"You can help with this map and their estates. Now, Granger," he gestured towards the chair next to him. "Mark those who have been sold with red pins and those who are not marked as sold with green pins."

She obeyed. She just obeyed and moved to sit beside him, asking no questions anymore, and just going through the book with him, her taking the pages on the left side, him taking those on the right side.

46. Second Language Acquisition

While it is true that many young children whose parents speak different languages can acquire a second language in circumstances similar to those of first language acquisition, the vast majority of people are not exposed to a second language until much later. Moreover, for most people, the ability to use their first language is rarely matched, even after years of study, by a comparable ability in the second language. There is something of an enigma here, since there is apparently no other system of 'knowledge' which one can 'learn' better at two or three years old than at fifteen or twenty-five.

(Yule, 1995)

Hermione sat and put on red pin after red pin on the map. It seemed to her that the Blacks had at one time made their money by acquiring and then selling estates. Or maybe that was just the way of the Wizarding World back then. She had to admit that she didn't like it not knowing but Wizarding History had always been considered less important, somehow, except of course the history of Hogwarts, which she knew almost by heart these days. Useless knowledge in this instance. Hogwarts seemed a world apart, was a world apart from the rest of the Wizarding World. The beacon of learning, the metaphorical academic ivory tower in the United Kingdom. Students came, students went smarter, more educated or maybe just older and more able to wave a wand, or to brew a potion or to solve Arithmetic puzzles. But Hogwarts, she understood that little by little now and while her understanding had begun much sooner, it had never been as clear as it was now, was different, it wasn't incorporated into the other part of the Wizarding World. Parents were rarely invited to go, Muggleborns could never show their parents their school, her own parents only knew from drawings and pictures what her home for six years had looked like. They had never seen what her dormitory had looked like, her bed, her...everything that had been dear to her. They had been completely shut out. No parents' day, no parent-teacher-meetings, nothing. As far as her parents had been concerned, she could have just as well lived on the North Pole for those six years.

She had usually pushed that thought away when she had it before. It depressed her and it made her feel guilty. She had never tried to make her parents more part of her life. She had never let Harry or Ron into her life at home, in Kent, with her parents. She had always gone alone and had tried, as best as she had been able to, to keep her two parts separate. Rather schizophrenic.

And on the pretence of caring for them, or worrying about them, she had played God. She had used her wand like a gavel and had condemned her parents to forgetting and to living in a penal colony. Well, former penal colony. She had put herself into a superior position because she had that possibility. Because she thought she knew what was best for her parents. Her parents. Those people she should have respected, should have sat down with them, should have discussed it and should have talked to the Order. The Creeveys had been protected by the Order and they now lived as the Creeveys in the Lake District. Her parents still had their old names and lived in Australia. Her fault. Just because she had thought she had been better, had known better. A wrong sense of protection, maybe. Or maybe a thought that only she could judge the situation correctly, that she only knew how dangerous is was and that her parents had been too uninformed to give their consent to any other form of protection. And their being uninformed had been her fault and her fault alone. She had played it down, she had pretended it 'wasn't so bad', that it 'wasn't dangerous as the Daily Prophet had stated'. She had presumed she had known best.

And maybe she had, but the Creeveys had a pub in that Lake District and her parents were on the other side of the world.

If she had acted like Colin (not the getting killed part, naturally) and had taken tens of thousands of pictures, if she had brought them all home, if she had shown her parents every aspect of her life at Hogwarts, instead of pretending to be the good Muggle daughter, she would have, maybe, been able to help them in another way, not making decisions without their knowledge.

Oh, but she was getting maudlin and there was a task to tackle. They had to find Aideen and her red pin which she had been about to stick near Reading, hovered in mid-air and Snape glared at her. She sent an apologetic smile and stuck it in as he turned the page of the book.

This was still definitely different from what she had known about wizards. They had made a lot of money, even selling houses to Muggles. Of course those houses had been sold at horrendous prices and mostly, probably, with a resident ghost or ghoul, but they had interacted with Muggles. Or had their solicitors deal with them. She didn't know, didn't know at all and it bothered her.

What had they learned in Hogwarts? Practical uses of magic and of course, all about the goblin-wars. But how to make a living, how to find a job, apart from those purely academic ones, or those that seemed to be needed every day, a Healer, or a job at the Ministry or at Gringotts, or a shopkeeper. So limited. She didn't want to be a Healer, she had seen enough wounded, enough dead, enough mangled, wrangled bodies in her entire lifetime, enough spells gone wrong. She didn't want to work for the Ministry, those were a bunch of idiots, the goblins still sort of hated her, a shopkeeper? With her lack of social skills?

She knew she was leaving one academic ivory tower for another. Studying maths wasn't what you might call practical but it was an opportunity away from Healers, Ministry-slaves, shopkeepers, goblins.

Still, Hogwarts. It had seemed like such a safe place, like a light in the dark, a safe ivory tower. But what was going on in the inside, she didn't know. She had worshipped it as a place where she could learn, where she could stretch her intellectual legs, and for the first time in her life, made friends. But she hadn't looked deeper. She had just accepted things. Hogwarts as being representative of the Wizarding World and the people in it as those willing to share their accumulated knowledge. But in their own way, most of them were just as stuck in that academic ivory tower of teaching and learning as she had been.

Not necessarily Professor McGonagall, definitely not Professor Dumbledore and most certainly not Professor Snape, but the rest? Professor Sprout had constantly sprouted stuff about plants, Trelawney had made her wanna-be predictions — or maybe that had been the way they had wanted to be seen. As not having personal interests, as not being anything other than experts (not Trelawney) in their field. Of course as teachers, they would.

But she hadn't shown one ounce of interest in them. And if she had...

A pin hovered in mid-air again and she was quick to put it in, not smiling at him this time but keeping her eyes on the book and the map.

He was the biggest enigma even if he had never been seen this way at Hogwarts. At Hogwarts, he had his role to fulfil. He had been easy to put be pigeon-holed and be kept there. The surly, unfair teacher, the one who had no private life and spent his free time patrolling corridors and being unfair to students. No doubt that he had known a lot about his subject but being unable to communicate it with a modicum of gentleness. He had been no mystery at school.

Now — he was an utter mystery. She couldn't make out anything. It was like sitting next to a stranger in a library, having been forced to work on the same book. Well, maybe not quite but she didn't know anything and yet she had presumed, sort of, that she did. But he was a conundrum, really. Being so...mysterious. Now he was sat there, diligently, sticking pin after pin, mostly red but or two green ones into the map of Britain, and from the corner of her eye, she could see that he was absolutely focused on his task, his hands steady, his brow furrowed. She had done as she had been told. She had gone to fetch the book without questioning, well, without really getting answers anyway. She had acted like a good little student who desperately wanted to please her teacher. She had acted like a child when she was fighting so hard to be seen as an adult by most. She had obeyed immediately and had then made the mistake of questioning him at the wrong time. Had put herself, as she had done with her parents, in a superior position. Thought that maybe, he wouldn't be able to get Aideen out alive without his magic.

Honestly speaking, she still didn't think so. Or at least not without backup, not without any kind of help, why the transporta...

Her head snapped up and whipped around to face him where he sat next to her, hunched over the book and the map. She hadn't noticed that their arms had been touching the entire time, she had been deep in thought and him, probably, focused on his work alone.

"How will you get there? I mean, you made it abundantly clear that you intend to do this on your own, but how will you get there?" she calmed herself. It wouldn't do to shout. Reason would win. Reasonable arguments.

He looked up and arched his eyebrow.

"You think Muggle means of transportation?" she asked.

"Obviously," he said in a deep, if slightly annoyed voice.

"You'll lose an awful lot of time," she said, keeping her own voice rather calm, forced herself really to be calm. He would never agree to a Portkey (illegally made, of course, she knew how to after all) or side-along apparition if she put herself into the superior position again. She had to be smarter about this.

"I know what you're getting at, Granger," he snarled and stuck another pin in the map — so forcefully that it was bent in the middle and looked rather...broken. Almost like a miniature gallows with a red round ball stuck to it.

"I'm not getting at anything," she said off-handedly. "I just believe time is of essence and we cannot afford to lose anymore. If we believe that Mrs Tonks has gone 'round the bend, as, I think, we both presume, we cannot know what she does, or already did to Aideen. And the sooner we get to her, the sooner we can get her out," she shrugged. Of course she didn't want to think about what had been done to Aideen or if she was just being kept, or already killed. She pushed the thought away but she had spotted his weakness. He liked Aideen and he wanted to rescue her. Maybe...

Oh.

Maybe as much for her as for him. Maybe he wanted to rescue her for her to be rescued, for her to be saved and sane and alright but maybe...maybe he wanted, needed to rescue her to regain some of the self-worth, self-confidence he had lost when they had taken his magic. Maybe he had to prove this to himself that he still could out-wit anyone, even without magic. Oh. And that would be...but at least the transport. At least having her there with a wand at the ready just in case something went wrong. Not that he would like to be helped by a mere girl — she could understand that but this was bigger than self-esteem. Life was at stake, probably.

He stuck another pin in, a green one this time, then took a green one out and replaced it with a red one. He was silent, but this had already worked better than her forcing her magic on him. That was the way, probably reverse psychology didn't only work on children, maybe it worked on former spies and potion masters as well. Or maybe not and she had just brought a rather valid argument. Which hers was, really.

"Fine," he said after a long while, a while which left their map full of red and only a couple of green dots. "But you will keep back," he said intently, looking at her deeply. "And you will obey me. You will do as I say."

She nodded and even though she had just pledged to obey him, to let him do what he had planned to do, without her knowing what the plan was, she felt less like a student and a little more like an equal. And she could still be there. She could still be a part of this plan and could still help.

That dunderhead slip of a girl. That bloody stupid chit. Had brought an argument which was more than valid, more than sane and more than reasonable. And she had known he couldn't possibly refuse that. He had to listen to a reasonable argument. And English trains were mostly not very reasonable and while they probably truly tried to be on time, they never managed. Apparition was quick and almost painless. Even if he had to hold onto her. And if there was the risk of being splinched. He would kill her if she splinched him, if so much as half a toenail was left behind, her would put his hands around her slender, graceful neck and wouldn't loosen his grip until she was still. He could do that without a toenail.

Seriously, the way she sat there, staring at the little illustrations of the mansions and houses and cottages in the book marked green on their map. Always wanting to please, always wanting to do the right thing and then, when he had least expected it, a sane, reasonable argument.

He sighed softly, then resigned himself to his fate. Half a toenail and she would be fertilizer for his garden. Half a toenail.

"What are you waiting for?" he snapped, deciding that it might as well be now. He still had the pepper-spray and the rope in his leather jacket and Andromeda, if she was there, would be so surprised to see him that it would be easy to spray this in her eyes before she could draw her wand, to tie her to a chair or anything before she could see again, and to question her before the pepper-spray lost its potency.

"You mean now?" she asked, her mouth hanging open a little, displaying even teeth. A bit stained from too much tea, but otherwise in good shape. Oh, he had made fun of her teeth once, he remembered. Oh, those were the days, really. When he could in good fun make fun of Gryffindors. These days, he had to rely on them for side-along apparition and even if he tried to get Draco to do it, he wouldn't be able to. Poor boy was completely out of his mind with worry and it would take approximately another twenty-four hours before the wish for vengeance set in.

"You did say time was of essence," he smirked, getting up and taking hold of his leather jacket, wrapping himself in it.

"Erm, yes," she nodded, then folded the map neatly. "Where to first then?" she continued, a vicious glimmer in her eyes — triumph? Determination? He couldn't tell.