Partially Kissed Hero

Partially Kissed Hero

Chapter Forty-Three

by Lionheart

I I I

Anyone asking questions regarding the KFC of combo harvester didn't read my last chapter. Here, I'll quote for you: "The affect of fairies on technology does not have to be obvious, instant or immediate (though it can be all of those things) and it certainly is not universal."

I I I

Hogwarts castle was truly ancient. Similar muggle structures were all fairly young, by comparison. Most of the truly ancient ones had been destroyed by lightning blasting them apart and burning them down through the ages. It was a real problem back before Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning rod in the 18th Century. Countless old castles were simply ruins, scattered stones tossed about like bombs because of powerful lightning strikes during storms.

But lightning never struck Hogwarts. The wizards didn't know why, they'd just never had that problem. And, after all, the attitude of "any problem I can safely ignore is not a problem" had been prevalent for a long time - and not just among wizards.

While they reentered this ancient edifice, two barely recognizable furry blurs raced passed the children at maximum velocity.

The kids could not help themselves and glanced back the way they'd come, wondering if a film projector was chasing them.

"I could almost convince myself one of those two cats was McGonagall," Hermione spoke with an odd lilt to her voice, unable to shake the strangeness of the moment.

"C'mon," Harry grabbed her arm and kindly towed her along. "We'll be late for Divination class."

This further strangeness did not help Hermione in the slightest. "I find it so odd that we're still having that class, in spite of the teacher going missing."

Harry shrugged. Hermione/Trelawney had managed to impress quite a large number of the students. Strangely, most students who'd had her class this year were already missing her.

However, Hermione for one was unsurprised that most of those students had taken great care to get their Divination homework done on time and properly, taking it for granted the teacher would know in spite of her absence, and somehow sure their grades would be marked appropriately.

What neither child knew was that Fred and George had seen Trelawney nip off into the forest and not come back. So those two were playing pranks on the school by skipping up to her tower every morning to write assignments on the board - with the ultimate challenge that whoever found their teacher got a free 'O' for the year.

Dumbledore knew those two Weasleys were doing this, but frankly couldn't spare the time from his other emergencies to deal with the matter himself; so he was quite happy to let their pranks continue for a time, as it concealed an issue he'd otherwise have to take time out to correct personally.

He just didn't have the time to find or hire a new Divination teacher at this moment. And worse yet, finding one who could fill both Trelawney's shoes as a true oracle yet incompetent teacher would be all but impossible.

At the moment, he didn't even have the time to try. So, Fred and George were getting away with a massive prank on the entire school.

Frankly, Hermione fought a near-constant temptation to just turn back into Trelawney's old form again and take up teaching that class once more, she'd enjoyed it so much. And it seemed only fair, the new Sybil Trelawney was still using Hermione's old face and form. Only the sure knowledge the Headmaster would confront her over her return, and ask questions she didn't want to answer, or possibly do worse things, stopped her from trying.

She'd really liked teaching that class.

I I I

"Hermione, what are you doing?"

The girl started guiltily, then looked up sheepishly. "Grading everyone's Divination homework?"

"Uh huh," Harry looked over the sheaves of paper surrounding her, from all Houses and all years. "And why is it that on each assignment you have put comments on their NEXT piece of homework? The ones we haven't written yet? Actually, there's stuff here on our behavior in classes - and I KNOW you weren't in some of those to see what you're commenting about."

Hermione drooped visibly, dropping the assignment she'd been making notes on. "Because it won't leave me alone. Their work keeps swimming in my head, and unless I tell them about it the things I need to tell them won't stop being there, trying to get out. Like this fifth year Ravenclaw - this assignment is alright, but unless he does the next one quickly he'll get a bad cold and won't be able to get it in on time. Or, over here, the seventh year Hufflepuff girls, they're ALL wrong about palmistry! I know we don't cover those lines until next week, but unless I tell them now one of them is going to get in a dating relationship with a boy who's all wrong for her! And I know we weren't there, but I've still got to scold the fourth-year Slytherins for their abominable behavior their last Divination class session. They really had no call to say those things - and I KNOW I shouldn't know what they said, to whom, or why!"

The bushy haired girl looked up at Harry in distress. "It's all there, in my head! I can't tell you how it got there, but now it won't leave me alone! And I've got to do things like scold poor Neville for spilling ink over his next paper - the one he hasn't written yet! Although, I feel less guilty about telling Nott that he and his cronies are all going to die during the next war, so he ought to be less enthusiastic about it coming, because he loses."

Harry blinked several times.

"Oh. Carry on, then."

I I I

"Well, truly, it's obvious Hermione is a Homework Seer," Luna commented as they all got together on the castle lawn to grade History of Magic homework.

Myrtle, who was hovering around, giggled before darting back to the castle.

"Second Sight manifests is unpredictable ways," Luna went on lecturing just as though she hadn't been mocked or interrupted. "We all have it. She is just the first to learn how to use it in any fashion."

The other two stared at her.

"Oh, don't go looking at me like that." Luna would not be ruffled. "It's easy to know too much about the future. Hermione actually has one of the most useful forms of it: helping people to learn. Really, I can't think of a more useful one."

Desperately unwilling to face that subject as yet, Hermione hefted her books more closely to her chest (and yes, she had an enchanted bookbag given to her by Harry, but honestly, it was... okay, she simply felt safer with a good, thick tome between her and the rest of the world. It's a defense mechanism, but one that worked well for her) before laying them out and, checking to see if they were alone, turned to her best friend, who was currently fingering a hole where he was missing a tooth. "Harry, why are you so concerned with the way your muggle form works? I mean, you are exercising to get it in shape when your real body is already quite fit. Now this whole tooth decay thing. You really have perfect teeth. It's your human disguise that doesn't!"

The boy pulled his finger out of his mouth, ceasing its explorations, and gave her his best answer. "It's not like that. It's... hard to describe, Hermione. But think of it like an old and favorite suit of clothes. Just because you have great workout gear or a really neat swimsuit or excellent casual dress doesn't mean you don't have to put on the old business suit from time to time, and you care that it has grown worn in the knees or it's getting scuffs on the jacket. You want it to look nice, because sometimes you still have to wear it."

Hermione's eyes glittered, and she kissed him on the cheek. "Thanks, Harry. I couldn't think of a more perfect way to explain it to a girl. Yes, of course you'd want it to look nice."

"How did you come to be missing teeth?" Luna was honestly puzzled.

Harry shrugged. "Blame the Dursleys. Not only did I get a few knocked out of me by my 'kind relatives' in various beatings, but they also took pride in having never spent a penny on me. So naturally I've never seen a dentist."

"Well, you've SEEN one." Hermione giggled. "Technically you've seen two - when my parents left me at King's Cross. But I'll admit that's different than seeing one in a professional capacity."

Luna turned to direct a puzzled look on her. "Why are you taking this so casually?"

The bushy haired girl bounced a carefree shrug. "I guess because it doesn't matter. I mean, we all know he really has perfect teeth under that disguise. Besides, I'm sure there must be some magical way of restoring them. Right, Harry?"

"No, there isn't," Luna interjected sharply. "I'm amazed you didn't know that, actually. Haven't you seen the toothless hags loitering around the Leaky Cauldron or Knockturn Alley? For that matter, Tom the barkeep doesn't have a full set himself. Don't you think they'd fix that if they could?"

That was enough to bring Hermione to a full stop. "What?! But..! I KNOW wizards regrow bones with ease! And they're almost the same thing."

"And boys are almost the same as girls," Luna provided calmly. "But 'almost' provides room for a world of difference in the fine details. You could also say with some accuracy that boys and girls are nothing alike - and the same would be just as true of teeth and bones."

"Well, they're made out of the same thing..." Hermione began.

"...with only minor differences," Luna finished for her, then blinked innocent wide eyes at her. "Were you talking of boys and girls or teeth and bones?"

That was enough to bring Hermione to a jarring stop.

Harry gave an unusually sober shrug. "Recall that I've only just begun to study medicine, and didn't inherit any from before, but generally speaking wizardkind can only supercharge the body's own ability to repair itself. Skin, blood and bone can all be replaced by a body naturally. The potions and spells we use just speed that up. It can't do something like replace a lost limb, because a body has no ability to do that naturally. Likewise, if the healing ability of one's body is lost due to age or illness, they are helpless. Magical understanding of infectious, genetic or mental diseases is late Medieval at best. And since human teeth do not regenerate... once lost they are gone."

"And a wise person takes care not to lose anything they cannot replace," Luna scolded primly, an effect somewhat marred by the fact her eyes were crossed, looking over one of their shoulders.

Somehow both other youths caught the message. 'A secret once lost cannot be reclaimed' and decided to put off talking of fairies or secrets for now.

Still, Hermione had a bur in her mind from the most recent topic of conversation and it worried her, she she in turn gnawed it back. "We do, you know," she declared some moments later.

"What?" both of her friends looked up at her.

"We do, replace our teeth, I mean," the bookworm shoved an errant lock of hair out of her face, gaze still down as she pondered in heavy thought. "As children we get a set of baby teeth. Then, as we grow, those are no longer the right size for our much larger bodies, and they fall out and are replaced by a set of permanent teeth."

"Yes," Harry acquiesced. "But they call them permanent for a reason. We don't get another."

"Actually we do," Hermione corrected. "Wisdom teeth at age eighteen or thereabouts. Another complete set of four molars at the back of the jaw, so called because you're supposed to have acquired a spot of wisdom by the time they grow in."

"Still, four teeth is not a mouthful," Harry rubbed where he was missing some.

By now Hermione was sparkling as she looked up at them. "But it could be, don't you see? Harry, you just told me yourself how magic healing focuses on supercharging what the body can already do. We can regrow bits of bone, yes, but replace entirely missing ones? Not hardly. Not naturally. That's one area where magic helps a body go farther and do more than it could on its own. And, frankly, the fields have got to be related. Boys and girls are different, yes, but not so different that what kills one won't hurt the other. Besides, since a body ALREADY replaces it's entire mouthful of teeth once, why not magically trigger that over again? Then use magic to speed it up?"

Both her companions could see the light shining in her eyes as she declared this. They looked at each other.

"There are already examples of critters that replace teeth regularly. Sharks are one such, although there are others. Those could prove to be a source of ingredients. It's worth experimenting on," Luna conceded.

"For that matter, she's right," Harry allowed, "humans replace their teeth once during their lives, going from baby teeth to our adult sets. So, if we can just trigger that reaction over again..."

"You'd get a brand new set of cavity-less choppers!" Hermione overrode him excitedly to finish for him. "Which is not a bad thing," she mumbled, "as the mercury used in standard fillings has been proven to cause all sorts of health problems."

Harry pondered, scratching his chin. "If this could be made anywhere near as good as skele-grow you could replace your whole set overnight."

"Probably also modified to enhance evenness and brightness!" Hermione exclaimed, happy as a girl could get (without romance, which a talk about dentistry does not usually have).

"Plus, there's the monetary aspect," Harry added quietly, so only they could hear. "If we come up with a potion to replace bad teeth, people would buy it. So if we market our magic tooth cure to the magical public we'd make a small mint. And, as you know, money is power; and on the scale of politicking, or even fighting, we plan to do you can never have enough of it. More gold means more medicine, more weapons, and more food. In short, more ability to win a war. And the extra fame could hardly hurt any when it comes to future clashes with... certain old men."

"It would be as large an item as those magical plant pots," Luna agreed with a strange, far-off look to her eyes. "Possibly more, as it has more of a potential market. Not everyone raises plants, but we all have teeth - or wish we did. And the 'elegant' set would probably buy this to enhance looks if they had even minor problems to correct. Provided it worked, we'd have worldwide appeal, and probably have to hire the work to make them out."

Hermione frowned. "Which would lead to the secret for how to make it getting out, so we'd have knock-offs appearing."

"That would happen eventually in any case," Luna agreed. "We don't have the political clout to force through a monopoly such as this. Even if we did, it is vanishingly unlikely such a monopoly would extend beyond England. And what if it did? Potion monopolies are always on a single recipe. All it would take are some minor modifications for there to be fairly cheap imitations."

Harry smiled darkly through his scowl. "There are families in Britain that do that for a living, switching out a few ingredients on established potions to market their own versions. And due to national pride people here would rather use the 'home grown' recipes than ones invented by foreigners. But due to the fact those families favor cheap substitutes to save on cost... it's given us the most foul tasting concoctions in the world. 'Tastes like a British potion' is a nasty epithet in most of the world."

"One frequently used in insults and other foul language," Luna agreed.

Harry was thinking. "Also, there's more to consider than just human teeth. There are uses for monster teeth of every kind. I can't tell you what a temptation it has been to just snag a few out of a dragon's maw from time to time - and they're already missing a few from before I got them. If we could pull the ones we need, then regrow them complete sets too..."

Luna was nodding. "Supply of certain valuable potion ingredients could expand explosively." Then she looked directly behind the other two. "Oh! Professor Myrtle, where have you been? We've all been waiting for you."

Hermione had been blinking furiously. She leaned closer to Harry and whispered, "so, not all potions taste nasty?"

Harry chuckled, then leaned closer to whisper back. "Not in the least. In fact the French go the opposite ways that we do. Just about every country has somebody who modifies potions to break patents or monopolies. Ours make the foul tasting concoctions you're familiar with, while the French take pride in their culinary skills and make some of the best flavored ones around."

"Good," the girl declared, resuming an upright stance in her seat as the ghost flittered in, directing the House Elves that had accompanied it to set up chairs and tables for them to work on the stacks of homework she also had them deliver. "What was the assignment again?"

"Three feet of parchment on how The Lord of the Rings shaped the modern magical world we live in," Luna answered promptly.

"Hmm," Hermione started blinking at the stack of homework set before her, reading the top line, "Ring Wraiths were the obvious progenitors of the dementors of modern day? I guess I'd never given it much thought." A strange sort of clarity descended over the girl, and she bent down quickly to write. "An O+ concept, but for the grammar I have to make it an EE."

Both other young teens got scared looks on their faces as the girl descended on the clouds of homework, "Most hobbits are cowards, obsessed with food and other comforts... never having won a war, but being excellent cooks, they are the obvious ancestors of the French? Hmm."

The girl marked down a grade, sharply and decisively, and Harry had an odd feeling of wishing he knew what grade it was.