It’s a blistering hot Tuesday at the end of July, and Hermione is volunteering at her local library. Helping out with the annual Summer Reading Challenge for primary-school children involves asking them banal questions to ensure they haven’t just skim-read the six books they need to complete before getting a special medal. Ordinarily, you wouldn’t catch her dead near a bunch of snotty-nosed kids, but she’ll be applying to study medicine at Cambridge at the end of the summer. She needs this role so that she can pretend to be a sociable, well-rounded person – two attributes she most definitely does not possess.