Hermione shrugged and accepted reality.
She grabbed Tom, who was stunned outside the door, but Tom stayed still and didn't move.
"Hermione, Mr. Granger and the others aren't here..."
Hermione looked at him, "You still don't want to do weird things?"
Tom: "!!!!"
"Come in," Hermione dragged Tom, who was still hesitating at the door, "It's too sad to be homeless on Christmas Eve."
The Granger's also had an entrance between the front door and the living room. The entryway is the space between the front door and the main room, a buffer between the outside and inside of the house, where the Grangers placed a shoe rack and a coat rack.
"You can use these." Hermione pulled a pair of slippers from the shoe cabinet and placed them in front of Tom, "Guest specials, brand new."
"Thank you."
Hermione nonchalantly hung her trench coat on a hanger, exposing the black tulle blouse she wore underneath.
With one hand on the wall, she crossed one foot, reached her right hand into the boot and removed a small part of the boot; when it was loose, she grabbed the heel and, with one swipe, removed the entire boot with a scrape of leather and velvet. The boot collapsed without the support of her calf, falling outward to reveal a leopard print lining with a hint of warmth inside. Hermione placed the still freshly changed boots on the floor and shifted her sore feet.
She looked up and caught Tom's black eyes.
"You..." Hermione raised her right hand and turned Tom's face to the side, "Turn your head!"
"Tom, bad!"
Tom: (?_?)
After making sure Tom was out of her sight, Hermione leaned against the wall and removed her other boot. Out of the shoe closet came a pair of dog-headed slippers, slightly different from the ones she wore at Hogwarts, where the dog heads were Shiba Inu and the house ones were husky.
Hermione slipped her feet into the dog-headed slippers and said, "You can turn your head now."
Tom saw it and couldn't help but say, "Dogs have very good sniffs, you're going to choke them ...".
Hermione's eyes flashed dangerously as she made a cutting gesture and threatened, "If you say anything else, I'll turn you into a shoehorn and put you in the shoe closet."
Hermione: o(｀ω′*)o?
Tom: (￣ω￣;)
The two walked together through the living room and into the dining room.
The Granger's dropped off an extremely sumptuous dinner. Although it was a bit cold, it was still delicious when warmed up. Mrs. Granger cooked well, which made the Granger family table not so "English".
After Tom and Hermione warmed the food on the table, they gathered around the table to enjoy this sumptuous Christmas dinner.
"I can't believe Mom and Dad are working on Christmas Eve, but considering it's Uncle Hal, it's understandable." Hermione helped herself to a bowl of French fish soup and talked about where her parents would be going tonight.
"Uncle Hal?" It was the first time Tom had heard that name.
"My dad's best friend, they've been close friends since they were kids, and when Uncle Hal has a tooth problem, Dad will definitely go treat him." Hermione remembered that she had never told Tom about Uncle Hal, so she started telling him about the legendary uncle.
"He's a very famous adventurer, who spent his youth adventuring all over the world with his brother Roger, then went on to get a PhD in archaeology from Oxford University and now teaches in the archaeology department at Sheffield University."
"He's been everywhere - Africa, Antarctica, the Arctic, the Amazon, the South Seas..." Hermione counted on her fingers the places Hal Hunter had been.
"From the Amazon to the Pacific, from New Guinea to the Himalayas, from volcanoes to the bottom of the sea, up and down the world. They've tracked jungle pythons, subdued tropical lizards, captured African white elephants, chased killer lions, confronted cannibal tribes and countless poachers..... " Hermione's eyes sparkled with adventure, "He used to tell me stories of his youthful adventures when I was a child. "
"Great!" Tom was fascinated to hear it too and understood why a girl as bright as Hermione had been sorted into Gryffindor. The seeds of adventure had been planted from an early age.
Hermione rubbed her toes against Tom under the table, "What are you doing for Christmas?".
Tom: "..."
"Actually... I'm grading students' papers for Christmas..."
The tears flowed.
Tom decided that the reason he was dropping out of this school year was that he was under too much pressure at work.
Hermione couldn't stop laughing as she covered her stomach.
"Actually, your thesis has some problems too...," Tom said slowly, cutting his steak elegantly with a knife and fork in his hand.
Hermione: "!!!!"
Now she couldn't laugh anymore, even though she knew Tom was probably making fun of her, she still instinctively panicked.
"What's the problem?"
"You'll know when the time comes."
"What's in time!" Hermione kicked at Tom. Not to be outdone, Tom vigorously defended himself, and the two began playing again....
...
Life at the Granger house was pleasant, of course Tom felt a little embarrassed when the Grangers returned on the first day, and even wanted to become a phoenix and fly away, but finally he bit the bullet and stayed.
Good thing Mr. Granger had been so kind to him, and during the time he stayed with him, he even felt as if George Joestar had taken in Dio Brando: Tom had become "someone else's boy," which was a rare experience for Hermione.
"Hermione, you're in bed again-"
"Hermione, look at Tom, he's studying early in the morning-"
Hermione: (((((;???;)))))
Seeing Hermione's expression, Tom felt that there was a high probability that he would not be invited next year.
The days passed like that, and the Christmas vacations suddenly disappeared, and it was as if the vacations had never existed. After the Christmas vacations, the calendar jumped and jumped to 1993.
Four months had passed since the Battle of the Common Room and life at Hogwarts was back to normal. In March, the mandrake that Professor Sprout had been cultivating for almost half a year had a lively, noisy, and dangerous dance for humans in the third greenhouse.
The mandrakes were approaching maturity and their scream was deadly.
By the time they were moved to other mandrake pots, they would be fully mature. The petrified "Tom" in the pavilion will then come back to life.
Along with April comes Easter.
There are two major vacations in the school year at Hogwarts: the Christmas vacation and the Easter vacation. Easter is a major holiday in the Western world, falling on the first Sunday after the full moon of the vernal equinox, and since the date of the equinox varies from year to year, the exact date of Easter is not certain.
In 1993, Easter fell on a Sunday, April 11.