and walking past without a word. Michael watched her go up the stairs and heard her bedroom door shut, then slowly opened the garage door and peered through it. His car was parked where he'd left it and nothing else was out of place.

Shrugging, and putting it down to Hermione being Hermione again, he closed the door, put the kettle on, and started the process of making some coffee.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

"Five seconds. That's better, but not as good as I'd like," Hermione mumbled as she wrote some figures down. "And six inches this time. It's improved but it's so slow…" Dropping the pencil she stared at the lined page covered in her neat handwriting as she tried to think of something else she could try. Her telekinesis was getting steadily stronger and more precise with practice, which she did multiple times per day, but it seemed to be slowing down. At least as far as lifting capacity went. Perhaps there was an upper limit?

That seemed annoying if so. The strange energy she was manipulating was absolutely everywhere, and the amount required to lift an entire car was miniscule as far as she could determine. It seemed more likely that it was a power handling capacity issue, rather than an absolute limit on total energy. For whatever reason her body just couldn't push any more energy through it without somehow running out of something needed for the process to continue.

After thinking it over for a while, she shook her head and pushed the notebook to one side. She'd let it sit at the back of her mind for a while, that often seemed to work nicely, and concentrate on other things. Pulling one of the desk drawers open the girl reached inside and extracted a plastic box, which she opened and delved into. Soon she had a pile of parts on the desk and was setting up her soldering iron. The audio amplifier kit she was building for a present for her father was nearly done, and it would only need another couple of hours or so to finish soldering all the remaining parts in place. Then she could test the power supply, and if that worked, wire the entire thing up properly. Her mother had helped her buy the kit and even paid for the nice case it would go in, which she was looking forward to assembling everything into.

Turning on the little desk fan next to her and leaning over to open the window a little, so that the smoke from the solder flux would blow away outside, she set to work. Soon she was happily bending component leads and pushing them through holes in the PCB, before soldering the other side in place.

A little over an hour later she was halfway through fitting the second big MOSFET transistor for the output stage when she froze, her hands still, before very slowly lifting the three-legged device and staring at it with wide eyes.

"Oh," she breathed. "Of course."

After close to five minutes of very hard thinking, she made a few notes then got back to work. Her sudden insight could wait for now.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

"Did you find everything you were looking for, sweetie?" Helen asked as Hermione came around the corner of the shelves holding a stack of at least a dozen books.

"I think so, mommy," the girl replied, looking down at her haul. Helen turned her head sideways to read the spines she could see. Two fantasy books, something called Shadowrun, which sounded like more of the same, a couple of science fiction books, one by Arthur C Clarke and one Isaac Asimov, and three textbooks. One of these was on advanced algebra, another was a secondary education primer on calculus, and the third one…

"Semiconductor Physics: An Introduction?" she read out loud, raising her eyebrows.

Hermione smiled. "I was surprised they had that one here. It's a very good library."

"Do you actually understand that sort of thing, Hermione?" Helen asked, more than a little surprised. Her daughter shrugged a little, then shifted the book stack as the top one started to slide off. Helen put her hand out and stopped it.

"Sort of? I'm only beginning but it's interesting. Electronics is fascinating."

"You certainly do seem to have stuck with it," Helen replied, pleased. The young girl was definitely invested in her hobby, and seemed likely to keep at it. Which was a little unusual at her age, but gratifying. And would probably stand her in good stead in later years. She was teaching herself far more than she'd ever learn at school, Helen was sure. At times she wondered if it might not be better to take her out of school entirely and get tutors for her, but that was not only quite expensive, but would deprive her of the small amount of peer group social contact she had now. Not that she thought Hermione would care much about that.

She sighed inaudibly as she followed her daughter towards the librarian's desk to check out the books. At times she really wondered if the child was in any way going to grow up a well adjusted person. On the other hand, she was happy, did all her schoolwork and chores without complaint, and didn't seem to actually be missing out on anything other than having friends. There was still time for that, hopefully. She wasn't even ten yet, even though at times she sounded like she was about eighteen.

Fondly watching as Hermione chatted to the librarian, a rather forbidding old woman who for some reason had a soft spot for the girl that seemed almost unique to her, Helen wondered what her daughter would end up doing when she grew up. Doubtless something extraordinary, she felt.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Lying on her bed, her eyes shut, Hermione let her 'energy sense' which she was still trying to think of a better term for expand outwards. The tiny fluctuations in the omnipresent energy field surrounding her that marked walls, floors, people, and everything else were harder to interpret the further away they got, but she was definitely improving on that front too. By now she could feel where her parents were, and easily distinguish between them. Something about the distortions they left in the field was very distinctive. Pushing harder, she extended her sensing outside the house, feeling a small change moving across the lawn which she recognized as Mr Boots, the cat from next door, and a much tinier one zipping away from him that was probably a mouse. She could even feel the big oak tree swaying in the breeze, which made her smile.

Reaching out with her mind, she slid the desk drawer open, floated a pencil and her notebook out, closed the drawer again, and held her hands up to pluck both items out of the air. All with her eyes shut.

Opening them, she giggled at her abilities, then sat up. Flipping through the book she stopped on the last page with writing on, before tapping the end of the pencil on her lips while she thought. Eventually she started sketching a rough diagram.

When she'd finished, she looked at the result, corrected a few places, then nodded. "That should do it. I think. I hope."

The previous fifteen attempts hadn't worked, but perhaps sixteen times was the lucky number?

Fixing the shape of her drawing in her mind, she closed her eyes again to cut out extraneous information and started trying to assemble a very delicate set of immaterial structures in the energy field surrounding her. She'd long since realized that everything she did left a mark in that field, each one distinct, in a similar way that people and objects did simply by existing although somewhat altered from that. And some experimentation had shown that it was possible to make those marks stick around for much longer than she expected, by sort of tying them to the underlying field. She didn't have the right words to properly explain it yet, but she knew what she meant.

And that had led her to some interesting places when she thought about it. Her sudden glimpse of what might be possible a few weeks ago had left her determined to see if it was something she could pull off.

So now she kept gently prodding the field into the right shape, very delicately and carefully. The first few attempts at this had resulted in it suddenly collapsing and giving her the most ghastly headache, but she'd figured out a way around that in the end. The next problem had been that although she got the little warped field piece stable, it had immediately collapsed when she'd tried making it do what she intended. That had annoyed her quite a bit as she'd been sure she'd got it right.

Several more attempts in slightly differing ways had come much closer, but success still eluded her. Going back to her books she'd read everything again, made some more notes, thought very hard indeed about what she was doing wrong, and finally, hopefully, found the error in her process.

Eventually the little self-contained twist in the invisible energy field snapped into the correct shape all by itself when she prodded it one last time. Very cautiously relaxing her hold on it, she smiled when it stayed put.

Opening her eyes, she looked at where her construction was, but as she expected couldn't see anything at all. Waving a hand through that volume didn't do anything either, which was what she'd thought would be the case.

"All right. So far so good," the girl said under her breath. "But will it work?"

She looked around, then down at her notebook. Picking up the half-used pencil she considered it before nodding. It would do. Hermione leaned forward and put the pencil on the bed in front of her crossed legs, kept her eyes on it, and very carefully lifted it into the air telekinetically. It floated up a foot off the covers in a vertical orientation, point up. Monitoring how much effort it was taking to keep it there, she closed her eyes and reached out to her mental construct, linking her telekinetic effort through it to the pencil.

Then she poked the control part of the construct.

The sharp crack that instantly resulted made her yip in shock and open her eyes while looking around quickly. The pencil was gone.

"What…?" Entirely baffled, she looked all over the bed, then leaned over both sides to check the carpet. Seeing nothing she hopped off it and wandered around, checking everywhere, but the pencil had completely vanished. "Where on earth is it hiding?" she complained, kneeling down and looking under the bed. No trace of the thing was visible.

Highly confused she stood up, looked around, shrugged, and lay on the bed to think about what had gone wrong. A moment or two passed then she frowned, her eyes fixed on a small black dot on the ceiling. Had that always been there? It was about the same size as…

The young girl put a hand over her mouth in surprise, then quickly got up, standing on the bed and peering carefully at the mark, which was about a foot from the ceiling light fixture. It wasn't a mark, it was a hole.

After thirty seconds of appalled inspection, she jumped to the carpet, yanked the door open, and rushed down the upstairs hallway to the cupboard the boiler lived in along with all the fresh towels. Opening it, she looked up at the trap door in the ceiling of the cupboard, which was the access to the loft. It didn't take her long to climb the ladder bolted to the rear of the cupboard and push the door open, then wriggle through it. She hadn't been up here for a couple of years, the last time being when she'd helped her father get the Christmas decorations down, and as she remembered, it was dark, dusty, and hot. Feeling around she found the switch and flicked it, the bulb in the ceiling coming on and rather badly illuminating a space filled with boxes and random odds and ends.

Shuffling across the dusty chipboard floor, Hermione kept her eyes on the surface, until she was in roughly the correct area to be above her bedroom. She looked around, pushing a couple of boxes to the side, and finally spotted what she was looking for.

There was a neat pencil-sized hole in the floor through which she could see a thin shaft light glowing in the dusty air.

"Oh dear," she whispered, rather startled although she'd been expecting it. Raising her eyes she looked directly above the hole and found the pencil, or about half of it at least. The rest was firmly embedded into the wooden beam holding the roof up. Only about two inches of yellow-painted pencil, and the rubber on the end, was visible. She stood up and prodded the thing, which didn't move at all. Then she tried pulling it out, finding that didn't work either.

"Oops."

That seemed an understatement, but she couldn't think of anything else that fitted.

"Hermione? What are you doing up here?"

She turned around to see her father peering quizzically at her through the loft hatch. Casually moving slightly so the rogue pencil was behind her, she smiled. "I was looking for a pencil."

"Don't you have enough of those in your desk?" he queried, seeming a bit confused. She tried not to have a guilty expression as she replied.

"It was a special one. But I couldn't really find it. I'll come down now."

"Make sure you wash your hands, it's filthy up here," he said, still looking a bit oddly at her. She nodded and his head vanished again. Turning around she grabbed the end of the pencil and broke it off flush with the beam, put that bit in her pocket, pushed one of the boxes she'd moved over the hole in the floor, and headed for the loft hatch.

One thing was certain; her idea worked. Possibly a little too well. She was going to have to work out how to turn it down a bit before she tried again.

When she went to bed an hour later she was smiling to herself.

Her success opened a lot of interesting possibilities.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Looking around very carefully, Hermione checked that no one was visible. Then she closed her eyes and checked again with her energy sense. No, the only people within a hundred feet were her mother in the front room, two neighbors three doors down who couldn't possibly see her over the fence, and another neighbor on the other side who felt like she was asleep.

Excellent.

She pushed through the bushes at the back of the garden, the hot early August afternoon causing her to sweat slightly, until she was at the rear fence. Beyond that was the golf course past the woods. She checked again that no one was around, then knelt down and crawled through the hole in the fence she'd found when she was about six and no one had fixed. No one else likely knew it was there, for that matter, since it was behind a big spiky bush in the garden, and on the other side under a pile of brambles that came right up to the top of the fence itself. However inside that, there was a cavity because of the lack of direct sunlight, and it only took her a moment to telekinetically move anything that was trying to poke her out of the way. She made her way through the undergrowth until she popped out into the woods a few yards further on, stood up, and brushed herself down.

Now she had to hurry. Her mother was busy doing paperwork for the dental practice, which Hermione knew from experience would keep her occupied for at least an hour, but she needed to be back home before she was missed or she'd get in trouble.

From previous walks with her parents through the woods she knew where she wanted to go, and headed directly there. Only a couple of minutes later she arrived in an overgrown clearing which contained half a dozen enormous boulders, which had obviously been there for a very long time, most likely dropped by a retreating glacier in the distant past. They were overgrown with moss and a couple of small trees had succeeded in finding purchase on one of them somehow. She approached the rocks and walked around them, studying them with both her eyes and her energy sense. The rocks were, it turned out, at least half buried in the ground, and therefore even larger than they looked.

"Perfect," the girl smiled.

Picking one that was a little apart from the rest, she examined it carefully. Pulling out a tape measure she took some readings, then wrote them down. That would let her work out the volume and from that a rough weight later.

Finished with that, she moved back to a safe distance, about forty feet, right to the edge of the clearing, then checked all around once last time. No one was anywhere near her as far as she could detect. Satisfied, she sat on a fallen tree trunk and started building her latest energy construct, which she'd modified quite a lot since that rather startling first successful test a few weeks ago.

The thing took shape quickly, practice having made it much easier, and she nodded when it stabilized. She was going to have to work out how to carry one around with her at some point, as right now they stayed where she put them and she had to take them apart to move them, but for now it would do. Focusing, she pushed a little thread of telekinetic energy into the control section, and linked the power channel between the energy field and her target boulder.

Then, with extreme care, she very, very slowly activated the thing.

The boulder shivered, emitted a deep rumbling groan that shook moss off the sides, and calmly lifted itself out of the ground. Wide-eyed despite herself, Hermione stared as it came up, and up, until the bottom fifteen feet which had been under the ground for who knows how long was hovering well clear of the ground. The top part was nearly as high as the trees were.

She gaped at it, then started grinning fit to burst. It worked, and it was taking no effort at all. In fact, she could probably keep this up all day, it was so easy.

Trying not to burst out laughing, she slowly lowered the thing back into the hole, before releasing it. Biting on her knuckles to keep the giggles in, she moved the power connection to the largest stone, which was easily twice the size, a lump of rock as large as their garage.

It lifted off the ground with no more effort than the first one had.

"Oh my god," she breathed in joyous incredulity. "I can't believe it works so well."

Checking her energy construct, she felt it was starting to fail, so clearly there was a limit, but it wasn't inherent in the idea, instead it was just down to the design of this specific implementation. She'd more or less expected that, to be honest. The amount of energy the thing was pulling from the surrounding field was still so small relative to the amount present that she could hardly tell the difference. Putting the rock down again, and making the ground shudder a little as she let it drop the last foot just for fun, she felt the ambient energy replenish itself. Whatever the ultimate source of the energy field was it was so large as to be essentially infinite, she suspected. Like gravity, or sunlight.

One day she'd work out what that source was but for now she was just ecstatic to have managed what she had so far.

And at least half of it was entirely down to her learning about electronics.

What she'd realized out of the blue was that the field was like electricity, in a sense, and it should be possible to do something similar to what a transistor did, to use a small control signal to change a much larger power signal. Her body couldn't handle that much power, for whatever reason that was, but she could make something that could.

It had been looking at that MOSFET in her father's amplifier that had sparked the insight. Field effect transistor. The name almost told her what to do.

So she did, and now she could make what for all intents and purposes was a telekinetic amplifier out of the very same energy that powered her telekinesis itself!

Feeling extremely pleased indeed, Hermione stood up, brushed some leaf mold off her rear, and headed home again. She had a lot to think about before she had to go back to school and be ignored by all the other children.

She wondered briefly if telekinetically turning Mark Hamilton upside down and shaking him when he tried pushing her into the ditch outside the school again was a good idea, but regretfully decided it probably wasn't.

Pity. He deserved it.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

"Happy birthday, Hermione."

Michael watched as his daughter blew out the ten candles, then looked pleased. "Well done."

"Thank you," she replied with a smile.

The usual present giving was performed. As had become customary, his mother gave his daughter the latest Terry Pratchett book, as the man seemed a never ending source of excellent fiction and could be relied on to produce at least one a year. His wife and he had put their heads together, talked to Nigel at the shop, and bought her a number of more advanced project kits along with some more tools, parts, and three books on circuit design. Hermione seemed very satisfied with everything.

He watched her looking through a book on electronics that some college students would have found a bit daunting and smiled fondly. All this because she'd see that little robot toy a couple of year ago, and he'd had a bright idea. Apparently it had been a good bright idea, as she was certainly progressing in her hobby much better than even he had expected. And from what he'd seen, that had pushed her even harder towards academic excellence, and caused her to start learning about a lot of other subjects too. Her mathematical ability was better than his was by a long way for example.

Yes, she was going to go far, his Hermione was.

Once they'd had some cake, and lunch, then more cake, they all lay back to digest it. He was sipping his coffee and considering the idea of one last piece of cake, weighing it up against having to brush his teeth for the third time today, when Hermione cleared her throat.

"Um…"

The three adults looked at her, Helen and Nancy interrupting the low discussing they'd been having about the plot of a recent film they'd watched on the television.

Hermione swallowed a little, appearing uncharacteristically shy.

"What's the problem, dear?" he asked calmly.

"I…" She paused, then went on, "I discovered something strange."

"Strange?" Helen echoed.

"Very strange."

"What is it?" he queried curiously. She seemed almost worried for a moment, then visibly pulled herself together.

"Really very strange indeed," she added, before raising a hand and holding it out towards the stack of books she'd received earlier, which was sitting on the other side of the fireplace.

Everyone gaped as the top book gently floated across the room to land in her hand.

Michael, along with the other two, looked at the book she was holding, looked at her somewhat apologetic but somehow amused face, looked at where the book had been, then looked at each other. After a long few seconds, they turned in synchrony to stare at her again.

"Do you remember when I asked if people could move things with their minds, Daddy?" she asked in a quiet voice. "It turns out that you can if you know the trick to it."

Holding out her other hand she made a glass of water float off the table into it, then took a drink. He kept watching the glass for some time before jerkily looking around to meet Helen's eyes.

"Sorry. It was a surprise to me the first time too," Hermione said apologetically.

"Oh, lord," he finally sighed, dropping his head back onto the chair and closing his eyes. "Only you, Hermione. Only you."

Then they started talking.

For quite a while.

 

[mp3.1415player]

Hermione lay in bed thinking, and practicing her energy sense technique at the same time. Her revelation the day before had left her parents and her grandmother very confused indeed, and even after explaining things several times they had been no less so. She thought that was fair enough as it had come as something of a shock to her in the beginning, but she'd had over a year to get used to it. By now a lot of it was second nature to her to the point she'd nearly given the game away a couple of times by accidentally floating a mug across the kitchen or something like that. Which would have been embarrassing.

But now she was good enough at the entire process, especially after her breakthrough in energy amplifiers, that she thought it was time she told them. Even though they were all going around with bemused looks she still felt it had been the right thing to do, although for now she didn't think it was necessary to tell anyone else about it. Someday, possibly, but she still had a lot of work to do thinking the entire thing through and mastering every technique she could come up with.

She wondered if anyone else could do the same thing. She'd certainly never heard of it being proven although there was plenty of fiction based around the idea. So much that it suggested that possibly it was that well known because there were others like her, but clearly not enough that there was any real documentation on it. Perhaps they were just shy?

Or possibly she really had come up with something no one else ever had. That would be quite gratifying in a sense, discovering an entire new field of research and getting to invent the terms and experiments to characterize it. Like William Gilbert and his study of electricity and magnetism. Or Benjamin Franklin, for that matter, although she liked to think she would be somewhat more cautious than to fly a kite in a thunderstorm, for heaven's sake!

Remembering the high speed pencil, she flushed a little. A little more cautious, at least. Her father had been quite sharp with her when she'd admitted to that minor miscalculation, pointing out with a certain amount of asperity that it was a good thing it had gone upwards rather than right at her. It would certainly have been an embarrassing trip to the hospital in the best case, and it could have ended very badly in the worst…

She'd made a mental note to check her directional vectors extremely carefully in future. Just in case.

Once he'd calmed down, though, from the fright she'd given him, her father came up with all sorts of good ideas about things she could try. He'd been reading science fiction and fantasy since he was her age, after all, and apparently had always wanted to be able to do what she was now managing. She idly contemplated if she could teach other people how to do it? There didn't seem to be any obvious reason why not if she could just work out the best method… Something to think about later, certainly.

But now her notebook had a couple of dozen pages of ideas for new things to try, and she'd had a couple of brainwaves about her energy construct while she was explaining it to her parents. Talking about that sort of thing seemed to help her understand her own ideas better, and she'd made a lot of notes on improvements to the whole process that she hoped would significantly increase the effectiveness of it.

She could hardly wait until after school tomorrow. Trying some of those ideas out was something she was looking forward to, and she was going to show her parents her floating boulder trick. That should show them just what was possible like nothing else she could think of…

Rolling onto her side, she plumped up the pillow, then settled down again after a yawn. With her eyes shut she expanded her energy sense outwards, trying to push the limits as she did every night. Each time it went that little bit further, and told her that little bit more about what was around her. She could feel the tiny distortions and fluctuations in the field surrounding everything and contentedly assigned meanings to them all as she went, while watching the cats and foxes and other animals roam around in the gardens. Even into the woods as far as her boulder clearing, and over most of the cul-de-sac her house was in.

As she fell asleep, she was idly counting how many people she could sense, and trying to work out who they were.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

"All right. I'm impressed." Michael shook his head in wonder as he watched the two dozen or so objects floating around his daughter's head in interlocking rings. There were a number of pencils, several apples, an empty glass, three tennis balls, Mr Boots the cat from next door who had wandered in as he was wont to do and was now looking rather bewildered, and a few coins. Hermione was sitting in the middle of this reading a book and grinning, giving a good impression of ignoring the impossibility of what she was doing. He knew her far too well though and she was definitely having fun.

The last week had nearly been enough time for them to get used to discovering that the girl had somehow worked out how to perform telekinesis in the first place, then added to that ridiculous breakthrough by inventing from first principles a method to hugely amplify the ability to a level that was frankly absurd. She'd taken them into the woods behind the house and demonstrated that she could yank about fifteen hundred tons of limestone out of the ground and float it in mid air like a helium balloon while making it look trivial and drinking a bottle of lemonade at the same time.

That had been a bit of a shock.

As was her saying that it was actually easy, and not anywhere near the upper limits of what she thought she could pull off. Since, as he understood it, her latest breakthrough had been an energy construct that allowed her to use preposterous amounts of whatever it was that was really doing the work without it requiring her to provide the power directly, she thought it could probably be scaled up to any level required with some work.

He was extremely curious to know what that source of energy really was. She said it was constantly surrounding everything, and seemed to be so large in extent that she could barely detect the drain on it from lifting that huge boulder, which implied some intriguing things. She also had said that it didn't seem to diminish the available energy at all.

In a way the part of the whole thing that was the most startling wasn't the raw power she demonstrated, but the sheer precision. She could write her name with a flying pencil in a manner that was indistinguishable from her normal handwriting, even with her eyes shut, or assemble one of her electronics kits with her arms folded and everything simply moving around as if self-propelled. It was eerie to watch her in action. Apparently she'd been practicing for more than a year before she told them about it, and was still improving even now.

All in all it was a level of telekinetic ability that a Jedi would have been astounded by. Michael smiled a little as he had, not for the first time, the thought. All she needed were the robes and a light saber…

"How are you coming along with the other ideas we discussed, Hermione?" he asked as he took a seat on her bed and watched her deposit all her objects in a line on her desk before turning around to face him. Mr Boots meowed, then jumped onto her pillow and curled up, apparently fine with his short flight.

"I think I've worked out a few methods to do some of them, Daddy," she replied. "I was concentrating on the lifting thing and the energy sensing for so long I didn't really consider other applications, but you're right, there are all sorts of things that should be possible with some changes to what I'm doing." She looked at the desk, then made one of the apples float up between them. "I've managed to do this so far, but I haven't tried it on a larger scale." Pointing at the apple, she flicked her finger, just for the dramatics he guessed by the expression on her face. The fruit separated into a dozen neat slices from top to bottom, all of these floating apart a little, as she motioned.

Reaching out after a moment's surprise he picked one of the pieces of apple out of the air, feeling a slight resistance which disappeared immediately, then inspected it closely. The cut was completely clean, like a razor sharp knife had been used. Popping it into his mouth he chewed as she grinned at him. "That'll save some time with the turkey at Christmas," he commented after swallowing, making her giggle. "Very neat. How did you do it?"

"I…" His daughter hesitated as she thought. "I suppose it's more or less that I made a telekinetic knife blade. It's a little hard to explain, but that's how it works. I pushed a very thin layer of telekinetic force through the apple in several directions and made it solid enough it cut everything in the way. Although 'solid' isn't quite accurate, it's more like everything on one side moved one way and everything on the other moved in the opposite direction. It works with stronger materials too, look." She picked up the glass and showed him as it neatly split right down the middle into two half-glasses, without any fracturing or splintering. His eyes widened a little as he carefully took one half from her and examined it. The cut, again, was completely clean and the edges looked razor sharp. He didn't touch it to find out.

"Extraordinary," Michael murmured, taking the other part from her and experimentally fitting them back together. The cut was so incredibly precise that the glass actually stuck, and when he held it up to the light he could barely make out a mark in the transparent material. Pulling the two halves apart again, which took a little effort, he shook his head in amazement.

"That's basically a mono-molecular cut, I think," he said. "The surfaces look perfectly optically flat. It would be very difficult to replicate that with a machine tool. Can you cut metal like that?"

"Yes." She showed him one of the forks from the kitchen, then made all the tines fall off.

"Your mother is not going to be pleased about that," he said causing her to look embarrassed.

"Sorry. I got carried away." Hermione smiled a little guiltily and put everything back on her desk. Smiling a bit, he sighed faintly.

"Never mind. We have plenty of forks. Although please don't do that to anything important. Like the house, or the car, or yourself. That is particularly important." He cast his eyes meaningfully upwards at the small hole in the ceiling that he hadn't patched over yet. Following his gaze she looked embarrassed and worried for a moment.

"Yes, Daddy. I'll be careful, I promise."

"Good." Getting up he leaned over and hugged her. "I don't want anything to happen to you."

The girl hugged him back. "I know."

Releasing her he straightened up. "I was wondering if you would be interested in a trip to London next month? I have to visit a dentistry supply company on Saturday the 28th​ to get some things for the practice we've ordered, and that will only take an hour at most. I was thinking that we could make a day of it, visit Foyle's and a couple of other bookshops, then wander around for a while. See the sights, perhaps visit some of the electronics shops on Edgware Road, or Tottenham Court Road too. There are lots of them around there, I've seen them when I've driven through in the past."

Hermione's eyes had become rather large and she was smiling widely. "That would be brilliant, Daddy! I've wanted to go to Cricklewood Electronics, and Proops too. They advertise in this magazine." She pulled a copy of Practical Electronics out of a drawer. He'd bought her a subscription to it, and Elektor, last year, and she read each issue cover to cover when they arrived. Flipping it open she pointed to a few advertisements for electronics supply companies, a remarkable number of which were indeed in that area of London.

"I think we could manage that, dear. We'll have to park somewhere near the dentistry supply company and take the tube, but we'll have most of the day available. I'd prefer not to spend all of it in an electronics shop if we can avoid that though." He smiled as she laughed.

"Will Mommy come?"

"No, she's got patients then, I'm afraid. It will just be the two of us." Ruffling her hair and making her squawk, he grinned. "I think it'll be fun."

"Stop that!" she said firmly, running her fingers through her hair. "It's bad enough without you messing it all up."

"Your hair is fine, dear. It adds character." Peering at her closely, he followed that with, "About four inches of it as far as I can tell."

The girl sighed, but she was still smiling. "Very funny."

"I thought so, yes." He headed back downstairs, somewhat amused by her huff of resigned acknowledgment. Teasing her was always fun.

It was one of the perks of fatherhood after all.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

"Aha!" Hermione stared at the page in front of her, thinking hard. "I wonder if that would actually work? It should do…" She scribbled diagrams, checking her references several times because she really didn't want to get this wrong. Having assured herself that the basic implementation was most likely correct, although until she tried it she wouldn't know for sure if the concept was sound, she turned the page and drew out a final version of what she was thinking of now as an H-field OPerator, or HOP.

Mostly because the acronym made her giggle, it had to be said.

She'd cribbed a lot of the diagrammatic methods from electronic schematics, with changes to suit the medium she was working in. An awful lot of the theory seemed to map onto the mysterious field she was manipulating better than she'd expected, and the girl suspected that there was some link between electromagnetism and it underpinning the whole phenomenon. Unfortunately, although her understanding of both was steadily growing as she studied every book she could lay hands on covering relevant subjects, she was all too aware that there was a huge amount of information she simply hadn't encountered yet. It would take her quite a while to really get to grips with it all to the level she was fairly certain was required to properly exploit the energy field.

But she enjoyed a challenge and this one was about as challenging as it got. So that was fine from her point of view. And she was having enormous fun coming up with new things to try, as were her father and to a lesser extent her mother. The latter didn't quite have the knowledge of fiction that the former did but she was happy to encourage Hermione to learn all she could. As long as she took suitable common-sense precautions at least.

Flipping back a dozen pages, the girl checked her calculations one last time, then nodded to herself. It looked good, so the next stage was to, very cautiously, try it and see if it actually worked.

Looking around, she decided that her bedroom was probably not the optimal location, though, so it seemed sensible to go out to the clearing. That place had seen quite a few experiments so far, and only a couple more minor misfires to date. She grinned a little at the memory of one of them, which had been an attempt to use the energy constructs to create an audio transducer of a sort. It had worked a little too well. Once.

She and her parents had beaten a hasty retreat with ringing ears just in case someone investigated, but luckily it was muffled sufficiently by the trees that no one seemed to want to look into it. One of the neighbors had commented the next day about little layabouts setting off fireworks a month or so early, and couldn't they wait until the fifth, but that was it as far as reactions went. Subsequent attempts had been less… impressive.

Closing her notebook she got up and headed downstairs clutching it and a pencil. "Daddy? I think I've managed to come up with a new design. Can I go and test it?"

Her father, who was watching the news and shaking his head about some sort of criminal attack on the other side of London where several people were hurt, without any obvious reason for the whole sorry event, turned his head and looked at her. "Will this one be as loud as that other one was?" he asked with a mildly resigned look overlaying a certain amount of amused interest.

"No. I doubt it. Well…" Hermione thought for a moment then shook her head firmly. "No. It'll be perfectly safe."

"I've heard that before," he commented wryly, picking up the remote and turning the television off. Standing, he added, "I'll get my coat." She smiled and went to do the same, as it was quite chilly now that autumn was nearly here. Leaving a note for her mother about where they were when she got back from the shops, her father and she left the house and walked back into the woods.

Once they reached the clearing, Hermione reached out and sensed the area to make certain no one was nearby. She could feel some people playing golf more than half a mile away, and various others back in the houses behind them, but no one was anywhere near at the moment. "It's clear," she announced, pulling out her notebook and taking a seat on one of the old logs at the edge of the cleared area. Her father sat beside her and looked at the pages as she turned them, his face interested. She explained as she went, both because he was fascinated by the subject and often came up with good ideas to try, and since she found that explaining her workings to someone else regardless of whether they understood it fully sometimes helped her see the errors if she'd made any.

Even Mr Boots sometimes sat and purred at her while she told him how something was meant to work while she was trying to figure out why it didn't quite. Oddly enough that had helped more than a couple of times.

He was quite a smart kitty, she thought with a small smile.

"I think I see," her father said when she'd finished explaining. "It's a feedback system."

"Exactly. With any luck, once I start it running, the sense node here will keep the control signal in the correct range all by itself, and it will self adjust. This part will modify this part so it doesn't burn out after a while, it should more or less keep refreshing the construct as it goes." She nodded, as she tapped her pencil on parts of the diagram while she explained. "It's more or less an operational amplifier with a feedback network on the input driven by a portion of the output. Nothing really complicated but I'm quite pleased with it."

"Assuming it works, of course."

"Of course," she giggled. "I shall be quite disappointed if it doesn't."

He patted her shoulder encouragingly. "If it doesn't I'm sure you'll be able to fix it."

"Well, then," she said, pleased by his support, "I suppose all I have to do is try it."

"Proceed, Number One," he chuckled. "Engage."

"Really, Daddy?" She sighed loudly, making him grin. "All right, let's see what happens…"

"I'd start small just in case," he advised, watching her. Hermione nodded a little as she closed her eyes and started constructing one of the most complex energy patterns she'd so far tried. It was a lot easier now than it had been at the beginning of her experiments but it still wasn't quite at the point that she could consider it trivial, at least to do a new one like this. The basic power amplifier was something she'd done so much by this point that she could make one almost instantly, half asleep, though.

"Come on…" The young girl concentrated, watching with the sense that wasn't anything like any of the normal ones as the HOP grew, changed, and finally snapped into stability. "Got it!" She smiled broadly. "I think. It's not falling to pieces immediately, so that's good."

"But does it work, there's the question," he commented.

She nodded slowly, looking around the clearing, then settling on a lump of old mossy wood about the size of her head a few yards away. "I'll try that one," she said, pointing at it. Carefully targeting the log, she locked the power channel onto it, tweaked her pattern a little to set the parameter she wanted, checked them four times, and when she was satisfied that even if it went wrong it wouldn't go wrong in their direction, activated the thing with a tiny effort of will.

Energy flowed from the ambient field through her construct to the log, and it lifted silently into the air to hang four feet off the ground. So far, so good. Next, she turned the feedback on, and they watched as the log promptly started oscillating up and down like it was possessed.

"Oh dear…" She stared at the dancing wood, bits of moss coming off it as it moved. "I think the gain is a bit too high."

"It's certainly lively," her father pointed out with a grin. "Can you turn it down a little?"

"Yes," she responded, tweaking one section of the construct. The log immediately sped up until it was a blur and emitted a low hum. "Oops," she added with embarrassment, hastily tweaking it back. "Wrong way."

Her father was stifling a laugh, making her give him an arch look, but he contained himself enough not to let it out. Modifying the relevant parameter the other direction, she watched as the jumping up and down slowed more and more, ended up as a slight bobbing motion, until it finally damped out completely. The log was now sitting there absolutely solidly without any motion at all. This was nothing that she couldn't already do, of course, but right now she wasn't doing anything. It was entirely working on its own, and if her calculations were accurate, should continue to do so indefinitely or until turned off.

Hermione grinned in triumph. "Yes! I did it!"

"Excellent work, dear." Her father clapped. "How stable is it if you add some weight?"

She frowned, thinking for a moment. "Now it's tuned it should stay like that and compensate for changes," she replied after contemplating the construct.

He got up and went over to it, putting his hands on it with a certain amount of tentativeness, then with more assurance when it didn't bite him. Pushing down, he nodded. "It seems solid enough." Experimentally pushing sideways, he nodded again. "Doesn't want to move in any direction."

"I've got it set to hold that position," Hermione explained. "It's adjusting for changes in any direction. I think I can…" She tweaked another part of the construct and then laughed as her father fell over when the log suddenly stopped resisting him, sliding sideways through the air. "Whoops. Sorry, Daddy."

"That's all right, dear, but warn me next time, will you?" he said as he sat up, brushing leaves off his jacket. He seemed amused if anything. Getting to his feet he prodded the log, then pushed it around a little, nodding. "Very impressive indeed."

"I'll try something bigger," she said, lowering the log back to the ground. He moved behind her and watched as one of the rocks in the middle of the clearing gradually lifted upwards, then settled down a yard clear of the ground as she locked it off. "That works so well!" she squealed in joy.

"You certainly seem to have cracked that particular problem," he agreed as he sat beside her again. "Will it work with other techniques?"

"It should do, I think," Hermione nodded. "It's something that can be added on to anything else, as far as I can see. So I should be able to make almost any other thing I work out how to do self powered. I don't know how long it really will run for but I think it will do it more or less forever." Curiously she checked to see how much it was affecting the energy field and came to the conclusion it essentially wasn't, or if it was the drain was so small it was almost not there at all. Again, it was also being replenished immediately from wherever the energy originated.

"Well done indeed, Hermione. You've earned your dinner today." He grinned at her as she stuck her tongue out at him. "My little Jedi is learning all sorts of new things."

"Oh, Daddy, you are silly sometimes," she giggled. He jumped to his feet, plucked a four foot long branch off the ground, and started swinging it around while making the appropriate sound effects, which caused her to fall off the log laughing her head off then pick another one up and do likewise.

Father and daughter fought a pitched wooden light-saber battle until they were laughing too hard to continue, while the rock patiently hovered fifty feet away as if that was where it had always been.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

"Well, that certainly did something, but it's not quite there yet," Michael said as he watched the tennis ball drop to the floor of the garage following a slightly strange trajectory. The car was parked on the drive and the door was down, giving them some space that was protected from the current vigorous and rather cold rain outside.

Helen came through from the kitchen and handed him a mug of hot chocolate, putting Hermione's one down next to her as their daughter frowned at the whiteboard he'd screwed to the wall above the small workbench there. She was tapping one of the markers on her chin as she thought, and he was keeping his expression blank while wondering how long it would be before she noticed she'd left the cap off. Lots of little blue spots covered the lower part of her face, which made Helen stare, then turn away trying not to laugh.

"How hard can a force field be?" Hermione muttered under her breath, sounding somewhat aggrieved. "It's a straight forward enough concept…" She made a few notes on the board, stared at them, wiped a couple out with her thumb, and corrected the drawing she'd been working on for nearly two hours.

"It's an entirely fictional concept, dear," he pointed out agreeably before taking a drink of the mint flavored hot chocolate. "But it'll be very neat if you can manage to pull it off."

She glanced at him, smiled, noticed the hot chocolate nearby, and put the pen down to pick the mug up instead. "Thank you, Mommy."

"You're welcome, sweetie. You two have been out here for ages, are you sure you're warm enough?" Helen replied, both hands around her own mug.

"It's fine, thank you," the girl said, smiling. "Just a little chilly. I can probably work out a way around that in the end too."

"Saving on the heating bill would be a good idea, so I'm in favor of that myself," Michael chuckled.

"I'll put it on the list," Hermione replied with a giggle. "But right now I want to get this to work."

He picked up another tennis ball from the plastic container full of them, and lobbed it underhand towards where a line of masking tape on the concrete floor marked the location of his daughter's experimental force barrier. The ball slowed markedly as it passed over the tape, but still continued forward, dropping to the floor in a quick arc and bouncing a few times. A dozen more lay around where it stopped. "Definitely having an effect. Can you… I don't know, turn the wick up or something like that?"

She shook her head slowly, looking between the balls and the whiteboard. "It's not quite like that. Putting more power into it won't really make it harder, it will just increase the area, I think. No, I'm missing something and it's annoying me. If I could just…" She trailed off, her face showing concentration, while Michael and his wife sipped chocolate and waited patiently. Both of them had faith that their little impossibility would succeed sooner or later.

"That's it!" Hermione suddenly shouted, making them jump. "Of course! It needs a fourth term, and that means I need to…" She scribbled rapidly on the whiteboard, erasing a large part of the original work and filling in several new parts to replace it. "I need to invert this vector, and that will change this bit here like this, and then this one here should be ever so slightly different like so… Yes! I see, it's so obvious when you look at it correctly."

She seemed terribly excited, he thought with amusement, as she worked. It was wonderful to see her so passionate about something.

After a few minutes she'd completely redrawn her diagram, which ended up visibly simpler than the one that had grown and grown from previous experiments, although it was still quite complex. He could follow enough of it from her explanations over the last few weeks to get the gist of the thing, although his knowledge of both mathematics and electronics wasn't really good enough to really understand it to her level. He thought he should probably borrow some of her books and read up on the subjects if he was going to keep helping her, as it would be nice to be able to follow along. Although he was under no misconceptions of his own ability. Hermione was in a class of her own intellectually.

Finishing, she stepped back and admired the result of her work.

"You think that will do the job?" he asked.

"I do," she replied, whirling around and grinning happily. "Let's see what it does." She got the slightly distant expression they were used to now as she did whatever it was she actually did to manipulate the energies involved in her psionic work. After about thirty seconds, she smiled again. "It's stable. I think it's working."

He looked hard at the tape on the floor and the space above it. "I can't see anything."

"It's there, though. Try one of the balls," she suggested. He picked up another tennis ball and repeated the toss as he'd done many times before. This time the result was quite different; The ball hit something completely invisible with a distinct thwok sound and rebounded slightly, bouncing off the floor and rolling to a halt next to his feet.

"Huh," he said, astounded despite himself, as Helen stared and Hermione looked exceptionally satisfied. "That is indeed a thing. How curious." Picking up a broom that was leaning against the wall near the main door, he spun it in his hand to put the handle forwards and cautiously waved it around in the vicinity of the tape. The wooden pole clacked off what felt for all the world like a solid object. Prodding around he traced the edges, finding that it was a roughly five foot diameter circle with the lower edge just off the concrete.

"I made it thick enough that it wouldn't cut things," Hermione explained as he tapped the edges a few times. "I think if I made it too thin it would be like the knife technique, which would be very dangerous since you can't see it."

"Good thinking," Helen said as she watched with amazement. "We don't want any accidents."

"How solid is it?" he wondered, poking the center of the invisible field very hard with the end of the broom, which resulted in a sensation like he'd slammed it into the floor.

"Very, I think," Hermione replied slowly. "I'm not entirely certain how much force it can stand but it's probably much more than you can get by hitting it."

Putting the broom back, he cast about for something else, then settled on the ice hammer he'd bought years ago when he was trying climbing before he decided it was too much work for a hobby. Taking it off the wall where it was hanging on a couple of nails, he walked closer to the marker tape, then gently tapped the force field to make sure where it was. When he was lined up properly he brought his arm back and gave it a good solid thump, which made the hammer ring as if he'd hit rock. "Ouch," he muttered, his hand suddenly aching slightly as he hadn't braced properly.

Shifting his grip a bit he turned the hammer around so the pick end was forward, took up a different stance, and swung again as hard as he could manage. The clang this time was loud enough that Helen put her fingers in her ears, and when he checked the sharp tip of the pick, it was noticeably blunted. "I think that probably proves it works," he said a little too loudly over the ringing in his ears. His hand was aching again. Putting the hammer back he shook his head and waited for the tinnitus to subside. "Short of buying a sledgehammer and really giving it a thrashing, or borrowing a shotgun, I can't think of any way to properly test it past that."

"I could drop an enormous boulder on it," his daughter suggested with a small smirk.

"That might be a little obvious after the fact," he retorted, laughing. "Let's leave that for another day, shall we?" Reaching out he poked the force-field with his forefinger, then ran his hand over it. He couldn't see anything at all, but it felt like slick glass to the touch. "Absolutely amazing. I wonder how strong it really is? And can you make it pass some things, like air, and not others? Or opaque for that matter?"

Hermione shrugged. "I'm not sure but I'll think about it. I'm just pleased that I got it to work at all right now."

He smiled at her. "You did a very good job, dear. Genuinely extremely impressive."

"I still find this all somewhat bizarre," Helen sighed. "But I can't deny you seem to have a gift for it, whatever it is."

"Psionics, Mommy. I told you. Daddy's books tell us all about it." Hermione gave her a mischievous look, causing Michael to chortle.

"His fictional books tell you all manner of ideas that are made up as you very well know, Hermione," Helen replied with a long-suffering sigh. Michael bounced another tennis ball off the invisible shield and raised an eyebrow at his wife. "Although I will admit that fictional may not mean what I always assumed it did," she added with a smile. "Psionics, then. You're sure you don't want to call it magic?"

"Do I look like a witch, Mommy?" Hermione gestured at herself, then the whiteboard. "I am a scientist."

"A mad one?" Michael asked with a grin.

"No. Just a happy one, and I think a hungry one right now," Hermione giggled. "Science is hard work."

"Well, I think it's probably time for dinner, then," Helen announced, collecting the empty mugs. "Shall we order Chinese food? We haven't had that for ages."

"A capital idea, dear." Michael nodded, as did Hermione, who seemed pleased by the suggestion. "I'll find the menu. The place on White Road?"

"They're the best one," Helen agreed. They all headed back into the house. In the kitchen Michael looked at his daughter as a thought struck him.

"You'd better get rid of that thing, I don't want to drive the car into it," he commented, pointing back into the garage. Hermione smiled and nodded.

"I already did."

"You definitely need to come up with some way to make them visible," he went on, rummaging through the kitchen drawer for the stack of menus, and finally finding the right one. "Invisible barriers are a trip hazard."

She laughed before they started discussing what everyone wanted. Shortly an order had been phoned in, and he was on his way to collect it, ruminating on how oddly life seemed to be working recently. Not that he wasn't enjoying it, of course, but he did rather wonder if any other parents had quite the same sort of oddity going on in their children's lives as he did at the moment.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Lying on her bed, propped up on the pillows, Hermione read the latest textbook with great interest. She'd managed to make her way through three different books on semiconductor design so far, and although she knew she had a long way to go, was getting quite a decent grasp on the basics if she did say so. It had led her to some fascinating ideas for designing HOPs, and so far she'd filled two entire notebooks with them. Some of the ideas would have to wait until she worked out the details of less complex ones, since they were built up from those assembled into much more complicated sequences. It really was like designing a printed circuit board, she reflected, and she could see that in time it would end up being closer to an integrated circuit.

She wondered what the best name for a psionic chip would be? A psip? No, that was ridiculous. Hermione smiled to herself. Names were something that was for later, she first had to actually design the things, and that would take a lot of work and reading and thinking. And probably years of time before she could do some of the really complicated things her father and she had come up with during one of their brainstorming sessions over a wide array of books on many subjects.

All in all, Hermione was very happy, and thoroughly enjoying herself. The annoyance of school was bearable since she could come home and do interesting things that didn't require interacting with her peers, who were mostly just irritating when they weren't either actively hostile, or utterly indifferent.

She preferred the latter to be honest, it was less painful.

Sometimes she wondered if she'd ever meet someone her own age who wasn't so annoying, but it wasn't a topic she was going to waste any time on considering that she had other things to get on with.

Turning the page as she finished the chapter, she looked at the heading for the next one. "Optical semiconductor techniques," she murmured. "That might be useful." Hearing a scratching sound at the window she looked up, then shook her head when she saw a small furry face peering in at her from the windowsill. "You don't live here you silly cat," she exclaimed to Mr Boots, who didn't seem to care since it was very wet and cold outside. Opening the window with a casual telekinetic operation of the handle, she added, "Fine, you can come in, but don't leave muddy paw prints all over my… What did I just say, Mr Boots?"

The girl sighed as the cat padded across her desk, a trail of wet footprints behind him, then sat on the end and stared at her before starting to lick himself dry. She closed the window again and floated the cat off the desk to the end of her bed, something that he took in stride. Apparently he was used to it by now and seemed if anything to enjoy the sensation. "You really are a nuisance sometimes," she said fondly, patting his damp head. "Silly kitty. Mrs Johnson will be wondering where you are."

He didn't seem fussed about that, merely stretching out across her bed and looking pleased with himself as his fur dried off on her duvet. Going back to her reading, she finished the chapter, made a few notes on things to consider later, and wriggled under the covers. "Don't shout in the middle of the night and want to be let out," she warned the cat. "I want to get a good night's sleep. Daddy says it's important. You go to sleep too."

Turning out the light as the cat meowed at her then rolled over to dry the other side, she spent a while extending her senses again as usual in the dark. At one point she thought she detected something unusual at the edge of her range, a little knot in the field that was almost, but not quite, like one of her HOPs. Only done wrong. But it almost instantly vanished and after looking around for it for a while she decided she must have mistaken a bird or something for it, falling asleep shortly afterwards.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

It was still some time before dawn when Hermione woke after a very odd dream with an insight that had been eluding her for weeks now. "Ahhhh…" she breathed, suddenly sure she had a solution to the problem of how she could move one of her HOP constructs around with her. It was simply a matter of looking at the coordinate system differently, making it relative to her rather than relative to everything else.

She sat up, disturbing the cat which had remained on her bed all night and causing him to sleepily and noisily complain. "Hush, Mr Boots, this is important," she said quietly as she pulled her notebook and pencil off the desk into her hand, then started writing rapidly to get the idea down before she forgot something.

It hadn't happened yet, but she was careful.

Once she'd sketched out the idea to her satisfaction, she quickly formed a standard basic amplifier HOP and pegged it to her own position, before experimentally sliding out of bed and walking around the room. Sure enough, it remained exactly where she'd created it, relative to her head, which was exactly what she'd been trying to do for some considerable time.

Exulting in her success, she hopped back into her warm bed and snuggled down into the covers, leaving the construct in place so she could see if it faded with time. Seconds later she was asleep again with a smile on her face.

 

[mp3.1415player]

"It works!" Hermione caroled in excitement as she and Michael admired the shiny blue football-sized sphere that hung in the air over the kitchen table. "Finally!"

"Well done, Hermione," he said approvingly. Leaning forward he tapped the thing with the end of his teaspoon, then nodded. "Seems nice and solid and this time we can actually see it."

"That was a tricky one," she admitted, neatly writing up some notes, while glancing at something only she could see. "But I think I worked out the parameters I needed to. So I should be able to change the color like this…" She did something and the blue sphere turned purple, then red, then green, then faded away to crystal transparency. The end result looked like high quality and flawless glass. It developed a rainbow sheen, before going through a whole series of color changes again although remaining transparent.

"Very good," he commented with a smile. "I think that neatly answers the question of if you can make it opaque."

"I had to make it interact with light, which needed some extra work, but it's very flexible," Hermione replied, looking at the sphere then her notes and writing some more observations. "Actually, now that I say that, I wonder…" She got a far off expression for a few seconds as he stirred his coffee, then put the spoon in the sink behind him and watched her.

"Ooohh… Yes, that is interesting," she finally said quietly but with intent. "Interacting with light goes both ways, doesn't it? In fact, it's interacting with electromagnetic energy. Not specifically light…"

"Because light is only a small part of the electromagnetic spectrum," he responded, causing her to nod.

"Exactly. It's also radio waves and heat and x-rays and all sorts of other wavelengths." His daughter looked fascinated. "So I think it should be possible to make it produce that energy not just alter it on the way through."

He thought it over, then said a little worriedly, "Please don't make it emit X-rays or anything of a similar nature. It would be very… unsafe."

"For goodness sake, Daddy, I'm not an idiot," she snorted, making him smile a little. "I know that. I'll be careful. Let's see…" Staring at the sphere for a time, she seemed to be thinking hard. Eventually she turned the page in her notebook and started sketching out another HOP diagram as he watched with interest, getting a rough idea of what she intended. "This to set the wavelength, this to limit it to visible light, this controls the power, like so," she mumbled as she drew, occasionally referring back to previous pages, until eventually she stopped and inspected the result. "I think that's it. I can link it to the force field HOP here and here, and that should do it!"

"You're getting good at that, dear," he said with admiration. She looked pleased.

"All right then, let's see if it works," the girl said. Both of them watched the sphere as it changed color again back to the crystal-clear version, then started to glow. The light was a pale blue color to begin with, which brightened until it was easily the equal of the ceiling lamp. "It does! Brilliant!" Hermione looked very excited. "This opens up all sorts of possibilities! It's converting H-field energy to electromagnetic energy, which is incredible!"

Michael nodded to himself as he thought it over. He could see a lot of interesting applications for such a thing himself without even trying very hard. Hermione moved the globe of light closer to her and stared closely at it, prodding it with her pencil then making some notes. The color shifted several times, going through a rich deep red to a golden yellow then bright luminescent green until it settled down to something almost indistinguishable from sunlight. "It would make a good room light," he suggested with a chuckle. "All you need is a remote control for it and to make it small enough to fit in the lamps and we could save money when you leave them turned on."

She giggled, with a glance at him, then looked thoughtful. "Hmm… Now that's an interesting idea," she said in a low voice, turning to a blank page. "Some sort of control node that could be operated electrically? It's only basically doing what this does the other way around… I think that should be possible if I can work out the best method." His daughter wrote for a couple of minutes, then nodded. "I think I can do that. This proves that H-field to electromagnetism is possible, so logically it should be reversible, I think. If so, I can probably make a control HOP that can be driven by electronics. Or maybe by an optical signal? It's already interacting with electromagnetism already, isn't it, so extending that should work..." She chewed on the end of her pencil rubber for a moment, making his dentistry instincts wince, then wrote some more.

"If you can transfer energy both ways, I can see a lot of uses for that," he said as he considered the concept. "Heating, cooling, lighting… those are just the obvious ones. Power generation too, perhaps?"

"Oh, that part's easy, I worked out how to make electricity from this ages ago," she said without looking up from her notes. "We just make a version of the lifting HOP that produces rotary motion rather than linear motion, and use it to turn a generator. I can probably come up with a way to directly produce electricity with some more effort but that would certainly work."

Michael looked at her with his eyebrows up, then nodded slowly. "Yes, I suspect it would. So you've invented perpetual motion then?"

She grinned at him for a second before going back to her writing. "Not really, it's not making energy from nothing, it's just pulling it from somewhere else. The H-field is providing the power in the end. It's perfectly sensible applied psionic technology not magic or something."

Laughing, he took another sip of coffee, then replied, "We shall have to get you a white coat if you're going to properly be a scientist. It's traditional after all." His daughter seemed amused but he suspected that if he did get her a suitably sized lab coat she'd be wearing it all the time…

Putting her pencil down, Hermione turned her attention back to her sphere of light and frowned at it. It shrank until it was about two inches in diameter, at which point she nodded in satisfaction. "There. It will fit into my desk lamp now."

The glow went out and she plucked the sphere of force out of the air, holding it up and admiring the thing. He was highly impressed that she'd managed to pretty much produce a physical object out of nothing, although at the same time it wasn't really a physical object, it was just putting up a good show. Which was rather mindbending if he was honest with himself.

Apparently one could become accustomed to the most bizarre occurrences if they happened often enough, he reflected.

She tossed it into the air and grinned when it silently vanished again. He whistled softly to himself. "You have the makings of a very good stage magic act there."

"I think I can do better than a stage act, Daddy," she replied calmly. "I have a lot of ideas."

"So do I, my girl, so do I." They shared a moment of glee, then he finished his coffee and pulled out his own notebook. "Would you like to hear some of them?"

"Of course I would," she replied with a broad smile. "It's fun."

Father and daughter were deep in conversation when Helen came back from visiting a friend two hours later and the kitchen table was covered in notes, drawings, and books. She shook her head at the mess, put the kettle on, and sat down to see what had them so excited.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Hermione pondered deeply, her mind awhirl with ideas. After serious consideration of the options, she finally nodded. "I would like the chocolate raspberry, please."

Her mother handed her a bowl of the requested flavor with a smile and put the remainder into the freezer, then all of them went into the living room and sat down. Tasting her treat, the girl smiled. "This is really really nice," she enthused.

"It's certainly better than most ice cream I've had," her mother replied as she tried her mint choc chip. "I think we might be going there again."

"That place has managed to get a good reputation in only six months," her father agreed, happily eating his rum and raisin. "However, this will mean brushing extra well tonight, Hermione."

"I know, Daddy," she laughed. They sat and enjoyed the ice cream, the fire crackling in the grate as it had been lit earlier due to the increasingly cold weather outside. Tonight was the first time it had really become chilly enough to warrant the effort. When she'd finished she put the bowl on the coffee table, turned slightly, and leaned on her mother who put her arm over her shoulders. The older woman reached around and pulled the fluffy blanket off the back of the sofa and spread it over both of them, Hermione helping, until they were warm and snug.

Her father watched with a smile. "Tea?" he queried, getting up and retrieving all three bowls.

"Yes, please," both Granger women chorused, before sharing a smile. "That would be lovely," her mother added.

"Back in a bit," he replied, nodding and vanishing into the kitchen.

Feeling warm and safe, Hermione gazed at the fireplace, her mother slowly running her fingers through her hair and doing the same. After a while, the older woman asked, "How was school today, sweetie?"

"A little boring as usual, but not too bad," Hermione replied with a faint sigh. "Martha Trent was being difficult again. I ignored her, even though I wanted to tell her she's an idiot."

"I do wish the school would be a little more observant at times," her mother muttered. "I've heard from several other parents that there are more cases of bullying there than is ideal. You're not the only one having trouble."

"I know," the girl said quietly. "I try not to let it affect me. It's hard sometimes. I wish they'd just stop, or ignore me for that matter. I haven't done anything to them."

"Sometimes it's not what you do, it's who you are, I'm afraid," her mother responded softly. "You're terribly intelligent and you probably worry them because they don't understand you. It will get better. Children can be horribly unkind when they meet someone they find unusual."

"Adults can be like that too, unfortunately," her father said as he came back into the room carrying a tray, having apparently overheard the comment. He put it on the low table near then and handed each a mug of tea, before taking his own and sitting down again. "Luckily it's less common. With any luck people grow out of that sort of behavior as they get older."

Hermione nodded slightly. She was aware of that, and that she probably prodded certain other children's particular buttons, but there was nothing she could really do about it except live with it and hope they'd get bored sooner or later. Or at least nothing that wouldn't lead to trouble.

Her mother pulled her closer in a sideways hug. "Try not to let it bother you. Only another year or so and you'll be in secondary school, and there's every chance that those children will either be somewhere else, or find something to do other than being annoying."

"I hope so," Hermione grumbled. "It's very irritating."

She drank some tea and gazed at the flickering flames, idly watching them with the energy sense as well as her eyes. It was a fascinating sight as she was now sensitive enough to the minute fluctuations in the field caused by everything around her that she could watch the wood being consumed almost from the inside. There was a companionable silence for a while, her father picking up a book and turning to his page, while her mother seemed lost in her own thoughts.

The girl almost jumped when the older woman asked, "Have you had any more breakthroughs in physical impossibilities in the last few days, sweetie? You've been awfully quiet for a day or two. Normally we've come to expect at least one bizarre discovery before breakfast." She was smiling at her daughter, making Hermione giggle.

"I've been working on a way to make electricity and the H-field interact more directly," she admitted. "Daddy gave me the idea, and I've been thinking about it quite a lot."

"Did you have any luck?" her father asked with interest.

"Actually, yes I did," she replied happily. "It's not quite finished, but it works. Hang on, I'll get it." She hastily finished the last of the tea, put the mug back on the tray, and flipped the blanket back to stand up. Dashing up to her room she rummaged around in her desk until she found what she was after, took it back downstairs, and got under the blanket again. Holding up what she'd retrieved, she watched them look at it.

"A torch?" her mother queried, a little puzzled by her tone.

"Yes." Hermione handed the blue plastic-cased device to her, the older woman taking it and turning it over in her hands. It was a cheap one, that they had several of in the house for power cuts or going in the garden in the dark. "It's lighter than usual," her mother commented while Hermione and her father watched. "Does it even have any batteries in?"

"Only a little double A cell now."

Curiously, her mother flicked the switch, then exclaimed when a ridiculously powerful bright white beam came out of the lens and put a circle on the ceiling. "Goodness, that's bright! How does that work, Hermione? It's not like a normal bulb at all, the color's all wrong."

"You made a small version of that sphere from the other day, didn't you?" her father put in, a look of understanding and approval on his face. She nodded.

"I did, it's about the size of a pea." Taking the torch back, she turned it off, then quickly disassembled it into the component parts. She showed them the quarter-inch diameter transparent sphere of solid force, which was mounted in a little wire frame she'd twisted up from some thin copper wire and fashioned into something that was soldered to the base of a normal torch bulb, the glass of which she'd broken away with pliers. "This is the result of a new HOP that generates it, runs the light system, and monitors these terminals for the presence of a voltage," she explained, pointing to the relevant sections. "The two wires touch it on either side, see? And there's a sense block that is looking to see a voltage across them. No current flows because it's not a normal electrical circuit, it's much more like the gate of a perfect FET with infinite impedance."

Opening the battery compartment she pulled out a single cell battery holder which she'd wired into the original contacts. "It only needs a little battery since it's not really doing much, and why make it any heavier? All the power for the light is from the H-field, all this is doing is letting you use a basic switch to turn it on."

Both her parents examined her invention, seeming quite startled with the simplicity. "And because it doesn't take any electricity worth speaking of from the battery that should last for a long time?" her father asked.

"Probably as long as it would as if it was in the package," she replied with a smile. "Years, at least. I can come up with a method to even eliminate the need for a battery at all with some more work, that's the part I'm thinking about right now, but this works really well already."

"Amazing," her mother breathed in awe. "That's very good work, Hermione. And it would be very useful too. I'm forever finding that the batteries have run down at the most awkward moment."

"I can do this to all the other torches too, if you'd like," the girl offered as she reassembled the device, then turned it back on. "I can change the color and brightness if this is wrong, but right now I haven't designed a good method to do that without directly changing the HOP parameters."

"Perhaps make it a little more yellow," her father suggested after considering the comment for a moment. "That's so white it's almost painful, and it's quite unusual. If we used it outside people would start asking questions."

"True," she nodded, tweaking the HOP a little and causing it to produce a warmer illumination. Stopping when it looked roughly like the big floodlight over the front driveway, she added, "How's that?"

"Perfect. It looks just like a very bright normal torch. If anyone asks we can just say it's a new type of bulb." Her father grinned at her. "Really excellent job, dear. And the first practical application of your ideas that anyone can use."

"I've got all sorts of other ideas too," she replied, turning the torch off and putting it down. "But for some of them I need to learn some more things. Like making a water heater or something like that."

"Now that could be useful," her mother commented. "It's quite expensive heating the house." She hugged Hermione again. "I'm very proud of how clever you are."

"I rather enjoy it too," the girl giggled, causing them both to laugh.

After a couple of minutes, during which her father played with the torch and seemed fascinated by it, even taking it apart again to inspect the innards once more, she spoke. "Er… I've been thinking…"

"We do somewhat expect that, dear," her father chuckled, screwing the lens back on the torch and putting it on the table. "It's a habit with you."

Hermione folded her arms and gave him a stern look. He raised his hands protectively. "She's doing that thing again, Helen."

"Stop making silly jokes, then," his wife advised with a mild sigh.

"Where's the fun in that?"

"Have you quite finished?" Hermione asked.

He looked slyly at her. "For now. Continue, by all means. You were thinking. About what this time?"

She fiddled with her hair and glanced at both of them in turn. "About perhaps seeing if I could sort of… teach you to do what I can do?"

Both her parents stared at her, then each other. "Do you think you actually can?" her mother asked slowly, sounding puzzled, while somewhat curious too.

With a small shrug Hermione replied, "Honestly, I'm not really sure. I can't see any specific reason I couldn't, I have to admit. I don't know why I can do what I can, but surely I can't be the only one who can ever do it? Perhaps other people are able to, or possibly everyone is able to but they just don't know how. After all I missed it for years and worked it out almost accidentally…"

"And you do have a very unusual mind, it has to be said," her father remarked when she trailed off. "Very few people are as smart as you are, my little scientific impossibility. You might have noticed something that other people did but never thought much of, and instead of putting it down as an accident, actually stuck with it long enough to find out that it was a real thing." He looked thoughtful as she nodded and shrugged simultaneously. "It's true enough that a lot of the important breakthroughs in science have been when people least expected them, but someone was sufficiently curious to investigate and sufficiently persistent to succeed."

"What was it that Isaac Asimov said? Something like 'The most exciting phrase to hear in science which heralds new discoveries is not Eureka! but That's funny…'" Hermione nodded as her father smiled. "That's certainly what I thought when that apple core flew away."

"Something along those lines, yes. And he's right. I've read quite a few stories about completely serendipitous discoveries that ended up becoming very important, and sometimes entirely new fields of discovery. Radioactivity, for example."

He fell silent in thought, while Hermione and her mother watched him. Her mother also looked intrigued and pensive at the same time. Eventually he looked up from where he'd been staring at his folded hands and asked, "How do you propose to try this?"

"That's the tricky part," she was forced to confess. "I'm not really completely sure. In my case I knew I was doing something peculiar because I saw it happen right in front of me. It was connected to being angry or frustrated at first, and I managed to get into that state on purpose once I figured that out. But I didn't want to have to always be upset to do it, because that's silly, so I kept trying until I was able to get the same result and not be angry. It was a lot of work."

"So you've said," he nodded. "I'm amazed you stuck at it that long."

"I really, really wanted to see if I could do it," she smiled. "And I could. Look what happened after that!"

"True, very true," he chortled. "You do keep surprising us. So do you have any idea about how to proceed?"

"A couple, yes," she replied, "But I'm not certain they'll work. I suppose the only way to find out is to try it."

"What do you think, Helen?" he asked her mother.

"I think it would be something I'd like to try at least," the older woman replied with a smile. "If Hermione thinks she can teach us, I'm game. Although I doubt I could ever be anything like as good at all this as she is, I don't have that much of a head for numbers at the best of times. Certainly not to her level."

Hermione waved a hand. "You don't need to know all the details to start with it, that comes later. It took me quite a long time to realize how I could use electronic theory to work with the field. Originally I was just pushing with my mind, more or less, and that worked quite nicely. I can lift the entire car into the air and keep it there for ages now, even without a HOP amplifying things. And the energy sense is all down to my ability too, I haven't done much with that yet other than practicing a lot with it."

"All right, then, dear. I think we're both up for it. How do you want to begin?"

Tapping her chin with a finger, Hermione considered the question carefully. "Perhaps…" she began a little cautiously. "Perhaps we could start with me making something that uses quite a lot of H-field energy, and then you see if you can feel anything? Once you notice it, which took me quite a long time, it's fairly obvious. Or it was to me at least. It was noticing it to begin with that was the tricky part, it's so faint most of the time. But I can easily make it much stronger in a small area by using an amplifier, that's the whole point of them."

"Worth a shot," he agreed. "As far as I've seen so far it's not dangerous?"

"Not unless you use it to do something dangerous as far as I can think," she replied thoughtfully. "We're constantly surrounded by it right now, and it doesn't seem to do anything unless you want it to other than exist."

"Fine. You may begin when ready." He chuckled as she giggled, her mother smiling at her and stroking her hair.

"I'll make an amplifier and link a force field to it so you can see where it is, but not a solid one, only one that is visible." She was working even as she spoke, quickly assembling a new version of a HOP from elements she was very familiar with due to all the experimentation. It quickly resulted in an apple-sized translucent blue orb hanging over the coffee table. Both her parents contemplated it curiously. "And now I'll set up a feedback loop so it's pulling quite a lot from the field and putting it back again, just going around and around," she went on, doing that too. To her energy sense the thing she'd made was like a particularly solid knot in the field. Leaning forward she waved her finger through it, then nodded.

"That should do," she said happily. The sensation of touching it was, at least to her, quite apparent and was a bit like running warm water over your finger. It wasn't painful in the least but it stood out nicely. Making another one identical to the first, she moved one towards her father and the other to her mother, plopping both within easy arm's reach of them. "There we go. See if you can feel anything from those."

Somewhat tentatively her mother reached out and slowly touched her floating sphere, pulling her fingers back as soon as she did, then trying again with more assurance. "It's…" she began, looking a little confused. "I'm not sure if I'm actually feeling anything or if it's all in my head."

Hermione's father was waving his hand through his own globe, an odd expression on his face. "I know what you mean. How much is wishful thinking and how much is real? I could swear I'm feeling something but I can't put words to it for the life of me."

Hermione watched them for a couple of minutes, wondering if this would work at all, or if she was going to have to try something else. Or if it was even possible in the first place. Closing her eyes, she concentrated on sensing them by the distortions in the field, and found almost to her surprise that there was an apparent effect whenever they touched the spheres. The knots in the field that represented the HOPs she'd made were very clearly, albeit very slightly, altering a tiny amount as the distortions that a living person produced intersected them. That was encouraging at least although it wasn't proof of anything useful yet.

She made a mental note of some possible applications of the concept for other purposes, then went back to observing.

Yes, there was definitely some interaction between the concentrated field density of her HOPs and her parents. Looking very carefully, she could almost make out an incredibly faint network of something inside them, which after some thought she decided might actually be their nervous systems. Which was an incredible thing, assuming she was right. It looked plausible since there was a larger amount of whatever it was that looked like a spine, and more still concentrated where their heads should be.

Hermione opened her eyes to double check, seeing that what she was sensing and what she was seeing appeared to match up quite accurately. So she might well be right in her supposition. Closing her eyes once more she watched the effect the field knots had, and smiled a little as she realized that there was a very small but real flickering, for want of a better word, in what she was looking at every time the knots of concentrated H-field energy interacted with her parents. So given that this was indeed real, did it then follow that they could learn to control that interaction?

Curiously, she quickly made another sphere, put it in front of her, and reached out for it while intently watching her own field distortion. She had been aware for some time that she left a rather larger 'imprint' in the field, which seemed to be the result of her telekinetic abilities, or possibly the cause of them, assuming it wasn't both, but hadn't spent much time carefully studying it for a while. Now, though, she saw much the same thing happening in her case, as every time she felt the field knot pass through her fingers, she could clearly see a change in the way the field itself interacted with her body.

Looking between herself and her father, she compared the effect, coming to the conclusion that while it was similar in nature it was much, much stronger in her case than it was in his. That followed from what she'd learned and deduced about how the whole thing worked.

"I can see some sort of connection coming and going," she announced, opening her eyes and watching her mother slowly run her fingers through the sphere in front of her. "It's absolutely certainly a real effect."

"I still can't be sure I'm actually feeling anything or if I'm just imagining it," her mother commented.

Thinking for a moment, Hermione slowly said, "Try closing your eyes, both of you. Keep them closed." Her parents exchanged glances, then obediently followed her instructions. "Good. Now hold out your hands."

Both adults put their hands out in front of them. She carefully moved the HOP globes out of the way, while keeping an eye and an internal sense on both, then slid them back through her parent's hands. Repeating the process a couple of times, she asked, "Can you feel anything?"

Her father frowned, then replied in a baffled voice, "I… think so. It's strange, it's a little like…"

"A ball of fur that's tickling you from the inside?" her mother put in, sounding confused but a little excited too.

"That's not a bad description, Helen. Odd, but close. How strange."

"What about now?" Hermione asked as she moved both spheres away.

"Um…" Her mother's face scrunched up. "It… might be gone?"

The girl added some more energy and moved the orbs again, this time through their upper arms. "Ooh! Oh, that was very odd," her mother almost squeaked. "I'm sure I felt something then."

Her father rubbed his arm where the sphere had passed, his eyes still shut. "I certainly did. It was quite disconcerting I have to admit."

Hermione smiled widely. Stage one was working. She'd proven to her own satisfaction that someone else could detect the field if it was sufficiently concentrated. That was a good start. Now, the big question was going to be, could they actually learn to manipulate it?

She was going to have a lot of work ahead of her, she thought as she kept moving the spheres around, eventually making them invisible and letting her parents open their eyes and guess where the things were. Slowly reducing the density of the HOP knots would be the first step, to see if they could learn to become more sensitive with practice.

As it turned out even from one evening's work, it looked like that might well happen. Both her parents found the entire experience strange but rewarding, and Hermione had nearly two dozen pages of notes and ideas to try next time.

She was going to keep at it until either it proved to be impossible, or she succeeded. Because she didn't like to fail, aside from anything else…

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Two weeks later, her mother gaped in shock as she made a crow's feather Hermione had found in the garden twitch on the table after nearly ten minutes of glaring at it with a gaze like a basilisk in a bad mood. "Did I just…?" she gasped in complete surprise.

Hermione was grinning like an idiot. "You did just, yes, Mommy. Well done." She pulled her notebook out of the pocket of her nice white lab coat and flipped it open. "I'm making a note here; Great success."

Sternly pointing at her father with her pen, she added firmly, "Stop slacking. You're next."

He saluted her smartly with a grin, replied, "Yes, Miss," and sat down where his wife had just been as she moved to the side, looking stunned and delighted.

Satisfied that things were going well, Hermione leaned forward and watched intently.

This was both fun and educational, in her view, and well worth the work.

And she had a lot of ideas to try now that this seemed to be getting results.

 

[mp3.1415player]

Michael handed the copper and brass device in his hand to his daughter, who took it curiously and inspected it. "What is it?" she asked.

"That is the old immersion heater element, the one that went pop about two years ago and made all the lights go out," he replied. Pointing at the heating element, which was cracked and obviously faulty, he went on, "Hard water makes them fail in a few years unless you use a specially plated one, which this one wasn't. It got a lot of limescale buildup, overheated, and then cracked, which created a short circuit."

"All right." She picked at the crusty remnants of the element with a fingernail, peeling up some of the very thin and corroded copper. "Why did you keep it if it's broken?"

He shrugged with a smile. "I replaced the old one, and put that in a box in the garage, then forgot about it," he admitted. "I meant to throw it away but never got around to it. But I was thinking about how to use a HOP to heat water and I had a brainwave…"

She looked at him, then at the dead heater with an evaluating expression, having obviously discerned his idea on the spot. "Ohh… very clever, Daddy. We use this to attach a HOP tuned to emit heat to and it will screw right into the hot water tank!"

"Exactly," he smiled. "Cut the old element off, solder some copper wire to where it was, and make a holder at the end so it's putting the sphere right into the middle of the tank."

"It will need some way to control the heat or it will boil the water," she remarked, putting the thing on the table and pulling out her notebook. "I can't think that would be good."

"No, it would in fact be rather bad," he told her. "We could probably use the original thermostat to control an electric circuit like you did with the torches, and just turn it on and off. A small battery would work for years, wouldn't it?" She nodded, already sketching another diagram.

"Yes, but there's a better way. I think I can set up the control circuit to just make sit at a specific temperature all the time. We won't need a thermostat, it will only ever get that hot. How much water does the tank hold?"

He thought for a moment. "I think it's roughly a hundred and twenty liters or so? And the thermostat on the immersion heater is set to seventy five degrees centigrade." Jotting the numbers on the margin of the page, she nodded again.

"All right. So… it will need to detect heat, like this…" The girl drew with expertise from much practice, as he watched over her shoulder. "This compares the temperature to the correct one and keeps it in the right place, this is an emergency off control if something goes wrong, this powers it all…" Looking up at him she said, "It can't really be a sphere because that will have the smallest surface area and be very inefficient. It should probably be shaped like a lot of plates, if it's going to work properly, I think."

"Can you do that?" he queried.

"Easily, yes, it's simple," she smiled, going back to drawing. Finishing, she turned the sketch one way and the other, checking it over and finally deciding it was correct. "I think that will do it."

"One of the more complex ones so far," he noted.

"It's doing several things at once, but it's fairly straightforward." Picking up the failed heater with one hand, she turned it around a few times, looking between it and the drawing. "I think we can just cut it here and here, then attach the HOP to this bit." Hermione pointed at the closed-end pocket that the thermostat would have fitted in.

"That looks fine," he replied.

She gently pulled on the element while using her telekinetic knife trick to separate the lower end of it from the base of the screw in heater, the coiled copper tubing cleanly coming loose leaving a bright shiny surface, surrounding a white ceramic material with the heater wire up the middle. The cut off stubs were about half an inch long. Putting the removed piece to one side she closely examined the remaining part, turning it over to look at the connector side as well. "Good, it has these caps on where the wires attached," she noted, "So it won't leak water. All right, that means all I need to do is make the HOP and fit it here, and it should be ready to go into the tank."

"Remember it needs to fit through the hole that screws into," Michael warned. "It's only about two and a half inches in diameter."

"That's not a problem. I'll make it small enough to fit, and we can always enlarge it later if it doesn't work properly," she replied with a smile. Concentrating, she did the psionic operation and quickly made a strange looking thing that sat in the air over the table. It was a crystalline construct, a pale yellow color like the walls of her bedroom, and took the shape of a series of disks a little over two inches in diameter arranged along a tubular part up the center, the whole assembly being just over a foot long. Both of them examined it.

"That hollow part goes over this copper tube here to hold it in place like I suggested, and then we just screw it in place of the original one." Hermione looked pleased with her efforts. Michael reached out carefully and put his hand near the force construct.

"It's not hot," he said.

"No, I'll turn it on after you install it. It'll be too hot to touch otherwise."

"We should probably double check you got your sums right before I do that," he smiled. "Just in case. Always best to double check things."

"Of course, Daddy," she giggled. "We can fill the sink with cold water and put it in there, then measure the temperature."

"Good suggestion." He walked over to the sink and put the plug in, then turned the cold tap on. When it was full Hermione plucked her HOP construct from the air, carried it over, and unceremoniously dropped it into the water. Rummaging through the right drawer Michael came up with a cooking thermometer meant for measuring the temperature of meat, and put the end into sink just under the surface. The reading quickly dropped to around thirteen degrees, the temperature of the water straight out of the cold main. "Good, that's working well. Turn it on and we'll see what happens?"

His nascent H-field sense, which he and Helen were still astounded by although in both their cases it was a weak thing compared to their daughter's abilities so far, felt her poke the control section of her HOP. "It's on," she reported. "And it looks like it's working." Both of them could see small currents of water flowing around the thing as convection took place, causing tiny visible distortions in the light. Curiously he put a finger into the water near it and nodded.

"Yes, definitely heating up." Removing his finger he watched the reading on the thermometer, which had started to rise fairly quickly. "Twenty degrees… thirty degrees… thirty five. That's very good, it's putting a lot of heat out to make it change that quickly."

In under two minutes the entire contents of the sink were steaming and the temperature had stabilized at exactly seventy five degrees. He propped the thermometer against the side and left it there, then filled the kettle and turned it on. Hermione looked briefly puzzled but then smiled. "I see. We add hotter water and make sure it turns off."

"Exactly." He grinned at her as they waited for the kettle to boil. "Very nice work, by the way, dear."

"Thank you," she replied with a giggle. "This is fun. And I like helping out."

Ruffling her hair, he chuckled. "You help out a lot, just by being there," he told her. Moments later, as she was huffing although smiling and patting her hair back into place, the kettle clicked and turned off. He picked it up and poured the contents into the sink, the thermometer quickly rising to well over eighty five degrees.

"It turned off immediately," Hermione remarked, looking at the energy construct. "That works too. Brilliant."

"Excellent. In that case, turn it off properly and we'll go and screw it into the tank. Your mother will be pleased when she comes home. Free hot water is a nice little bonus to having a psionic researcher as a daughter." He grinned again as she started laughing. Plucking the device out of the now empty sink, she quickly attached it to the modified original heater base and held it up.

"Done."

"In that case, to work," he replied, both of them heading upstairs to the cupboard the gas boiler and hot water tank lived in. Opening the door he turned the power off, then stopped, realizing a minor problem. "Ah. I'll have to drain the tank first, or we'll flood the house," he said with a sigh having missed that in the excitement of what they'd done. "The heater goes in at the bottom there, and if I take it out all the water will go everywhere."

"I can hold the water in place with telekinesis, I think," Hermione replied after thinking about the problem for a few seconds. She was staring at the tank and clearly probing it with the energy sense. "If I just make a force field around the existing element, and expand it out a little, it should push the water away… I think that's got it."

"If you did it incorrectly we're about to get very wet," he cautioned, but he trusted her enough that he thought she probably had got it right. Popping back to the garage he retrieved a bucket and some tools, then took them upstairs again. A couple of minutes work had the cover over the contacts on the back of the heater assembly removed, and he disconnected the wiring and removed that too. Then he put the large special heating element spanner over the mechanism and heaved carefully on it. A moment's resistance followed before it scraped slightly and shifted. Hermione floated the bucket under the bottom of the tank and the heater as a small dribble of water came out.

"I dearly hope that's all," he said just a touch nervously.

"I can feel most of it's held out of the way," she replied. "I think that was what was inside the force field when I made it."

"Well, we're about to find out," he chuckled, turning the element further. A little more water appeared but the flow stopped almost immediately so he continued turning. After an entire rotation it was loose enough he could do the rest by hand, which only took a little longer. As he pulled the unit out a cupful or so of water followed it into the bucket but that was all.

He pulled one of Hermione's modified torches from the shelf over the boiler and turned it on, directing the beam into the hole, just to see what it looked like. There was a three inch diameter cylinder of air going into the tank, and water on the other side of it, with absolutely no visible indication of why it wasn't coming out. "Incredible," he muttered, shaking his head. "Every time I see that I still think it's ridiculous."

Putting the torch away he quickly screwed the new H-field powered heater into place, tightened it, and nodded. "That should do it. You can relax now, dear."

Hermione smiled. "I'll let the water back, then turn it on." They heard a gurgling thump from the tank before all went silent. "It's working," she added happily.

"And nothing's leaking." He held out his hand and she shook it gravely. "A first rate job."

It didn't take long to disconnect the other end of the immersion heater wiring and remove it, then turn the boiler back on. This was necessary to run the pumps to circulate the water and to heat the radiators, but he had ideas on how to get around that too, soon. For now, the boiler should only come on for heating and not hot water, which was a good test. Closing the cupboard, he turned to his daughter. "I think that counts as a successful afternoon, dear."

"I think so too, Daddy. Shall we do some more exercises now? You and Mommy are coming along very well indeed."

"I have a little paperwork for the practice I need to finish and get out of the way, but after that, certainly," he replied with a glance at his watch. "And tomorrow we have to get up early for the trip to London, don't forget."

"I'm looking forward to it," his daughter replied, smiling. "I really want to see some of those shops."

"Remember we'll be taking the tube so we can't buy everything," he pointed out as they headed back down the stairs. "We'll have to carry it with us."

"I know," she said. "I haven't been on the tube for ages. Or to London."

"The second part implies the first one, really," he chuckled, making her give him a look of fond tolerance. He headed for his study to do the paperwork while Hermione disappeared into the garage. A little later he heard her go back up to her room, but by then he was deeply involved with writing a letter to a colleague, after which there was some patient rearranging to do because of staff illness.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Hermione yawned a little as she flipped through the latest issue of Elektor, making notes with her free hand and occasionally looking up at the scenery outside her father's car. They were on the A3, currently passing Guildford, having left the house twenty minutes ago. Her father had said that with any luck they'd be at the dental supply company in south-west London in roughly an hour and fifteen minutes, but it depended on traffic once they passed the M25 which he'd said was often quite busy at this time of morning. She didn't mind, as she was looking forward to seeing what she could find in the shops she hoped they could visit, and also wanted to see the Science Museum again. They'd visited just after her eighth birthday but that felt like ever so long ago.

Considering all the things that had happened since, it was, she reflected with an inner smile.

The girl closed the magazine a few minutes later, making a mental note to read the article on page thirty nine about analogue switches at some point, and put both it and her notebook in the door side pocket. The street lights were just starting to go out as the sun rose, it being just after half past seven in the morning. She looked at her father, who was concentrating on the road ahead although he glanced at her and gave her a quick smile, then went back to watching the world go past at seventy miles an hour. The car was quite an expensive model and very comfortable, although she didn't often get the chance to ride in the front.

"The traffic's lighter than I thought it might be so with a bit of luck we'll manage to push right through into Putney before it really picks up," her father commented. "It shouldn't take more than an hour at most to finish at the company, and the nearest tube station is Southfields on the District line."

Nodding, Hermione recalled the tube map she'd memorized some time ago just in case it came in handy. "So we take the District line to Embankment station, change to the Northern line there, and that takes us right to Tottenham Court Road. Or we could go in the other direction to Edgware Road first, then come back on the Bakerloo line to Oxford Circus and transfer to the central line for one stop."

Her father snorted, shaking his head. "Only you, Hermione, would be able to remember all that. Do you have the entire map of the underground in your head?"

"Yes." She grinned as he laughed. "It's useful information."

"I will have to take you on trips more often, it'll save ages looking at maps," he chuckled. "Speaking of Tottenham Court Road, fancy visiting the new Forbidden Planet shop? It's just down New Oxford Street about three hundred yards from the station now since they moved last year to a much larger place than they used to have. I haven't managed to visit it yet."

"I'd like that, Daddy," she told him, smiling. "We haven't been to a big book shop for months. Especially one that specializes in science fiction."

"We could consider it research material, I suspect." They shared a look of understanding.

She watched the cars passing for a little longer, then closed her eyes and settled back in the seat to wait. Extending her energy sense outward the girl amused herself by trying to catalog all the things that flashed past. Her range was quite a bit larger now if she pushed, closing in on a mile at the extremes, but she wasn't trying to reach out that far at the moment and was only interested in things a few hundred yards away at most.

The people in the cars stood out with the characteristic field distortions that living things produced, which were quite distinct from those everything else made. She was getting good enough at interpreting these tiny changes to the background energy of the field that she was fairly certain she was actually nearly able to deduce things like emotional state. It seemed plausible, going on the whole idea of psionics, as an empathetic sense was certainly one concept that came up quite often. She was very keen on seeing if she could do other things than telekinetic effects even though those seemed to have almost limitless applications.

At times she could feel one or other driver seeming to get quite annoyed, probably due to the whole driving aspect of travel which seemed in some ways rather boring. There were also feelings that she suspected corresponded to tiredness, anticipation, happiness, and a whole host of others. It was going to take a lot of practice to really get good at this sort of thing she decided after a while. Some people seemed to be easier to read than others, too, which was fascinating. Hermione wondered why, and what the difference between people was in these terms. Possibly it was linked to their own connection to the H-field?

She had so many unanswered questions about the whole thing and every time she worked out one aspect half a dozen more popped up. It was clearly something that was going to take an awfully long time to properly understand, although she was fairly pleased with her progress to date. And she still wondered if she'd actually found something new or if she was merely the latest to stumble across something others knew about. The complete lack of any real proof one way or the other did rather suggest that she might have managed to make a whole new discovery, because once you understood the possibilities, proving it was a real thing wasn't difficult at all. Nor, it seemed, was teaching other people how to do it too, based on the results with her parents.

After a little thought, she decided that wasn't necessarily completely true… If this was some sort of family trait, possibly her family could do it and other people couldn't? That seemed a bit unlikely, to be honest, but without more evidence one way or the other she couldn't rule it out or confirm it. At some point she was going to need to see if she could teach someone unrelated how to access the H-field, but that meant telling other people, which she was a little reluctant to do right now. She wanted to have some really good data on her experiments before someone with a lot more resources got involved and made things too complicated…

Even if it was something that was being researched somewhere else, she was quite content to do her own work, thank you very much, and didn't want someone getting in the way until she'd finished if she could avoid it.

Oh well. Things were going quite nicely so far and she planned on continuing in this vein for the foreseeable future. Maybe when she finished school she could study it at university or something, but that seemed like a very long way away from where she was right now. Still, she was having fun, her parents seemed pleased too, and all in all it was a rewarding hobby on top of the electronics. Which she also loved.

A flicker of something strange at the edge of her current scanning range made her frown. What was that? It was something similar to what she thought she'd sensed before a few weeks ago, vaguely reminiscent of a HOP but… not. Focusing on it, she tried to get as much information as possible before they drove too far past it to detect. At this distance, something like a quarter of a mile and increasing, she couldn't quite get a good look at the H-field parameters, but…

"That's odd," she mumbled.

"Sorry? Did you say something?" her father asked.

"I thought I felt something strange some way off, almost like a HOP, but it's… bizarre," she replied after another look. Moments later whatever it was disappeared behind them, too far away to sense, and she opened her eyes with a mild sigh.

"Bizarre how?" he asked, glancing at her, then going back to changing lane to pass a slower truck in front of them.

"It felt… off, somehow. It was…" She tugged on her earlobe gently as she thought. "A bit like it was much more complex than anything I've made so far, but at the same time it was also too simple. Does that make any sense?" The girl looked at him as he frowned slightly. "I'd need to see it up close, but I got the impression it was really inefficiently connected to the field. As if there were lots of extra parts that didn't really do anything, and it had been made by someone who didn't quite understand what they were trying to do."

"How far away was it?" he asked.

"About… a quarter of a mile off the road that way when I sensed it?" she replied, pointing to the left.

"So roughly two miles back and a quarter of a mile west, which would be somewhere close to Ripley town center," her father said a moment later, having thought it over. "I wonder what that was?"

"I have no idea. I thought I detected something a bit like it a few weeks ago right at the limit I could sense, but I was almost asleep and it vanished after a moment so it might have been a dream," she responded, still wondering what it was. This one definitely wasn't a dream, she was sure of that.

"Sounds like someone else knows how to do what you're doing," he commented.

"It does rather, yes," she admitted with puzzlement. "Although it really didn't feel right somehow. It was related to a HOP, but I don't think it was a HOP. Not quite, at least not the way I make them. But I could only sense it for a few seconds so perhaps I made a mistake."

"Possibly. It will be interesting to see if you spot anything else like that."

Nodding, she settled back again and closed her eyes, intending to check for exactly that. Expanding her range to the limit and looking specifically for something similar to that odd little knot, she passed the rest of the journey carefully noting anything out of the ordinary. Four more times she detected almost the same phenomenon, with very minor differences as far as she could make out. Each time she got a slightly better understanding of what the thing was, at least as far as what it looked like in an H-field sense. She had no idea what it was for because the thing seemed almost to have parts missing. It wasn't quite an amplifier, it wasn't quite a force field, it didn't interact with electromagnetism in any sensible way, and it had a huge number of extra bits that didn't seem useful at all other than to waste energy. The things stood out against the background H-field like lighthouses compared to her HOPs, which were barely detectable except at close range.

She'd spent quite a lot of effort thinking about how to make them as efficient and simple as possible, of course, since needless complexity was not only wasteful but made analyzing the operation much more involved than it required. Why make things more difficult than they needed to be? HOPs were fairly straightforward if you understood the fundamentals of both H-field knots and electronic theory, and the math wasn't terribly hard to follow.

Hermione raised an eyebrow as she examined her memory of the last one of those mystery knots. That was an interesting point, in fact. The design was almost like whoever had done it didn't understand the fundamentals, but had achieved the result they got by trial and error, empirically changing parameters until it did what they wanted and having as a result to add a lot more aspects to compensate for all the places it was trying to be unstable. "How strange," she murmured, casting about to see if she could find another one. "I wonder who made them? They certainly seem close enough in design that it's either the same person, or someone using the same information."

"Mass production of HOPs?" her father asked, slowing at the junction they were approaching and looking both ways. "Or is it like a blacksmith making customized work for his clients?"

"I really have no idea," she admitted. "I wish I did. I've never seen someone else's H-field work. I didn't know anyone else was doing it until an hour ago."

"It looks like this trip is producing surprises," he noted, and she nodded. Writing down her observations in her notebook, as she'd been doing each time, she added a few impressions and thoughts before closing it again. "We're only about ten minutes away now," he added.

Shortly they turned off Kimber Road into a small industrial estate and drove right to the back. Parking the car, Hermione's father turned it off. "Here we are. Put your coat on, it's chilly, and we'll go in." Taking his seat belt off, he reached into the back seat and retrieved both their coats, handing her own to her and putting his on. Both of them got out and he locked the car, then led the way to the door and pressed the button next to it. A slightly crackly voice spoke from the intercom over the button. He said, "Doctor Michael Granger to see Dennis Halcombe, please."

The door emitted a harsh buzz and he pushed it open, waving Hermione through then following. Inside they were quickly met by a tall solidly built blond man who held out his hand with a smile. "Michael, it's nice to see you again. And who is this young lady?"

"My daughter, Hermione," her father replied. "We're going into town afterwards to visit some of the shops. Do you mind if I leave the car here until this evening?"

"Of course not, no trouble at all," the man replied with a smile. "We have lots of parking space." He looked down at Hermione. "It's nice to meet you, young lady. Would you like a soft drink, or some tea?"

"Tea, please," she replied with a smile.

"Follow me, then." All three of them went up a flight of stairs into an office, where he directed Hermione to a chair at a table to one side. She sat down and looked around with interest. The room had quite a lot of dentistry equipment around it, which all looked very expensive and new. Shortly she was sipping some quite good tea and reading a manual for a dental x-ray machine with a certain amount of curiosity while her father and Mr Halcombe talked about a number of very technical subjects that seemed to require quite a lot of paperwork.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

The tube car was as noisy as she remembered them to be as it rumbled through the tunnel under the city. It was also crowded with people to the point that most of them were standing up, although luckily when Hermione and her father had got on in Southfields it had been fairly empty. Each stop added more people, who all seemed to want to get right into London and were oddly patient about standing cheek by jowl on a packed tube train. She supposed that if you did this every day you either got used to it or went mad.

"Doing quite well for time," her father commented directly into her ear, having to slightly raise his voice to be heard. He looked up at the wall chart on the opposite side of the carriage which showed the stops along the District line. "That last one was Earl's Court, so we have another five stops to go."

Hermione nodded as she also looked, checking her recollection was correct. "That won't take long," she replied, thankful that they'd be able to get off this useful but claustrophobia-inducing train soon. She didn't mind small spaces, but she didn't particularly enjoy sharing them with about two hundred people she didn't know.

Soon enough they were exiting the Underground station onto a busy street. The sound and smell of traffic was much more obvious than at home, and there were a lot more people wandering around although it was nothing like as busy as on the tube. Hermione looked around, orientating herself from a remembered map, then pointed. "I think it's that way," she said. "Henry's Radio is one place I want to look at, they have all sorts of second hand equipment according to the advertisements, and there are a couple of other shops down that way too I think."

"I remember that place, I went in there once years ago to buy some cables for the stereo when I happened to be in the area," her father replied as they started walking. Hermione made sure her backpack was securely in place, as she didn't want anyone to knock it off. As they walked along she looked around curiously, seeing a vast number of shops selling almost anything you could think of, and people of every color and ethnicity under the sun. Luckily, although it was quite cold, the weather was good for the time of year and the walk wasn't a long one.

"Ooh," she breathed as they entered the shop they were after, looking around wide-eyed at the huge amount of equipment and parts all over the place. It was a narrow but long place, leading back quite a distance, with tables down the middle and around the edges, all full of boxes containing more electronic bits and pieces than she'd ever seen before. "This should be fun…"

Her father looked at her and smiled, then followed as she eagerly headed for the first table and started peering at all the things on it. A couple of the other customers looked oddly at her, apparently a bit surprised by a girl her age carefully inspecting component after component, but after a while just shrugged and went back to what they were doing.

An hour and a half and three shops later, they emerged into fresh air with Hermione smiling happily, her backpack half full and noticeably heavier. "That was brilliant," she exclaimed. "I got enough transistors and logic chips to make several of the projects I was wanting to experiment with, and a whole bag of LEDs for a really good price."

"Which, of course, I paid for," her father chuckled.

"Of course you did, Daddy, that's what fathers do," she giggled. He patted her shoulder as they headed back the way they'd come.

"One day, my girl, I expect that I will be living off your earnings. I can hardly wait." He grinned as she smiled up at him. "So where next? It's only just gone eleven so we still have lots of time."

"I think Cricklewood Electronics," she replied after a moment's thought. "We need to go to Willesden Green station, so that's two stops on the Bakerloo line and six on the Jubilee line. It should take about twenty minutes."

He stared at her, then shook his head in wonder. "My little walking and talking underground map, so she is," he remarked with a look of mild incredulity. They headed back towards Edgware Road station, her father making jokes about her memory most of the way.

Hermione was very much enjoying herself, and she was fairly certain he was too.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Emerging onto the surface at St Giles Circus, Michael held Hermione's hand as the flow of people out of the tube station behind him nearly knocked the girl off her feet. A large number of them really seemed in a hurry to get somewhere, he thought as they moved to the side out of the main crush. "There are a lot of electronics shops that way," he said, pointing up Tottenham Court Road, "And Forbidden Planet is that way down New Oxford Street."

"Can we finish with the electronics shops first?" his daughter replied after looking both ways. "It's probably easier like that. We'll both get so lost in a book shop we'll forget what time it is."

He laughed, checking his watch. It was about half past one, so they were doing well on time. Half an hour or so poking around for electronic bits to go with the entire backpack stuffed with surplus things she'd already had him buy for her, then an hour in the bookshop, and they'd still have time for a couple of hours or so in the Science Museum before it closed and they got thrown out. Strictly speaking that really needed an entire day, and he thought that was something they should do at some point. He was pleased how well his daughter was handling the tedium of getting around the city. At her age he'd rather have expected complains by now, but then Hermione was an unusual girl even leaving aside her remarkable talents.

He'd noticed several times that she'd got that same faraway expression which he was fairly certain meant she'd detected another example of whatever it was she'd noticed on the trip from home, but with the number of people around neither of them had thought it was the right time to discuss it. She'd occasionally pulled her notebook out on the tube and written in it following one of these events and he was quite curious to hear her thoughts and conclusions on the whole thing when they got home.

Now, though, it was of secondary importance, and he took the lead across the street, Hermione following and looking around with considerable curiosity. The pair spent a happy forty minutes poking around in a few more smaller shops than the ones they'd visited, including one place that was down a small side street and dealt in surplus and second hand computers of all sorts. There were a number of IBM PC clones, lots of monitors, a few BBC micros, some Apple computers, and a large number of machines he'd never even heard of before. Some of it looked very industrial and well worn, clearly the detritus of a company clear-out.

Hermione looked around the place with an intrigued expression, wandering off into the aisles while he investigated a rack of used monitors, wondering if there was a better one for the computer at home, which was getting along in years although it had been a decent machine at one point. "Looking for anything in particular or are you just browsing?" the young man behind the counter said after a few minutes of watching him.

"Mostly browsing," Michael replied over his shoulder. "I'm vaguely interested in a monitor, something about this size, but carrying it on the tube would be a little awkward." He pointed at an NEC monitor he'd recognized from one of the PC magazines he'd leafed through at W H Smiths a month or so ago.

The clerk laughed a little. "Yeah, those are pretty heavy, mate. Good monitor though, only six months old. SVGA, fourteen inches, bang up to date. I can do you a Trident SVGA card to go with it for a hundred quid if you like. We can arrange a courier, we do that all the time for the bigger stuff."

Thinking it over, Michael inspected the monitor, turning it around on the shelf to check the back. It was a little dusty and had clearly been used quite a bit but looked fairly clean overall. "Where do you get all this?" he queried as he turned it around again.

"All over," the man replied. "Friend of mine does bankrupt stock clearances, fire sales, office refurbs, you name it. Lot of gear comes out of that, all those companies upgrading their stuff, that sort of thing. We keep the best kit and clean it up for resale here, the rest either goes as scrap or gets sold in bulk." He waved a hand around the shop. "We can probably supply anything you want if you don't mind used. And sometimes we get new gear too, you never know what will turn up in an auction."

"Hmm." Michael nodded as he considered the information. He spotted Hermione appear down the far end of the aisle then vanish again. Turning to the man, he said, "All right, that sounds like a deal to me. It definitely works?"

"Word of honor, guv. We test everything, anything sold in the shop is fully working. Three month warranty, if it fails, we'll replace it."

"In that case, I'll take it." The other man nodded, pulling out a credit card machine and putting a slip in it. Once paid for, Michael gave him one of his cards, which the chap stapled to his copy of the invoice while handing the other one over.

"Should be with you by Wednesday. Any trouble, call us on that number."

"A pleasure doing business with you," Michael said.

"Likewise. If you want a computer for your kid there, let me know," the clerk commented with a nod at Hermione who was heading their way, holding a book.

"Found something, dear?" he asked.

"A book on computer aided design for electronics," she replied, holding it up. "It looks interesting."

"We'll take this too," Michael said, turning to the clerk after looking at the price and handing him a five pound note.

"Fine by me," the man replied with a grin, ringing up the sale. Hermione retrieved her book from the counter and put it in her backpack, then they left. Only a few feet from the shop, she stopped dead, looking at an old woman walking down the other side of the narrow road just in front of them. Michael followed her eyes and raised his own eyebrows, thinking that the woman seemed to be slightly vague about which century they were in as her clothes seemed to be at least ninety years out of fashion if he was any judge. She looked a well-preserved sixty plus, with her hair in a bun and a look on her face of someone about some important task as she strode around the corner.

He looked back at Hermione, who had pulled out her notebook and was writing quickly in it. "Did you get one of those feelings again?" he asked in a circumspect manner, aware that there were a few pedestrians around. She nodded, still writing, until she finished and put the notebook back in her pocket.

"Yes." She looked around cautiously, then added in a low voice, "That woman had one of those things in her pocket."

"You're sure?"

"Definitely. I could practically see it. I can still practically see it, for that matter. It's radiating waste energy like mad." She seemed almost offended. "So inefficient."

"How odd." He looked after the woman, but there was no sign of her. "I wonder…"

They exchanged a glance and he could see Hermione was torn between wanting to follow the woman and demand an answer and being cautious until she worked it out for herself. "Probably best not to poke too much right now," he finally said, causing her to nod a little uncertainly.

"I suppose. I'm really curious though." She blinked a couple of times, then hissed, "It just vanished!"

"Vanished?" he echoed.

"Yes. Just disappeared without warning. Maybe she turned it off…?" Hermione thought as she peered down the street, until she sighed. "I have no idea what on earth is going on with that. There's something very odd happening."

"Well, I'm sure you'll work it out sooner or later," he assured her. "Come on, let's go and look for some good books then it's museum time."

"All right," she replied, following as he headed back to the main road, turning left at the end of the side street and aiming for the Centre Point building a few hundred yards back the way they'd come. He noticed she was looking over her shoulder every now and then for a few minutes, but finally shrugged and appeared to forget about whatever had happened for the time being.

Ten minutes later both of them were staring in amazement at the largest collection of science fiction and fantasy books either had ever seen. Their eyes met, both got a look of excitement, and they headed deeper into the basement rooms of the largest science fiction bookshop in the country.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Hermione stared up at the Black Arrow R4 rocket hanging from the ceiling, feeling sad that people had managed to make something like that and just give up before succeeding. The description of the UK space program and how it was basically shut down for no really good reason annoyed her. Who put that much effort in and just… stopped?

She sighed faintly and moved down the hall, looking at the other exhibits of technology from the distant to recent past. It was absolutely fascinating and she wondered idly if one day possibly some of her own work might end up here. That would be rather nice, she felt. Catching up to where her father was studying an immense red horizontal steam engine a minute or so later, she stood next to him and also inspected the machinery. "It's absolutely huge," she remarked, feeling dwarfed by the thing.

"It's impressive to see it running, but it's a bit too late in the day for that now," he replied. "Perhaps next time." Checking the time, he nodded. "We've only got about twenty minutes before they'll close, so we probably should start our way back."

"All right." She looked around with a smile. "I really love all this sort of thing."

Putting his hand on her shoulder, he squeezed it gently. "I know you do, and so do I. I'm glad you've had a good time."

"And we've got lots of books to read as well, so it's been a really brilliant day." She smiled at him, which he returned.

"We'll come back and properly look around the whole place one day," he assured her as they started back through the transportation gallery, pausing to look at the Apollo 10 capsule for a few minutes.

"The Natural History museum is also well worth visiting, but it's enormous. We'd need a couple of days to really see it all," he added as they moved on.

"I'd love to see that," she told him.

Having retrieved their bags from the locker they'd rented, they left the museum to a darkening and now rather cold evening. Father and daughter headed for the South Kensington tube station, which only took a few minutes to reach. Descending the steps they found there was a much larger crowd of people milling around near the ticket machines than expected, and to Hermione most of them felt frustrated and angry. "What on earth is the problem?" her father commented, looking around for any indication of the issue.

She did likewise, then spotted a London Regional Transport poster on a placard near the escalators. Pointing, she said, "I think that's the reason." Both of them pushed through the crowd, Hermione staying behind her father as he wedged his way closer, then read it.

Quite a lot of other people were doing likewise, all of them looking annoyed.

'District line closed west of Gloucester Road until 11 PM due to an incident at Earl's Court' the sign said, above a list of alternative routes, most of which involved a lot of changes and would take a long time. "I wonder what happened?" she asked as she read the sign.

Her father sighed. "Probably some sort of electrical or signaling failure. That's normally the problem, Must be fairly severe if they've shut the entire line down," he replied. "Damn. That's awkward, the District line is the one we want and there's no easy alternative."

Hermione thought about the problem. "We could go to Gloucester Road, transfer to the Picadilly line, change at Green Park, and go to Waterloo station. That has a train service that calls at Wimbledon. Which is quite close to Southfields so we could get the bus. It's a lot faster than waiting around for nearly five hours."

He looked at her, back at the sign, then asked, "You're sure about those stops?"

"I am, yes," she replied confidently.

"In that case, let's go," he replied with a smile. "You are really earning your allowance today, dear."

Smiling to herself she followed her father as he headed for the platform, quite a large number of people having come to the same conclusion doing likewise. They managed to squeeze onto a carriage ten minutes later for the single stop required, then hastily transferred platform just in time to jump aboard a train going the other way on the Picadilly line. Luckily there were some seats free so they sat down, feeling relieved. "Three stops, then onto the Jubilee line," she said, settling the carrier bag full of books between her feet.

Unfortunately when they arrived at Green Park, the platform was absolutely heaving with irritated commuters. The door opened and someone near it shouted, "Oi! What's going on with the Jubilee?"

"Packed to the gills mate," someone shouted back from the platform, which was so full of people hardly anyone could move. "Stay on and change at Picadilly Circus if you're heading to Waterloo, I would."

"Thanks!" the man shouted. Hermione and her father exchanged glances and stayed put. Only a couple of people got off, and about a dozen managed to shove their way aboard, before the doors closed and the train rumbled back into the tunnel.

"All right, that means we change at Picadilly Circus onto the Bakerloo line," Hermione remarked. "It shouldn't make much difference."

"Fair enough, not much we can do, I suppose." Her father shrugged a bit. They waited the short trip to the next station, which only took a couple of minutes, then looked out when they arrived. While the platform was crowded it was vastly less so than the previous one so they disembarked and headed for the Bakerloo southbound platform, following the press of people all going the same way. Hermione walked in the lee of her father to avoid getting trampled, while yet again noticing something she'd felt when they'd been at Tottenham Court Road earlier that day. Aside from the bizarre vanishing woman, which was definitely something she was going to have to think about, there had been a distinct odd distortion in the field coming from the south, fairly close although unlike the mysterious knots she'd been sensing on and off all day, this was much more diffuse. It was very strange, feeling almost like the field itself was warped over a fairly large area in a subtle-but-obvious-when-you-looked-for-it manner.

Now, though, she could feel it to the east. Remembering the map of London, she tried mentally triangulating on whatever it was and finally decided it had to be close to Charing Cross tube station, or in that general area. As they got onto the carriage, only being able to get standing room, she kept monitoring that strange area, and felt its position relative to the train's travel. Sure enough, as they slowed for Charing Cross, she could easily tell the distortion was above and to the north-east of their current position. She closed her eyes and leaned on her father's hip as the train moved off again, trying to work out exactly what it was she was detecting. Like the strange woman's nearly-HOP, it was similar to what she did, but at the same time quite alien. It was certainly doing something to the H-field but as far as she could tell it wasn't directly acting on it like she did. It was somehow indirectly manipulating it in a way that was using far more energy than it required, unless she was severely misunderstanding what it was trying to do.

That, from what she could sense, was basically doing something vaguely akin to one of her force fields, but in an odd manner which was producing an effect that didn't seem to do anything very useful. It wasn't blocking energy or physical objects by the look of it, and the field distortions surrounding the whole setup were very peculiar indeed. The train curved around and she turned her head to follow the retreating field distortion, still attempting to figure it out. Even when they stopped at Waterloo and got off, she could easily pick up whatever it was now she was looking for it.

Hermione puzzled over the entire situation the whole way to Wimbledon on the surface train, feeling that weird zone of field bizarreness eventually vanish into the background distortions of London itself. When they finally got back to the car she wrote out a lot of notes while her father drove home, filling a dozen pages with ideas and sketches of the patterns she'd deduced and inferred from her energy sense.

That night, tired, generally in a very good mood, and having spent a while talking to her parents about the whole day, she lay in bed trying to work out just why all those strange knots and distortions made her uneasy. There was something a bit wrong about them, she finally concluded, unable to really put it into clearer terms even to herself.

More information was needed on what was behind it, and she was going to have to think about the entire thing. She fell asleep still puzzling over the day's revelations, and had some very strange dreams as a result.

 

[mp3.1415player]

"How curious," Helen remarked, having listened to her daughter's story of the previous day's outing. "I wonder what that was?"

"I really have no idea yet, Mummy" Hermione admitted, frowning and fiddling with her hair as she though. "It was quite large, the area felt like it must have been at least as big as the cul-de-sac, probably bigger, but… It's very odd. I'm not at all sure what it's meant to do. I'd need to get closer and study it properly but I think it was possibly attempting to interfere with some method of detecting things on the other side of it? But I honestly can't be certain. It definitely wasn't a HOP, or at least anything like my HOPs. Although it was doing something with the H-field, that stood out like mad."

"If it's some form of stealth system or something of that nature it seems counterproductive to have it so obvious," Michael commented. Hermione looked at him and nodded.

"That's what I though. But I might be wrong. It's just a guess, since I can't quite understand what those constructs are doing or how they're made." She studied her notes for a while as Helen and Michael exchanged glances. "If I could get a better look at it…" the girl muttered. She wrote a few more sentences, did a little math under that, underlined the result, and stared at it. Then she shook her head.

"It doesn't make any sense. Like that thing that woman had in her pocket," she grumbled.

"How do you mean, dear?" Michael asked.

Their daughter turned to him. "I have no idea what it was, but it seemed to be doing whatever it did… wrong."

"How can you be sure it's doing something wrong if you don't even know what it does in the first place?" Helen asked with curiosity, moving to make some tea. She held up a cup meaningfully to Michael, who nodded, then put filled the kettle and turned it on.

"That does seem a stretch, dear, Helen has a point," Michael agreed. "Don't fall into the trap of jumping to a conclusion from insufficient evidence."

Hermione sighed a little. "I know, but that's how I can't help thinking about it. It felt like a very complicated HOP, but there were a lot of gaps, and bits and pieces that didn't seem to connect to anything, or do anything much. And what there was used far more energy to do whatever it was doing, with almost all of that being wasted. Or…" She thought some more, then shrugged. "Possibly it wasn't wasted, perhaps it was doing something I can't work out, but that's how it looked to me. Again, if I could see one for longer, more closely, I could probably figure out what it was doing. I think."

She paused for a few seconds, looking at her notes, then went on, "I'm also almost certain that neither the large one at Charing Cross or the small portable ones are directly manipulating the H-field like a HOP does, or like telekinesis does for that matter. They're…" The girl waved a hand a bit vaguely. "Doing something similar to that, but indirectly. As if there was another layer above the field and they were…"

Trailing off, she got a faraway expression for some moments, making Helen and Michael look at her then each other. The kettle emitting a loud click as it turned off made Hermione twitch, then seem to rejoin them in the room as Helen poured the water into the teapot.

"No. There's something I can almost see but it won't quite come into focus," the young girl said, sounding annoyed. "It's very irritating."

Michael patted her on the shoulder. "I'm sure you'll work it out in the end, dear. Don't get upset if you can't instantly do it. You're doing exceptionally well so far and no one can always be right every single time no matter how good they are."

She nodded with a small grimace of unwilling acceptance. "I know, Daddy, but it's still irritating. I don't like not knowing something."

Helen giggled. "That we are very well aware of, sweetie. You do tend to want to know everything. That's not always possible, unfortunately."

Hermione sighed, making both her parents exchange looks of mild resignation, but she finally nodded. "I wish there were some books on psionics I could look this up in," she mumbled, flipping back through her notes, then closing the notebook and putting it down.

"There will be soon enough," Helen pointed out, as she started pouring three cups of tea. "You're writing them." She looked meaningfully at the notebook, and thought of the dozen or more like it in her daughter's desk. The girl seemed a little startled as if she hadn't realized that, then smiled brilliantly.

"I am, aren't I?" she exclaimed. "Wicked."

Amused at the unusually age-appropriate expression, Helen stared hard at the sugar bowl, managing after a few seconds to make the spoon float out of it and over her tea. Hermione watched with a broad smile, as did Michael. Both clapped when the sugar in the spoon mostly ended up in the cup. "You're getting better, Mommy," Hermione exclaimed with joy.

"It's hard work, but I do think I'm becoming more adept at it," Helen replied, fumbling the spoon which dropped to the table with a clink, then sighing and picking it up to stir the tea the old fashioned way. "Although I can't manage it for all that long yet."

Michael gave her a somewhat smug look as his teaspoon started stirring without him touching it. She raised an eyebrow, causing him to chuckle.

"Don't show off, love."

"Of course not," he replied mildly, taking a sip.

Both of them watched as Hermione's tea was sweetened by the sugar directly flying from bowl to cup in a white cascade, while she was apparently looking at her mother and not either of the other items. There was a tiny grin on her lips during this, which made Helen giggle. "Clearly we have a long way to go yet," she chortled.

"You're picking it up much faster than I did to begin with," the girl smiled.

"We know it can be done, dear, which is half the battle," her husband said in reply. "You had no idea if it was even possible at all, and managed to succeed anyway. Which is remarkably impressive." He sipped more tea, then put the cup back in his saucer. "Although I do think you most likely have a natural talent for it that dwarfs that of either of us."

Hermione shrugged, shaking her head slightly at the same time. "I really don't know. Possibly I was just lucky?"

"Perhaps. You were certainly far more persistent than most people would be, regardless," he retorted. "Very few people would have stuck at something so unlikely for so long, until they managed to get results. Trust me, I've seen it at university, when people are fully aware something is possible and still feel it's too much work to keep at it."

She seemed somewhat pleased but also a little embarrassed. "I just wanted to know if I could make it work," she mumbled. He ruffled her hair affectionately.

"And you did. You certainly did."

Smiling to herself, Hermione drank her tea. Helen got out some biscuits, deciding that they were due a small reward for their hard work and the extra tooth-brushing was a price worth paying.

"So… we would seem to have some evidence that Hermione may not be the first person to come up with psionics," she said a little later, after pouring some more tea for all of them.

"Possibly," the girl replied, looking pensive. "Possibly not. What I saw really didn't seem to be exactly what we're doing. It was certainly related in some manner but it's quite different in others. I can't quite put my finger on what the difference means though." She shook her head. "Both are using the H-field but telekinesis and the HOPs are doing it…" Hermione trailed off, her expression thoughtful. "All I can describe it as at the moment is more directly," she finished after a few seconds. "I need more data."

"Our little scientist," Michael joked. "Always needing data."

"Data is important, Daddy!" she protested, smiling. "How else am I to work if I don't have data? That's what experiments are for. And observation, of course."

"Of course. Observe away, by all means. I'll be fascinated to see what you come up with."

Finishing his tea and biscuits, he stood up. "I have some accounting work to do, but perhaps when I finish we could practice some more and you could observe that to tell us where we're going wrong?" he suggested. Their daughter nodded.

"I'd love to," she replied. "Call me when you're ready. I'm going to go upstairs and finish my latest project, now I have the parts I need."

"Do be careful not to fire any more pencils through walls or anything of that nature," he remarked with a grin, making Hermione sigh.

"I know, I made a mistake," she mumbled. "I'll try to avoid making any more."

"You will no matter how hard you try, that's life unfortunately," he chuckled. "Everyone, even you, has the occasional moment where things don't quite go as planned. The trick is to avoid making the same mistake twice. And to think ahead so when it does go pear shaped the damage is minimal."

Hermione nodded, looking understanding. Helen was just glad her little pencil incident had only resulted in a hole in the ceiling and not in anything important. The girl had very obviously learned from that event and taken the lesson to heart. Which was a good thing. The idea of her doing the same to a rock the size of a car didn't bear thinking about…

Telekinesis could clearly be quite hazardous if someone was careless. Like most things in life.

Also standing, she collected the tea things and put it all in the sink to wash. Hermione got up and came over as she turned the tap on, floating a tea towel into her hand from the other side of the kitchen with the air of someone to whom such things were entirely routine, which made Helen smile. "I hope you remember not to do something like that in school," she commented as the sink filled with hot water.

"I nearly did forget once or twice," her daughter admitted, giggling a little. "It's so easy now and really useful. But I don't want to show it off in public because it will only cause them to look at me even more oddly." She sighed faintly. Helen put her hand on her shoulder comfortingly for a moment before beginning to wash the tea things along with some plates left over from breakfast earlier, handing each to Hermione to dry.

"You'll make friends who can keep up with you one day, sweetie. I'm sure of that. And someone like that is likely to become a very good friend." She glanced at the girl, who was staring at the cloth and the plate she was working on, both of which were hanging in front of her in an implausible manner if you weren't aware of quite how strange the Granger household had become in the last months. "You need some friends your own age, after all."

"I've got you and Daddy and Granny," Hermione replied. "And Mr Boots, even though he keeps tracking mud all over my desk no matter how much I tell him not to. And even though he doesn't live here."

"That cat is certainly somewhat ambiguous about his home," she agreed with a smile. "Affectionate but a little dim, I think." She sighed. "Still, I think you need other friends."

Hermione hugged her for a couple of seconds. "I'm not unhappy, Mummy. It would be nice if the children at school weren't quite so mean sometimes, but it could be worse. Some of them are horrible to other people too. The teachers try but they can be very sneaky about it."

"Bullying is never right, but I'll agree from my own childhood that it can be hard for the adults to stop," Helen replied sadly. "Just remember that you can tell the teachers about it."

Hermione scowled. "That just makes some of the bullies even worse and say nasty things" she grumbled. "Teacher's pet, and why are you so bossy, and why do you always have a book in your hand. Honestly, some of them are just stupid. Education is important."

Helen pulled the plug out, letting the water drain away, and turned to her daughter. Kneeling down she put both hands on Hermione's shoulders. "You will never please everyone, Hermione," she said, meeting her daughter's eyes. "There will always be people who don't understand you, and a lot of people can be quite unpleasant about things they don't understand. Don't let it upset you if you can, and remember that it's not your fault. Try to get along if possible, and live with the fact that sometimes it isn't. Don't let the bullies make you feel that you're wrong to like learning, because you are not. You're a very intelligent young woman who has a bright future ahead of her. And we love you, never forget that either."

"I know, Mummy," the girl replied, sighing. "I try not to let them upset me. Sometimes it's hard though." She stepped forward and they hugged each other. "I do my best not to shake them with my mind until they fall over too," she added with a small giggle.

"That would be… unwise," Helen said dryly. "As well as something of an overreaction. Best to ignore them, I think." Releasing her hold on her daughter she stood. "Do you fancy steak tonight?" she asked.

"Ooh. Yes, I'd love a nice steak," Hermione replied eagerly.

"I'll take some out of the freezer to defrost, then." Proceeding to do just that, she asked over her shoulder, "What do you think these other people you detected are doing? It's a curious discovery you made. I wonder if it's some secret government thing?"

Hermione giggled. "Agents of a shadowy government agency walking among us and no one knows but the plucky girl and her parents," she hissed, making a strange face. "No! I know, it's aliens! They've got a secret base right in… the… middle… of London…" She slowed down as her face changed from hilarity to sudden thoughtfulness. Helen stared at her, a pack of frozen steaks in her hand.

"Aliens?" she echoed. "That sounds somewhat unlikely."

Her daughter nodded, still staring into the middle distance with an expression of deep thought. "Very unlikely. But…"

They exchanged wondering glances.

Coming to her senses with a jerk as she realized her right hand was very cold, Helen put the steak packet on the counter and dried her fingers with the cloth. "I can't help thinking that aliens are some way down the list of possibilities," she finally said. "But I confess I can't think of anything obvious."

"Neither can I," Hermione sighed. "Because I don't have enough information." She looked at her mother. "Perhaps we should investigate?"

"You are not Nancy Drew, Hermione. We should probably be careful not to prod something we don't know enough about. It's probably some sort of government thing like you said, as mad as that sounds, and the government never appreciates random members of the public turning up asking questions." Helen shook her head as her daughter appeared just a little truculent, but Hermione was more than smart enough to let her realize it wasn't a good idea despite her ever-present hunger for knowledge. "You concentrate on your own studies and let whoever it is stick to theirs. You haven't detected anything like that around here, have you?"

"Only that one I thought I did weeks ago as I was falling asleep and I'm not sure it was really there," the girl replied, brightening up. "The closest one I'm sure about was miles and miles away on the way to London. And even though I found several during the day, there weren't many of them. Whatever is behind it doesn't seem to be very common. I still want to know what's going on near Charing Cross, though."

"Of course you do, you wouldn't be Hermione if you didn't," Helen smiled. "Let's leave that for later."

"Oh, all right, I suppose." Hermione shrugged in mild disappointment. "But I'm going to keep an eye open for anything odd happening around here."

"I would expect nothing else from you, sweetie."

Her daughter grinned then dashed upstairs, from where a few seconds later an aggrieved cry of "Mr Boots! Just look what you did to my desk!" came to Helen's ears, making her laugh before getting on with things of her own.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Lying in bed with her eyes closed and next door's cat purring next to her head, since he seemed to have fallen into a routine of visiting almost every night, Hermione extended her energy sense slowly outwards. She noted each distortion in the field as she encountered it, the static ones that represented objects, the ground, and everything else inanimate by now easily distinguishable from living things, even trees and other plants. Life had a distinctly different effect on the omnipresent energy flow, although she didn't yet know why. She was steadily learning to interpret what she sensed, by now coming close to almost seeing it as images rather than the ghostly and nebulous effect she'd initially managed to produce.

The overall result was amazingly complex, absolutely fascinating, and contained so much information that it was sometimes hard to deal with. The more she concentrated on the details the finer the level she could sense, although the further away she pushed it from herself the more effort it took. The girl had been carefully considering the best way to make a HOP of the right type to aid her, but so far was just a little hesitant about doing so just in case she ended up with the energy sense equivalent of a flashgun or something like that.

She had no wish to accidentally experience what it was like to have the local H-field distortions amplified by a few million times and dumped directly into her brain. That sounded like a recipe for a monstrous headache if not something worse.

Hermione was curious, and keen on experimentation, but she wasn't daft. And she'd already had one close call. So each new HOP was the result of a lot of careful thought and extremely cautious testing at a safe distance. She was fairly sure she'd work it out sooner or later, even so.

Now, she examined the local neighborhood in detail, noting how Mr Killian at Number 47 seemed to be a bit tipsy again based on what she could feel, the dog at Number 19 was very upset about a squirrel that was in a tree out of reach, someone in a car going past a couple of hundred yards away seemed very tired, and many other facets of her local environment. She'd spent at least an hour every night for months now doing this exercise and was intimately familiar with far more things that most people wouldn't even consider over a fairly substantial area. It was good practice, and something she could do from the comfort of her bed.

Feeling Mr Boots purring, she idly spared some attention for his own unique field distortion pattern, smiling as she felt what seemed to be contentment. The cat was not the smartest animal around but he did seem fond of her. And put up with her experimenting on floating him around the room, which if anything he'd decided he quite enjoyed.

She considered the idea she'd had for a long time of seeing whether she could float herself. Hermione couldn't see any reason why it wouldn't work, and in fact was almost certain it would, but there was still a hole in the ceiling that bore mute testimony to what could happen if someone was a little overenthusiastic…

Not wanting to leave a much larger hole in something with her own head, she'd resisted the temptation so far. Again, it was something she wanted to be certain was safe. Some form of force field around her would also be a good idea, which should be easy enough. Remembering reading Dune, she made a mental note to work out a solid design for a personal shield. Only one that wasn't quite as catastrophically dangerous in the presence of certain types of energy. That seemed like rather a drawback to her, overall.

Having come to the conclusion that nothing much had changed in the area, she gradually expanded her zone to the limit she was currently able to reach, which was close to a mile and a half in all directions. At the edges it was nothing like as clear as it was much nearer, but she could still distinctly feel an aircraft pass overhead, from the direction of Gatwick, with nearly two hundred people on board. It climbed rapidly and soon passed out of her range. In the other direction, she could sense the differing materials under the ground, ultimately becoming fairly uniform rock about a hundred or so feet down.

Hermione had the thought that it would be interesting to see what a mine felt like. Her parents had suggested a holiday in the spring down to Cornwall, and that area was riddled with mines from what she'd learned, so she'd be able to find out.

Wondering what range she'd ultimately be capable of, she kept poking around in the mental map of the field surrounding her, noting all the minor variations that changed the otherwise uniform energy. Even now she wasn't sure where it actually originated from, it was just there. It would be interesting to go up in a plane and see if there was any change much higher up, but from the ground she couldn't detect anything. Perhaps during the summer holidays they'd go to France like her mother had suggested? If that was on a plane rather than the ferry it would be more useful information one way or the other.

Slowly moving her attention from place to place in the sensory zone, she kept her mental eye open for any signs of the odd phenomena that she'd spotted on the trip to London a couple of weeks ago. So far she hadn't yet sensed anything of that nature anywhere near her since then. It was still puzzling her, that entire experience. What was going on near Charing Cross station was a question she didn't have an answer to, but dearly wanted one. And even now she was somewhat stuck on what the difference between what she did and what that was doing. There very definitely was a difference, she was sure of it, but at the moment it defied her full understanding.

And she was nearly certain that whatever it was that was causing those bizarre H-field distortions, it was doing something extremely strange indeed. The girl couldn't shake the feeling that she was going to be very upset with herself when she finally figured it out, since she had a nagging sense it should be obvious if only she could look at it in the right manner.

Oh well. As her parents had said, understanding would come in time, and she had a lot of other things to think about. Not to mention whoever was behind it probably was best left alone for now in case they turned out to be upset about her asking questions.

She still wondered if it was aliens.

Hermione fell asleep with a small smile on her lips, half-way through yet another mental attempt at designing some method to detect the H-field without using the energy sense.

It would help if she knew what it actually was, of course.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

"That's brilliant, Daddy. Keep it going… Come on, I know you can do it." Hermione sounded excited as Michael concentrated hard. All of them watched as three apples slowly moved in a horizontal circle above the living room table. "Ten seconds."

He pushed himself to do something that he'd never in his wildest dreams expected to actually be able to do, a bead of sweat rolling down his forehead.

"Twenty seconds."

It was getting easier, he knew that, but easier and easy were two utterly different things. Not to mention his daughter, who had an astonishingly greater ability at telekinesis, had also had nearly a year's head start on either himself or his wife. And was at least as smart as both of them put together, which might well help.

"Thirty seconds."

He was in an almost zen-like state, as odd as that seemed, even as he concentrated as hard as if he was working on a tricky root canal. The effort wasn't physical at all, it was as you'd expect entirely mental, but that didn't mean it wasn't remarkably tiring.

"Forty seconds."

On the other hand it was worth every second spent on it, he thought at the back of his mind, still amazed at what he was doing. He'd been reading science fiction and fantasy books since he was seven and this sort of thing was a staple of more of them than he could count. Now he was actually doing it.

"Fifty seconds."

'Use the force, Michael,' he thought with a mental snicker, wishing some of his friends from school could have seen this. Back in his tabletop gaming days it would have really set them going. Rolling dice would have been fun, too. He wondered how much trouble you'd get in at a casino with telekinesis…

"One minute. You can stop."

With a sensation of relief, he allowed the orbiting fruit to fall back into the bowl they'd come from and relaxed, letting out a long breath. "That is harder than it looks," he gasped.

"You did very well, Daddy," Hermione told him with a broad smile as she made some notes. "That's ten seconds longer than last time. You're getting steadily better with practice."

"I'd hate to think I'd get worse with practice," he chuckled, wiping his brow with the tissue Helen handed him wordlessly. "That would just be embarrassing."

His daughter giggled a little. "True," she replied. "Mummy's improving even faster, though, so you can't slack off."

"Remarkable," Nancy, who had stopped in for a visit, said with a shake of her head. "That really is something to see. All I can do is make a feather twitch so far."

Hermione smiled at her. "It takes time like I said. I'm sure you'll pick it up though."

His mother smiled back. The girl had done the same exercises with her that she'd done for both Helen and Michael a couple of weeks afterwards, and it had resulted in much the same thing if somewhat more slowly. It seemed likely, Michael believed, that the younger you were when you started learning such a talent that the faster and better you'd develop it, like with so many other things. His daughter starting off so young and moreover, having come up with the whole thing by herself, quite probably meant she was always going to be far ahead of any adult that acquired the skill in later life.

"I'll keep practicing, Hermione, but I'm probably too old to learn something so extraordinary in the way you did," Nancy replied, echoing his own thoughts.

"Even old people can learn, Granny! Look at Daddy!" Hermione gave him a cheeky grin.

"Oi! I'll have you know, young lady, that I am neither old nor infirm," he responded with a mock glare at her as Helen snickered. Nancy was laughing too. He levitated an apple out of the bowl into his hand, somewhat unevenly, and bit into it with an expression of triumph while the other three grinned at him. "See? I can learn new things."

All the other apples flew into the air and proceeded to execute a complicated three dimensional dance, while Hermione met his eyes and giggled. He sighed. "Fine. You win. Again. But I shall have my revenge!"

"Eek!" The girl shuffled away on the carpet, obviously trying to stifle laughter. "I have angered the beast!"

Helen lost it completely at that point and fell about laughing, Nancy joining in a moment later. Michael sighed. "I have no respect in this household at all sometimes," he muttered, winking at his daughter who put the apples back and nodded gravely.

"Earned, respect is," she croaked in a rather good Yoda impression. "Learned, skills are."

"Foolish child." He pointed with his free hand. "Get the monopoly set out and you'll see real skill."

Hermione jumped to her feet with a smile and quickly retrieved the game from the cupboard under the television, setting it up on the coffee table. Twenty minutes later they were deeply involved in attempting to thrash each other at it, a family pursuit of long tradition and much viciousness. Added to in this case by all four of them pushing the pieces around without touching them, although his mother mostly seemed to be using her currently untrained telekinesis to cheat with the chance cards when no one was looking.

All in all, it was a very pleasant way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

"I think that's got it," Hermione said under her breath as she looked at the prototype circuit she'd spend a solid week carefully building from surplus components, veroboard, and a lot of wire. Surrounding it on her desk were half a dozen books and manuals, including a TTL 74 series data book, the thick yellow and blue tome a lucky find during their trip to London that time. She'd been reading up on logic circuits for a while now and could see some interesting possibilities there, both for her electronics projects and for inspiring H-field Operators.

This device was a fairly straightforward proof of concept, nothing preposterously complex but one of the more involved ones she'd designed, mostly, from scratch. It had taken quite a bit of research but she was fairly sure it would work.

Now she picked up her multimeter probes, turned the meter on and set it to continuity, then started testing the wiring while referring to a pile of hand drawn diagrams on A4 paper. The meter beeped happily as she checked each connection, once or twice not doing so and telling her which joint needed touching up. Overall she was pleased by the time she'd finished to find that she'd made only three actual errors, and one more wire had snapped where she must have accidentally tugged a little too hard on it at some point.

Satisfied, she set the meter to the voltage range, then connected a pair of wires with alligator clips on to the little bench power supply she'd built from a kit from Maplin a while ago. Turning it on, she made sure that the five volt power rail on each IC socket was correct, finally putting the probes down when she'd checked all of them.

"Good," the girl commented happily as she turned the power supply off again. A meow from behind her made her look over her shoulder at Mr Boots, who was lying on his back on the bed with his legs in the air watching her upside down, his whiskers curled forward. "You do realize this isn't your home, don't you?" she said with mild exasperation. "And I'm not going to feed you."

The cat waved his tail and merped. She shook her head in a fondly bemused way and turned back to the circuit. "Cats are such strange creatures." Opening her top drawer she pulled out flat black plastic box about six by nine inches in size, which she opened to reveal a number of DIP packaged integrated circuits. Most of them were logic chips of various types, largely surplus parts from Proops and the other shops. A few were bought from the local Maplin, and one or two had been salvaged from an old broken radio her grandmother had given her to take to pieces. All were sitting with their leads firmly pressed into the hard black foam that lined the box, a conductive material to protect them from static electricity.

Once again reading her notes, she selected each required chip in turn, carefully straightening the leads then pushing them into the sockets she'd soldered to the veroboard. The last one snapped into place, the 74LS154 being one of the larger chips, then she sat back. Inspecting the prototype one final time, she reconnected the power supply with the multimeter set to current inserted between supply and board, then held her breath and flipped the switch.

The needle jumped and settled down at a perfectly reasonable eighty five milliamps. No smoke made an appearance and no nasty crackling sounds happened. She smiled a little and picked up the logic probe she'd also built from a kit, carefully connected the power leads to the bench supply as well, and began poking the tip on IC leads to see what was going on. She nodded happily as she found that the oscillator was running, the ripple counter driven from it was counting correctly, and the binary to decimal decoders were doing the right thing too. All the switches made the right signals appear in the right places when she pressed each in turn.

"We're nearly there, Mr Boots," she remarked, putting the tool down and turning the circuit off. The cat lifted his head and peered at her at the sound of his name, making her reach over and stroke him. "All I need to do is make the HOP now. This one is really complicated, so you must be quiet while I think, all right?"

Giving him one last tickle, she picked up another notebook and flipped through it to the right part, then studied the diagram carefully for some time. The basic idea wasn't hard, but implementing it was a bit more involved than anything she'd done so far. It would be a good test of whether her ideas about how to make HOPs that connected together in a modular fashion, very similarly to how the logic chips in front of her worked, was viable or not.

She was certain that the basic concept was sound but unsure if she'd worked out the best way to do it yet. Hence the experimentation. Initial manual tests had shown promise but the full scope wouldn't really be tested until she got everything working together.

Hermione set to work, the immaterial energy construct growing steadily in front of her, only visible to someone through the energy sense. A more and more complex arrangement of little knots of H-field distortion appeared and connected together, forming a pattern that she'd have had a hard time to explain to someone without actually showing it to them. Words didn't really do it justice. She made sure that each part was stable before moving onto the next, duplicating elements where required as she'd found she could do after a lot of practice. It was much quicker than making each from scratch once she had something that worked. Linking them all together in a web of connections remarkably analogous to the electronic circuit in front of her, she finally finished.

"I think that's got it," she said to the cat, who was now sitting up and watching her with a feline look of mild indifference. "I hope. It looks good as far as I can see." The girl reached out and waved a hand through the not really there pattern of knots, not feeling a thing with her normal senses but easily able to detect it with the special one she'd spent so long training.

Picking up the circuit board, she smiled when the HOP array followed it precisely. That had worked as well, it was positionally linked to the prototype. So far so good. Now all it needed was the connections between the electronics and the H-field construct.

That only took another minute or so. When she was done, there were H-field sensors monitoring the state of a couple of dozen outputs on the PCB, two rows of wire wrap terminals each driving a HOP node. She took a deep breath.

"I hope this works or I'll have to start all over again," she remarked to Mr Boots, who meowed at her in apparent encouragement. Whether for her work or in request of some tuna she didn't know.

Hermione activated the main HOP power channel, then reached out and snapped the power switch to ON.

The little red LED came on to indicate power was flowing but nothing else visibly happened. However, to her H-field sense, the HOP array was now running. She started to grin before very gently pressing one of the four by four arrangement of push button switches on the bottom of her circuit.

Then she yipped in triumph as a foot off the desk a pinpoint of green light illuminated out of nowhere. It hung there in space as she gazed at it with a massive smile on her face.

"It works!" she shouted in glee.

Releasing the button, she watched the point of light winked out. Pressing another one got her a different illuminated point half an inch to the right. Absolutely exalted she pressed each button in turn, then several at once, before mashing the entire set of switches with her hand. All of them produced a corresponding point of light in a grid replicating the switch layout.

"That's rather good," her father's voice said from behind her, making her look over her shoulder to see him standing in the doorway to her bedroom. "Like a hologram."

"Exactly," she laughed, jumping up and spinning in a circle, before flopping on the bed and making next door's cat complain. "Hush, you, this is my room," she told him as she grinned at the ceiling.

Her father bent over the desk and inspected her work, then experimentally prodded one of the switches. When the floating green point of light came on, he cautiously poked it with a fingertip, then waved his hand through it when he didn't feel anything. "Very good indeed. How does it work?" he asked, playing with the switches some more.

"It's like a much more complicated version of the torches, Daddy," she explained, sitting up to look at him. "I built a keyboard scan circuit in a way, it's based on the sort of thing a computer uses, except simpler. It scans a matrix of switches and if any of them are pressed it generates a unique code. There's also an output scan circuit that's synchronized to the first one which takes that code and converts it back to a position in another matrix. Then the HOP array looks for those signals and generates a visible output in the correct position."

He nodded slowly and thoughtfully. After a moment, he asked, "You know more about this than I do, but isn't that overcomplicated? Do you need to take the switches and convert them into a code then back again just to make lights come on? Couldn't you use the switches to directly drive the lights?"

"Of course, but that's not quite what I was trying to do," Hermione replied happily. "The keyboard scan part is just to make a code that the other part can read. That's the interesting bit. Because if I could make it work properly, I can produce the code in a different way. What I was thinking about was using the output of a computer to drive it."

He looked at her, then back at the prototype on the bench, his eyebrows up a little. "So… you're half way to building a holographic monitor?"

"Yes!" She grinned. "It'll take a lot more work, and I need to learn more about how to design a circuit that can run fast enough, but this is a proof of concept. It shows I can interface a HOP to an electronic circuit, as well as a simple switch like the torches show. And that I can make a HOP array that does something much more complicated than any of the other ones I've made so far."

She pulled her legs up and sat cross legged on the bed while he sat in her chair, Mr Boots hopping onto her lap and curling up. Stroking the cat, she carried on excitedly, "There's all sorts of things I can think of now I've managed to make this work. I could probably do the entire thing as a HOP array in the end, but this is already brilliant. I still need to come up with a good method to go the other way, but I think I can, and that means interfacing electronics directly to the H-field should be possible." The girl almost bounced up and down where she was sitting, she was so excited at the prospects.

"You really are a very clever young woman at times," he smiled, shaking his head in wonder.

"I try," she giggled. "I think I need to learn more programming though. And I need a computer. We do a little at school with the BBC Masters in the computer room but they don't really let us play around on them, only do the set work which isn't very complicated."

"A pity my old BBC micro died a few years ago," her father remarked. "Just gave off a big bang and a lot of smoke. Shame, I had some good games for that thing."

"I remember," she replied. "I liked Planetoid."

"Well, Christmas is coming up very soon, so if you're good, you never know what Santa might bring you." Standing up, he looked amused as she rolled her eyes.

"Daddy, I knew it was you when I was five."

"No, it's Santa, honest. Everyone knows that."

She humphed at him but she was grinning.

"Anyway, dinner is ready, so wash up and come down."

"Alright," she replied, putting the cat that wasn't hers on the bed that was, where he complained but fell asleep again, then heading to the bathroom.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

"Are you sure this will work?" Helen looked askance at her husband and daughter who were fiddling around with her old dressmaker's dummy, which they'd set up in the middle of the garage. Again, the car was in the drive, and it was a horrible Saturday a week from Christmas, blowing like mad and not entirely certain if it wanted to snow or rain, so it was doing both. No one had left the house all day and had no intention of so doing. Luckily they were all more than capable of making their own entertainment, more so these days than in the past although it had never been a problem even then.

"It should do, Mummy," Hermione replied, nodding as she looked over to where Helen was sitting on a stool watching. The door to the kitchen was open and warm air was flowing into the garage, offsetting the usual somewhat chilly environment. At one point Helen would have made sure the door was closed as there was no point paying to heat the poorly insulated room, but since Michael and Hermione had first sorted out free water heating, then recently upgraded that to free heating as well, all courtesy of one of her HOPs, there was no real reason to be militant about it.

"I was thinking about how to make it safe to try self levitation, which does work, I've tried it without an amplifier, but it would be very dangerous if you lost your concentration or got distracted or hit a bird or something," the girl chattered away, making Helen smile. She was, as usual, very excited to be trying one of her ideas. Yet another notebook was rapidly filling up with observations and calculations, making the woman wonder how many she actually had now. Dozens, at least. "And if an amplifier was used it could really go horribly wrong. So I thought that we could design a sort of personal shield. A force field specifically designed to protect a person, like in Dune."

"And I suggested that it might be safer to try it on something inanimate before we risk using the same idea on a person," her husband added. She gave him a look, knowing full well that he was at least as excited as their daughter was about all this, his inner science fiction nerd coming to the fore yet again as it did every time Hermione managed to pull off another ridiculous trick. "Just in case she got her sums wrong."

Hermione put her hands on her hips. "I got the calculations right, I'm sure," she huffed.

"Just like you did when you made a supersonic pencil?" he teased.

"You're never going to let me forget that, are you?" the girl sighed. He shook his head as Helen hid a smile.

"No. It was a lesson you have to remember." He patted her hair affectionately. "Even you make mistakes, like all of us, and the fact that you can do some amazing things only means that a mistake could be that much worse. So keep it in mind and always check everything carefully."

Their daughter looked embarrassed as she always did when her little miscalculation was brought up, but nodded understanding. "Believe me, I won't forget that in a hurry," she said quietly, before turning back to her work. Helen met Michael's eyes and smiled slightly, her husband returning it.

Hopefully between Hermione's native wit and common sense, and their urging, they could keep the disasters few and far between.

"All right, I think that's got it," the girl announced half a minute later, as she squinted at something that wasn't really there in the usual sense of the word. Helen tried to use her own nascent H-field sense and was able to detect a surprisingly complex little matrix of energy hovering over the top of the dressmaker's form. She turned to them and took on her very small scientist air, straightening the sleeves of her lab coat.

Helen though it was hilarious but would never ever say that.

"There's a HOP array here," Hermione began, pointing at the construct. "It's got a standard power amplifier module, which connects through a feedback module to a force field one, which is set up to make a field surrounding the target about two inches away. There's also another very low powered field running all the time which is acting as a detector, and it will trigger if something goes through it moving faster than a certain level. When it does, it makes the main field turn on to block whatever it is." She pointed at different parts of the invisible array as she spoke, both parents studying what they could make out of it. Neither understood how it worked yet, but the explanation was clear enough.

"How fast does it react?" Helen asked curiously.

"Effectively instantly, I think," their daughter replied, her expression mildly pensive. "I can't quite think of how to properly test it, but as far as I can work out it shouldn't take more than microseconds at most. I haven't been able to detect any delays in the HOP speeds, they work immediately whenever I activate them. Certainly it's much faster than a person can notice."

"And what speed does the hazard have to hit the trigger?" Michael asked.

Hermione shrugged. "Whatever speed I set it for. It took me a while to design a method to detect motion but it turned out to be quite simple in the end when I thought about it the right way. I can make it so sensitive it will go off it you blow on it, or so insensitive you'd probably have to hit it with a bullet or something."

"Would it actually stop a bullet?"

"Oh, certainly, the amount of energy needed to break it would be enormous," Hermione replied confidently. "That part I'm sure of now."

"Hmm. Not bad. Let's see what happens, then," Michael remarked, picking up the same broom he'd used when they'd first been experimenting with force fields.

"Poke it gently and I'll see how it reacts," their daughter instructed. He held the broom out and prodded the dummy in the chest, making it rock slightly. "Good. Harder, please?"

Again, he tapped it. She asked for steadily increasing hits, until she nodded. "That should do it. I think I've got a good calibration for it now. Hold on, I'll just tweak this like this…" Hermione concentrated for a second or two. "There. It should turn on if you hit it a bit harder than that last one."

Michael examined the dressmaker's form, then pulled the broom back and swung it, hard enough that if he'd hit someone with it they'd have had a bruise. The moment the end of the wooden pole got within a foot of the surface, a glassy translucent shield formed around it roughly a couple of inches off the thing, following the contours. He was unable to stop the swing in time and winced as the broom handle clattered against the force field.

Everyone stared in amazement, even Hermione. "Wow," she said under her breath. "That was amazing!"

Michael pulled the broom away and the effect disappeared instantly. "Wow indeed," he mumbled, grinning like an idiot. Helen's eyes were wide. "Best special effect I've ever seen."

"I can make it invisible but I wanted to be able to see it properly," Hermione said, smiling broadly. "It works!"

"Hang on, let's try something else," her father commented, leaning the broom against the wall and picking up a sledge hammer he'd bought a couple of weeks ago. Hefting it, he swung the thing as hard as he could at the center of their test object, the result being identical to the broom handle as the head of the hammer stopped dead, recoiling a little and making him grunt. The form barely moved behind the glimmering shield, which again vanished once he lowered the hammer. "Ow." He rested the tool on the floor and flexed his hands.

"Where did all the energy go?" Helen asked, memories of long ago physics lessons in school tweaking at her thoughts. "The form hardly moved, and the hammer didn't bounce as much as it should have."

"I think it mostly got transferred back into the H-field, Mummy," Hermione replied after thinking about it for a moment. "It did the opposite of what the light emitter does. That converts a tiny amount of the H-field into electromagnetic energy, or transfers it from somewhere, I haven't worked that out properly yet, and this turns kinetic energy back into something the H-field can absorb. It's how telekinesis seems to work. It doesn't lift something like putting your hand under it, it acts on the entire object you're targeting." She waved a hand at their test subject. "So, in theory, if you had that on and fell off a building, it would stop you at the ground but not squish you against the inside. Which would be bad."

"Doesn't that break about half the rules of physics?" she queried. Hermione frowned.

"Yes. I think, according to what the books say. But I also think that those rules are missing something I don't understand. Because this obviously works, and as far as I can see if theory tells you one thing and the universe shows you you're wrong, it wins."

"You have a point, dear," Michael agreed, picking the hammer up and returning it to the corner of the garage. "Well, I'd say that was a successful test. Another one for the win column."

Hermione looked pleased. "Yes. And it gives me even more ideas for variations on the concept." She looked at him. "Do you want to try it?"

He smiled back at her. "Obviously." With a giggle she nodded.

"All right. Stand there, I'll just make you one." Helen watched as another complex construct quickly took shape, marveling at the surety with which their daughter did something that should have been impossible but clearly wasn't. "There," the girl said a few seconds later. "That should do it. I'll turn it on and…" Michael looked at her, then Helen.

"I didn't feel anything," he reported.

"I didn't think you would," Hermione replied, studying an area of space just above his head. "But it's working."

"I suppose you'd better test that then," he told her, folding his arms.

She grinned, then grabbed the broom and swung it at his ribs.

Half an hour later Helen shook her head and went into the house to watch the news, leaving the pair to their light saber battle with a broom and a mop, clacks of wood on force fields following her inside.

"I sometimes think I've got two children," she said to herself, highly amused.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

"Happy New Year, Hermione," her mother said, turning to her as they watched the celebrations on television. Hermione hugged her, her father on her other side putting her arm over her shoulder.

"Thank you for letting me stay up to watch," the girl replied before yawning widely. "It was fun. And dinner was lovely."

"Agreed," her father said, leaning back to reach over and pick up his champagne flute. He tapped it against her mother's one, and Hermione's which was filled with sparkling apple juice. "I hope 1990 will be as interesting as 1989 was."

"Probably more so," her mother commented wryly, shaking her head a little. "I can't see it being less involved."

"Life does seem to have become rather more unusual recently," her father chortled. "It's certainly fun though."

"However, I think it's time a certain young woman was in bed," her mother put in. "It's gone midnight now and you need your sleep or you'll be a mess tomorrow."

Hermione yawned even more vigorously and couldn't really deny that. "I'll see you in the morning," she told her parents, as she got up from the sofa and rubbed her eyes, floating the empty glass back to the table while she did this. "Good night."

"Night, Hermione," they echoed. She trudged out of the room and up the stairs, feeling very tired but happy, brushed and flossed carefully, and stumbled into her bedroom. Getting into her pajamas and sliding under the duvet, she smiled at the shiny new BBC Master 128K home computer that was sitting on her desk, a Christmas present she was extremely grateful for, then turned the light out with a flick of telekinesis on the switch even as she closed her eyes.

 

[mp3.1415player]

Because some people wanted this ​

---

Looking up as a colleague leaned in the doorway, Jackson Punnet put on an enquiring expression.

"It's doing it again," the other man, Stanton Fields, announced gloomily.

"What's doing what again?" Jackson asked, slightly puzzled.

"The magic monitoring thingy. It's gone all strange again."

"You mean the Accidental Magic Detection And Homing Lister?" he clarified.

"Yes. That AMDAHL widget. It's gone tits up again," Stanton sighed heavily as Jackson got up and headed towards him. "Bloody thing needs a good kicking, I reckon. It's been playing silly buggers for years now, and no one has any idea why."

Walking past his colleague into the other room, buried in the bowels of the Ministry of Magic, Jackson examined the device in question, which was a complicated arrangement of crystals, pieces of carefully shaped wood, springs, a little thing that went 'poot' every seven point two seconds (which no one had the faintest idea about, but if you stopped it 'poot'-ing the entire thing broke and took three days to fix,) and for some reason that had never been established, a potted fern. "Did you water the fern?" he asked, leaning in to check and sticking his finger into the soil.

"Of course I watered the bloody fern! Do I look like an idiot? First thing I checked, that poxy fern. It's fine." Stanton glared at him. "It's never the fern."

Sighing a little at his companion, who was hard work a lot of the time, Jackson fiddled with the device rather gingerly. After several minutes and one tooth-rattling jolt from the main magical power bus, he turned to the other man. "Looks fine to me."

"Says the man who has no more idea about how that thing works than anyone else does," Stanton replied with heavy sarcasm. Which was true enough, the thing was over four hundred years old and no one had the vaguest idea where the plans, if any had ever even existed, had got to. Neither did anyone really understand how it did what it did, only that it it did in fact do it. Most of the time. Except on the second Tuesday in March on a leap year that contained the number two, when it instead tended to write very bad poetry.

That was magical devices for you. They were a little weird at the best of times even to wizards.

Turning to the output scroll, he picked up the parchment that was sitting in the bin and looked through it. The background magical level wobbled up and down like a wobbly thing, averaging a more or less constant level with the occasional spike. When certain classes of spike happened, they were annotated with various figures that indicated roughly what they were and where, along with a time. The device was also supposed to make a sound, but sometimes it didn't and saved them all up for a while, then frightened the life out of them by making a terrible racket for a few minutes. Jackson was fairly sure it did that just to liven things up, but he was never going to admit that to anyone else.

Unrolling the readout he scanned the results before sighing. There was an intermittent low level, in fact incredibly low level, almost nonexistent, signal that came and went apparently randomly. It was recognizable as they'd seen it happen intermittently for at least the past year, but no one had the vaguest idea what caused it. Certainly not accidental magic as that was very distinctive and instantly apparent, although that only applied past a certain fairly high threshold, below which it was filtered out since otherwise the blasted machine would be constantly registering hits. There was such a thing as too sensitive. And any accidental magic below the set threshold was too minor to bother about anyway, since the Muggles would only put it down to chance, or low flying clouds, or too much alcohol. Some prosaic and mundane explanation, certainly.

They weren't very observant, Muggles. Which made their own job easier but was yet another reason to avoid the creatures.

The system was more usefully used to monitor underage wand use, which was the main purpose of it these days, despite the name. Any wand with the Trace alert linked to it would immediately generate a precise location and time, which could be cross-referenced to a known magical household and used to determine whether a warning was issued, and in more serious cases, the cleanup squad sent out to fix things and wipe the memories of any Muggle witnesses. Obviously, Pureblood households were excluded from that as they always dealt with their children's excesses themselves as was their right. They also had the sense not to perform magic near Muggles.

"I wonder what that is? Equipment error, or something real?" he mused out loud, winding the scroll up again and putting it back into the output bin. Whatever it was, if it even really existed, didn't look even remotely like actual magic, and couldn't be localized. It was just there. Or not, depending on whether it was a real reading or an instrumentation error.

"Probably the bloody contraption is wearing out, finally," his colleague replied sourly, giving the device a harsh glare. "It's already apparently allergic to the Oxford area. We haven't had a hit from anywhere within twenty miles of the place for nearly a decade and no one knows why."

Jackson nodded thoughtfully. That was true enough. There had been a marked falloff in results in several areas around the country for reasons no one could work out even after a fair amount of checking. The prevailing theory was that there simply weren't that many Muggleborn in those zones due to the vagaries of fate, and it left holes in the map.

"Possibly," he allowed, looking back at the horrendously complex device. It pooted at him. "Probably just noise. If it's wearing out, it might be getting prone to false readings."

"Damned annoying, it is," the other man grumbled. "It's making a mess of the archives. I get blamed for that when someone gets all huffy about the parchmentwork, and it's a pain in the arse. Nearly got a pay cut last month over this bloody pile of rubbish."

Thinking for a moment or two, Jackson finally snapped his fingers, then dug around in the drawers on the other side of the room. He eventually emerged with a dusty book, holding it triumphantly aloft.

Stanton looked at it, then him. "What's that?" he asked.

"The closest thing we have to a manual on that thing," he replied, jerking his thumb at the AMDAHL, then paging through the handwritten book, which was more accurately a collection of notes made by a whole series of operators over many, many years. There were sketches of various parts of the thing, some annotated with cramped writing and the occasional warning such as "DO NOT MOVE THIS LEVER PAST TEN DEGREES! IT TOOK FIVE WEEKS TO GET RID OF THE CARNIVOROUS WOMBATS AND HUXLEY IS STILL TERRIFIED OF BEES."

Jackson looked at that sentence, at the machine, shuddered a little, and quickly turned the page. He found what he was looking for a couple of minutes later. "Aha! I knew I'd seen this bit before," he exulted as he moved back to the device and knelt next to it. Pulling out his wand, he studied the notes carefully for a moment, then nodded to himself.

"What are you doing?!" Stanton hissed, looking with alarm at him, then towards the door to the corridor. "We're not supposed to play with it!"

"I'm just turning down the background sensitivity a smidge," Jackson replied, concentrating on what he was doing. Prodding a couple of parts of the device with his wand, he muttered the right words, before smiling a little. "If it's picking up things that aren't there, this should filter them out. Same thing it does to minor accidental magic, so stop griping."

"We don't fiddle with the bloody thing!" Stanton growled. "What happens if you break it? We'll never hear the end of it."

"Relax, I won't break it. I know what I'm doing."

The loud pop that ended up with him upside down on the other side of the room, his hair on end, rather put the lie to that. Stanton covered his eyes and moaned. "Oh, for…" he sighed loudly.

Climbing to his feet with a wince, Jackson said, "Whoops. Poked the wrong bit there."

"Really? I'd never have guessed," the other man snapped sarcastically. "When did you first work that out?"

Making a rude gesture Jackson went back over to the device, which was pooting happily and apparently undamaged. He bent down and retrieved his wand, stuck it in his pocket, then checked the output scroll again. "See? I was right, it's stopped registering that odd signal now," he exclaimed in satisfaction. "All it needed was a little tweak."

His colleague approached and inspected the parchment as well. "It comes and goes," he said doubtfully. "Perhaps it's just not doing it right now."

"Or it is and this fixed everything," Jackson retorted. "No need to thank me."

"I wasn't going to," Stanton muttered. He took the scroll out of Jackson's hands and studied it carefully for a few seconds before shrugging. "Fine, if that works, great, and if it broke something I'm blaming you."

Jackson grinned at him. "I'd expect nothing less, old chap," he replied, slapping the other man on the back. "I'm off for lunch."

Feeling the satisfaction of a job well done, he headed out to find something to eat, leaving his colleague to grumble in his office. Which was hardly unusual.

 

[mp3.1415player]

As often seems to be the case, I started writing the next chapter, it got out of hand, went a little sideways, and I finally discovered I was writing the next but one chapter, or possibly further ahead even than that! So I went back to write the beginning section, which turned into a whole chapter of its own... At that point I thought fuck it and decided to post that part now. I'll finish the next part and post it at a later time, as is the way of such things ​

---

Soldering the last wire to the DIN connector, Hermione put the soldering iron back in the holder, then waited a few seconds for the joint to cool before releasing her hold on the cable. Picking the connector up she examined it carefully, seeing that all the wires were properly soldered in place with the right color codes. With a nod of satisfaction she quickly put the outer shell on the plug assembly, inserted the retaining screw and did it up, then reached around the back of her computer. The display was currently showing the 'BBC BASIC' prompt, with a blinking cursor.

Unplugging the existing monitor which was sitting on top of the computer, she plugged the new cable in place of it and wiggled the connector to make sure it was properly seated. When she was happy that part was done she turned her attention to the hand made circuit board setup in front of her on the desk, the computer being off to the left side. "All right," she murmured, looking it over carefully, then picking up the even larger stack of paperwork that had grown considerably since her first experiments nearly a month ago now and leafing through it to the setup checklist. "The frame sync seems to have locked," she went on, looking up at the two LEDs on one of the set of three interconnected pieces of veroboard, all covered in socketed ICs and other parts. A quite large amount of wire linked the boards together, grouped into related sections.

The red LED was glowing steadily, but the green one next to it was flickering on and off. "Line sync is drifting though," she noted, Mr Boots observing from her bed with his whiskers curled forward. Reaching out she very gently turned the relevant potentiometer, which had the effect that the flickering sped up, until abruptly it went solidly on. "That should do it."

The LED started flickering again and she frowned at it, before flicking the shaft of the pot with her finger. It remained lit after that. "Good. Stay like that," she told it sternly.

Checking a few voltages with her meter, she watched the needle settle to the right readings each time, until she was happy everything seemed to be working correctly. It crossed her mind that she needed to get an oscilloscope at some point which would make this sort of thing much easier, but they were frightfully expensive and she couldn't really ask for one after her parents had bought her the computer so recently. Never mind, she'd make do without.

Everything appeared to be in order. Holding her breath, she depressed the switch that controlled the output driver section that ultimately interfaced to the HOP array. Signals flowed through electronics and H-field sensors detected them, passing the information through to the invisible part of her project.

Immediately a perfect replica of what had been on the monitor blinked into existence above her desk, hanging in thin air. Perfect, albeit with a bit of noise, which was expected since this sort of construction wasn't ideal for fast digital signals.

Hermione stared at the insubstantial but very clear display and grinned like an idiot. "Yes! It works!" she shouted in triumph.

The display disappeared and her face fell. "What happened?" she gasped, leaning forward and looking at the mass of wiring. Carefully poking through it with the end of a pen, she looked up every now and then when random pixels illuminated, until suddenly the display reappeared. Wiggling the wire in question she grimaced. Another broken connection. This wire was definitely rather easy to snap.

It didn't take long to turn it all off, remake the connection, and turn everything back on. This time the display was noticeably less noisy, and didn't vanish on her.

Leaning to the side she typed on the keyboard, entering commands to go through the various video modes. All worked, even the color ones, which produced a steadily widening smile on the girl's face.

"That's absolutely brilliant," she enthused, pulling out a desk drawer and removing a box of floppy disks from it. Flipping through the contents she found the one she was after, inserted it into the disk drive, and loaded the Defender game from it. It would make a good test and she liked it anyway.

Shortly she was flying her little spacecraft back and forth shooting down aliens and giggling to herself, feeling very pleased with how well her project worked.

"I wonder if I can make a keyboard like this too?" she asked Mr Boots, who was watching the floating lights with great interest, as the thought struck her. He meowed in response, jumped from the bed to the desk, and took a swipe at her ship. Squawking in outrage she grabbed him before he managed to step on her circuit boards and held him up in front of her face.

"We talked about this, Mr Boots. You aren't to walk on my projects, remember?"

He gently tapped her nose with one paw, apparently unconcerned with the lecture, causing her to laugh and put him in her lap where he settled down to watch as she restarted the game. When her father came upstairs a little later to see how she was getting on, he was apparently quite impressed with the end result and ended up playing Defender as well.

She was somewhat annoyed to see he got a substantially larger high score than she did, and resolved to practice more.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Turning the page, Michael read the rest of the article in the paper, scowling at the summation. "Bloody Provos have done it again," he said with disgust. Helen looked up from making some pancakes to glance over her shoulder inquiringly. "Blown up a military recruiting office in Leicester," he went on, turning back to the previous page and the beginning of the article. "No one dead, luckily, but two people were hurt. They've claimed responsibility for it as usual."

"How unpleasant," she sighed. "That's something like four times this year so far, isn't it?"

"Around that, I think. Lots more in Ireland of course." He shook his head as he turned the next page. "Although there are at least three attacks in the last six months that they claimed weren't anything to do with them, although the government said they must have been. It was odd, the IRA spokesman seemed to be quite upset about them being blamed for those ones, although no one believed him of course."

"Someone really needs to work out how to stop this sort of thing," she said with a sad tone. "Far too many people are getting hurt."

"I know, but the question is how," he agreed with a sigh of his own. "Politics is a nasty business and this sort of politics is the worst of all. No one is ever going to be happy about any solution that can be hammered out." Turning to the finance section, he scanned it briefly, then folded the paper up and put it to one side. "I'm glad I'm not involved in that sort of thing. I wouldn't be very good at it I'm sure."

"From what I see on the news most people who are involved in it aren't very good at it," she quipped with a small smile, looking back at him again and making him laugh for a moment. "If they were we might not have quite so many problems with the world." Flipping the pancakes with the spatula, she raised her voice and called, "Hermione! Breakfast!"

"Coming, Mummy," their daughter called back from upstairs. There was a thud and a cry of irritation. "Ow! Silly cat, will you please stop trying to trip me up?"

The two adults exchanged a look of amusement. "That bloody cat spends more time here than he does at his own house," Michael remarked.

"He likes Hermione, I think," his wife giggled. By the time their daughter made an appearance, her school uniform somewhat in disarray, the food was on the table. Hermione was muttering to herself and straightening her clothing with a mildly annoyed expression, but brightened up when she entered the kitchen. Sitting down she smiled at them.

"How are you this morning, sweetie?" Helen asked as she poured some tea.

"Fine, thanks, Mummy," the girl replied happily. "I've made a start on indexing all my notes, which is going to take ages. I didn't realize quite how much I'd written down. You were right, I've got enough to nearly make a whole book out of. I was thinking that perhaps I should type it all up and print it out, so it's easier to read."

"That sounds like an excellent idea, dear," Michael said with a nod. "If you do, I can help you edit it and get it properly laid out to look nice. I've written more than my share of reports and other documents over the years."

"Thank you, Daddy," she smiled. "It will take a couple of weeks at least though."

"There's no hurry," he told her. Looking at his watch, he drank the last of his tea, finished his pancakes, and stood up. "Better get on with it, I have an early emergency extraction to do in half an hour." He kissed Helen, then ruffled his daughter's hair, getting a squawk out of her. "See you both later."

Heading for the door, he turned back for a moment. "I have to pop up to London again the weekend after next. Would either of you like to come? It would be a shorter trip than last time, I need to pick up some more x-ray film and processing agent from the dealer in Soho and I was planning on driving in and parking nearby. There will be a couple of hours available before we have to come back to beat the afternoon traffic. We could go to the bookshop again if you'd like, it's not far away." He looked at Hermione as he said this.

She smiled, before looking at Helen. "Can you come this time?"

"Next Saturday but one?" his wife remarked. "I don't have anything on then, so yes, I think that sounds lovely."

"Great. I'll talk about it more this evening." He checked his watch again. "Have to run." With a wave he quickly put his coat on then went into the garage and got into the car. Shortly he was driving to the practice while going over the upcoming work in his mind, the radio playing in the background.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

"Back for more parts, Hermione?" Nigel asked as he looked up from the till when the door alarm pinged. She smiled at him, walking over to the counter as her mother came in behind her, having picked her up from school earlier and stopped off at Maplin on the way home.

"Yes, I need a project box, about this big," she replied, indicating the dimensions with her hands.

"Looks like one of our deep single eurocard ones would probably do it." Coming out from behind the counter, and moving past a customer that was browsing the battery section, he led them over to the right aisle. "How about this sort of thing? Do you want a plastic or a metal one?"

"Metal would probably be better," she replied after thinking it over. "For shielding."

"All right, that's going to be… hmm… N72FK, here we are," he announced, bending over and selecting one of the aluminium boxes on the shelf. "That do?"

She took it from him and looked at it. "Perfect. Thank you."

"My pleasure, Hermione," he smiled. "Anything else?"

"Some small odds and ends. I can find those, thanks."

"Great. You know where to find me if you need me," he told her, nodding then going back to the front desk where another customer had arrived. Looking through the various hardware items in that section she found some suitable standoffs, screws, and a number of other bits and pieces, including some panel mount sockets and a few switches, plus some more veroboard. Shortly she had a collection of everything required.

"I think I'm finished, Mummy," she commented after looking around and locating her mother, who was leafing through a book on basic electronics in the next aisle. "Ooh, the next issue of Electronics is here!" She put her basket on the floor and picked up the magazine, the February and March issue, which had an oddly appropriate image on the cover. "Holograms…" she mumbled, opening it and having a quick look, before putting the periodical in her basket as well. Looking up at her mother who was watching with a smile, she added, "Now I'm finished."

The older woman chuckled, put the book in her hand back on the shelf, then walked with her to the till. Shortly they were heading home in the car, where Hermione took all her purchases up to her room. After lunch she got to work.

Making the holes needed in the box was the work of seconds, although only after very carefully measuring and marking everything, then double checking she'd got it right. A little applied telekinetic force neatly clipped out the cast metal with no effort at all, giving a result as neat as if it had been machined. She was rather pleased with herself, thinking that this alone was almost worth the learning and effort she'd put in.

Fairly shortly she'd got her set of hand made prototype boards stacked into the box on plastic standoffs and all the new wiring finished. It was all connected up to sockets through the enclosure in a much more robust, and Mr Boots proof, fashion than her initial attempt. The end result looked, even if she said it herself, very professional. Soldering another connector onto the other end of the video cable she'd originally had on the device, she plugged it into the box, then connected the mains power supply to it as well, before turning everything on.

"Excellent," she whispered when the new HOP-powered holographic display snapped into life over the computer. She'd put the original monitor on the floor beside the desk as it wasn't needed any more, the prototype display unit taking its place. The output HOP array was positionally locked relative to the electronic unit so it would simply appear directly above it. "That works really really well."

There was even less noise than before, she noticed with satisfaction. Clearly the shielded metal box had helped a lot in that regard. Taking the top off again she carefully separated out wiring into different bundles, then tied them together with some lacing cord, while checking the results. By the time she'd got everything properly bundled up the noise had entirely vanished, which was highly gratifying. Double checking that nothing was able to come adrift, she finally screwed the lid back on for the final time. "Done."

Mr Boots' face appeared at the window and made her raise an eyebrow, then shake her head with a small sigh as she got up to open it. "You really don't seem to know where you live, do you, silly cat?" she commented to him as he scrambled inside, shaking some drops of rainwater off a hind leg on the windowsill, before mrrping at her and hopping onto the desk. He didn't seem to be too worried at her remark. Stroking him she looked out the window to see Mrs Johnson watching with a smile, and waved, getting a wave back.

"If he gets too annoying just shove him out again, Hermione," the older woman called over the fence. "He's a pest sometimes."

"I don't mind, Mrs Johnson," she called back, leaning out the window. "He's mostly good. Except for the wet footprints all over everything."

Her neighbor laughed, waved again, and continued her walk down the garden to the shed at the far end. Closing the window, Hermione sat in her chair again, idly stroking the cat as he rubbed against her hand, while looking at the projected display and thinking hard.

Eventually she nodded as the design she was contemplated crystallized in her mind, reached for her sketch pad and one of the notebooks that she now had a really quite large stack of, and began drawing out the next stage of her ideas. Mr Boots complained that she'd stopped stroking him, didn't get much reaction, and finally wandered off out the open bedroom door deeper into the house.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Principles of H-Field manipulation via Psionic Methods
Original research methodology, results, and conclusions
by Hermione J Granger​

Hermione looked at the title on the display, wondering if it was too long, then shook her head. It was correct, and that was what she was aiming for. Making sure the little strip along the top of the keyboard was in place, showing the commands for the View word processor program, she put her hands back on the keyboard. Resuming typing, glad that the computer lessons at school had given her decently fast keyboard skills although it was something she expected would improve a lot by the time she finished, the girl added the next part, with frequent pauses for reference to a dictionary and thesaurus to find the right words.

Chapter 1: The H-Field: What is it and what does it do?

Considerable time has been spend on researching both questions, from the initial discovery by the author through independent work, to the current time. The exact origin of the H-field is still unknown although empirical evidence proves it exists and can be manipulated both directly by the action of what has been termed Psionics after the popular fictional depiction of such phenomena, and indirectly through energy constructs formed out of the H-field energy itself. Although so far it has not been proven conclusively, the H-field appears to consist of a possibly limitless pool of energy that fills the environment, not interacting with it to any great degree under normal circumstances. While experimental efforts have shown that it can under the correct conditions interact with both electromagnetic energy and gravity, this does not appear so far as can be currently determined to happen spontaneously.

The true source of the H-field is not yet known, and the question of whether it exists everywhere throughout space or is localized to the surface of Earth is also to be determined, but to date it has been found everywhere the author has investigated at what appears to be identical, or near identical, levels. Energy can be extracted from the H-field via mechanisms that convert it to kinetic force, electromagnetic wavelengths, and gravitational distortions. Results from experimental actions in all these categories do not appear to diminish the local H-field density more than minimally, an effect that is nulled out within fractions of a second. Similarly, returning energy to the H-field via the reverse mechanisms does not appear to increase the field density more than minimally for a very short period before this effect damps out entirely.

It is the author's opinion at the time of writing that the H-field represents a to-date unknown and undescribed fundamental property of nature. No viable description or explanation of this property has been found in a non-exhaustive search of the literature available although it is acknowledged that such research may exist in sources not known to the author at this time…

She paused and reread the section, nodding a little and making a couple of changes, then correcting some typos. She'd need to get her parents to proof read it all, but it sounded suitably scientific and objective to her. Satisfied with the beginning, she started typing again, scanning her handwritten notes while putting the draft document down and remembering to save frequently.

It was hard work, but she was learning a lot of new words and rather enjoying herself in the process. Hermione had never thought she'd be writing a book, and found that it was quite exciting to be doing so.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

"A very good start, dear," Michael said as he finished reading the four chapters his daughter had finished after several evenings of typing. "I can see a few places where you got carried away with your own vocabulary, but we can fix that easily enough." He grinned at her as she looked slightly embarrassed. "You don't have to use every single word you know, after all. Especially as you probably know more than I do."

The girl was lying on her bed idly controlling a dozen small items in interlocking spirals above her while he read, and he mused on how such things were commonplace these days with an inner sense of mild astonishment. She nodded a little. "I like words," she mumbled quietly.

He patted her hand. "I know you do, and there's no harm in that, but we can adjust it a bit to make it flow better without making it less scientific. As I said it's a very good start. Much better than I could do at your age, I can assure you." He looked back at the document floating on the holographic display she'd built, amazed yet again at how much she'd managed to do. "Do you want me to print this out, then we can go over it with a pen and edit it? That's probably a good way to make sure we don't miss anything. Your mother will happily help, she's done quite a lot of editing work in the past."

"That sounds fine, yes, Daddy," she smiled.

"Use that program we got to put it on an MSDOS disk and I'll print it on the laser printer in my office," he said.

"All right."

Looking to the right, he inspected the partially completed mass of wiring and parts sitting at the back of the desk. "What's that going to be?" he asked curiously. "It looks even more complicated than this thing is." He tapped the metal box her display unit was in.

"It goes with the display," she explained, sitting up and looking excited. "I wondered if I could make it work the other way, so you could use something to change the screen by poking it. Like that light pen you have for your computer, only without needing the special pen. I'm going to have to write some programs to control it, which is ever so much more complicated than the display. That's using the video output to time everything, but for input I'll have to work out how to synchronize the position of the object with the position of the display, then get it to feed back into the display output, and so on. It's going to take ages to make it work properly but I think I can do it."

Hermione was clearly excited and had reverted to her rather ebullient and chatty self when explaining her ideas, which made him suppress a smile. It was nice to see her so cheerful.

"It does sound complicated, dear. I'll be fascinated to see what you come up with."

"So will I," she grinned. "It will be brilliant if I can pull it off."

He got up. "Don't stay up too late, remember it's a school night. Bed by nine, all right?"

She nodded happily as she hopped to her feet, then sat in the chair he'd just vacated, all the objects she'd been floating landing on the bed. "That's fine, Daddy."

With a smile at her, he left the room, looking back to see her reading the screen closely. Amused, he went downstairs to watch the news, then practice his telekinetic exercises with his wife for a while. They were steadily getting better at it, although he was fairly convinced that their daughter had an unassailable head start on them all. Probably because she'd started so young, among other reasons. And likely she just had a gift for it too.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

"So this is your favorite bookshop in all the land?" Helen quipped, looking around the chaotic and large shop filled with books, comics, models, posters, and a wide variety of people running the gamut from businessmen in suits to teenagers covered in piercings. It was one of the most eclectic mixes she'd ever encountered in a single place, and gave off an air of good-natured nonconformity.

"For fiction, certainly," Michael replied with a grin, Hermione nodded vehemently next to him. "It's a wonderful place." Pointing to the back, he said, "The books are mostly downstairs, the basement is actually larger than the ground floor is. It goes right out under the street." Hermione was already heading that way. Her parents followed after her, descending the stairs and rounding the corner to enter into a low series of rooms entirely lined with shelves, which were filled with tens of thousands of books.

"Good lord," she said in wonder. "That's a lot of science fiction."

"And fantasy," he noted with a laugh. "I want to check the new releases section over there, to see if they've got anything interesting in from the States. Have a look around, you might find something you like."

"I'm more fond of the classics of literature, love."

"That doesn't exclude either science fiction or fantasy, trust me on that, dear," he assured her good-naturedly as they walked over to the relevant section. "There are a vast number of phenomenally good literary works under those classifications. And some truly excellent comedies too, which I know you like. We'll have to see if we can find something for you."

She looked around, then asked, "Where did our daughter disappear to?"

He waved vaguely deeper into the shop while scanning titles. "Somewhere over there. Relax, she's fine, and she'll find us sooner or later."

Helen smiled a little ruefully, knowing that both her husband and daughter would happily spend the rest of the day in a place like this, while admitting to herself that being surrounded by books wasn't precisely hard for her either. And she wasn't entirely unaware of the relevant genres, having read a fair amount of her husband's collection over the years. Slowly moving down the shelves, she looked at the titles, recognizing some authors although most were unfamiliar to her.

Turning around she walked across the basement room to the other side, which was covered in American comic books, their garish colors and fanciful covers instantly recognizable. Perusing them with mild interest, she watched a couple of teens heatedly discussing the pros and cons of their favorite characters. "I'm telling you that Doctor Curlyhair could take Iron Man in a fight any day of the week," one of the boys said, prodding the other boy in the chest while waving one of the comics. "Especially with the Crimson Lady helping."

"But the rest of the Avengers would have his back," his companion retorted. "And they'd kick their arses."

"Doctor Curlyhair has Kenny on her side. You know that Kenny would crush the Avengers flat. Even Thor."

His friend paused, then reluctantly nodded. "Kenny is kind of OP, yeah."

"So I was right!"

"This time. Only this time."

Satisfied, the first teen grinned, then picked up a few more comics, one having Spiderman on the cover, a couple with Batman, and one with some sort of lizard girl in a trench coat who was smirking out at the world looking highly amused about something. Helen hid a grin of her own as the two started another argument about whether the Hulk could beat Superman, wandering off down the shelves. They certainly seemed to be enthusiastic about their hobby, she thought.

A couple of pleasant hours passed until she finally managed to drag both her children away from the store. All three of them were carrying plastic bags filled with books.

"I rather fancy a bite to eat before we head back," Michael commented.

"That sounds nice," she agreed, glancing at Hermione who nodded eagerly. "I know there's a good Thai restaurant fairly close by, shall we go there?"

"I love Thai food," Hermione commented with a broad smile.

"I know," she replied calmly. "That's why I suggested it." Their daughter giggled as they headed in the right direction. Half way there Hermione stopped in the middle of talking and looked at the other side of New Oxford Street, Helen and Michael following her eyes to see a teenaged girl, about sixteen or so, with bright pink hair walking in the other direction next to a tallish sandy-haired man who bore a distinct familial appearance. Both of them were smiling and talking together, the girl showing him something in a bag she was holding.

Helen became aware that she could feel something distinctly odd from both, something that tickled her still-underdeveloped energy sense. By the look of it, when she glanced at him, Michael felt it too. And of course Hermione clearly detected it long before either of them, probably from a mile away. She'd been glancing in that direction for a while now, but by the looks of it the pair had just come out of a jewelers a few doors away.

None of them said anything until the two had passed by, even though they were eighty feet away on the other side of the road, and disappeared down the steps of the tube station, still happily chatting. It looked just like a father and daughter out for a little shopping and probably was that. No matter what else was involved.

Hermione had watched them go, and now turned back to look in the direction the three of them were walking although both Helen and Michael had slowed when their daughter did. "That was one of those things you've sensed, like the last time, wasn't it?" Michael remarked casually.

"Yes," she replied just loudly enough to be heard over the traffic and people passing by. "Both of them."

"Did they vanish this time?" he queried curiously as Helen listened.

"No, they're getting onto one of the trains," the girl reported after a moment's concentration. "Central line, I think."

"They looked normal enough except for that young lady's hair," Helen put in. "It was certainly rather vivid." On the face of it there had been nothing out of place about either person, and even the hair wasn't all that unusual especially in London.

Hermione nodded, still looking thoughtful. "It's very strange," she remarked after a little longer. "I can't detect any more anywhere in the vicinity though."

"Well, don't push yourself too hard thinking about it, dear," Michael told her. "You'll work it out eventually."

The girl fell silent, but had the same expression on her face until they arrived at the restaurant five minute later, when it was replaced with a hungry one.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

On the way home, Michael made a snap decision and went a slightly different route than he'd normally take. Turning right rather than left as he met the A40, he merged into traffic. Helen, who was switching stations on the radio, looked up then around, before peering quizzically at him. "This is a rather roundabout way to go," she pointed out.

"Yes, but I wanted to check something," he replied, glancing in the wing mirror, then changing lane. A quarter of a mile further on he took the next right. Hermione was now looking out the window too, having put her book down, an understanding expression crossing her face a moment later.

"This is Charing Cross Road," the girl said.

"Indeed it is. Well spotted." He grinned at her in the rear mirror. "How far away is that anomaly of yours?"

After a moment or two she smiled a little, then closed her eyes, her hand rising to point slightly off to the left. "About… a third of a mile that way?"

"What are you thinking, Michael?" Helen asked cautiously. "We're not going to poke around something we don't know anything about, are we? I can't help thinking that…"

"Relax, we'll just drive past," he assured her. "I just want to see if anything looks odd. The whole affair is puzzling me."

"I'm curious too, Mummy," Hermione chipped in. "We'll just look."

"All right. But if we get kidnapped by aliens I am going to be very annoyed with both of you," she sighed.

"Surely you would be more annoyed with the aliens, dear?" he commented with a sly grin.

"You're closer," she grumbled, causing their daughter to giggle.

They wended their way down Charing Cross road towards the river, the traffic fairly heavy but moving steadily. Hermione was looking at some destination that wasn't really visible in the usual sense, her head tracking it as they neared. Finally she said, "It's all over to the left there, quite a large area, but it's very… fuzzy. And spread out in a strange way. But there's something around the corner that's connected to it and is right next to the road."

Helen looked back at her, then forward down the road. They rounded the corner, the traffic slowing as a lorry pulled out of a side street and caused a temporary blockage. "I can't see anything unusual," she said.

"Can you feel it?" Hermione asked quietly, leaning forward. "A big fuzzy blob all over there, quite close." She pointed to the side. "And a sort of… sharper… anomaly right… there." Her finger swung confidently to indicate… A record shop?

"Classic Vinyl?" Helen read as they passed at a walking pace. "Or the bookshop next to it?"

"No. Between them." Hermione was still pointing. "There's a sort of pub there." She turned her head to track whatever it was. "It looks very run down."

Michael glanced in the mirror, then indicated right, turning down a side road a hundred yards further on. "Now what are you doing?" Helen asked with mild exasperation.

"Turning around to have another look, obviously," he chuckled. "I could have sworn I saw something odd there where Hermione said and I want to look more carefully."

"You two are impossible," she sighed, but when he took a couple more rights and rejoined the road in the other direction, she kept her gaze to the side too.

"There! See it, Mummy? Daddy?" Hermione said quickly, pointing again. "It sticks out like mad, it's doing something very strange indeed to the local H-field. Honestly, there's so much wastage. Why on earth do they do it that way?"

Michael once again checked the mirror before indicating left this time, and turning into a small side road nearly opposite the record store. He pulled over and put the car in neutral, then twisted around in his seat, as did Helen. Both looked through the rear window across the hundred feet separating the vehicle from the record and book stores, vehicles passing both ways and crossing their sight line every few seconds.

"It's definitely there," their daughter said, having unbuckled her seat belt and now leaning over the rear seat to stare out the window. "And it's trying really hard to hide. Although how anyone can miss it I don't know, it's like a lighthouse. I could feel it a mile away."

"Can you see anything?" Helen said in a low voice to her husband.

He was squinting and waving his fingers in front of his eyes for some reason, blinking occasionally. "Actually… yes, I can," he finally replied, sounding startled. "It's doing something very strange, Hermione's right about that. I can feel it more than see it. There's a doorway right between those two shops, even though my eyes are trying to tell me there isn't. How peculiar."

She peered carefully at the shops, scanning across from one to the other. After a couple of times she realized suddenly that there was a little hitch in her vision just as she passed her eyes over one specific spot. Closing them, she extended her energy sense as much as she could. "Oh," she breathed in surprise. "I see what you mean. That is very strange indeed." Very carefully holding a picture in her mind of what the H-field was telling her, she slowly opened her eyes without letting them move.

There was indeed a door there. One that looked like it led into a house of ill repute, as her grandmother would probably have termed it. Something was trying to tell her it wasn't there but now she knew the truth she was able to see past that.

"It's an SEP," Michael said with astonishment. He and Hermione were looking at each other with raised eyebrows, their expressions remarkably similar. Both turned simultaneously to stare at the odd doorway. "That is a very good trick," he added with a grin.

"An SEP?" she echoed. "What on earth is that?"

"A somebody else's problem field, Mummy," Hermione explained, closing her eyes again and looking extremely interested. "It's from a book. It hides things by making you think it's somebody else's problem so you ignore it."

That was a fairly close analogy, she had to agree, watching as pedestrians walked past without giving the odd doorway a second glance, although they stopped to look into the windows of both shops. No one seemed to enter or leave the hidden building although the window in the top half of the door appeared to have a light on behind it.

"Oh." Hermione looked mildly impressed, then very curious. "I see. That's very clever, although it's really not efficient at all."

They both looked at her. "What did you work out?" Michael asked.

"I think I see what it's doing to make that happen," the girl replied, opening her eyes and looking back at the other side of the road. "I didn't think of that, but it's very interesting. Mostly in what it implies… I'm going to need to think about it for a while."

"Is it like one of your HOPs?" he queried as he put the car in gear again, then slowly drove off just as another vehicle turned into the road and slowed while honking at them.

She waved a hand a little uncertainly. "In one way, yes. In a lot of other ways, no. It's definitely using the H-field, but it's certainly not doing it like I do. I'm almost convinced that whoever did that doesn't actually know about the H-field, it's more like…" She paused, considering her words, then slowly finished, "…like they don't really know about it. Like they're doing something that almost accidentally uses it. But that doesn't make any sense…"

As he rejoined the main road and headed towards the bridge to south London, she vanished into thought, only absently putting her seat belt back on then leaning back in the seat and going very quiet. It wasn't until they were halfway back to home that she smiled faintly. "There is another layer," she said almost under her breath. "I was right. But what is it and how does it work?"

Helen and Michael exchanged looks. Their daughter was going to be filling a lot more notebooks, they could practically feel it. But it was Hermione.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

"Two hundred and six pages, including the index and glossary," Michael remarked, feeling proud of his daughter. "An exceptional bit of work, dear. Well done." He held up the stack of paper, fresh from the laser printer.

"I couldn't have done it without you and Mummy helping so much," she replied, somewhat pink cheeked.

"It's still all your own work, Hermione. All we did was help with the words here and there," Helen commented, smiling at the girl. "You put in an immense amount of effort and have something you can be pleased with."

Putting the stack down on the desk, Michael rummaged through his office supplies drawer, digging out the comb binder and a box of combs. He looked through the latter for one large enough, then started putting the pages in the punch mechanism in sets of twenty or so, before pulling the lever. The repetitive crunching sound punctuated his words. "I've been thinking," he said, replacing the stack and repeating the operation.

"Always a good move, love," Helen grinned, causing him to stick his tongue out at her and Hermione to giggle.

"Quiet, you. What I've been thinking about is that perhaps now might be time to talk to someone else about all this." He nodded at the shrinking pile next to him, then the growing one on the other side. Hermione and Helen exchanged glances. "An actual scientist, I mean. Someone who researches this sort of thing for a living."

"Does anyone research psionics for a living?" Helen queried.

He shrugged slightly, doing the next stack. "Directly? Not that I can find out, no. Hermione's discovered something entirely new as far as I know, leaving aside our mysterious friends in London."

"Who aren't doing what I do, they're doing something distinctly different," the girl put in.

"And apparently hiding from everyone, so it's probably best to let them," he agreed. "It's polite if nothing else. But the point I'm making is that there's a limit to what Hermione has the resources to do on her own, and we can't provide her with everything no matter how much I'd like to. I'm a dentist, and a science fiction nerd, but I'm not a physicist or whatever is required. We're smart people but it's out of our field of knowledge. Perhaps we should see if we can get someone with the right skills to look at the whole thing and see if they're able to discover more than Hermione can by herself."

The girl in question looked a little put out and he hastened to add, "Not that I don't have full faith in your abilities, Hermione. What you've accomplished is extraordinary by anyone's standards. All I'm thinking is that we could accomplish more if we can get someone who has different knowledge. If nothing else your holographic display, and that keyboard you're experimenting with, is probably worth a lot of money to the right people. Assuming we can work out how to make it without you doing all of them. I certainly can't make a HOP like you can yet."

"Nor me," Helen agreed. Both were able now to more or less follow when she explained what she was doing but the why of it and to some extent the how was still beyond them.

"It's the Easter holidays in a couple of weeks, and we could probably arrange to visit someone if we start looking into it now," he went on, doing the last set of paper, then stacking it with the others and tapping the entire sheaf into order. Putting the comb on the metal spikes sticking up out of the machine, he depressed the handle to open it and locked it off, before carefully slipping the comb fingers through the holes the punch had been made. "I've been going over our options for a while and I remembered that when I was at Oxford there was a new department being set up in the Psychology building to study Parapsychology. The first one in the UK, although there's now one in Edinburgh too but that's an awfully long way to go. Oxford is only an hour or so away from here."

He got the last of the pages in place then lifted the lever, before removing the bound document from the device and turning it over to inspect it. Then he handed it to Hermione who looked at it proudly, hugging it to her chest for a few seconds with a grin. "Your first book. And the first printing of the first edition. Be worth a lot of money one day, that thing."

She laughed, opening it and leafing through with a smile.

"I still know quite a few people at Oxford, so I called a couple of them last week just to catch up, and casually asked about that department. It's still going and seems to be doing fairly well although it's small and a lot of people seem to consider it a bit of a joke," he continued, clearing the machine into the bin to get rid of all the little bits, before putting it away again. Sitting on the edge of the desk he regarded them. "I didn't mention you, of course, but I got a name, and looked it up in the faculty directory. I can call up and make an appointment easily enough. And probably get in contact with some people I knew in the physics department too, at some point, since this is probably in their bailiwick as much as anyone else's. What do you think?"

Hermione closed her book and considered his words carefully, while Helen did the same. After a while she nodded a little hesitantly. "I… suppose we could do that?" she said quietly. "Someone is bound to find out sooner or later anyway. We might as well do it properly."

He nodded. "We know you can teach other people how to do it, dear, so it's not as if we'd have to let them prod you all that much. And with some luck, we might be able to get some more insight into what's going on, what the H-field really is, and answer some of the questions you noted in that." Michael pointed at the document in her hands. She followed his finger, before nodding again somewhat more firmly.

"All right, Daddy. I think you're probably right. Let's do that."

He looked at Helen, who nodded too. "I'll make some calls tomorrow morning then, and see what happens. We don't have to tell them everything at once, don't forget. It's probably best to ease them into it." He floated his stapler into his hand and grinned at them, making both laugh. "That alone will make their eyes pop out, never mind your HOPs."

Hermione giggled. "We should print some more of these if we're going to tell someone else," she said, holding up the document. He smiled, then started refilling the laser printer tray.

It was going to be very amusing to see the expressions on various people's faces, he suspected, and it was something he was looking forward to.

 

[mp3.1415player]

Lying in bed very early in the morning with her eyes shut, Hermione pondered the new information she'd gathered on the most recent trip to London. It had brought to mind a number of concepts that she'd been aware of but not addressed so far, as she was more concentrating on her telekinesis and HOP designs.

There was definitely something strange going on. That much was clear. So far she'd directly seen three people carrying those strange not-really-a-HOP tools about their person, the things very distinctive to her H-field sense and almost the same in each case. There were small individual differences that gave the impression of the devices being hand made, or in very small quantities if done by machine, but they were mostly so similar those had to be a sort of personal customization of a standard design.

And as they were both so similar and so obvious, it was a sensible conclusion that all the other such things she'd detected that she hadn't seen with her eyes, the ones at long range, were the same class of device. Whatever they were intended to do, it implied there were a number of people wandering around with them out there. The sample size was small, but she'd so far noted sixteen of them over the last few months. Mostly in London or the immediate vicinity which made sense because of the number of people who lived there. Where their house was had a much lower population density, and as far as she could currently tell, didn't have any of the things in range. Which was nearly a four mile diameter circle at this point.

So what were they? What were they for? How many people had them? Where did they get them? Why were they, assuming it was the same root cause, hiding behind an SEP?

She had no proof it was the people with the devices that were behind the SEP at that pub, but given two strange occurrences with very similar H-field manipulation going on, it wasn't a stretch to think they had to be directly connected. Not to mention that the overall… construction, for want of a better word… of the SEP and the other oddities surrounding the Charing Cross site were essentially identical to the mystery devices.

Hermione was seriously reconsidering her initial wild idea it was aliens behind all of this. As mad as that sounded. A secret alien base hiding in the middle of London with aliens disguised as ordinary humans wandering around doing… something? It wasn't quite as unlikely as she'd initially thought when she'd had the idea, although she was still fairly sure that wasn't the truth. It would make a good novel, yes, but in reality it seemed just a bit far-fetched.

She made a mental note to perhaps try writing that novel one day, as she'd found she rather enjoyed writing books…

So… Assuming it wasn't aliens, what was it? A secret society of people who could do things via something related to, but simultaneously not, psionics? Hiding in plain sight for some reason rather than becoming known to the public? Why? What were they hiding from? If they were genuinely hiding, why on earth do it almost in the center of the largest city in the country instead of in the middle of nowhere? Where did they learn to do what they did? When did they learn it? And how? The people she'd seen included one girl only a few years older than her, which seemed young for some sort of secret government project like her parents had suggested, unless that was some sort of disguise. Which, if true, raised even more questions…

How many of them were there? That was one of the more interesting ones, of course. At least sixteen assuming that none of them had more than one notHOP tool, but she had to presume rather more than that to have gone to so much trouble as to hide a quite large piece of London. From what she'd determined it was at least twice the amount of area as the street her house was on, which seemed a lot to simply disappear into mystery. Looking at a map didn't show anything untoward, which both didn't surprise her that much as it would be too easy to locate if it did, and suggested that whatever was hiding either had government aid to stay off maps, or predated the ones she'd found. Or both, of course.

It seemed very likely that they didn't know about psionics or the H-field, since their own methods stood out like a lighthouse when looked at from that viewpoint. Which presumably wasn't the desired behavior. From everything Hermione had seen, what they were doing was hideously inefficient if you considered minimal energy usage as a design goal, although she admitted to herself that they might well have different design goals and thinking of their work as wrong wasn't entirely fair. It was clearly the result of considerable knowledge she didn't herself have, so whoever it was had been doing this for quite a while.

Aliens, government agents, or just sneaky people with unusual skills. Those seemed like the three most likely candidates, although she could easily come up with more simply by thinking about the fiction she'd read. Her father undoubtedly would have even more ideas. Aliens did seem like a stretch even now although in some ways it would be the most sensible, even if implausible, reason. A hidden society of sneaky talented people seemed a touch unlikely too, as it would have taken a lot of work over many years to pull off the Charing Cross thing. It certainly wasn't impossible but it seemed a little strange even so as far as she could see. Although again she might, almost certainly was for that matter, be missing key bits of information.

The government doing something classified was in many ways the most likely possibility but even there it didn't quite fit. On the other hand, since she did have far too little information, it was entirely possible that the whole thing was completely sensible when you knew the truth. Perhaps it was something Cold War related, which she was well aware had produced some very strange outcomes over the last forty years. Her father had told her some really bizarre stories he'd read about that made it clear governments were filled with people who were sometimes rather dim. Or just paranoid.

Or paranoid and dim, which seemed like a bad combination.

She sighed faintly. All this was just speculation running wild since she simply didn't know the truth. Her mother was a little concerned about the whole thing, as was she, and while her father shared those concerns he was also quite interested in it too. He'd read too many spy stories over the years, and fantasy books.

Hermione smiled to herself at his suggestion it was a bunch of wizards from another world who moved here in secret to escape a demon of some sort. That was another good novel idea, but hardly likely as far as she could see. Perhaps she should encourage him to write a book too.

Oh well. Until and unless she managed to get more data on the whole thing, it was probably best to put it to one side, stay out of the way of whoever it was behind it all, and get on with her own work. Perhaps at some point she'd discover what was going on, but right now she had other things to think about.

Although she'd had quite a few ideas sparked by observing that not-very-well-hidden pub in London. And studying the way they did what they did had let her work out some very interesting things.

The H-field was, as far as she could tell so far, present everywhere in essentially the same way and at the same levels. That was what she'd put in her book, arrived at by months of careful observation and experimentation. She really wanted to see if there was any variation with altitude, and location further away than London, but everything she'd seen so far had only shown at worst tiny variations that came and went apparently randomly, quickly damping out to the background level.

When she used telekinesis she was essentially directly altering the H-field flux running both through her and the environment around her, by an act of will. Precisely how this happened was still a bit of a mystery, but it was certainly real. And could be taught, as she'd proven with her parents and grandmother. Why she herself had managed to do it spontaneously wasn't known to her but she assumed she was just naturally that little bit more sensitive to the H-field than they were, to the point that she'd accidentally manipulated it those times. Emotion definitely heightened sensitivity, she was satisfied of that. It also reduced ability, since being all wound up didn't help one's mental clarity at all. So it was important, as Yoda said, to avoid the dark side of the force. Which still made her giggle when she thought it.

Her HOPs and all the other techniques she'd come up with were doing the same thing, but offloading most of the power handling requirements in electronic terms to something that wasn't inside her head. Which allowed for a lot of interesting possibilities and seemed logically to be much safer too.

However, what the mystery people were doing was quite different in some crucial ways, from what she'd seen. They didn't appear to be directly accessing the H-field at all. All their equivalents to her own constructs were far more complex than anything she'd so far made, but at the same time a lot of that complexity didn't seem to be doing anything useful. Or indeed, in a few places, anything at all.

It also manipulated H-field energy in a strange way, she'd noticed. Almost like this was a byproduct of the original goal rather than the goal itself. It seemed to her that what they were doing was using a higher level of manipulation, which masked the actual H-field connection under an interface method that allowed complex effects to be achieved without having to build them up from first principles.

Her eyes opened and she stared at the ceiling in the dimness of predawn light. "That's it," she said as things clicked together in her mind. "That has to be it. It is a different layer like I thought." Hermione smiled to herself as a few things resolved themselves, although it also led yet again to even more questions without answers.

If one likened the H-field to an electric field, which it wasn't, but it was close enough for the analogy to work for the moment, what she did was divert, reinforce, and otherwise manipulate that field to cause useful work. A HOP was at its simplest level just as she'd initially thought very similar to a field effect transistor, and acted in a way that was remarkably close to that sort of device. A small control signal controlled a much larger power signal, which then led to the possibility of constructing much more complex 'circuits' from the basic elements. It mapped remarkably well to electronic theory, both analog and digital. Much more complex effects could be realized by offloading the effort into a construct designed for that specific task rather than by doing it manually, so to speak.

And having it all made out of the very energy that such things controlled allowed all manner of interesting possibilities that one could never do with electronics. She was sure an entire computer could be made that way, for a start, and had already produced simple logic gate equivalents in addition to her original feedback systems, which were the basis of analog rather than digital computers. A mix of both ideas could undoubtedly produce some remarkable results although it would be a very complicated thing to do.

That led her to the obvious conclusion that once you had an H-field computer, you would necessarily require H-field computer programs. And some sort of programming language. Which in turn suggested that once you had all that, you might well have people who knew how to use those programs but might not actually understand exactly how they worked…

Was that even possible? It somewhat fitted her preliminary observations. Perhaps those notHOP tools were actually a sort of pocket computer that had a lot of premade programs available to it, and the user could utilize it to indirectly manipulate the H-field without ever having to even know that's what they were doing. She considered the idea and decided it wasn't entirely out of the realms of feasibility. Hermione could see roughly how to start the design of something of that nature although it would be an awful lot of work to successfully pull off.

But it would, at least in part, explain the general fuzziness of the things she'd seen. Why they did it in a very complicated way, and seemed to be inefficient from a power usage standpoint. If it was using some sort of… library of subroutines, in effect, like a procedure in BASIC, that might well result in something that was effective even if not efficient. Capable of doing something very complicated indeed without requiring the person behind it to know all the theory and practice to achieve the same effect by hand, as it were. At the expense of wasting a lot of the energy that was being used, which might well not matter to them if they only cared about the results rather than the method to arrive at them.

So had someone at some point discovered the same thing she had? And actually made an H-field computer system? Or was she going down entirely the wrong path?

If they had done that why didn't they publish their results? Why hide?

She shook her head a little. Again, there simply wasn't enough information, and it was entirely possible she'd come up with a scenario that was completely wrong. It also didn't quite seem to be a complete explanation somehow, as if she was still missing a key insight or two. That said, it did have some interesting possibilities for her own work and was worth thinking more about at some point.

Leaving the actual mechanisms behind the whole thing aside for now, though, still left her thinking about what was being done. That SEP field was a good example; unlike telekinesis which acted at a physical level and allowed things like lifting and moving objects, creating force fields, diverting energy, and such effects, making people ignore something that was right in front of them was acting, probably, on a mental level. It wasn't actual invisibility in the usual sense of the word. She was fairly certain that a modification of the method she'd come up with to make a force field visible could also be used to make something behind that force field invisible. Which needed to be tested, now she considered it again.

That pub wasn't doing that, though. It was making people look right at it and not see it, without being literally invisible. Presumably a camera could well record an image of it, unless some of the other effects surrounding it that she'd noticed were meant to stop that as well. But the primary effect that made it an SEP right out of Mr Adam's books was that it did something to the mind, directly. A normal person wouldn't even notice that they weren't noticing something.

Which gave her some truly fascinating ideas.

Right back when she'd first realized that psionics were real and so was telekinesis, she'd wondered if she'd be able to pull off some of the other fictional ideas of the concept, like telepathy. Due to her experimentation with HOPs and all the other things she'd put that on the back burner, as she didn't really have any good ideas yet how to proceed down that path, but… That SEP field was doing something that obviously wasn't a million miles away from the same sort of idea. If a pseudoHOP could affect the minds of random people from a distance, did that mean it was possible to do the same thing by hand through psionics?

It was a scary thought, actually. What would the limitations be? And the risks? She could immediately come up with a whole series of examples from literature that varied from beneficial to very, very much the opposite. Shivering for a moment, Hermione decided that any experimentation along those lines would have do be done excruciatingly carefully, if at all.

She already knew that her energy sense could detect the H-field interactions that happened with living things, it was how she could sense people, animals, and even plants from a significant distance. The minute distortions they left in the field contained a lot of information about them, information she was still working on deciphering. It was fairly straightforward to determine emotional state, for example, which was immediately an empathetic talent straight out of science fiction. So far she hadn't really pushed that beyond noting it was getting easier, but perhaps she should put in some more time on this area of research. However it did show yet again that the H-field and a living thing had a connection, even if the living thing wasn't able to actively manipulate the field at will.

In fact, the entire existence of H-field manipulation proved beyond doubt that it interacted with the mind. At least one way. The SEP phenomena proved it went the other way too under the right circumstances, which seemed fairly logical if you thought about it.

The question was, of course, could she do the same thing? She knew what the result was, and she could see roughly how it was being done, so it should be feasible to come up with a method of her own to duplicate the results even if she couldn't yet directly copy the exact way they did it. Not that she particularly wanted to copy their method exactly if there was a better way to achieve the same results. One that wouldn't radiate wasted energy like it was going out of style. If nothing else than because if the point was to hide something from someone, hiding it behind a giant screen covered in floodlights and a huge sign saying "Look away, there's nothing to see here," seemed suboptimal.

Although, quite in keeping with the book description, she thought with a grin. Perhaps Mr Adams had known more than he'd let on.

She spent a couple of hours before getting up for breakfast and heading off for school thinking about how to make her own SEP, taking many pages of notes in the process, and ended up going down the rabbit hole of ever more elaborate methods to hide and protect an area from anyone you didn't like. By the time she finished she'd come up with at least a dozen methods to do some really quite bizarre things, which was going to take a lot of experimentation and the help of her parents. And it had opened up an entirely new field of research and most likely a whole new book at some point.

All in all, it was quite a productive morning in her view and she hadn't even started the day.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

"I had a very odd phone call this morning," Jerry commented as he sat down in the cafeteria at the same table as several of his friends and colleagues.

"Isn't that almost inevitable for someone in your field?" Christine replied with a quick grin. "Ghostbusting is always going to attract odd people. For example, you." She pointed at him with a fork, before sticking the cherry tomato on it into her mouth and looking amused.

He sighed heavily as the other two at the table started snickering. "It's not ghostbusting, it's research into parapsychology, as you damn well know," he complained, taking the plate and cutlery off his tray and sliding the latter to the side. "I'm studying a completely sensible field."

"So sensible there are only two places in the entire UK that are currently paying people to study it," Farouk chuckled from the other side of the table. "And so sensible there are no actually verifiable or reproducible results from any of the experiments anyone has ever carried out. How your department ever got funding is beyond me."

"We got some very good data on electronic random noise generators being influenced by an act of will last year," Jerry protested. "Well above statistical chance."

"For one week. You haven't been able to do it again," the other man replied, grinning. "It was equipment error. Just admit that."

Stabbing his fish with his fork, the first man scowled. "We had a whole series of tests that showed it," he grumbled. "Something went wrong with the setup and we couldn't reproduce it perfectly when we moved it to another room. But we controlled for all the environmental parameters, so I still think it was real. We don't know why our subjects couldn't do it again yet. I'll figure it out though."

"Sounds like equipment error to me," Farouk taunted, grinning. "You had a loose connection or something like that."

"You helped me build the rig, you idiot," Jerry sighed. "So if there was a loose connection it was your fault." He ate some fish, then mumbled, "It wasn't a loose connection. I checked."

"You have to admit there's not a lot of evidence for what you're trying to find, though, Jerry," the fourth person at the table, William, put in, having been listening with an expression of enjoyment to the same sort of thing that happened every time. "I won't deny there's a lot of very circumstantial evidence for psychic phenomena, but there's never been anything even remotely resembling proof. It's all anecdotal at best, with a very small number of exceptions that never seem able to be reproduced."

"If there is some very subtle way that a human mind can directly interact with something outside the body, which I don't think there is, it does vaguely make sense that it would be highly prone to the exact conditions needed to show it," Christine commented, smiling a little. "So if it's real, it would be very tricky to consistently reproduce."

Jerry looked pleased.

"But it was probably equipment error."

Jerry looked annoyed again. She grinned at him.

"What do you expect, you muppet? You're trying to convince a semiconductor researcher, an electronics engineer, and a biologist that psychic powers are real." She waved her fork around at the others. "If you want to convince someone you'd probably have better luck with the other soft science types."

"They think I'm nuts," Jerry muttered into his coffee.

"That's because you are nuts," Farouk laughed. "But we still like you." Jerry gave him a put upon look which only got a grin in response. "So what was odd enough about this phone call of yours that it stood out from what must be a constant stream of bonkers people trying to explain how they saw next week's pools numbers?"

"It was from a dentist near London who says his whole family can do some sort of telekinesis and wanted to talk to someone who researched that sort of thing," Jerry replied, brightening up. The other three exchanged dubious looks, then turned as one to him. "I know, it sounds weird, but he seemed perfectly rational unlike some of the people who call us. And he got my name from somewhere, he'd obviously done his research. Normally the really daft ones just phone the main reception and scream about gremlins or something of that nature."

"It's a scam of some sort, it always is," Christine told him patiently. "You remember that chap last year who tried to convince you he could win the premium bond's top prize if only someone would give him enough money to buy a lot of bonds? He was a complete con artist, and not a very good one."

"I remember, yes. This is different." Jerry shook his head. "I did a little background research of my own. His name is Michael Granger, and he took a first class BSc in biology here, then went to Kings College for a BDS in dentistry, again first class. His wife is also a dentist, studied at Bristol University, degrees in dentistry and radiology, and they both met at Kings. They have a successful and very well regarded private practice in Hampshire, ten or twelve miles southwest of Guildford, which has been running for some seven years now."

The others were staring at him as he finished speaking. After a moment, William said in some disbelief, "Jesus, Jerry. Are you a Parapsychologist or a private detective?"

"I know a few people, and it's all public information," he replied, putting a little more pepper on his fish while smiling. "The point is that he's not a swivel-eyed nutter according to people who know him. And from what I picked up he spent a while looking into me before he called. Several people said he'd phoned up out of the blue to chat and happened to ask about the department. We did our research on each other by the looks of it."

"And you think that means he's not deluded or something?" Christine asked a little warily. He shrugged.

"I can't prove it, but I don't think he is. I've fielded more than a few of those sorts of calls, and you get a feeling for them. He seemed sincere as best I could tell."

He frowned slightly, thinking back to the call that morning. "Bit cagey though. Like he wasn't telling me everything. That was the odd part, other than the entire call. But I suppose I'll find out when they turn up." Putting a few chips in his mouth he chewed and swallowed.

"When's that supposed to happen?" Farouk asked.

"He wanted to visit next week, on the 9th​ of April. During the Easter holidays, so his daughter could come as well." Jerry finished his coffee and put the cup down, ate the last of the chips, and leaned back. "It fits my schedule so I said yes."

"Must be hard finding a hole in that schedule, what with all the high powered international trips you do," Christine chortled, making him sigh yet again.

"You never give up, do you?" he plaintively asked.

"Nope. It's much too much fun," she grinned, standing up. "See you later, Jerry, I've got a date with an electron microscope. Have fun with the ghosts."

"Not ghosts!" he shouted after her as she left, then looked around with embarrassment as every other faculty member present stared at him. Christine was still laughing when she left the cafeteria. As she vanished she started whistling the iconic film's theme tune.

Putting his hand on his face he moaned. "She is such a pain in the arse sometimes."

William snorted with laughter. "Don't worry, she's like that with everyone. And you have to admit you're a tempting target."

"Oh, god, don't you start," Jerry grumbled. He also got up. "I have work to do. Thanks for the moral support."

"Any time!" Farouk saluted him with his coffee cup as he wandered off, feeling a little hard done by and underappreciated. Jerry waved over his shoulder as he headed back to his small department, wondering if this Granger bloke was going to be yet another disappointment as so many had been before.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Helen sighed a little as Michael led her into the garage from the kitchen, her hand over her eyes. "Is this really necessary?" she asked with mild irritation. "You could just tell me what the surprise is."

"That would spoil it, dear," he chuckled. Guiding her into position with his hands on her waist, he rotated her a little. "All right. You can open your eyes now."

She did so, then looked around. The garage was empty, with only a circle of masking tape about three feet across on the floor right in the middle to differentiate it from the last time she'd been in here that morning. After a moment or two she turned to him and folded her arms, giving him a hard look. "Practical jokes now, is it?" she asked. "I suppose Hermione is in on it. You two are impossible."

"It's not really a joke, dear, but yes, Hermione is involved." He was smirking in a very annoying manner, causing her to shake her head. "And she's closer than you think."

She gazed at him, then suspiciously scanned the entire garage again. "I can't help feeling I'm going to regret this, but what are you up to?"

"No, no spoilers. You have to work it out for yourself."

Helen put her hands on her hips and glared at him, only getting a grin back in return, then turned on the spot and very carefully inspected the entire garage, paying special attention to the marked circle. As far as she could tell nothing was amiss, and their daughter wasn't hiding under the workbench about to jump out and shout Boo!

Her eyes stopped on a cardboard box upside down against the rear wall of the garage, one that had originally contained the mower and hadn't quite managed to get thrown away yet. "Aha!" she said with satisfaction, stalking over to it and flipping it over. "I found…"

She sighed as Michael laughed from behind her, as the box was entirely empty.

"This is getting annoying," she complained. He kept chortling in the manner of one who was playing a grand prank and was not going to get dessert as she turned around and glared at him.

"Getting colder," he giggled.

"You are a proper pain in the arse, Michael Granger, I hope you realize that." Helen looked around again, then finally had a thought and closed her eyes. "Oh, you little sods," she grumbled as she very carefully tried using the energy sense. She could clearly detect her annoyingly amused husband on the other side of the room, and in the middle of it, there was something… She frowned slightly as she tried to work it out. Something wasn't quite right there, but what?

Opening her eyes again she stared very hard at the circle of tape, moving her head from side to side, then crossing her eyes almost accidentally for a moment. She could just make out, now she was looking in the right way, something that was sort of flickering in and out of existence in that area. Concentrating very hard on it and remembering what had happened in London, she closed her eyes again, fixed the exact location of whatever it was in her mind, then slowly opened them once more without moving her head.

"How on earth did you do that?" she finally said with great restraint as she found herself squinting at her daughter, who was standing in the taped off circle grinning at her, very slightly wavering like she was on the other side of a bonfire. It was making the inside of Helen's brain itch in a way that she'd never encountered before and didn't very much enjoy. "Stop doing it," she added with asperity. "It's annoying."

Hermione popped back into normal existence, still looking highly pleased with herself, as she stopped doing whatever she'd been doing. Clearly the girl had somehow managed to work out how those strange people at the pub had pulled off their trick, although this felt quite different in some hard to define way. It seemed to do much the same job though.

"Sorry, Mummy, we needed someone who didn't know what was happening to test it," Hermione replied, smiling widely. "If you knew I was there it would be much harder to make it work. Daddy knew and he could still see me. You didn't, and you couldn't, although you did very well with sensing the H-field distortion."

"How does that even work?" Helen asked, feeling startled and despite herself rather impressed.

"It's using the H-field to directly manipulate the senses," Hermione explained. "More or less exactly what the Charing Cross anomaly is doing, but via a different mechanism. I think. I'm still working on how they managed their results. It's not through the normal H-field methods at all, it's much more complicated than that and seems almost too complicated to be sensible. But I finally worked out what it was doing even if I'm still slightly puzzled about how and designed my own method to do the same thing."

She waved a hand at the circle of tape. "I set it up so anything inside this zone was in an SEP, and your mind just told you there was nothing there, so you saw and heard what you expected not what was real. I think it works with smell and probably touch too, although we haven't tested that properly yet."

Helen shook her head in wonder as she stared at her daughter. "That is possibly more terrifying than anything else you've done so far," she commented a little uneasily. "Affecting the mind? How is that possible?"

"The H-field is directly connected to the mind all along or we couldn't do telekinesis," Hermione responded as Michael leaned on the workbench to listen as well. "Right at the beginning I wondered if other fictional psionic abilities would be possible, like telepathy for example. This is, in a way, demonstrating that they are. I don't know if reading someone's mind is actually something that can be done, but fooling the senses turned out to be fairly simple when you understand how to do it. I'm still working on how to fool the H-field sense, which is a lot harder, but I can't say it can't be done. I just don't know if it can."

She was clearly quite excited with her latest work. "It opens up all manner of possibilities, actually. I wasn't thinking much about the mental aspect, only the physical, because that's what I initially started with, but when I saw that pub and what it was doing it made me interested all over again in something I'd considered at the beginning but hadn't really spent much time on."

"You're going to have another book to write at this rate," Michael remarked.

She nodded. "I had the same idea. But it's still very early yet for this field. I need to do a lot more work on it. I was just curious to see if I could make an SEP of my own and it turned out I can." The girl grinned happily as her parents exchanged looks.

"Well, it's very good work, but if you start jumping out at me from thin air there is going to be trouble, young lady," Helen said in a dark voice. "We'll have none of that, do you understand me?"

"I'll be good," Hermione replied in a small voice, causing Michael to chuckle. Helen whirled and pointed sternly at him.

"You, don't encourage her either. I know you."

"Me, dear?" He put a hand on his chest and affected an innocent expression. "Would I do that?"

"Yes," both Helen and Hermione echoed, before they all fell about laughing.

Then they went back into the house for lunch with Helen wondering what the next bizarre trick would be.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

"It's very pretty, Daddy," Hermione said wonderingly as she looked out of the car window at the ancient stone architecture surrounding them as they slowly drove through the heart of Oxford city center.

"Oxford University is the oldest educational establishment in the English-speaking world," her father commented as he looked both ways, then turned right onto High Street. "People have been learning here since 1096, nearly nine hundred years ago. It's been in operation ever since. It's also undoubtedly one of the best universities in the world. The city more or less grew up around it, as far as I know. A lot of very famous people went here over the centuries."

"Where did you go?" she asked curiously.

"I was in Christ Church, that big one we passed back there a minute ago on the right," he said, pointing back over his shoulder. "We can stop off later and have a look if you like. It's got some fantastic places inside, such as the main hall, which is like something out of a fantasy film." He smiled at her in the mirror. "You'd probably love it."

"We need to take the next left onto Longwall Street," Helen put in, looking up from the Oxford A-Z she was holding. "Just along there, about a hundred yards away."

"I see it," he replied, indicating. Moments later they turned onto the new road.

"Follow it round to the left, then turn right onto Mansfield Road," she continued. "At the end we turn right again and it's on the right at the end before the corner. The Tinbergen building."

"I vaguely remember that one, but I never went inside," he said with a nod. They drove past a number of other interesting looking buildings, turning appropriately, until the correct location arrived on the right. Hermione looked up at it curiously. She could feel a lot of people all around the place, all apparently hard at work. On the way she'd been keeping watch for any of the strange pseudoHOP users but hadn't sensed one since they'd passed High Wycombe half an hour ago on the M40. There had only been a few here and there even then, in total she'd detected nineteen since leaving the house. And she was almost certain that at least two of those were ones she'd felt before, on the first trip to London, in the vicinity of Leatherhead.

She frowned very slightly as her father looked for somewhere to park. There was something niggling at the back of her mind about the H-field around here, like it was trying to tell her something but doing it very faintly indeed. Closing her eyes she tried to localize whatever it was but couldn't quite get a good fix on it, only that it was there.

"Ah, there we go," her father remarked with a satisfied tone. He'd finally turned around and gone back onto Mansfield Road, finding some free space there. Pulling over, he turned the car off, then stretched with a sigh. "Quite a long drive, but we made it. Now, do we know where we're supposed to meet this Doctor Jerry Langham?"

Her mother checked the faxed map the parapsychological researcher had sent them. "It says to go to reception and tell them we're here, and he'll come and find us," she replied.

"Simple enough, then." Hermione's father nodded as he took the keys out of the ignition. "Might as well leave everything in the boot for now, until we need it. No point carrying it all around with us." He opened the door and got out, as did the other two. Hermione looked around, then up at the buildings, wondering what this man was going to be like and how he'd react…

They'd find out soon enough. Soon, having locked the car, they were walking back to the Experimental Psychology building and a meeting with someone who should find her work worth looking at. She patted the bag over her shoulder that had a copy of her book in it, feeling a sense of accomplishment all over again.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Pushing the door open, Jerry walked through it, hurried down the corridor, and went into the reception area while looking around. He spotted three people, a man, a woman, and a girl of about ten or so, who were standing near the wall on the other side looking out the window. With a glance at the reception desk, he got a nod in their direction as he'd expected, so he went over. "Doctor Granger?" he enquired.

The man turned and met his eyes, nodding and holding out his hand. "Doctor Langham, I assume," he replied with a smile.

"That's me," Jerry said, smiling back. "And this is the other Doctor Granger, and Miss Granger too, by the looks of it."

"Correct," the woman replied. "Please, call me Helen."

"In that case, I'm Jerry."

"Michael."

"I'm Hermione. Pleased to meet you, Doctor Langham," the young girl chipped in, looking at him with a slightly shy gaze overlaying a certain level of examination he was amused by. She gave the impression of being a bright young lady, if he wasn't mistaken.

"Likewise, Hermione." He looked around at them. "Shall we go up to my lab? It's only a couple of minutes walk away and less public than this is."

"After you," Michael Granger nodded, causing Jerry to turn and walk off with the small family following. A few minutes later they were inside his tiny domain, where he, two other professors, and five postgraduate students attempted to find the science behind what most considered fantasy.

"This is my office," he said, waving them through into the room, then closing the door. Going behind his desk he sat down while indicating the other chairs. All three Grangers sat as well. Leaning forward he folded his hands on the desk and examined them. None appeared to be visibly disturbed, which was a good sign, but not absolute proof they weren't yet another group who thought the aliens were talking to them through their cornflakes.

Hopefully it wasn't that. Not again. He'd never hear the end of it from Christine aside from anything else.

"So. You told me on the phone that you believe your family can all perform some form of, how did you put it, psionic ability? Telekinesis if I remember correctly."

They exchanged glances, with what looked for a moment like hidden amusement. Michael Granger cleared his throat. "That is essentially correct, yes. It's something we've been learning to do for some time. But I thought that we might have reached the point where a professional in the field might have some useful insights. After all, we're both dentists, and my field of knowledge is biology with specialism in teeth. Not psychic abilities."

Jerry nodded slowly. They sounded sane enough. A good start. "All right, that's more or less what I gathered. Well, we do study this sort of thing here, although I would have to admit it's a very difficult field to get solid reproducible results in. There are a vast number of factors that can interfere with the excruciatingly small effects the mind can bring to bear on the external world, although I personally am satisfied that this is indeed possible. I've seen some perfectly convincing data more than once that showed an effect that was statistically highly unlikely to be chance, or equipment error. We have a lab next door which is set up to monitor a huge number of physical parameters, such as temperature, magnetic fields, air movements, thermal measurements, you name it. Everything we could think of that might show some real world effect under experimental conditions. We also have access to the latest MRI technology and more computing power than you'd believe."

He smiled a little. "I've been doing this research for seven years now and the technology has advanced enormously even in that time alone. I'm fairly confident that if there is some subtle effect that you can produce, we can spot it. And if there's some other explanation, we can spot that too." Leaning back, he went on as they listened, "With all due respect, you must understand that we get a lot of people making this sort of claim here, and honestly the vast bulk of them have so far, unfortunately, turned out to be mistaken. I'm not saying it's fraudulent in most cases, as the people in question usually honestly believe in what they're telling us, but it's quite easy to convince yourself of something when you want to believe it."

Chuckling ruefully, he added, "It happens to researchers as well, I'm afraid. So we have to be very, very cautious to make sure we're not seeing what we want to see."

"I understand," Michael replied with a nod, glancing at his daughter then his wife. Both seemed to be almost smiling. "It would be disappointing to us as well if we were mistaken."

"Of course it would." Jerry smiled again. "But just think about if you're right! It could be an enormous breakthrough in a field that has been sadly neglected for all too long, and plagued with far too many charlatans. We take it all very seriously and if there is something going on, we'll almost certainly be able to find it."

"That sounds ideal, Jerry," Helen said quietly. "How do you want to begin?"

Her daughter seemed to stifle a small giggle, probably due to nervousness.

"Let's get some details on all of you first," he said, pulling out three sets of consent forms for experimental investigation. He put them on the desk in front of them, pushing a small jar with some pens in towards them as well. "This is the standard form we need filled in for our experiments, just to keep the ethics board happy, you understand. Nothing we do here is in any way dangerous. Then we can get a medical base line, before setting up the first experimental process. Telekinesis is something that is so delicate it requires a very careful calibration process to be completely certain that we're seeing a real effect."

"Have you ever managed to record a real example of telekinesis before?" Michael asked as he picked up one of the forms and looked through it.

"That is… somewhat subject to debate," Jerry sighed. "The readings we got on a number of experiments were non random enough that statistically we're fairly sure we had something, but we were unable to duplicate them on the next occasion. It's such a tiny effect if it really exists it's extremely hard to measure accurately. But I'm always hopeful, and we've improved the experiments enormously since then."

The man nodded, looking up. "I see. And you haven't managed to find anything completely unambiguous yet?"

"Not… quite, no," Jerry was forced to admit. "Not in an experimental environment."

"Well, let's hope this is your lucky day," Michael smiled.

A scraping sound made Jerry's eyes drift to the right, and then stop dead and widen.

One of the pens was gently lifting out of the jar of them. He followed it with his gaze, not even breathing, as it floated blithely through the air to land in Michael's hand. Feeling lightheaded, he kept staring as the man looked up again. "Do you need my mobile telephone number as well?"

Jerry looked very slowly at the jar, which was missing a pen, at the pen which was in the hand of someone who hadn't gone within two feet of the jar, at the expressions on the faces of all three people on the other side of the desk which ranged from amused to mildly resigned, then back at the jar.

He took a breath, realizing rather suddenly he was about to run out of oxygen.

Then, quite deliberately, he picked up his phone receiver, put it to his ear, and dialed a two digit code from memory without looking away from the man sitting opposite him.

When it was answered, he said hoarsely, "Farouk? Get your arse over here right now."

Then he put the phone down without waiting for an answer, leaned forward, and said, "Do that again."

Michael did it again.

Jerry nearly fell out of his chair, before he jumped out of it and danced around the office like a bloody lunatic.

 

[mp3.1415player]

Chances for Purebloods to push for Hermione or her parents to be sent to Azkaban?

We already know that people get sent to Azkaban for breaking the statute of secrecy, and that Hagrid was sent to Azkaban because Fudge is easily influenced by Lucius Malfoy.

Click to shrink...

Entirely non canon, but I couldn't resist because I'm in a funny mood tonight... ​

---

"We have a minor... problem... Minister."

"What is it now, Bones?"

"It's about the Grangers."

"Those magic-stealing Muggle fools? They're in Azkaban where they belong. We should have given them the Veil."

"Well..."

"Come on, spit it out, woman! What happened? Their weak Muggle constitution wasn't enough to keep them alive already? Excellent, that solves that pr..."

"Azkaban is gone."

"..."

"..."

"Gone?"

"Yes. Gone."

"What do you mean, 'gone?'"

"I mean gone, Minister. Disappeared. Vanished. No longer in existence. Utterly erased from the fabric of reality like a snowflake in a..."

"Enough! I know what gone means!"

"Then why did you...?"

"What I fail to understand is the application of the word in conjunction with Azkaban."

"All right, let me see if I can explain more clearly, sir. Hmm. Ah, yes. Azkaban is gone."

"..."

"What do you mean, g...?"

"I MEAN AZKABAN IS GONE, MINISTER! THERE'S A DIRTY GREAT HOLE IN THE SEABED WHERE IT WAS, BUT THE ENTIRE ISLAND, BUILDINGS AND ALL, IS COMPLETELY MISSING! AZKABAN IS GONE!!"

"Oh."

"Yes. Oh."

"What about the Dementors?"

"Gone, Minister."

"The Death Eaters?"

"Gone, Minister."

"That little boat?"

"Also gone, Minister."

"What about all the Aurors on site?"

"Ah. There we have good news. They're all safely down in the cells. Along with all the short term prisoners from Azkaban. There is, however, a problem."

"A problem?"

"Yes. We can't get them out. There's some sort of shield spell we can't remove surrounding the entire cell block. We can get food and water in through a small hole, but nothing we tried can break the shield. No one has any idea how to get rid of it."

"Um... I see. And the Grangers?"

"We determined they went home, fed the neighbor's cat, then went on holiday to France. We can't find their house."

"Oh."

"..."

"What's that in your hand, Bones?"

"A note."

"A note? From whom?"

"The Grangers. It was taped to my door this morning."

"What does it say?"

"'Next time we'll be quite miffed and will deal with the problem permanently. Love and kisses, The Granger Family.' Minister."

"..."

"I believe I have an appointment that I'm missing. I'll leave this minor problem in your capable hands, Director Bones. Let me know when it's been dealt with."

"Of course, Minister."

"You unutterable pillock."