Chapter 135 – Investigating (2)
It was late afternoon, and Hermione was about to give up and head home, ready to rethink her approach. She has been surveying the two supposed entrances, alternating between them every two hours, without results. There was simply nothing suggesting that wizards were using any of them. With a bit of disappointment, she had already stood up from the bench she had been sitting on the past half an hour or so when it happened.
It was a man wearing something that made him stand out amongst the crowd. He was dressed in a blue, sapphire-colored robe that swept alongside the sidewalk as he looked around nervously. Evidently, he was unfamiliar with the place, holding a yellowed paper, searching franticly, and sticking out within the muggle world like a sore thumb.
"Poor bastard... but thank you." Hermione whispered, looking around the street, hurrying to the other side, not wanting to lose the man from sight.
The supposed entrance she was observing was an old barber shop. Going by the windows, it looked like something from a century ago, lost in time or preserved as an art project. What she learned about it was that the door leading into the shop would open if someone tapped it in the correct rhythm with their wand, but the code had changed frequently since the war had broken out. Learning it was the hard part, but this was her best chance.
"Come on... show me..." she grumbled, observing the man like a puma stalking its prey in the jungle. The only difference was that she had to weave around men and women who were going about their lives and often blocked her view. "Tsk...!"
With an aggressive impulse, something that she mustered from her frustration and a bit of headache, she managed to push through a group of students, ending up receiving their annoyed curses aimed at her back. No matter what they threw at her, she was tuning all of it out as the wizard was holding a crooked, old wand, tapping at the door.
"Knob, knocker, upper right hinge, knob, knob, knocker, knob." She repeated to herself, without blinking or drawing breath, right until the man opened the door, walked through, and disappeared into the void behind it the next moment. "Bingo!"
"Hey, bitch, we are talking to you!"
"Sorry, I don't speak English!" Was her answer, without looking back, hurrying along, stunning the group so much they failed to react in time.
"But..." Confused, the head guy turned towards his friends, "She spoke perfectly... no?"
Hermione didn't even think about them, holding her wand, quickly repeating the sequence, and when turning the knob, the door opened, letting her slip in without hesitation.