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Dear Miss Hermione Jean Granger,
The British Scholarship Committee thanks you for your application and is pleased to inform that a favourable decision has been made regarding your funding request.
Your Master’s studies in Healing (specialisation: Mental Disorders) will take place at the Occitan Academy of Healing under the guidance of Monsieur Guillaume Changeux, following your stated preferences. Classes will commence in two months, on 2 October 2000. You are kindly requested to arrive in advance for campus accommodation and adaptation to academic life, no later than 30 September, but no earlier than the 18th. An international Portkey with an open date, further instructions, and a list of necessary items will be sent to you in early September.
The Committee would also like to note that your attached motivation letter was assessed anonymously under the application review policy and made a lasting impression on one of the programme’s principal sponsors, who has chosen to remain anonymous. He has elected to undertake full sponsorship of your education, including the accommodation cost, the three-year course of lectures required for certification, and a weekly allowance of five Galleons. The sole condition, that you are already aware of, is a monthly informal report on your studies and life abroad. This should be sent by owl post to Cassius Quiritus before the 25th of each month. In addition, in light of your exceptional learning aptitude noted in your résumé, your sponsor has requested the inclusion of a supplementary specialisation in Palliative Care. We hope this secondary programme proves to be just as engaging as your primary field.
Once again, congratulations on your acceptance. We wish you every success in your pursuit of a Master’s degree.
Emily Vole
Chair of British Scholarship Committee
Department of Magical Education
Ministry of Magic, United Kingdom
Hermione looked up at Minerva McGonagall and froze.
“They… they accepted me?”
The professor gave her a weary smile.
“Yes, my dear, and you know perfectly well that no one deserves it more than you.”
“It says I must study Palliative Care at the sponsor’s request…”
“Unfortunately. Such conditions are standard—those who foot the bill set the terms. Thank Merlin, he at least honoured your preferred specialisation, Hermione.”
“You know who he is?”
“We discussed your departure just before you came in. I can’t say I’m fond of his character, but better this than ending up as Argus’s assistant. Please abide by the programme’s terms and don’t expect any correspondence—your sponsor is the sort who sees no point in wasting words. Should any matter arise that requires his involvement, you’ll communicate with his secretary, Monsieur Hervier.”
McGonagall seemed about to say more, but merely shook her head and sighed.
“I believe in you, my girl. Remember, you can always write to me, too.”
Hermione smiled and gently clasped the dry, wrinkled hand that, ten minutes earlier, had given her a ticket to a new life.
“Thank you, Professor McGonagall. You’ve already helped me so much—with the application, the accommodation, everything…”
She barely remembered descending the staircase from the Head’s office, past the gargoyles, the corridor of doors, and out into the sunset-drenched viaduct.
Imagine that—even a stipend…
In the south tower beneath the roof, it was so stifling that even open windows offered no relief. Hermione shrugged off the plain dress she had worn to visit the Headmistress and collapsed onto the bed, utterly spent.
The day would not end. From morning until the start of the reception, Hermione had helped the house-elves and a much-diminished Filch prepare the castle for the sponsor’s gala—Hogwarts still required investment, even two years after the final battle. So did many others, left homeless and penniless under Voldemort’s regime. And no matter how much Hermione tried to ignore it, she was one of them: the Order of Merlin came with no monetary reward, just a handshake and a mumbled “no funding, but good luck,” followed by a job offer in the Ministry archives—at a meagre one and a half Galleons a week. Her parents were still somewhere in Australia, and, understandably, no word had come, making it rather difficult to support their non-existent daughter. Harry’s money was his, and burdening the already struggling Weasleys…
So Hermione had finished her final year at Hogwarts—free tuition, board, access to the library, and all the small joys of school life she had almost forgotten after a year on the run. She passed her examinations and then begged McGonagall for a post as an assistant. But such positions never exist, and the Ministry outright refused to create one. Thus, “the brightest witch of her age,” once the daughter of middle-upper-class London dentists, became something between a live-in house-elf and a guest of the Headmistress.
The Ministry’s gifted youth support programme offered her a glimmer of hope: training in Mind Healing, necessary both for lifting the Obliviation and… well, the story was an old one: “Physician, heal thyself.” All that remained were the formalities: nine N.E.W.T.s, references from Minerva, Poppy, and Filius. And of course, the notorious motivation letter—a scathing pamphlet on modern society, nearly all of it gripped by PTSD, yet stubbornly focused on trivialities to avoid facing reality. Complex traumas, near-fatal bites, lingering curses—St Mungo’s could treat them all, yet no one dared address the mind—fear of prying too deeply, especially when the Ministry now frowned upon Legilimency. No diagnosis, no treatment. No treatment—another Dark Lord rises while everyone buries their heads in the sand. A decade on, the same pattern repeats, scarring a new generation of children thrust into war beside adults. Then comes sleeping draught abuse, reckless habits, adrenaline addiction, fresh crimes, scores of victims. The rot starts at the top—both figuratively and literally.
Which made it all the more astonishing that someone with access to ancient, bottomless vaults found the letter compelling rather than offensive. An extraordinary figure—McGonagall had described him aptly. Hermione had glimpsed the sponsor’s shadow through a crack in the office door: the hem of a robe like folded wings, a predatory profile—part Occamy, part common bat. Curse this mutual anonymity.
Hermione lay staring at the ceiling, wondering who could need palliative care so badly that they would sponsor the training of a Healer. Some French magnate? In Britain, no one remained incurably ill post-war: wizards either died quickly or recovered.
The sun had long since set, and the air thickened into a hazy summer dusk. Hogwarts slumbered; its slow, sleepy breath stirred the curtains—phantoms of French flags against the stone ceiling. The last glimmers of red, gauzy tulle, and Ravenclaw-blue drapes—the lingering traces of former room décor.
There were still forty-four days before the move to Montpellier, and Hermione already couldn’t sleep.