Part Three
Part Four:
The summer holidays had stretched on, hot and humid, the air filled with the buzz of insects. Hermione had been taken care of her captured beetle, the reporter Reeta Skeeter. Ever few days, she cracked open the lid of the Unbreakable jar to slip in fresh leaves, and would spend hours watching the ex-woman chomping on them with her chitinous mandibles.
She'd been training the insect too. When it obeyed commands, dancing or doing tricks, Hermione would reward it with fresh greenery or, if she was feeling especially kind, scraps of paper from the Daily Prophet, so that the reporter could keep abreast of the world outside. Rita was turning the shredded scraps into a nest.
But when the insect stubbornly refused, Hermione would tip the jar, tumbling the pest around like a washing machine.
Now, with the return to Hogwarts looming, it was time to test if the training had taken. She unstoppered the jar and allowed Rita to climb out onto the rim.
"So, bug, are you going to behave? Are you ready to submit to being my familiar?"
Immediately the beetle stretched its wings and flew, hurtling itself through a crack in the window as it scrambled for freedom. Hermione sighed, watching the big, fat bug buzzing away over the neighbours gardens.
"What a shame," she sighed, reaching for the hourglass on its golden thread around her neck. She turned the time turner once. In the blink of an eye, events rewound. The bug flew backwards through the window, landed on the rim of the glass, and clambered back inside the jar, which stoppered itself.
Hermione clucked her tongue, looking down at her in disappointment. "Clearly I've been too kind in your training..."
