The Dentists' Daughter

"Happy Birthday, honey!" were the first words Hermione Granger heard as she woke up on Wednesday, the 19th of September, 1990. It was her mother, interrupting a wonderful dream the newly eleven-year-old girl had been having. In the dream, she was in a magnificent library that had books on all sorts of strange subjects. She was just beginning to explore the section on magical transformation when she was awakened. If it had not been a school day, she might have finished her dream — and her birthday party would not have been delayed until the following Saturday.

"Oh, Mum, can't I sleep just a little longer? It is my birthday, after all," implored Hermione.

"Nope. Rise and shine. Your dad's making your favorite breakfast, and you won't want to eat it cold, will you?" responded her mother, who hurried back to her bedroom to finish getting dressed herself.

Hermione yawned and stretched. It doesn't feel any different to be eleven, she thought, as she slowly got out of bed and wandered over to her closet to pick out clothes for the day. After pawing through several tops and a few pairs of jeans, she settled on a red top and brown jeans. The still-sleepy girl yawned again, thinking to herself that she should not have stayed up reading so late. She managed to get dressed in the top and jeans that she had chosen, and then picked up her hair brush and looked into her full-length mirror.

The girl who looked back at her was not short but she was not tall, either. She was not skinny and not fat, not terribly ugly or startlingly beautiful. In all respects the girl in the mirror looked, well, ordinary. Except for her hair and her teeth. Her hair was not blonde or auburn or ginger or black, not sleek or wavy, but brown and very bushy. Her teeth were also unusual, in that they were larger than average and stuck out a bit further than she would have liked. If I only had a magic wand, I would sort these teeth out, she thought to herself, and not have to get braces like Mum and Dad want. They were both dentists, so she did not expect to escape the braces for much longer.

Hermione made a valiant effort with the brush to force her hair into a semblance of normality, then headed for the kitchen, from which were wafting the wonderful smells of breakfast.

In the kitchen her dad, a man of medium height and build, was wearing an apron and humming contentedly as he cooked his specialty: buttermilk crepes with fresh blueberries, which Hermione had requested for her birthday. The hot crepes with whipped cream and Vermont maple syrup were her favorite breakfast. With dentists for parents, Hermione didn't get such a sweet breakfast often.

"Mmm, the crepes smell so good!" enthused Hermione. "I'm so hungry I could eat about ten!" she continued, as she took a seat at the breakfast table.

"We'll see about that!" replied Alfred Granger. "How about two to start with?" he asked, carefully placing two hot crepes on Hermione's plate. "There are blueberries in the bowl, butter in the butter dish, maple syrup in the pitcher, and whipped cream in that other bowl. Pour yourself some milk — it has calcium, which is ..."

"Important for healthy bones and teeth," Hermione finished for him. "Anyway, there's calcium in the whipped cream, isn't there?"

Hermione's mum came into the kitchen and took her seat next to Hermione. She was fairly tall for a woman, slender and fit. Hermione had always thought her elegant. Why, she even looked good when wearing her dentist costume, as Hermione liked to call the clothes her mother wore while tending to people's teeth.

"Those crepes smell delicious, Alfred," Harriet Granger said to her husband. "I'm glad that Hermione asked you to make them. I suppose one morning of indulgence will not negate 364 days of being careful about her diet."

"Quite right, Harriet," he answered, smiling at his wife.

"Oh, mum, look at all the healthful things I'm eating," said Hermione. "See, I've taken loads of blueberries and a big glass of milk."

Alfred Granger served his wife and himself the crepes that he had been keeping warm in the oven. How fortunate I am, he said to himself, to share my life with these two wonderful people. It's a pleasure to do something for them that they both enjoy. If only Hermione would not resist getting braces! After they came off and her teeth did not embarrass her any longer, she would be glad she had had braces, he thought. Her hair is a different matter. She has her mother's hair, and I think it looks great!

On Wednesdays her dad had to see the early patients, so her mum drove her to school. Harriet Granger had a pleasant manner that masked her inner drive to eradicate tooth decay in all of Britain, beginning with their own town of East Molar. Hermione was proud of both her parents, but she especially admired her mother's determination to better the lot of her fellow citizens through public advocacy.

Hermione liked going to school because she enjoyed learning new things, especially in math and science. She was especially fascinated by a book she had found in the library called Powers of Ten, which showed pictures of things ranging in size from subatomic particles to the whole universe. She wanted to understand how everything worked. She wondered why the sun shone so brightly. She wondered how caterpillars turned into butterflies. She wondered how airplanes could stay in the air. So many things seemed amazing, almost magical.

Hermione's day at East Molar Junior School began in the typical fashion. She put most of her books in her locker and chatted with her friends, Susie Adams and Meghan Murphy, about a new boy, Jason Pimberley, in their year. Susie and Meghan said he was cute, with wavy blonde hair, a ready smile, and a sly sense of humor, but Hermione thought he used his wit to make fun of people.

Hermione was a hall monitor, a responsibility she relished, since she really thought everyone should follow all the school rules, just as she did. For an eleven-year-old girl, she was more than a bit of a control freak.

"Hey, Michael," she said reprovingly, as one of the third-year students hurtled past her. "Slow down! You know there's no running in the halls. Save it for the playground."

A few minutes later, a couple of girls came around the corner from the cafeteria, laughing uproariously at something or other.

"Mildred! Samantha!" Hermione called out. "Would you please hold it down? Teachers are already in their classrooms, getting ready for the day. They don't need to be distracted by you lot!"

"Oh, Hermione," retorted Mildred, "You're such a busybody. Relax a bit, will you? We were just having a laugh about something my stupid brother did this morning."

Mildred's comment annoyed Hermione, but she realized that many people did think her too bossy for their liking. She tried not to annoy them, but when they broke the rules, it was her job to make them behave. At least, that's how she saw the situation.

The girls' first class was science. For all of September they had been studying astronomy. Their teacher, Mr. Flaska, was an enthusiastic older man and Hermione's favorite teacher. He had explained how ancient peoples first looked to the stars for guidance on when to plant their crops. He also told the class how astronomy differed from astrology, which consisted of superstitions that people had about using stars and planets to predict the future.

"If anybody offers to tell your fortune by consulting a horoscope, run the other way. You don't want their ignorance to rub off on you!" Mr. Flaska admonished them.

Hermione thought that was going a bit far. Some of her friends, like Meghan, liked to follow their horoscopes in the newspaper, but Meghan had never managed to convince Hermione to pay any attention to that part of the paper.

Today Mr. Flaska was telling the class about how stars are born, live, and die. Hermione was interested that the largest stars have the shortest lives and die in enormous explosions called supernovae.

"When a giant star explodes, most of its material is ejected into the space around it," said Mr. Flaska. "This material includes elements like carbon, oxygen, and iron. Almost all the elements in your body were formed in large stars and then scattered by their explosions. You are made of stardust."

"How romantic!" sighed Meghan. "I am made of stardust!"

"Mr. Flaska," said Hermione, raising her hand, "I read that even giant stars cannot form elements heavier than iron, since the iron nucleus is the most strongly held together. So where did the elements like uranium that are heavier than iron come from?"

"That is an excellent question, Hermione!" exclaimed Mr. Flaska. "The problem with fusing elements heavier than iron is that the reactions consume more energy than they release. However, in a supernova explosion there is a lot of energy available. The temperatures and pressures are so great that elements even heavier than iron can be formed by nuclear fusion. All of these elements are also part of the material flung into space by the explosion."

"So, Mr. Flaska," said Susie, "does any of this have to do with black holes?"

Questions like this were one reason that Hermione liked Susie so much. She was always making interesting connections between ideas she had heard.

"Oh, yes, Susie!" answered Mr. Flaska. "When the core of a giant star has run out of fuel, it cannot produce enough energy to resist the force of gravity and it collapses under its own weight. If the core is big enough, it may form a black hole, from which nothing, not even light, can escape."

After class was over, Hermione, Susie, and even Meghan were enthusiastically discussing what they had just learned about supernovae and black holes. Just then, Jason came out of the classroom, followed by a few of his friends, Buster, Kyle, and Mark. When he spotted the three girls, he began to strut a bit.

"Look, boys, it's Hermione, the bucktoothed wonder! Hey! Hermione! Your parents must be lousy dentists for you to have teeth like that!"

Hermione's face flushed and her eyes flashed. Her prominent teeth were the two things about which she was most self-conscious. "Jason, you're a walking blonde joke," she retorted contemptuously.

Her friends laughed nervously. Hermione's anger was growing. She really didn't like people insulting her parents, either. As Hermione glared at Jason, his turtleneck sweater suddenly began to shrink, getting tighter and tighter around his neck. His face turned blue, and he collapsed at the feet of his buddies.

This was not the first time that someone who had angered Hermione suffered a strange affliction, but every time it happened it frightened her. This time, as Jason lay motionless on the cold floor, Hermione was really scared. After a very tense minute or so, the sweater began to shrink back to its normal size and in a few more seconds Jason regained consciousness.

"What happened?" he asked his friends.

Buster said, "Hermione looked at you real funny, and then your sweater began to choke you!"

"There's something dangerously weird about Hermione," said Kyle.

"That's ridiculous!" Susie said, springing to Hermione's defense. "How could Hermione have made Jason's sweater shrink? I think he was faking it."

But Hermione knew that Jason was not faking it. She had wanted to choke him, and the sweater had seemed to bend to her will. The incident bothered her for the rest of the school day, and she worried that Susie and Meghan were avoiding her.

After school that day, Hermione was waiting for her dad to pick her up when she saw him approaching in their family car. Someone was with him. This was most unusual. Hermione always looked forward to telling her mum or dad about the interesting things she had learned in school on their way home, and she was worried that whoever was in the car with her dad would interfere with her plan to talk with her dad about supernovae, nuclear synthesis, and black holes. She need not have worried. She would soon forget her plan.