“Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so.” ~ Douglas Adams
Epi-soda 15
“My word.” Bumblebore sighed. “It seems like we been riding the McClatchy—formerly Knight-Ridder—bus for weeks.”
“It only feels that way,” said Hermione knowledgably and rather smugly. She reached her arm all the way past the elbow into her clutch bag and pulled out The Year of Magical Thinking. She opened the book at the place that she had bookmarked previously.
“What are you going to do with that?” asked Randalf the Burnt Sienna morosely. He sat next to Bumblebore wishing he could twiddle his thumbs. That is Randalf wished he could twiddle his own thumbs, mind you, not Bumblebore’s.
Hermione had her nose in the open book and while tapping her teeth with a tasseled bookmark. She looked up. “Hmm?”
“He said,” Bumblebore grumbled, “what are you going to do with that?”
“Read it,” said Hermoine obviously.
“We thought you were going to make a point,” observed Bumblebore.
He went on, “perhaps with the bookmark.”
She stared cross-eyed at the bookmark for several sentences in which the narrator discusses how the McClatchy Bus is hurtling through London at astonishing speeds, magically becoming narrower as it squeezed between cars, taxis, lorries, jitneys, and fairies.”
“Hey!” cried Bumblebore.
“Sorry,” apologized the narrator magically.
“The point I was making,” said Hermione at last, “was that we were in ‘bookmark time.’”
“Of course!” exclaimed Bumblebore. “You’re right.”
“Mmmph?” muffled Randalf the Rouge.
“She’s saying,” grumbled Bumblebore irritatedly and pushing Randalf the Rogue—”
“That’s rouge,” huffed Randalf.
“Whoops, sorry.” apologized the narrator again.
“May I continue?” asked Bumblebore, annoyed at the interruption.
“Of course,” said the narrator.
“That the time we’ve been away,” Bumblebore continued gravelly, “which seemed like weeks or months, was rather like the time period that occurs when you put a bookmark between pages and then set it aside. When you return to it, you open it to the bookmark and the characters are right where you left them.”
“Brilliant!” cried Der Weasel (it being in his contract that he must say ‘brilliant’ once an episode).
Nullius in Verba 
Oh no, it’s that bally clutch bag of Hermione’s back again, as if we had’t had enough of it in Book Seven!
Good to see old H.Splutter return, though.
The clunky plot device of Hermione’s magic carry-all bag proved to be too much temptation to resist.