On the same day Snape visited Baker Street, Hermione had her own encounter.
A tabby cat rang the Grangers' doorbell. Before her astonished parents' eyes, it transformed into an elderly woman in a dark green robe, who introduced herself as Professor McGonagall from a school of magic.
Muggle—the word she used for ordinary folk.
Hermione didn't care for the term.
When McGonagall noticed Mrs Granger's scepticism and Mr Granger's furrowed brow, she transfigured their sitting-room sofa into a lion.
But Hermione herself was hesitant. She admitted—though unwillingly—that she had only just emerged from her books, and the thought of moving into a strange new world unsettled her.
"So… can I not go?"
McGonagall, who had expected excitement, blinked in surprise.
"Why, child? Don't you want to learn what I've shown you?"
"I don't, actually," Hermione said. She thought of Nietzsche, and with a small pout whispered, "I'll go to medical school, like my parents. I want to become a great doctor, and help humanity."
McGonagall's expression softened, but her voice was firm. "If you do not learn, I fear your life will be in danger. The magic inside you will erupt."
The Grangers fell silent.
They knew her secret. On her last birthday, after holding everything in at school, Hermione had come home brimming with excitement. In her laughter, the entire sitting room had floated. For one unforgettable evening, her parents had felt as though they were walking in space.
"My parents can take me to hospital!"
"First: Muggles do not understand magic. Second: if your powers are exposed, how will others treat you? A miracle of God—or a heretic?"
McGonagall's words were gentle, but mercilessly true.
Hermione knew it already, but she hated to face it. She hadn't even told Nietzsche about her "secret"—not that there was any reason she should tell him. Perfectly normal!
Still, she asked, "Can ordinary people also study there?"
The question gave McGonagall a jolt of recognition, as though she'd heard it before.
"Why do you ask that? Because of your parents?"
Mrs Granger caught her daughter's blush and teased with a smile: "No, it's a friend at school. Her only friend."
"Mum!!"
McGonagall's eyes shifted from surprise to curiosity to understanding.
No wonder the words felt familiar. She remembered a summer more than a decade ago, visiting a Muggle girl whose plea had been for her sister. This child's plea was for a friend.
"That's not possible, dear. Think of it this way: even if your Muggle friend attended, he would only feel more isolated among wizards."
"It's fine—he has me."
Hermione's answer was simple, obvious to her.
He had been the only one at school willing to talk to her, a bookworm, to debate over books and ideas. And yet, after glimpsing Nietzsche's inner self, Hermione Granger had made it her mission:
This boy had serious problems.
She would be the one to stop him being expelled for fighting.
(Not that some of those bullies didn't deserve it.)
"Child… how can you think like that?" McGonagall coughed.
"It's alright," Hermione said firmly. "He helped me when no one else would. So I can accept his loneliness."
But to McGonagall, Hermione seemed the more peculiar one.
She softened her tone. "But how do you know he'll accept magic? Very well—next time I take you to Diagon Alley, I'll bring him along. He can see for himself."
A stroke of genius, she thought. Gentler and more practical than the Headmaster, who left far too much to his deputy.
"Then… alright."
Hermione reluctantly agreed.
Once McGonagall left, however, her serious little face crumpled. She collapsed onto the sofa, clutching a pillow, wriggling like a restless worm.
"Say something," Mrs Granger prodded her husband.
Mr Granger lowered his paper with a sigh.
"Hermione, try to be positive. What if your friend accepts you're a witch? And besides—the Nietzsche you chatter about every evening hardly sounds the type to be put off."
"No, I just… I just don't want to go somewhere I don't understand." She hugged her knees, voice muffled.
"Anyway, we'll all see him when we go shopping in a few days."
Hermione didn't answer. She dragged herself upstairs and shut the door firmly.
Mr Granger smacked his thigh, remembering suddenly—and pulled his wife aside.
Superman.
In an age of superhero comics, Hermione had often seen Nietzsche leafing through them.
One afternoon after exams, when an owl-delivered letter lay unopened in her hands, she had sat beside him as he read.
"Nietzsche… what if—what if we were Superman?" she'd asked nervously.
His reply had stayed with her:
"If we were Superman, you'd be an even greater doctor, and I'd build more powerful machines."
She'd dreamed a little then. But dreams crumbled against reality.
What if she couldn't keep an eye on him? What if, by the time they met again, he'd landed in a cell instead of a classroom?
So—perhaps they weren't friends at all. More like sworn rivals.
For days, Nietzsche didn't invite her to the library, and Hermione sulked at home, thumping her pillow in frustration.
Meanwhile, at Baker Street, Watson drilled Nietzsche in handling recoil and Sherlock lectured him in "combat theory."
As a former army doctor, Watson was unrelenting—but to keep the boy from boredom, he even commissioned Captain Philips to craft him a cane, shorter than his own.
"It holds a blade—and fires a nine-millimetre round," Watson explained, then turned to Mary with sudden doubt. "Am I a bit… unhinged?"
Mary, fixing her make-up, didn't look up.
"Am I?" she asked idly. In truth, she thought the weapon too tame.
Her little one, raised for ten years, was heading into a world of wizards. Wizards—who poisoned apples.
"Last year, you thought Holmes firing at home was reckless," Nietzsche muttered, inhaling the tang of gunpowder. "Now you've given me military-grade body armour."
Watson groaned, rubbing his temples. "Yet you'd rather tell Irene Adler your secret than tell us."
Sherlock smirked through a cloud of smoke, notes on Snape and the case in his hand.
"Watson, accompany me to the Diogenes Club. We're meeting someone."
"Uncle Mycroft?"
"Don't call him 'Uncle'," Sherlock snapped. "He only said you had sharp intuition. He's said the same of Watson."
"Dad, you just can't admit Uncle Mycroft's cleverer than you."
"Very well. Extra training tonight."
"No!!"
Nietzsche looked down at the arsenal strapped to him. Walking from door to staircase was struggle enough.
Superman Nietzsche—already crushed beneath the weight of reality.