Chapter Text
"Yes Mom, I’m here. I made it. It's totally fine," Hermione said, currently locked in a deadly wrestling match with her new front door key. She was holding her cell phone awkwardly between her shoulder and her ear because her AirPods had tragically died on her. She had charged them just yesterday. Clearly, the universe was testing her.
Moving off-campus from her dorm was supposed to feel like a monumental leap into independent womanhood, but it didn’t quite feel like it counted when the house belonged to her parents.
Yes, her parents had a spare home in California. In fact, they had several spare homes, most of which were apartments rented out to students, tech professionals, lifestyle influencers, and people who listed their occupation as "Visionary." That was just the kind of real estate empire an aesthetic dental practice in Los Angeles afforded you. All the rich and the beautiful wanted perfect veneers, and the Drs. Granger were absolute undisputed royalty of the Hollywood smile.
Because of their own glamorous success, they couldn't entirely grasp why Hermione was pushing herself so hard. It would have made far more sense for her to just go to dental school, inherit the family practice, and spend her weekends yachting. But they loved her, so they supported her eccentric desire to spend eighty hours a week in a lab coat.
And so, she found herself in Malibu. It was a modest, two-bedroom independent house built in a gorgeous Spanish style, complete with a spectacular sea view and a small, impeccably manicured garden. It was entirely at odds with her childhood in Beverly Hills or her rigorous, high-stress undergraduate experience at Stanford. It was aggressively quiet.
The front door finally clicked open. Inside, everything was pristine. Her mom had obviously hired a premium maid service to deep-clean before her arrival, and Hermione felt a familiar prickle of overachiever resentment. She wanted so badly to make her own way in the world, but her parents simply didn’t understand that "letting go" didn't involve hiring a professional organizer to color-coordinate her pantry.
She dropped her keys into the ceramic bowl in the hallway and entered the living room. There wasn't a single speck of dust on the tiles. When she opened the fridge, she found it fully stocked with artisanal, organic groceries and pre-pressed juices.
Hermione sighed, trying to shake off the irritation. Focus on the goal, she reminded herself. At least her MD-PhD coursework at UCLA promised to be intellectually brutal. She had been chosen to work directly in Professor Elias Arnold's lab. He was a Nobel Prize winner, a towering giant in neuro-signaling, and she was incredibly earnest about proving she belonged there. She couldn't wait to spend the evening reading up on his latest research papers before dinner.
Walking back out to the driveway, Hermione opened the boot of her pristine white Audi—another luxury her parents had practically forced upon her—and began pulling out her suitcases. Only one contained her clothes. The other, significantly heavier one was packed to the absolute brim with research papers, binders, and medical textbooks.
As she hauled the heavy case toward the porch, the neighboring yard suddenly flooded with warm, golden, strategically placed ambient lighting. A second later, the deep, rhythmic drone of a yoga chant echoed through the evening air. Her neighbor had clearly installed high-end, invisible outdoor speakers throughout his property.
The man himself stepped out onto a manicured lawn, carrying a professional tripod and a camera, which he placed onto a custom-built platform. Hermione paused, staring over her heavy suitcase. In this neighborhood, everyone was some kind of minor celebrity, but this man looked strangely familiar.
He was striking, though far from the typical blonde, tan Malibu mold. He had straight, ink-black hair that fell past his jaw, an olive-toned complexion, sharp, angular features, and a prominent, hooked nose. He was dressed entirely in relaxed, high-end luxury: an unbuttoned white linen shirt, loose drawstring pants, and white slip-on shoes. He looked like an ad for an expensive Mediterranean cruise.
As his virtual session screen booted up—projected seamlessly without a laptop in sight, of course—he happened to glance across the manicured hedge dividing their properties. Catching her eye, he flashed a warm, practiced, and thoroughly brainless smile. To Hermione's trained eyes, however, one thing stood out: his teeth weren't perfectly whitened, and they were slightly crooked. It was the only unpolished, un-vetted thing about his entire aesthetic.
Then, the camera clicked live. The man spoke into his microphone, his voice a shockingly deep, resonant baritone.
"Welcome, everyone, to tonight's Yoga and Wellness session. I hope that by the end of our time together, you will be surrounded by strong, positive vibes, and fully energized to manifest your deepest desires. Let us begin."
Hermione’s jaw dropped as recognition finally flashed in her mind.
It was Severus Snape. The incredibly wealthy, wildly famous retired runway model turned celebrity wellness guru. The man was a staple on daytime talk shows, preaching mindfulness, hosting manifestation retreats, and selling overpriced green powders to the Hollywood elite.
To Hermione, he was the ultimate quack.
As he transitioned effortlessly into a flawlessly balanced tree pose—all while maintaining eye contact with the camera and speaking in that ridiculously soothing, hypnotic baritone—Hermione couldn't help but roll her eyes. Loudly. This was exactly what was wrong with Los Angeles. Here she was, sweating through her pastel blazer, hauling a hundred pounds of legitimate medical literature to advance human knowledge, and her neighbor was getting paid millions to tell people to breathe through their third eye.
Determined to ignore the spiritual toxic positivity radiating across the hedge, she gave her heavy suitcase a violent yank.
Crack.
One of the plastic wheels snapped clean off against the edge of the stone walkway. The suitcase listed heavily to the side, completely off-balance, and tipped over, dragging Hermione down with it. The zipper, stressed to its absolute limit by the sheer volume of unbound research papers, gave way with a dramatic shhhwack.
In an instant, three years of meticulously organized academic achievement became a Malibu lawn ornament. Binders burst open. Highlighting markers rolled into the dirt. A stack of papers on advanced neural pathways caught the ocean breeze and began drifting gracefully toward the hedge.
"Oh, you have got to be kidding me!" Hermione gasped, dropping to her knees and frantically scrambling to catch a runaway chapter on brain-stem anomalies before it landed in her neighbor's immaculate lavender bushes.
Across the hedge, the chanting abruptly stopped.
"And... exhale, my beautiful souls," Snape’s deep voice resonated through the garden, though it sounded slightly distracted now. "Take a moment to center yourselves in lotus pose while I... clear a brief energetic blockage in the immediate vicinity."
Hermione froze, a handful of dirt-smudged papers clutched to her chest, as she heard the soft rustle of linen approaching the hedge.