The Joys of International Travel
Hermione’s dad drove her, Crookshanks, and her trunk to the ministry before he went in to the clinic, saving her the hassle of trying to drag it all onto the tube in rush hour.
Oasis and Guns ‘N’ Roses were blaring from the speakers as her father drummed his finger to the beat on the steering wheel. The wipers swished across the windscreen rapidly, out of beat to the music. He was silent this morning – never a morning person, and had never even at the best of times indulged his daughter’s nervous chatter. He’d taken Hermione for dinner the night before while her mom went to her environmental group meeting, and she’d told him about her year then. What else, really, was there to say, that wasn’t pointless fussing about her trip?
Dion Granger firmly believed that any nerves ought to be dealt with by research and careful planning, and if you were still nervous, you should return to planning, not indulge yourself with whinging. Hermione had her portkey schedule written out, the directions memorized but easily accessible, a sandwich packed, and her relevant textbooks reviewed. She’d even gone to the library and looked at the microfiche records about recent Bulgarian news and read a book on Bulgarian history, and started teaching herself the Cyrrillic script. What was there to talk about?
Her dad circled Whitehall a few times, muttering under his breath about the lack of parking and the traffic and the pedestrian who ran out in front of him. Irritably, he pulled over into a bus stand and helped her unload her trunk and her cat carrier from the estate car onto the pavement.
Crookshanks unloaded himself, having adamantly refused to enter his carrier this morning. Her dad had been growing impatient to leave and Hermione had given up, opened the rear door of the Scorpio and bowed His Royal Stubbornness inside with a flourish. Crooks had spent the whole car ride on the wool tartan throw her mum kept in the back, purring up a storm and marking the dry-clean only throw with an unfortunate amount of orange hair to remember him by. It was a fair compromise, at least he’d not left claw marks in the leather. Now, he batted at the carrier door as soon as he reached the ground and yowled plaintively until Hermione opened it, he was not fond of the rain.
“Contrary cat,” Hermione grumbled fondly as she shut the door.
“I stopped at the bank yesterday, before I left,” her dad said. “They didn’t have as much Bulgarian currency as I’d hoped, but there’s 500 lev and 500 pounds in this envelope, in case there’s an emergency. Spend the lev on your last day in Bulgaria, if you’d like, and buy something nice. I’d meant to give it to you last night, but our meeting ran late. I know you said you’re not going to be in the Muggle world, but I wanted you to have enough that you can get home in an emergency if you need to. Take a bus, take the train, take a plane, whatever you need to do, if you need to leave. And there’s an international calling card, so if anything happens, you are to use it, and if it doesn’t work, call collect to the office or to home, or where ever, and we’ll figure it out, or pay someone to use their phone. And you’ll make sure you send one of those birds as soon as you get there, and once a week, or call, if you can - I want to hear about your first real job. And maybe when you’re back in England, I can stop by while you’re off work, and we can have lunch.” It came out all in a rush as he slammed the car door closed, and stood awkwardly leaning against the drivers door, hands in his pockets in the driving rain.
“Thanks, Dad,” Hermione said, hugging him as she slid the envelope into a zippered inner compartment of her raincoat. He hugged her back tightly, kissed her on the cheek and waved her off. He was in the car and driving away with a cheerful beep of his horn before Hermione had even managed to gather up her trunk, cat, and carrier moving down the sidewalk.
Predictably, the Portkey was scheduled for 10 am, and her dad had her there at a quarter past eight, so she had plenty of time. It felt crazy to imagine that even with her being this early, in less than two hours, she’d be on the opposite side of the continent, in Bulgaria.
Hermione spotted the telephone booth easily. There was a long line up in front of it of oddly dressed people despite there being two empty booths within eye sight.
If she’d had any question about it, the attire of the people waiting would have ended them.
Visitors were supposed to wear Muggle garments to enter the Ministry, but obviously their idea of Muggle garments was a bit... dated... if the corseted ballgown and top hat on one witch were anything to go by. One wizard was not even trying, wearing peacock blue wizarding robes with a peacock feather bedecked pointed hat, while another wore puce hose and mustard breeches with a flared riding coat.
The most convincing and least eye catching of the bunch was an elderly witch in a fushia track suit, which was saying something. Even Hermione had to admit that the peacock feather cape sported by one matronly witch was stunning. She watched as the water beaded off of it, envious of the impervious charm used. It was raining heavily enough that it was soaking through her rain coat, and she’d forgotten her umbrella in the car.
One by one, she watched as they disappeared within the telephone booth and did not come back out.
Idly, Hermione counted the office windows overlooking the phone booth. How often did workers at Whitehall notice something odd about the phone booth and get obliviated? Maybe there was a general confundus charm warded into the street? What would the implications of THAT be on the functioning of Muggle England’s government?
Finally, it was her turn, and she managed to squeeze cat, trunk, and self into the phone booth (Why hadn’t someone used an expansion charm on the thing?), dial the phone, take her visitor badge (Hermione Granger – Portkey Travel), and sink down into the earth and into the Ministry of Magic.
Butterflies in her stomach, she followed the oddly-dressed witches and wizards through the atrium, through the security gate where her wand was recorded, and found the lifts. Carefully reading the instructions in her hand three times despite being certain she’d memorized them, and reading the sign by the lift twice in case there was a discrepancy, she entered the lift and pressed the button for Level 6: Department of Magical Transportation.
Foreign Travel Office, London, England - 8:41 am, (UTC+1)
Hermione followed the signs in the maze of hallways to the Foreign Travel Office. The office was crowded, all the chairs full, with more people standing. It reminded Hermione uncomfortably of the departure lounge at the airport when she’d flown with her parents on vacation on Christmas Eve one year, except with wooden chairs, no windows, and no suitcases.
Hermione noticed with that horribly familiar sinking-gut feeling of “I don’t fit in” that she was the only one there in Muggle clothing. But what else would she wear? Her school robes? Several people appeared to be wearing uniforms and were clustered together in groups. Reading name tags and looking at insignia, she guessed that they were foreign Aurors.
Hermione was also the only person in the room with a trunk and cursed the rules on underaged magic, feeling even more out of place. Everyone else probably had their luggage conveniently stashed in their pockets or something.
She’d never admit it to Harry or Ron but in this moment she just wanted to whine that it was all so UNFAIR. If she’d had a magical parent or could use magic, she wouldn’t have arms screaming from the abuse of hauling a trunk full of books and a somewhat overfed feline around London two times in less than a week.
Tentatively, she struggled her way through the crowd to the harassed-looking desk-wizard. He ignored her as she stood in front of the desk and she waited. One second. Two seconds. Three seconds. Ten seconds...
Finally, she interjected, “Hello, sir, I’m rather early, but can I confirm this is where I need to be for the 10:00 am portkey to Prague?”
“You’re more than an hour early,” he said, scowling at her and pointing to the large clock on the wall. “We’re extremely busy these days.”
“My father dropped me off before work, he didn’t want me to take the tube with my trunk, and he had to get to the office early this morning, and I wasn’t sure how long it would take to get to this office -” Hermione babbled, inwardly cursing the part of her that made her tongue run away with itself in front of potential authority figures when she was nervous. She forced her mouth shut.
The wizard looked her over critically with a growing sneer, taking in her sensible black leather boots, her sensible neat-pressed black trousers, her sensible grey rain coat, her even-more-frizzy-than usual-hair, the trunk, and the cat, and raised an eyebrow.
“And who is your father?”
“I’m muggleborn.”
“I see,” he said, and it was very clear from his tone exactly what he thought about what he saw. “Well, miss, I’m afraid that the 10 am Portkey to Prague has been cancelled. It was a Class 5, meant for half a dozen people, and not enough tickets were sold to run it. We’ve reallocated that time to another destination. There’s another at 5 pm that if you come back we can try and see if there’s a space available.”
“But I have a connecting portkey arriving in Varna at 12:30 pm, well, 10:30 am in London, and an appointment to meet my summer employer at the Portkey office !” Hermione hated how shrill her voice was becoming in her panic.
“You’ll have to rearrange that when you reach Prague, then, miss.”
“But the ticket was issued here!” Hermione protested. “I’m sorry, sir, but I’ve never taken a portkey before and I don’t have a way to let my employer know that I can’t make it, and an owl will take days to get to Bulgaria, and my job offer is conditional on arriving at the station at 12:30 today, and ...” Hermione felt her face go hot, and her eyes prick with tears. Stiff upper lip, Hermione, solve the problem, don’t cry about it, she reminded herself in a voice that sounded rather like her mother’s.
“Miss, the British Ministry of Magic does not arrange portkey schedules for the whims of one teenage witch, particularly at this busy time,” the wizard scolded pompously. “School is out, people are vacationing for the summer, World Cup preparations are underway, we have dignitaries and officials arriving and departing almost hourly, and you will have to go to the booking office and arrange something for another day. We are not in the business of accommodating last minute portkeys.”
“The British Ministry couldn’t organize their way out of a paper bag,” a man’s American-accented voice drawled behind her. “You should see the mess they’ve made of the World Cup housing arrangements. What have you done with the poor girl’s ticket?”
Hermione turned to see one of the American aurors had come up behind her. He was an older gruff faced man whose beard looked like he’d forgotten to shave for a week. Behind him, almost every eye in the room was either fixed on her, or carefully not looking at her in that really obvious way that meant they were listening to every word. Lovely. Just lovely.
The desk-wizard huffed.
“The young lady’s portkey has been cancelled because the departure time was needed for another portkey, and she was the only passenger. Unfortunately, the larger flow of international travel is more important than any single ticket.”
“This is Europe,” the American auror scoffed. “You’ve got Portkeys going off every fifteen minutes. If your Ministry can’t even manage to arrange pre-scheduled Portkey transit for one teenaged witch, I’m terrified to see what happens when you try to portkey in a few hundred thousand people a month from now. Will they all make it to England, or will we be fishing them out of the Pacific somewhere? Should MACUSA be putting out a travel advisory against attending the World Cup? Should we be arranging our own transit for the team, or are you going to leave them stranded to give the English team half a chance at being competitive?”
“After what I heard about a break in to the ball-storage room, I think a travel advisory may be wise, Auror Peters,” a woman’s French-accented voice sneered from behind them. “Graal! Whoever was responsible for arranging security on that building ought to be terminated immediately. I think the girl would be safer walking to Bulgaria than relying on the British Ministry.” Hermione turned and saw that a woman in the blue fleur-de-lis embroidered robes of the French aurors had joined them at the desk.
“We’ve significantly cut daily personal portkey schedules to accommodate all the official World Cup traffic. There are no empty spaces on portkeys departing this morning.” The desk wizard had gone from pompous and dismissive to shrill and defensive with the arrival of the aurors.
“Well, there’s room on our Portkey to Paris,” the French auror said, “since Simone has to stay for another week to deal with the mess your Ministry made of the security arrangements for referee accommodations. Surely even the British can figure out a connecting schedule from there, if London’s the only hang up.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” the desk wizard muttered and began flipping through a large book, muttering to himself. The aurors left, and Hermione found herself awkwardly hovering next to the desk, not sure what to do.
“Miss Granger,” the desk wizard finally called, and Hermione walked back in front of him.
“Thanks to the generosity of the French aurors, I’ve managed to make this work. You’ll even arrive one portkey early in Varna, so no need to fuss about anything. Now, normally we like to arrange 30 min between portkeys, but since this is a special case, you’ll just have to rush. You’ll take the 9:30 am portkey to Paris with the French ministry group, and then, fifteen minutes later, take the next portkey to Berlin. From Berlin, you’ll take the next portkey to Vienna, and then from Vienna, the next portkey to Varna. It’s a bit convoluted, but you should arrive at 12:15 pm Bulgarian time, or 10:15 am in London. You should be grateful – we normally don’t arrange same day multi-connection portkey tickets like this.” That pompous, lecturing tone was back in his voice. “And here’s the tickets,” he said, passing them over the desk to her.
“Thank you, sir,” Hermione said, biting her tongue about what she actually thought about the idea of needing to be grateful for arriving at her destination on time with a prearranged ticket.
“All settled, miss?” Auror Peters asked.
“I am, thank you so much for your help, Auror Peters, and yours, too,” Hermione said, turning and smiling at the French auror.
“My pleasure,” Auror Peters said, holding out a hand for her to shake.
“Auror Boncoeur,” the French auror said, holding her hand out to shake, too. “ I am pleased we could assist, mademoiselle. The British Ministry can be so inflexible.”
“Hermione Granger,” Hermione said. “So, are you both in England for the World cup?”
“Yes, of course,” Peters said. “Each country playing sends a team of aurors to inspect the arrangements prior to the event. This one’s been an absolute fu– uh – nightmare.”
“Wow. That seems like a lot of redundancy – is security so difficult to arrange?”
That startled a laugh out of both aurors.
“Oh, the World Cup’s horribly dangerous,” Peters said. “I love Quidditch, but I think every auror department in the world crosses their fingers that their country won’t be hosting. Imagine trying to hold the Statute of Secrecy on an event where we build a brand new Quidditch stadium, have a couple hundred thousand witches and wizards arrive from all over the world and camp out for weeks, and then party afterwards, win or lose. One of the British aurors was telling me they’ve already had to have the Obliviation Squad out to Dartmoor twenty-two times, and the spectators haven’t even started to arrive yet!”
“Yep, I’ve heard even the Ministry maintenance staff have been brought onto the obliviation team,” Boncoeur said.
“It’s probably why the desk-wizard’s such a - ” Peters paused, looking at Hermione “ -uh – unpleasantly officious and unhelpful person. He was probably working in records or something a month ago. And it’s not just the no-majs you have to worry about. So far the wards they've put up are such pieces of – uh – poorly executed workmanship - that they’ve caught someone sneaking in pretty much every day. Merlin only knows if there’ve been people they haven’t caught. I won’t be surprised if I see a memo that Sirius Black himself has been spotted at the stadium with how things are going.”
“And the riots – someone always tries to start one, win or lose,” Boncoeur added. “Bring a hundred thousand of the most sports-crazy wizards in the world together in one place, and what can you expect?”
“It’s really that dangerous of an event, then?” Hermione asked, suddenly second guessing her decision to go to Bulgaria. She remembered Frau Dobrenova’s letter, which mentioned injury pay and medical care, and came to the unpleasant realization that maybe that wasn’t just for form’s sake. Summer with her parents might be uncomfortable and a bit boring, but it wasn’t dangerous.
“Oh, yeah,” Peters said with relish. “Did you hear about the no-Majs up in Canada a couple weeks ago? The hockey finals? The home team lost and fifty thousand people rioted on the streets, smashed up a bunch of buildings, bunch of people injured. And that’s without magic, and for a far more boring game, and without the fans all being concentrated in campgrounds like here.”
“One year they tried to ban wands,” Eloise said. “The whole crowd flouted the rule, and the party afterwards was even worse than usual.”
“No auror wants to have their country host the world cup. Win the world cup, of course,” Peters said with a smirk, “but host? Never. I hope the US doesn’t host again until I’ve retired, and I’m not coming out of retirement to help no matter what they pay me.”
"
“Come now, mademoiselle,” Boncoeur said. “It’s time to catch the portkey.”
Auror Boncoeur led her to a group of blue-robed aurors, clustered around holding a rope.
“Just grab hold of the rope with one hand, and make sure you keep hold of everything you’re bringing with you. Here, I’ll hold your cat, people often fall the first time you take a portkey. It would be sad if you dropped such a handsome cat”
“Thank you,” Hermione said, handing the auror Crookshank’s carrier and grabbing the rope with one hand. “He’s unhappy about the carrier as it is.”
“Portkey from London to Paris, France, is now departing. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.”
As Hermione clutched the rope with all her might she felt an unpleasant tug deep in her belly and -
Paris, France – 10:30am (UTC+2)
- found herself stumbling forwards onto a different floor, in a different room. She looked around, shocked, at the large heavily guilded room that rather reminded her of a tour she’d taken with her parents of the ballroom at Versailles, and winced at the sudden nausea, feeling a bit light headed.
Eloise handed her back her cat. “See? Simple. Just a bit unpleasant,” she said, and fished in her robe pocket. “Come this way to the departure area.”
She pulled two wrapped candies from her pocket and handed Hermione one. “Eat this, ought to settle your stomach. Portkey travel gets better once you’re used to it, but it always leaves your stomach unhappy.”
Hermione took it and stuffed it in her mouth. An explosion of mint hit her tongue and sure enough, the roiling of her stomach subsided at least a little.
Eloise helped her give her next ticket to the desk wizard, who gestured her to the next rope for the departure to Berlin where three dourly dressed older wizards were already waiting.
“Bon courage, Mademoiselle Granger,” Auror Boncoeur said as Hermione grabbed hold of the rope with the hand holding her cat and gripped her trunk handle firmly in her other hand.
“Je vous remercie, Auror Boncoeur,” Hermione replied.
And it was time to go - “Le portoloin de Paris à Berlin, en Allemagne, va partir maintenant. Dix, neuf, huit, sept, six, cinq, quatre, trois, deux, un.”
She felt that tug in her stomach (was it WORSE this time?) -
Berlin, Germany – 10:45 am (UTC+2)
- and landed, stumbling forward one step, and stood there, dizzy and nauseous, staring at the black and white marble floor tiles, Crookshanks yowling up a storm in protest, and she murmured incoherrently to him, trying to soothe him. “Sorry boy – sorry- I know it’s awful- halfway there-”
“Bitte verlassen Sie den Ankunftsbereich” she heard someone scold her, and she reflexively grabbed her trunk and her cat and trudged out of the way. She found the departure area and presented her ticket and was informed by the stern-faced desk witch that the portkey was running late.
How could a PORTKEY run late? Weren’t they supposed to be arithmantic constructions, made for a schedule usually weeks in advance? Were they making it now? Was that safe? But, if she didn’t take it, what on earth was she going to do? And if it was running late, would she, after all of this, miss her final ticket to Bulgaria? She tried to say something about it, and the desk witch informed her unsympathetically that there was a reason that portkeys were supposed to be scheduled 30 min apart.
11 am found Hermione standing, holding the departure rope next to a brown-robed witch, shifting on her feet, alternately balling and relaxing her hands. She HATED feeling out of control. And oh, how she wished she had another one of those mint pastilles that the French auror had given her. The acid in her stomach was rolling, and the stress was NOT helping it settle.
At 11:03, an elaborately dressed wizard (really, was that a gold brocade robe?! It looked like something Lucius Malfoy would wear) strolled into the departure zone and presented his ticket to the suddenly obsequious desk witch. (Was that a flash of gold in the witch’s hand, had he bribed her?! The nerve of the man!)
He sauntered over to the departure area and picked up his end of the rope.
“Der Portschlüssel von Berlin nach Wien, Österreich wird jetzt abreisen. Zehn, neun, acht, sieben, sechs, fünf, vier, drei, zwei, eins...“
Hermione felt that now familiarly sickening pull in her stomach-
Vienna, Austria – 11:06 am (UTC+2)
- and promptly fell on her rear, landing with her arm against the sharp corner of her trunk. Definitely going to bruise. She stood too quickly, bent over, and had to swallow a few times to down the vomit in her throat. She glanced around, eyes dizzy and unfocused, and finally found the sign for Abflug.
She, the trunk, and the cat, stumbled over to the departures area and handed the last ticket to the witch behind the desk. Poor Crooks was meowing pitifully, quietly, like he didn’t even have the strength to cry.
The witch was scolding her for being late, or something like that (Hermione’s German was good, but her brain was too spinny for an exact translation), and followed the hand the witch gestured with to where four people were already clutching a rope.
Hermione grabbed an end of the rope one more time. Rope and cat carrier in one hand, trunk handle in the other. Was her head always this heavy? And oh, her mouth tasted awful, she wished she had time to brush her teeth, although right now, she wasn’t sure if she could handle the taste of toothpaste without throwing up.
“Die Reise von Wien nach Varna, Bulgarien, beginnt jetzt. Zehn, neun, acht, sieben, sechs, fünf, vier, drei, zwei, eins ...”
She felt the tug and pull in her stomach -
Varna, Bulgaria – 12:15 (UTC+3)
- and she dropped to the floor, on her hands and knees, and promptly vomitted, face hidden by the curtain of her hair. Beside her, she heard a forlorn yowl, more retching, and smelled partially digested fish as Crookshanks vomitted too. The smell hit her nose, and she found herself vomitting again.