It was a dark and stormy night*.

Very stormy, in fact.

One of those storms that goes down in history, in tales, in the bottom of alcoholic drinks that make moonshine vodka look like breast milk.

One of those storms that make writers wet (regardless of vicinity), Hollywood directors salivate, and their Visual Effects artists drop their heads in despair.

One of those storms that reaches out into the depths of the oceans like a rabid niffler and picks up random pieces of junk (squids, fish, anchors, buried treasure, immensely smelly old boots hosting a microbiologist's paradise) and brings them to the surface. Some of them reach the beach.

Dum. De. Dum.

The storm is over now. There is a squid on the beach. It's a small one. And dead and destined for a bright future in a Chinese restaurant.

However, there are none in the vicinity, certainly none close enough to get here before the small squid becomes a feast for the gulls and various little creatures burrowed in the sand.

Forget the squid, then. It's not interesting.

Curious word, interesting.

May you live in interesting times.

May you meet interesting people.

There is absolutely no way in hell that the small woman on the beach is interesting. Even if she is completely dry. Even if she is heaving and drawing huge breaths that suggest she hasn't been doing it for a couple of centuries.

Wait.

What?

Hmm. Actually, if she hasn't been breathing for a couple of centuries, then she would be interesting.

But it's only been two or three decades, so that's not interesting.

Still, she's the only thing on the beach that's moving, and since it's still a few hours before the soaps start on the telly, we might as well keep watching.

There's a large crystal a few feet from her. It's cracked.

No connection to the uninteresting woman whatsoever.

Which might make it interesting.

Perhaps a closer look will help.

Besides, the woman has gone unconscious again. She's dressed in a fading yellow t-shirt and comfortable black cargo pants, and therefore has no sense of interesting fashion taste. Never mind the fact that her clothes are dry despite her having emerged from the water's depths - she is fundamentally uninteresting.

Forget about her.

Or else.

Or else something. Never mind what, that's not your concern. If you can't recognize a good threatening threat when you see one, you have no right to be unthreatened.

And get those damn eyebrows down.

There's still a crystal here, and if you don't stop smirking, you won't be told what it is.

Silent now? Good. Remain that way. Virtuous, that is. Silence is a virtue, even outside movie theaters.

It is an old storage crystal. You can tell - that's a generic you, mind, not a you you - by the markings near its edges. You can also tell that it's a not a genuine Ashekeri crystal, but a cheap knock-off. Probably made in some backwater place like Maputo or London.

So maybe the woman is interesting after all. She must have been stored in it. For twenty years, maybe thirty. Perhaps that was longer than her captor intended. More likely, shorter.

Still, she's probably going to die on the beach anyway, so it's hardly relevant.

* Phrase copyright Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1830. Also see the works of C. M. Schulz, 1965.

It is common knowledge, admittedly to an uncommon few in 2020 (that's a year, not hindsight), that the absence of Chinese takeout within delivery distance does not imply the absence of humans.

This would explain why we are in a house now, watching an elderly - but spry! active! capable of causing major owies! and making Beef Welly to die for! - couple take care of our uninteresting washed up brunette.

Ours? Wait. She's not ours. We only own, have, are in possession of interesting things, people, personalities. See above.

It's a cliched scene, the old woman sitting on the side of her bed trying to feed the young woman some broth, the old man standing in the doorway radiating concern.

This takes the concept of Uninteresting to new heights.

Banks. Banks are cool. Lots of animals come here, and drink, and feed, sometimes on each other.

Sadly, this is a goblin bank and not a river bank. The only thing cool here has to do with the temperature control.

And while the goblins would probably - in another age - be perfectly happy to attack their human clientele, this is not considered proper behaviour nowadays. Bad for the Corporate Goblin Image and all that.

Damn. It's her again.

Still, it's an uninteresting woman in an uninteresting place. Guaranteed to be uninteresting.

With that established, we may as well watch.

She's looking better than the last time we saw her. Short hair, alert eyes, firm chin, strong strides as she marches to the end of a line. She observes everyone as she waits in line.

Most people here are dressed in a Muggle manner and using those little communication devices. No wonder she's watching them. Technology has come a long way since she was last flesh and blood.

Now she's talking to the bubbly teenager in front of her, who seems most willing to tell her all about her new Zygonis PI-413. Or maybe it's a Genie G9. (It's not like someone like you would know the difference.) She seems impressed by its myriad functions, though perhaps not for the reasons the teenager thinks.

Perhaps a surface scan of her thoughts is in order.

Oh.

She's British. That explains a lot, crappy storage crystal making included. She's impressed by the fact that an electronic device working at all in a magical bank. That problem was solved fifty years ago. But Britain, being the primitive anti-Muggle country it is, never bothered investing much in the wards that made that possible.

Well, she'll learn. This isn't Merry Olde England (or Scotland or Wales or that really cool place that noone calls GeorgeBestLand even though they should).

She finally gets to the front of the line, having been given a crash course in modern telecommunications and jargon by the mile-a-minute poster child for Teen Witch Hourly.

She has no identification on her but her blood, but that is all the goblins need. Apparently she has an account here, here being the bank, even if the original branch was far, far, far away. If the goblin is surprised by the fact that this is the first time it's been accessed in years, he shows no signs of it. At least no signs that a pitiful human can recognize.

Perhaps she's not so pitiful after all, because she mentions something about 'It's a long story' and even shares a laugh with the differently figured sentient being. An old marm elsewhere in the bank faints, but noone notices, except for the guy in the line behind her, who rudely takes her place before bending down to offer assistance.

It had been a hard month for Hermione. Just five weeks ago, she'd been a happy young woman, engaged to the love of her life. The war was over, she didn't have to be constantly on guard any more. And that had cost her. So much.

That bitch - she'd trusted her! - had caught her unawares. Trapped her. For twenty effing years. And the bitch had won.

Her fiance hadn't waited for her. She could hardly blame him - and didn't - he'd been told she was dead, according to the news reports. Everyone thought she was dead. He'd waited three years before he'd married someone else. But much as her head knew he wasn't to blame, her heart was still angry. Broken.

She wondered if 'Heartbreak for Dummies' had been written yet. The number of Dummies books must surely have multiplied exponentially over the years. Still, it was unlikely that 'Heartbreak for Dummies That Have Been Asleep For Decades' was among the new titles.

The worst thing was - of all people Harry Potter could have married, did it have to be the fangirl? Perhaps Ginny had grown up a little. Hermione hoped so. Harry was a good man, if a little slow on the emotional uptake (Dursleys and Dumbles be Damned!) and she had hoped he would end up with someone who wanted Harry and not the Boy Who Lived. She would have recommended Luna herself, for all the nonsense that the girl spouted.

Well.

Going to say hello to her former lover wasn't an option. He was a family man now, happily married by all accounts. It would destabilize his family - his kids. She would not play the role of home breaker. That sort of the role was reserved for the bitch - who had now got everything she wanted and would never get punished.

Hermione felt a smackerel of remorse. She liked dogs. She should stop insulting them by comparing them to the b--

The brunette Brit sits on the park bench. She is eating a kebab. She seems to be enjoying it. Perhaps she's never had one before. It's not a healthy food, she seems the healthy type.

How would I know that?

I know everything.

Everything that's worth knowing. If I don't know it, it ain't worth knowing.

I wonder what she's thinking about.

Surface scan... gorram! ... she's got mental shields up. Occlumency, most likely, judging by the nature of her mental walls. She must have detected the previous scan.

Well, there's only one thing for it.

Ask her.

Hermione was wiping her face with a napkin when she saw it.

Blue furry creature at twelve o'clock. Fox with wings. Translucent. Shimmering.

Luna had showed her books of imaginary creatures once.

The fox had horns too. Very crumpled looking horns.

Oh fuckity crap.

This was bad.

She put her head in her hands and groaned. As she was still holding a messy damp napkin, this was a singularly bad idea.

How unusual. The normal reaction when he showed himself to humans was for them to squeal, ignore him, or - most commonly - have another drink.

Not to go muttering, over and over again, "Luna's never going to let me hear the end of this."

Her short hair was now unhappily mixed with cucumber sauce from the napkin. He waved a paw to vanish it.

Perhaps an introduction was in order.

In her mother tongue. As was customary.

"Good afternoon, Miss Granger," he said in Welsh.

Hermione looked up. The fox - snorkack! - was speaking.

"Hi," she muttered. "I don't suppose you know Luna Lilandra Lovegood, do you?"

The snorkack cocked his head. "No. Friend of yours?"

"Never mind," sighed Hermione. "You're a figment of my imagination, aren't you?"

"Your imagination isn't this good."

The witch blinked. "You don't exist."

"Yet here I am."

"I wonder what they put in that kebab?" mused Hermione.

"What were you thinking about ten minutes ago?"

"Maybe they put hallucinogens in all food nowadays. The new MSG?"

"Hello?"

"Maybe people are so bored nowadays that they only eat stuff that makes them see things. I wonder how long it lasts."

It was a sign of her general out-of-it-ness that Hermione didn't notice that the snorkack was in her face till his snout was inches from her nose. She squealed, leaping up, and entered the lists of Crazy People To Avoid in the minds of more than one of the people walking by.

"Now," said the fox-like creature, "why don't we take this little conversation somewhere a little less public, hm?"

Hermione blinked. "You mean, follow you?"

"You got anything else on your social calendar, ducks?"

Hermione considered this. She was already getting over the possibility of a certain ditzy blonde not being totally nuts. It was nothing compared to the shock of being locked away for decades, when you stopped to think about it. She looked at the snorkack again. It was still blue, winged, and foxy. All of which clearly inspired trust in her pink-brown-skinned acrophobic feline-inclined self.

"Promise not to eat me?"

"I can't eat you if I don't exist."

"Oh, alright then."