"I don't know if they can; I don't know; it sounded like they waste away and die; I don't know; I can't explain it; it seems completely contradictory; I would certainly hope not; and I'm sure they'd like brownies if they tried them," Hermione returned back shot for shot, her hair becoming an even more maddeningly frizzy as her already frazzled nerves became more frayed. She didn't like not knowing things.
"No, not like yummy brownies, Brownies brownies," her father said with a wave. "Little spritely things that live in people's houses, are never seen, and expect gifts of food for doing odd jobs around the house," he explained. "Though some say they live in streams and waterfalls, though I don't see how that could be without them tracking mud all over the place," he muttered to himself.
"Dad!" she cried, getting his attention. "What are you talking about?"
"Folklore," he said with a grin. "Brownies are a lot like what you described house-elves to be, though the only sure way to run them off is to refer to those gifts as 'payment,' and they can leave if you mistreat them. Hm, I wonder how much of our folklore is really half-remembered bits of the magical world that's managed to bleed through. You know, with a name like Hermione, I would've expected you to glance a bit at some folklore and mythology before now."
"Well, sorry for disappointing you for being more inclined towards practical matters," Hermione said stiffly. "I had no control over what you named me."
"Nonsense, you've never been a disappointment a day in your life," her father countered. "Though it looks like knowing about Brownies and the Philosophers' Stone would certainly be practical now."
Hermione felt her stomach plummet and the rest of her go numb. How much did he know?
"Oh, I suppose I should mention that the Ron kid started blabbing everything about what you'd never told me about, huh?" her father said with an eyebrow raised.
They were moving to Australia, she just knew it. Her mother had a standing offer there and had almost taken it several times before now, but whatever cost-benefit analysis went on in her robotic brain it had always come back with a baffling 'not yet.'
With her being able to put them off discussing "the options" once before, she knew she wouldn't be so lucky this time. Having control of her magical education didn't amount to much if her family relocated. Both Hogwarts and the Ministry would surely back her parents' decision if she protested; she had no means to travel on her own, had no money, and couldn't pay for school even if she could bring herself to run away.
And on top of all that, the one person who might be able to help was Harry and she certainly wasn't going to abuse their friendship like that, especially not when things were just starting to go in the right direction between them. Hermione didn't know how she was going to get herself out of this; she'd never had to beg for anything in her life but fear was a great motivator to learn if she had to.
"You look like you're going to faint," her dad said cautiously. "You want to switch positions so you can lie down?"
"Dad, I-I'm-," she stammered, at a loss of what to say. She was going to kill Ron for this.
"-Disappearing into a world full of unknown dangers - and now obviously questionable ethics and morals too - but are more terrified at the thought of leaving it than you are of continuing to face those enormous dangers, so you've taken it upon yourself to hide all of this from us thinking that if you somehow make it through unharmed that we don't have to know and won't be worried about you? Oh! Plus, there's a boy involved. Is that about the size of it?"
Hermione sat there with her mouth helplessly open, unable to come up with anything to add to the conversation. How could he have gotten everything so right so quickly?
"I'm not stupid," her father said with a 'who do you think you're talking to?' expression on his face. "Keeping something like this from your mother I can kind of understand, but you told me about Harry, for goodness sake. Plus, I'm a parent; I'm going to worry no matter what. I know I'm not going to be that big of an influence on your life anymore but how am I supposed to help you deal all this magical world madness if you don't tell me about it?"
Finally something clicked in her head and her mind sprang into gear.
"You're not going to tell Mum?" Hermione asked, astonished at her luck.
"I don't want to move to Australia any more than you do," he said with a look that said she was mad. "Their toilets go backwards and the seasons are weird. Who wants to have Christmas in the summer? Besides, why should we be the ones to leave? These wizardy folks are the ones who can't get their act together. First a money-laundering Merlin then a self-defense instructor that tries to kill their students. That's one hell of a pop-quiz."
Springing up, she darted to her dad and hugged him around the neck. With a falsely exasperated cry of alarm he moved her hair so it wasn't in his face and hugged her in return.
"Thanks," she said, like she'd said so many times before, feeling a bit of a return to their old closer relationship. Why had she convinced herself he would've taken this so badly? He was always on her side about everything.
"Yeah, well," he said somberly, "I figure if this stuff happens in stodgy old England, the rest of the world must be completely unlivable. You just promise me something," he said as he held her at arm's length to look her in the eye.
"What's that?" she asked.
"Don't you buy into everything these people tell you about the way the world works just being 'the way the world works,'" Serious Dad said with the same sad eyes he had when his parents were mentioned. "You question things and figure it out for yourself. And while you're at it," he added with a pointed finger to make sure she didn't forget this next part. "Never forget that just because you have to go there to learn, doesn't mean you can't walk away if what you find there isn't worth the price you pay to be there. We still have that college fund for you."
This had her right back to feeling bad again. She wanted to say that of course she'd be objective and make up her own mind about things based on what she learned, but the last bit kept her from it. With Harry learning more about his family, cutting ties with the Dursleys, and trying to make a life for himself somewhere he's actually wanted, when it came to being in the wizarding world Hermione had more care to stay than will to go.
"I'll keep that in mind," she said somewhat sadly.
"So! The Brownies that aren't Brownies," her father said in the falsely chipper way he got. "The whole thing seems like it was made to be an exercise in dubious morality," he said with a look. "I suppose the whole thing revolves around whether they actually require a foreign family unit to live and why that is."
"If they really do need a family to survive then the right thing to do would be to keep them and make them feel welcome," Hermione said, taking up the issue from him. "But if they don't then the right thing to do would be to - What, convince them they don't need us and help them move out on their own? But if we did that it puts them in a very weak position. If they do require work to sustain their health on top of their basic needs, then how can they argue for a decent wage in a society used to getting the work for free?"
"People could just wait until an elf's almost at the point of death and then swoop in and get them back as slaves," her father said with a wave. "It means you'd have to change the culture, not only of house-elves but society as a whole or the entire thing would collapse. But there's also something we haven't considered," he said seriously. "If house-elves are brownies, then we'd have to take that into account."
"What do you mean?"