Summary:
Hermione Weasley has what many would perceive to be the key components of a perfect life: a loving, hardworking husband; two beautiful young children; a respected (if not highly paid) career in medical research; and a three-bed semi in the rural idyll of Ottery. When the empty house three doors down the road is sold to a middle-aged single father and his teenage son, she strikes up an unlikely friendship that threatens to dismantle her entire world.
Notes:
Playlist containing the non-diegetic and diegetic music within this fic can be found here
Chapter 1: Story Of My LifeNotes:
I have had a number of different hyperfixations recently which have resulted in this entire evil thing being exorcised from my brain, unfortunately you have to suffer now alongside me
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Hermione has been aged down five years from canon, so her birthday is the 19th of September 1984, while Tom has been aged down eighty-two years, his birthday now being the 31st of December 2008.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Monday 21st September 2026
6.48am
"Oh, my boy. My best boy. Poor, poor boy. My angel."
Hermione recites her litany of comforting phrases to her wailing son, holding him close to her on her and Ron's bed, stroking his soft auburn hair.
"What on earth happened?" she asks Rose, who looks sheepish, holding both hands behind her back.
Rose says nothing, but her bottom lip starts wobbling precipitously. She's three and a half years old, outrageously beautiful, all ringlets and righteous anger. "Hugo bit me!" She punctuates her point by stamping her foot, then dissolving into tears of frustration.
Ron's upper body appears at the doorway, carrying two pairs of shoes, wellies, raincoats, and other assorted bags. "Rosie-Roo, that's not nice; and Hugo, no biting." Rose follows him out of their bedroom onto the landing, bawling.
"You mustn't bite, darling," says Hermione gently to her still-sobbing boy. "It hurts people, and people won't be your friend if you hurt them."
"Rosie take my lolly!" he cries, fat tears tumbling down his chubby cheeks. In the background, a familiar refrain plays on the bedroom television.
#Give it up for Monday / Whoa-oa-oa-oa-oa / Clap your hands it's Monday / Whoa-oa-oa-oa-oa#
"What lolly?" Hermione asks, confused. Hugo only howls as a response, as she sets him down on the bed.
#Let's dance it's Monday / Whoa-oa-oa-oa-oa / It's a Happy Monday / Whoa-oa-oa-oa-oa / the first day of the week#
"Rose, what lolly is he talking about?" calls Hermione, walking out onto the landing and across into the children's bedroom. She's met with a scene of destruction: two entire trays of eyeshadow palettes – expensive ones, now discontinued – have been smashed up; the chalky glittering fragments distributed widely and deeply into the soft shag rug of their room. Amongst the chaos, a solitary stick of Lypsyl, missing its lid, is found at Hermione's feet, with a small bite taken out of it.
So that was the lolly. How wonderful.
"Ron!" she yells. "I need backup— urgently."
"What is it?" he asks, skidding backwards from his march along the hallway to look through the door into the children's room. Rose is clinging onto one of his legs.
"I need the carpet cleaner with the brush head attachment, probably the shake and foam stuff— and an exorcist, for good measure." she sighs.
His eyes widen, and he strokes his chin with his hand thoughtfully. "Oh, blimey. Yeah, alright, gimme a second – if you put their stuff in the boot, then I'll brush their teeth, and sort all this once you've left."
Hermione smiles at him wearily. "You're the best."
He really is the best, she thinks. Together for sixteen years, and married for eleven, theirs was a life with an easy rhythm, never once permeated by arguments, even though they were living through the madness of raising two young children. She often looked at him surreptitiously, thinking of how handsome he was, in his own, craggy, red-headed way (though he was always at great pains to ensure his hair was more accurately described as strawberry blonde). Whilst they had gone to school together, they had never been interested in one another romantically until many years later; their mutual friend Harry always acting as the nexus between the two.
He grins back at her and blows her a kiss, before heading back into the other room, clapping to muster the children. "Come on, you two! It's Breakfast Club today! That means you have to be at nursery early – come on, TV off!"
"But I want to watch Bluey." Hermione hears Rose whine, as she heads downstairs. Halfway down, she trips over something soft and falls down a few stairs, clinging onto the banisters at the last minute, making a clattering sound. A large, furry blur of brown darts upstairs while Hermione gasps, trying to catch her breath.
"Crookshanks again?" shouts out Ron from the bedroom.
"Yep, Crooks again," she shouts back. "Jesus Christ, stop trying to fucking kill me every morning, you prick of a cat." she mutters.
8.14am
The traffic on the A30 grinds to a standstill. Hermione sighs and smacks her hands on the steering wheel in frustration, nervously eyeing the clock. What should be a simple half-hour commute with plenty of time to grab a coffee is rapidly turning into a complete disaster. Both lanes of the road are gridlocked. Opening Google Maps on her phone, she can see the traffic layer has the stretch of road she's on and up ahead coloured a dark red, to indicate severe delays. She groans in frustration.
Fucking roadworks again. God, I should have checked before I left nursery. I swear they're just digging it up for fun these days.
It's an unseasonably warm late September morning, and she decides to roll her window down, reasoning the extra petrol fumes will be cooler than the stifling temperature inside the car; the refrigerant in the air conditioner long depleted, and never high on the list of priorities to fix. Switching the engine off and idly drumming a tattoo on the steering wheel, she looks to her right in the next lane; a man in a burgundy Ford Focus, who looks to be approximately in his mid-fifties, with a hangdog expression, is staring straight ahead at the road, looking entirely miserable. Hermione exhales loosely, voicelessly trilling her lips, blinking rapidly out of boredom. She decides to play some music, with an idea dawning on her.
Of course!
Tapping away at her phone to bring up Spotify and search for the song in question, she hits play and grins at the vocal coming through the car speakers.
#Hey-ey-ey-ey-ay-ay-ay – hey roadblock!#
She taps along to the beat of the song on the steering wheel, miming along to the words:
#It's gonna be a roadblock, roadblock / Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh...#
Roadblock, roadblock#
She bounces around in her seat, her curls bobbing around her. As she mouths out the words gonna block this city, she turns to the right and the man in the burgundy car is staring at her, with a disgusted look on his worn face. She immediately stops, turning down the music and winding up the windows. The man turns away, his expression showing some residual revulsion, and speeds off, the traffic having cleared. The cars behind Hermione begin angrily beeping at her, and she starts her engine again in a panic, taking a couple of attempts before she moves away successfully, suitably chastened.
8.36am
Practically sprinting into the departmental office, Hermione grabs a cup from the cupboard, slams in a heaped spoonful of Azera and switches on the boiling water tap, while she sprints across to her desk to fetch her notebook and a crucial piece of paper that has been sitting on her desk for just this occasion.
Tina Goldstein, a quiet, sarcastic, American research assistant with absurdly neat, bobbed hair is at her desk, munching on a Danish as Hermione runs about the place. "They went in seven minutes ago." she says, chewing, continuing to stare at her computer screen, barely acknowledging her.
"Thank you, Tina." replies Hermione, grabbing her coffee and notepad, walking backwards into the door of the meeting room, before dipping down in a well-practiced manoeuvre: using her bottom to sit on the wide plastic handle of the door, to open it without the use of her hands.
In the conference room, seven people are already sitting around, purportedly discussing upcoming research projects with unknowable numbers of participants on the other end of a phone line; everyone hunched over the electric, three-legged starfish which is blaring out a noise that ought to be a human voice, but is such poor quality, they may as well be reading the aural equivalent of tea leaves. She shimmies into the only empty seat left, between Poppy Pomfrey, the Senior Research Nurse who pulls a chair out for her with a smile, and jolly old Professor Slughorn, Senior Clinical Lecturer and Consultant in Molecular Genetics, who taps his watch, smiling, as if admonishing her for being late. She mouths a sorry-traffic-was-awful to both him and the bright-eyed Minerva McGonagall – Vice-Chair of the funding committee and Professor of Molecular Medicine – who mouths back an it's-fine.
"Moody, I'm afraid the quality of the line is very poor; can you repeat what you just said?" asks Professor Snape, the Clinical Senior Lecturer in Epigenetics, over-enunciating his words to an obnoxious degree. He's practically climbing on the table, his greasy hair hanging over the speakerphone, staring at it as though he could rectify the technical issues through sheer force of will. Doctor Sprout, the Consultant Gastroenterologist, throws up her hands in frustration and mutters something to Professor Sybill Trelawney, Consultant in Psychodynamic Neuroscience, who looks as though she had zoned out approximately five minutes before she entered the room.
Professor Albus Dumbledore, the Director of the Clinical Research Facility, signature signer-in-chief and inadvertent holder of all purse strings for all the numerous studies that took place in the facility, has had enough. "Alastor, I think we should reconvene at a different time when technology allows. I'll have my secretary send you through the details for the conference in November." An electronic howl answers him as Sprout leans over and switches off the speakerphone, then slumps back in her chair and sighs.
"Any other business? Or shall we all have some of our morning back?" Dumbledore enquires, casting his eyes across the table.
"Yes, as a matter of fact, Professor, there is some other business," said Minerva, with a small smile. She reaches around to the table behind her, where a box has been covered up by a tea towel. She places it on the conference table and removes the towel, revealing a large cookies-and-cream cake. "Happy Birthday for the other day, Hermione!"
Hermione blushes, and a small smattering of applause breaks out around the table. "I'm afraid our HSE officer won't allow us to light any candles." Snape intones morosely.
"That's quite alright— thank you so much, everyone; please help yourself." she says, hoping she sounds incredibly grateful.
Who the fuck chose cookies and cream? My least favourite cake flavour. I bet Mary-Lou is behind this.
Minerva pulls a large, round, white-and-dark chocolate cake out of the already-opened box, and gasps when she sees that someone had already taken a generous slice taken out of it.
"Oh, I'm so sorry Hermione," she said, looking despondent. "I only left it in the fridge for ten minutes this morning."
Hermione's smile is tight, a spike of anger ossifying in her chest. "I'm sure it was just a mistake—still looks plenty good to me!"
Minerva appears to be placated by this, and smiles in turn. "Everyone who wants a piece, grab a napkin, and I'll have a go at hacking this apart."
The meeting participants form an orderly queue, napkins in hand, medical professionals delighted at the prospect of ultra-processed sugar and fat before 9am. Halfway down the receiving line is Dumbledore, and Hermione knows that this is her chance. She can't let him get away again. Just as he's heading towards the door, she calls out, just a little too loud.
"Professor! Can I keep you for just a moment?"
"Of course, Hermione. It's very good cake, this." he says, thoughtfully chewing on a slice. Hermione watches as his expensive end-on-end blue linen shirt – the one that probably costs a good quarter of her monthly salary – gets coated in brown and white crumbs.
"It's just— the Part 2 funding form for the PD study." she says hurriedly, clutching it in her hand.
"PD study?" he replies, completely baffled.
"The adolescent personality disorder study that we're carrying out? With UCL as co-sponsors?" she prompts. He chews on the cake more, frowning, as if he was trying to remember if it had ever been mentioned to him. "The neuroimaging study? I sent you a reminder email about it last week."
"Can't say I recall." he says, looking up into the corner of the room, as though the mysteries of the universe might be found there.
"And reminder emails every week before that. For five weeks."
"Did you?" he replies blithely, scattering more crumbs over his shirt.
"Yes," she says, her mid-face hurting from how much she's clenching her jaw, smile nailed-on. "It's just, UCL are saying if we don't send the information they need by Friday, it's putting the entire study at risk— the study that's been running for fourteen years now," she says, her expression now a dam holding back a maelstrom of anger. "Also, the funding for the study makes up about seventy percent of my personal income, and, well, you know, the mortgage company tend to get a bit shirty if you stop paying them." She follows up this statement with what she intended to be a casual, tinkling laugh, but instead sounds mildly hysterical.
He blinks in surprise. "Oh. Well. In that case, I shall endeavour to have it all signed off. You're next in the office—?"
"Thursday, Professor."
"Very good," he says, taking the funding form, smudging a large piece of cake on the margins as he does so. Hermione's undereye starts twitching. "I'll have Ms. Fawkes send everything to you when I'm done."
"Thank you, Professor."
He leaves the room, and Hermione holds her breath for a second before exhaling all the air in her lungs and slumping over the table from a standing position. She ambles out of the meeting room towards her desk, looking exhausted. Tina had clearly heard the entire conversation.
"You know, Hermione," she drawls, smiling wryly, "One tends to catch more flies with honey than with vinegar."
Oh, fuck off. Fuck off and stick it up your arsehole while you're doing it, you lazy fat-arsed bint—
"You're quite right, Tina," says Hermione, cheeks now hurting from the rictus grin she had plastered on her face. "Although I'm not quite sure how much more honey I can apply to a situation like that."
Tina hums noncommittally, giving no indication she had been listening to her reply. "Hey, are you going to the deli up on Fore? Can you get me a chili jam sausage roll and some tiffin? Ooh and maybe a chai latte?"
No one says 'up on Fore' in the UK, you fucking imbecile. It's 'on Fore Street'.
Tamping down her impulse to tie her up with her own USB cable, bundle her in her car, drive the half hour it would take her to get to Exmouth, place her in a rubber dinghy, then personally kick her out into the English Channel, Hermione blinks rapidly and keeps her expression frozen on her face. "It's closed on Mondays, remember, Tina?"
"Aw yeah," she says, her face falling. "Wait, the ones on Magdalen are open, aren't they?" she types rapidly on her keyboard, her eyes oscillating side-to-side, scanning menus.
The fucking gall of this bitch to assume I've got nothing better to do than deliver snacks straight into her fucking pie-hole. Mind you, this could be part of the long game. She can't be far off a stroke—
"Yes, Number Fifty-Nine is open!" she says, even allowing herself a fist-pump. "Can I get a bacon brunch bagel with extra smashed avo; a chai latte, and a pistachio raspberry slice? You're the best; I'll send you the cash now."
Just walk away. Just walk away before you fire a staple gun into her face.
"Sure thing - see you in a bit, Tina!" she says brightly, clutching her handbag over her shoulder, power-walking out of the building. Tina waves after her, cheerily.
6.56pm
"...In the morning, Sophie and her mummy went shopping, and they bought lots more things to eat. And they also bought a very big tin of Tiger Food; in case the tiger should come to tea again. But he never did. The End." Ron closes the book, and the children scamper into their beds, wriggling under the blankets.
"Right, time for your song!" says Hermione, as the children both giggle. Rose deliberately sticks her foot out from under the blankets in an attempt to commence her nightly game – the one where Hermione is supposed to be shocked by its discovery; stick it back under the covers; whereupon Rose will repeat the process again. She doesn't bite, however, and both parents begin to sing together, in a well-practised two-part harmony, as they tuck a child each into their beds, stroking their hair and distributing kisses onto their tiny palms:
#I know you belong to somebody new
But tonight you belong to me
Although we're apart you're a part of my heart
And tonight you belong to me
Wait down by the stream
How sweet it will seem
Once more just to dream
In the silvery moonlight
My honey, I know
With the dawn that you will be gone
But tonight you belong to me
Just to little old me#
"Right: night-night Rosie-Roo and Hugo-Moogo," says Ron gently, with an air of finality. "Sweet dreams." Hermione crawls across the floor to Rose's bed to tuck her in for the night.
"Goodnight, Mummy," whispers Rose, closing her eyes and snuggling up under her blanket. "I love you."
"I love you too, my little best girl." she whispers back, kissing her forehead. She crawls to Hugo's bed next to do the same to him.
"Night, Mummy!" he says, with a delighted grin, and plants a sloppy, wet kiss on the end of her nose. "Eugh, yuk!" she laughs. "Night night, my sweet boy."
They wave at the children in their beds, smiling, shutting the door behind them. "Night night; see you in the morning."
Hermione smiles at Ron warmly, pleased and relieved that their child-free hours of the evening have begun. Ron's face is expressionless as he gestures with his head, motioning towards the spare bedroom.
"Go on then, get your rat out."
Hermione stills, then wordlessly opens the door in question.
At least he still wants to touch me. Just about.
She takes off her trousers and underwear and folds them neatly on the chair in the corner. Ron assumes his usual position kneeling on the bed, an array of lube and two differently sized dildos arranged next to him. She inwardly shudders at the sight of the bigger one. Ominously named 'The Doctor', it was a monstrously girthy, 9.5-inch, dark brown silicone contraption that Ron had unilaterally imposed on their sex life eighteen months prior.
"Why on earth would you buy that?" she had said, aghast, squeezing her thighs together in fear. "It's far too big— besides, I don't even really need a dildo to get off."
"Oh, go on, 'Mione, give it a chance," he had cajoled. "Besides; there's no returns on it."
She had suffered through it ever since, convinced that like so many of the strange hallmarks of their nuptials that had emerged over the years, very little of it had to do with her pleasure, instead representing some sort of visual aid for him; a re-enactment of a pornographic scene whose origin she hadn't been privy to. It was one of the many layers of weirdness that had developed over time, without any overt communication; silently accepted as penance for the crimes of ageing and gaining weight.
"Here's your blindfold." Ron says, passing her the ratty, black satin sleep mask with too-loose elastic that allowed her to reach climax without having to confront the horror of her own body.
"Thanks." she mutters, welcoming the darkness. She feels the Magic Wand being passed to her, and she turns it on as she began the grim death-march towards a joyless orgasm.
It's not as if she didn't experience desire anymore; but after two rounds of childbearing, significant weight gain and eventual, glacial loss, she had been left as what she described as out of sorts. Breastfeeding had had the undesirable side-effect of shrinking her clitoris to two-thirds of its previous size and a fraction of its previous sensitivity – a source of many, increasingly frantic Google searches – though it had regained some of its size and function over the subsequent years. It was this that led to the inevitable internal monologue whenever she was led to the chamber for their intermittent lovemaking:
...of course, I could go back to the GP, but that bitch receptionist didn't take 'genitourinary problems' as an answer last time, did she? Maybe I should be far more explicit this time. Yes, please may I have an appointment, oh, it's not terribly urgent no, but may I possibly have someone look at the fact my clit has fucking disappeared? Oh, they'll have a field day with that information. Shout it across the fucking office, GDPR be damned. And I know what will happen, I'll have another appointment with a nurse practitioner or a physician associate – because you can never actually see the actual fucking GP these days – and they'll say "Well Mrs. Weasley, of course, you are of an age when oestrogen levels start to decline, have you considered masturbating more regularly and losing weight? Perhaps take a multivitamin?" and I'll say, well that's completely fucking fantastic, I'd never thought of that, can you at least do a blood test? Might you react slightly differently to a man reporting the same level of complete sexual dysfunction? You useless dipshits—
Her train of thought is suddenly interrupted by a loud report of flatulence.
"Jesus Christ, Ron," she hisses.
It's followed by a belch, exhaled through loose lips. "S'alright, it'll go in a minute."
Hermione takes a deep inhale and endeavours not to breathe through her nose for the next minute. She honestly didn't know whether his behaviour was an attempt to introduce levity into a situation he found uncomfortable, a genuine lack of respect, or both. He also had developed an unfortunate habit of injecting unwanted comedy into routine intimacy; most often displayed when he would approach her from behind, kissing her, hand snaking down into her underwear, dipping into her cunt. He would then sniff his own fingers and pretend to be a sort of vaginal sommelier, inevitably concluding that she smelled or tasted like something unpleasant or unexpected:
"Hmm, I'm getting an aroma, it's reminding me of something... Quavers?" he said, eyes distant, wafting his hand in front of his nose.
"You're horrible," she said, jerking away from him. "If you can't say anything nice, then fuck off."
"I'm only having a laugh."
"Well, I'm not fucking laughing."
She tries to concentrate on the sensation of the wand. It's somehow too much and not enough all at once.
Just two stone to lose. If he still does it then, you'll know there's a wider issue.
She had been putting rather a lot of stock on her continuing weight loss changing her current fortunes; in truth, she had no idea what she would do if she finally got to be a size eight and he didn't start spontaneously bending her over the sofa for a quickie.
"But why can't you just fuck me wherever? We don't always need to go to the spare room—"
"The spare room is away from the party wall; I don't want Nev to hear us going at it."
She hears the pump of the lube bottle in the background and knows what is coming. The shock of cold silicone breaches her core, and she grits her teeth as the familiar sting of The Doctor encroaches, Ron slowly inching it in.
This is ludicrous. What if I said to him, hey: from now on, every time you get off, the only way I can get anything out of it is if I can stab you in the leg while you're doing it. Yes, I know that it actively detracts from your pleasure; but I'm afraid I do need the visual of the leg-stabbing, or else my vulva will get sad.
She squirms and huffs. The pressure around her pussy is unbearable – throbbing, aching, but increasingly numb from heavy vibration without precision, the unpleasant stretch of The Doctor's girth capping off the experience. She wiggles her hips up at an angle so that the dildo is abruptly squeezed out and tears the sleep mask off her face.
"Ron, I'm sorry, this is getting me nowhere— can you please just go down on me instead?"
He looks stunned, still kneeling, not hard, one hand on the end of The Doctor, observing her with all the clinical detachment of an entomologist pinning a butterfly. He looks away and pauses for a beat before meeting her eyes nervously. "Uh, yeah, of course."
He nestles his face between her legs and tentatively sticks his tongue out, stalk-like, to meet her clit, keeping the rest of his face the maximum amount of distance he can be away from her, like a hummingbird attempting to extract nectar from a flower overrun with particularly aggressive wasps. She moans at the sudden flood of sensation back into her nerve endings.
Thank God, I've finally got my monthly cunnilingus. I might actually be able to come this time. Now all I've got to do is to relax and try not rattle through my to-do list. Think of something sexy. Hm, maybe I was too hasty in judging my poor old Nana and her collection of books with Fabio on the front cover. I could have inherited them instead of the Royal Doulton figurines.
Part of the way through, she feels the familiar, tentative prodding of him inserting The fucking Doctor again. Exhausted, she gives in.
I suppose you can't get everything you want. I don't even know what I want any more. To be worshipped for once? No, that's too much— just a little bit desired? To— God, I'd love to just have a proper snog one more time. Oh God, don't cry, don't cry—
It's somehow this that starts tipping her over the edge. Ron jumps back as her pussy starts to pulsate and she cries out from the sudden lack of contact; instead, he starts ramming The Doctor in and out rapidly and furiously. She screws up her face from the pain, sobbing from the frustration of a ruined orgasm; she yelps when he pounds her cervix. She lifts her hips and squirms away, managing to push The Doctor out with her pelvic floor muscles yet again, groaning at the relief of its absence.
Ron strokes himself, getting half-hard, guiding his cock – and The Doctor – towards her mouth. She knows he won't penetrate her vaginally – he very rarely does these days, and never unprotected – but instead permits her to toss him off briefly before he takes over for himself, while she is expected to fellate the dildo. She lies there, dazed, half-heartedly sucking on it as his fist pumps his own length frantically with his eyes screwed shut. As he reaches his peak, Hermione enacts the well-practiced dance of putting the tip of the dildo to his own, and to flatten her tongue to give the impression that there could potentially be two loads in her mouth. He grunts quietly as he comes; the noise a small concession to when they first got together and she had told him she found his complete silence during sex unnerving. The room is filled with the sound of breathing slowing.
"That was a good load," he says, assessing the small overflow of pooling semen that had dripped from her tongue onto her breasts, as he goes to pick up his phone off the floor. "Took forty-five minutes that time."
"Really." she murmurs, as he hands her a hand towel to clean up.
He starts putting on clothes rapidly. "It's going to rain overnight – I've just got to put the strimmer back in the shed. Can you change the upstairs bins before you come down? Thanks, love."
She lays motionless on the bed, listening to him clomp down the stairs. A solitary tear escapes the corner of her eye, tracking down her temple into her ear.
Notes:
No one:
Me, in a leather trenchcoat, crouching, smoking a cigarette between thumb and forefinger: In ordeur to leuern smut, feurst you muzt peurfect ze anti-smut
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I'm not actually at all familiar with East Devon, but Joanne seems to love setting stuff in that neck of the woods, so I'm just running with it
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My fancasts for Ron and Hermione are Dennis Waterman and Romy Schneider – yes, mainly because I saw some terrible schlocky old film called My Lover, My Son and they're hilariously miscast as people who are supposedly related. I also saw Schneider in a great sci-fi film called Death Watch, and she looked exactly how I imagined this Hermione to be (extremely frazzled). Waterman aged like hell very quickly, but Ron's appearance is closer to what I imagined here, albeit with a more current hairstyle. All my fancasts in this are actors from the mid-twentieth century, to match the eerie, timeless feel that being set in rural Britain engenders; barring the most visible signs of technological progress (primarily infrastructure such as pylons and mobile phone masts), a lot of market towns and villages are essentially preserved in aspic in a way that the major cities are not.
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All chapter titles are named after songs written by Stock Aitken Waterman, and many of their songs will be referenced throughout this fic. SAW were a monstrously successful songwriting and production trio who reached the height of fame in the mid-1980s to early 1990s. They achieved more than one hundred UK Top 40 hits, with thirteen of those reaching number one (although they had more modest success in the U.S., with only three number ones). They're best described as a sort of three-man British Motown with a LinnDrum, making music for the girls, the gays, and the under-10s. Widely reviled by the serious music press at the time, their work was a mainstay of school discos, which is where Hermione would have been exposed to it.
References:
• The title of the chapter comes from the Jason Donovan song Story of My Life, the B-side to his 1990 single Rhythm of the Rain. Not one of SAW's finest; kind of sounds like a Robbie Williams album track.
• The Days of the Week song is played every morning at 6.50am on the CBeebies channel in the UK.
• The song Hermione gets caught grooving to in traffic is Stock Aitken Waterman's 1987 hit Roadblock, which they initially released anonymously as a riposte to music industry critics who derided their music; it received numerous accolades before they made the big reveal.
• The story that Ron is reading from is the 1968 children's story The Tiger Who Came to Tea, by Judith Kerr.
• The lullaby that Ron and Hermione sing is Tonight You Belong To Me, a song from the 1920s recorded many times by many different artists, although the version in this story is inspired by this scene in The Jerk (1979).
• Quavers are a beloved British potato-based snack, known for their mild cheese flavour.
• To understand UK dress sizes, take the equivalent US size and add four (so a UK 8 is a US 4, a UK 14 is a US 10, etc.)
• A stone is equivalent to fourteen pounds; therefore, Hermione believes once she's lost approximately 30lbs all her problems might disappear (she's so real for this, frankly)
• Royal Doulton is a British ceramics company that makes ghastly, cursèd figurines that are inexplicably popular.