Dumbledore was searching the gate for a way to call the house when Sirius spoke again - "Dumbledore, I'm... well, I know I told you I'd come and meet your friend but this house... you just don't enter a house as heavily warded as this unless you're absolutely certain the owner's a friend."
"Sirius, I assure you that the owner of this house means you no harm," said Dumbledore as he continued to poke and prod at the gate.
"What exactly are you doing over there?" asked Hermione.
Dumbledore sighed, "The last time I was here the owner said something about there being a way to call the house from the gate but I can't seem to find it. Shouldn't there be a bell or something. I'm absolutely certain that muggle houses are supposed to have bells near their doors."
"There's an intercom right here," said Hermione pointing to a device embedded into the stone pillar next to the gate.
"A what?" asked Dumbledore.
"An intercom," explained Hermione patiently. "It's a muggle device. You have to press this button here to talk to someone in the house."
"A muggle device? How intriguing?" mumbled Dumbledore as he walked over to the device. He peered at it in wonder. "And you say I have to press this... what did you call it? A button? How ingenious."
Hermione was getting annoyed at Dumbledore's fumbling. It exemplified everything that she had always found ridiculous about British magical culture, mainly the strange way they all seemed to be so blindly ignorant about muggle life. She remembered Arthur Weasley only too well. At the time she had known him, he had been the Head of the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts. Despite this fact, the man had been astonishingly ignorant about muggle devices. Really, how could the man know if a Muggle Artefact was in fact being misused when most of the time he didn't even know what most so called muggle artefact's did? Still, he had been rather enthusiastic about muggle technology, which was more than she could say for most purebloods.
She wondered why she had come. She didn't really owe Dumbledore anything. Mostly, it had just been a way to get the man of her back and stop him from pestering her. Still, it was a beautiful day, she thought. The sky was a brilliant blue and the air... the air smelled wonderful. It smelled of the sea and eucalyptus and the flowers that seemed to be growing everywhere in the front yards around them. She was so caught up in the beauty of the area around her that she missed most of Dumbledore's conversation over the intercom.
She was startled out of her reverie by Dumbledore calling her "Miss Granger, Sirius, if you could both please come here. The owner has told me that we will need to place our hands on that," he gestured towards a round ornamental metal disk fixed to the gate. "That will allow the owner to temporarily key us into his wards."
As Hermione walked towards the gate, she wondered why Dumbledore had bothered with all the multiple portkeys and phoenix travel he had made them take in an effort to disguise their destination. It was rather obvious where they were. All she had to do was compare the time on her watch with the position of the sun in the sky and she knew that she was most likely somewhere on the west coast of America. Throw in the climate and she didn't even have to check the license plates of the cars parked on the street to know that she was somewhere in Southern California.
The notice-me-not charms on the street signs were also a wasted effort. Really, all she would have to do was look-up the registration information for some of the cars and she would have a street address as well. All it would take would be a little trip to the local DMV and a spell or two on unsuspecting clerks to make them look the other way and... Why was she bothering to think about this, she wondered. For that matter, all she really needed to do was find the nearest letterbox, as she doubted that Dumbledore's notice-me-not charms would extend to the letters inside… She wondered again, why she was bothering... Really, it was best to just endure this meeting and get Dumbledore off her back. Then she could happily go home and forget about all this.
She placed her hand on the disk as instructed by Dumbledore and felt a tingle run through her entire body. The gates then swung open automatically and soundlessly, which was a bit of a disappointment considering that ominous creaking would have been far more appropriate after the way Dumbledore had been carrying on. She started walking down the drive followed closely by Sirius and Dumbledore. She hadn't taken more than a dozen steps when her vision turned black and she knew no more.
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