For newyork_noodles.....
Only an hour late -- here's my entry for the Harry Potter Gen Ficathon.
Rating: G
Summary: During her first week in Hogwarts, Hermione Granger discovers that not all wizards see the world the same way she does.
Warning 1: People who like Lavender Brown might not appreciate some stuff in this story.
Warning 2: This story is technically finished, but I am a compulsive editor and may spiff it up a little over the next few weeks.
Title: Hermione Granger and the Powers That Be
The Hogwarts Express went over a bump, but Hermione Granger was already awake.
She hadn't slept much the previous night. She was too excited. Her parents had been excited too, ever since she got the letter. Well, ever since they'd verified the letter. It had seemed prankish at first -- everyone knew owls weren't smart enough to carry mail -- so they'd written back to see what would happen and a lady named Professor McGonagall had very kindly come over and explained things in person. She'd turned a teacup into a turtle right in front of them, and described the Hogwarts curriculum until even the Grangers were satisfied. And then... and then she'd taken them to Diagon Alley and Hermione had gotten a real magic wand and a huge trunkful of books....
Twenty of which had just spilled out of her bag.
Hermione lunged forward as Hogwarts: A History hit the floor, and her head collided with the shoulder of the round-faced, nervous lad sitting across from her. He had been jolted back to wakefulness by the train, and was now staring around with wide, terrified eyes.
"Oh, I'm so sorry!" cried Hermione. "The train just lurched and I lost hold of them, they're all over the floor now--"
"Trevor!" squeaked the boy. "Is Trevor down there?"
"Who's Trevor?"
"My toad! Oh no, I've lost him, Gran's going to go spare--"
He drew back his feet so Hermione could get at the rest of her books, and then fought his way out into the corridor.
Hermione piled the books awkwardly on her lap and dug out her school robes, which had been at the bottom of the bag.
The boy had a toad! Hermione had desperately wanted a familiar, but animals with exposure to magic evidently had different behavioral patterns than ordinary ones, and her parents had advised her to wait a bit and see which creatures had adapted the best.
Her parents were successful dentists, and they had given her lots of advice for her first year at boarding school. Keep away from bullies, snobs, and troublemakers; don't be afraid to know things; when in doubt, make yourself useful.... and, of course, the usual warnings about taking care of her teeth. She understood about her manners and associations -- that was plain common sense -- but she didn't know why anyone would be afraid of knowledge, because knowledge was her favorite thing in the whole world.
It occurred to her that this was a good time to make herself useful. She piled her books back up again, used the bag's strap to secure its bulging contents, and went up to the front of the train.
There was no one in the locomotive: they were apparently running on magic. The rest of the train was positively bustling, and the plump boy was quite lost in the crowd. Hermione checked the front compartments and began to work her way backwards. She introduced herself, in the next few minutes, to over half of the students who would be in her year. It was good, her parents said, to memorize names as soon as possible. It would make things less awkward over the next few weeks.
"Excuse me -- I'm looking for a toad -- no, it belongs to one of the first-years -- pass the word along, will you, watch out or someone might tread on it--"
The snack trolly took up most of the aisle, and she had to squeeze past (first checking that Trevor the toad hadn't got in among the Chocolate Frogs). Slipping past the plump witch behind it, she ran straight into a pale, narrow-faced boy with slick yellow hair. He recovered his balance without putting an arm out to help her, and looked her up and down with an unpleasant sort of calculation.
"Watch where you're going," they snapped at the same time.
The boy's lip curled in annoyance. "What do they call you?"
"People I don't know call me Miss Granger."
"Granger... surely I've heard that name. A wizard in--"
"I don't have any wizarding relatives," she said.
His eyes iced over. The reaction was so sudden and profound that Hermione was completely lost for a response. The boy shoved rudely past her and headed up the corridor.
Realizing her mouth was hanging open, she shut it in time to glare at the boy's cronies, who immediately thought better of shoving her as well. They merely glowered as they followed their leader toward the front of the train.
There, she thought, went a snob. She would be absolutely certain to keep away from him.
It took twenty minutes to go through the rest of the train. The plump boy, whose name turned out to be Neville Longbottom, had already done the compartments in the back, but there was no harm in trying them again. Perhaps Neville hadn't been thorough enough, or maybe the students in some compartments hadn't taken him seriously. He didn't really ask to be taken seriously, when one thought about it.
Many of the older students were in the back. Some husky second-years jeered at her and blew raspberries; she shut the door in their faces and tried to comfort a very small first-year whom they had apparently been teasing. A group of third-years, apparently led by a black boy with dreadlocks and two identical twins with flaming red hair, were prodding a large fat tarantula around their compartment. The red-haired first-year a few compartments over was obviously their brother, and next to him -- holy cricket! There was no mistaking Harry Potter. Modern Magical History had a picture of him as a baby, along with his parents. He was the image of his father, but had his mother's eyes--
Neither of them had seen the toad, though. And the red-haired boy had dirt on his nose. He was probably in trouble already.
Within an hour the train arrived at Hogwarts, and the first-years were whisked off to be Sorted. Hermione never did locate Neville's toad. It turned up on the floor of the Great Hall, and she noted with interest that magical toads were evidently smart enough not to get too badly lost.
* * *
It had been a close call, but she made it. She was in Gryffindor!
The Hat had tried to coax her into Ravenclaw, but she had been determined from the beginning to get into the House that had produced the greatest number of defenders during the last wizarding war. Professor Dumbledore's obvious eccentricity had been a bit offputting, but she charitably decided that he was allowed a little daftness at his age.
Gryffindor Tower was a cozy place, if a touch gaudy and forward. There were five bunks in the first-year girl's dormitory, and she chose one with a longish cabinet next to it. She could probably cobble up a bookshelf on there, if she could get some spare boards from Mr. Filch.
Her dorm mates, at first glance, were an unpromising lot. Two of them were so shy they would barely speak, and the other two were right twitterheads, nattering about cosmetics and fashions and popular music. When the noise got to be too much, Hermione pulled the drapes on her four-poster and read ahead by the light of her wand.
The head of Gryffindor was Professor McGonagall, who had met them in the Great Hall. She taught Transfiguration, which had looked, from the textbook, to be one of the most difficult classes of the year. Hermione made sure to get there extra early, and shook her head when Harry Potter and Ronald Weasley came in late and ran afoul of the professor, who was sitting on the desk in animagus form while the students took notes on the first chapter. Hermione glanced up in time to see McGonagall revert, in midleap, to human form, and was thrilled at the grace and precision of the shift. Transfiguration was looking more fascinating all the time.
Some of the boys were whispering that this was the only time they'd ever see McGonagall sitting on her desk. Hermione couldn't see what that had to do with anything. She liked the stern professor already.
They were turning matches into needles. The incantation, Incumus nindulus, turned out to be a broken mixture of Latin and Imp, and she spent a few moments trying to sort out which syllable came from which language. She had done the reading, but went over it again just in case, reveling in the familiar feel of the words running through her head.
The wand movement was minimal -- a simple dip and point, directing the wizard's magic toward the match. Harder, though, was the mental part of the job. There were so many things to concentrate on: the differences and similarities between needles and matches, the desired final form of her needle, the physical and magical properties of wood, sulfur, and steel, the required alteration of the object's aura and molecular structure....
Hardest of all, at least to a Muggle-born student, was the mental "shove" that got her magic working. Though her wand helped a bit, Hermione began to realize why magic was more than brainless chanting and bright sparks.
"Incumus nindulus.... incumus nindulus...."
Was something changing? She couldn't tell.
There was a fzzt! from behind her, and she glanced around at Seamus Finnigan, whose match had ignited by itself. Professor McGonagall swept into the scene, extinguished the desk with an economical gesture, and explained, in several very potent words, the difference between needles and minor explosive events. Hermione listened because it was fascinating, but turned quickly back to her needle when McGonagall turned to check on the other students' work.
"Incumus nindulus...."
The wood part of the match was definitely getting greyer. Steel, she thought, not silver, because silver had an entirely different molecular structure. The end was still sulfur, and she tried to imagine a thin hole through it, but that was really hard, as hard as maths, which her parents hadn't bothered much about because they were dentists.
The period ended. Reluctantly Hermione held up her match, and was surprised when Professor McGonagall praised it as the best effort in the class. More surprising, though, was the fact that everyone else in the room was alternately glaring at her match and refusing to meet her eyes.
The other classes were interesting, but not nearly as challenging. Except for one.
It had been promising when Professor Binns floated in through the chalkboard. He informed them that his subject was history, spelled his name out loud as he obviously couldn't write it, and told them to prepare a fresh roll of parchment with the date, time, course, and subject. Hermione was impressed with his organizational skills... right up until he began to speak.
Near the end of the class, she glanced around, taking the opportunity to work out her sore quill hand. Nearly every student had stopped writing. Weasley had his head propped up on one sagging arm, and Susan Bones of Hufflepuff seemed to have fallen asleep.
Grimly Hermione finished her notes, because someday Professor Binns would probably give them a test, and then the whole class would be grateful that somebody had paid attention.
* * *
On Friday they had double Potions with the Slytherins.
If Professor Dumbledore had looked like a great white wizard, Professor Snape looked like his evil apprentice. Snape's voice carried well and he seemed to choose his words carefully, for which Hermione was grateful -- it made note-taking so much easier. But there was disdain in his eyes when he looked at his students, and he ignored her hand every single time she raised it.
For that matter, aconite and asphodel weren't covered until the last chapter of Magical Drafts and Potions, and only in the footnotes, at that. Hermione had been intrigued by the Draught of Living Death, because it had been referred to in the histories of the last war with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, but apparently most of the other students hadn't read The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts.
Twice more she raised her hand, and twice more Snape sneered at it and turned away. Her potion, by the time Neville Longbottom managed to melt his cauldron, was almost perfect, but Snape had hardly spared it a glance.
With Snape and Longbottom gone off to the hospital wing, the rest of the students milled about, griping over backpacks and notebooks ruined by the spilled potion. Some of them put their cauldrons away without cleaning them. Others left supplies scattered all over their tables. Hermione bottled her potion in the manner approved in the book, left it on the front desk, and stormed out of the dungeon without waiting for Snape to come back.
Teatime came and went as she sat on a rock by the lake, uncomfortably aware that nobody would miss her until dinner, and then only the prefects would wonder where she was.
What was the point of a lesson like that? It was as though Snape didn't even care whether the class actually learnt anything. For that matter, why was one of the Hogwarts teachers allowed to be so unpleasant? And why had he gone on about the Draught of Living Death? The fact that he had introduced such dangerous and obscure topics in his first lesson was somewhat disquieting, but it seemed unlikely that Dumbledore would have hired a real Dark Wizard, and Hermione didn't remember any Snape from any of the historical texts she had hidden from her parents after the trip to Diagon Alley.
They would never have approved of a class like Potions. In fact, there were a lot of things about Wizarding life that her parents would never approve of -- things far more dire than straightening one's teeth with a few words and a magic wand. Professor McGonagall, she knew, had glossed over the Dark Arts. Stories about Death Eaters and Voldemort would only have worried the Grangers, and might even have prevented them from sending her into such a dangerous environment.
She'd also hid The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection. Some of the curses in there looked gruesome, if not downright evil. But honestly, if there were people in the world who were willing to use such terrible curses, wasn't it worthwhile to learn to fight back?
Wasn't it worthwhile to fight against anything that tried to beat you down?
Why had Snape ignored her during class? What was the good of having questions, of knowing answers, if the teacher didn't want to hear about them?
Her parents' words came back to her then. Never be afraid of knowing things.
Knowledge was important. It was good to know things, even if nobody cared that she knew.
She hated hiding things from her parents. It felt like lying, and even more like manipulation. If her parents didn't know what was going on, they wouldn't worry about her, but they also couldn't protect her if something went wrong.
That, Hermione Granger decided, was life.
Hogwarts had an infirmary, and enough teachers to prevent anyone from being seriously harmed by what they were learning. And Professor Snape was only one teacher. His class might be unbearable, but the subject wasn't the same as the professor, and since it was in the curriculum it would probably come in useful someday.
Schooling was important, no matter how unpleasant it was. And Hermione resolved to make every lesson count.
It was well that she did, because in their next class, she found that Snape had marked her down for bottling the potion according to the book, instead of in the preferred laboratory method which he had not explained in class.
She met his glare calmly, and went back to taking notes.
* * *
If Snape's class had been bad, Thursday's flying lesson was even worse -- for a different reason.
She'd prepared as well as she could. She'd gone to the library and found nothing but Quidditch texts, which, even though they were books, had managed to bore her silly. She read them all the same, but none of the her classmates wanted to hear about them before the lesson, even the ones who seemed to discuss Quidditch nonstop. Neville Longbottom alone showed interest. Unfortunately, as many times as she explained proper posture and the theory of manual broom control, he just didn't seem to get it.
She was still muttering statistics to herself as they trooped out to the field. Two rows of brooms were laid out on the grass. As they drew closer, something hard and sour knotted in Hermione's stomach, and it took her a moment to recognize the sensation as dread.
Hermione Granger had never been on a broom.
Flying, according to the books, was more art than science. The broom's built-in magic interfaced with that of the rider, and every broom reacted differently. Every flyer, from what she had read, reacted differently as well. The only thing they agreed on was that all the books in the world couldn't prepare a wizard for the feeling of balancing on a broomstick and taking off.
She was Muggle-born. She had never even seen anybody on a broom.
She wondered if it was anything like riding a bicycle.
Hermione hurried ahead, trying to find the best broom. There wasn't much to choose from. The books had advised her to consider the tapering of the handle, the gentle curve of the shaft where the hands were supposed to rest, the age and sheen of the twigs in the tail -- but the brooms waiting on the grass looked like they'd been chopped out of brushwood, bristled with hay, tied off with old twine, and frayed into uselessness. Some of them still had bark on them, and there were spiderwebs caught in the ragged tails.
There was no difference. She picked a random broom and tried to swallow her fear, or at least distract herself by wondering why Madame Hooch had yellow eyes.
"..right hand over the broom," the witch was saying.
Hermione held out her right hand. Was she holding it in the right place? Should it be a little further near the front? Why didn't the broom have a recognizable handrest?
If she was doing it right, the broom's magic should respond to her waiting hand. She held her hand a little lower, but couldn't feel anything.
"Up," she said, along with the rest of the students.
Her broom rolled over lazily.
Well, at least it had done something. She glanced around, noting with consternation that Potter was holding his broom already. In the end, she had to pick hers up, which was embarassing; but the feel of the broom's inherent magic reassured her a little as she swung one leg over the handle.
Then Neville Longbottom managed to push off early, fell off his broom, and broke his wrist.
Hermione decided at that moment that she hated flying.
The day went downhill from there. Again Harry Potter took center stage, squaring off against the blond-haired Slytherin from the train, who turned out to be a bully as well as a snob. Professor McGonagall's intervention apparently prevented him from being expelled for pulling dangerous stunts in the air while completely unsupervised, but the blond-haired boy provoked him again at dinner, and Weasley talked him into participating in an actual duel. Of all the irresponsible, thoughtless, selfish, barbaric... Hermione couldn't think of a good adjective, so she tried to talk Potter and Weasley out of falling for an obvious Slytherin trap. Being not only thoughtless but stubborn, they refused to listen.
Fuming, she decided to wait for them in the common room and confront them again. Nobody else seemed to care what Potter and Weasley got up to. Gryffindor House wasn't nearly careful enough about points. They were going to lose the cup if nobody managed to straighten them out.
* * *
At thirty minutes after midnight in the Gryffindor common room, Hermione Granger realized that she had never been so mad in her life.
"I hope you're pleased with yourselves!" she snapped. "We could all have been killed -- or worse, expelled. Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to bed."
Practically running up the stairs, she stomped into the girls' dormitory and slammed the door behind her, dragging a sleeve across her red face. Potter and Weasley had a nerve! Flouting rule after rule, ignoring her when she tried to stop them, sneaking out after hours with intent to duel, and then nearly getting them all caught near the forbidden third-floor corridor -- and they were lucky to be alive, really, after that business with the three-headed dog. She pitied Longbottom, she really did. He didn't deserve to share a dorm with those roustabouts.
Lavender Brown was awake, sitting on her bed with a magical cosmetics set her mother had sent her by owl post.
"Did you have fun out there?" she said nastily.
"I don't see as it's any of your business," grumbled Hermione.
"Lose any points yet?"
"No."
"'Course not," yawned Lavender. "Can't have anything happen to the perfect Granger score."
"You sound like Professor Snape." Hermione crawled into her bed, stacking her current reading material on the floor beside it. "What is it about you and scores?"
"You almost fell off your broom today," said Lavender. "There's one thing you can't do perfectly."
"I'll get it eventually," said Hermione. She could feel the heat pouring off her face.
"Perfect Hermione Granger can't ride a broom.... Serves you right for showing off the whole week....."
"I wasn't showing off!" protested Hermione. "I was doing my best! Don't you dare ask me to hold back, Lavender Brown. Just because you stay up all hours and never study--"
Lavender made a face at her and went back to painting her nails.
"Didn't your mother teach you how to be industrious?"
"Didn't your mother ever teach you to give it a rest?" sneered Lavender. "Or do you have nothing better to do than listen to your mother?"
Hermione seriously considered jinxing her. There were a couple of good ones in this year's DADA text. But that would definitely constitute getting into trouble.
"You leave my mother out of this."
"You brought her into it."
"I brought your mother into it."
"Ooh, are you crying? What's wrong, you don't like it when I talk about your mother? Little baby can't stand it when someone talks about her mother? Are you mad at her for naming you Hermione? What a stupid name--"
"Shut it," snapped Hermione, pulling her drapes to. "You'll wake everyone up."
The next day Hermione looked up 'bullying' in the library. Unfortunately the student handbook had been written by Godric Gryffindor, and advice such as "Tis alle inne your Head" and "Be wayre, in event of Insult, never to begyn it, but to gyve as gude as ye shuld recyve" seemed to have little application to her current situation.
* * *
In the following days Hermione kept her chin up and her books close to hand, and went through breaks and meals without speaking to anyone at all. Not even Transfiguration was enough to make her smile.
McGonagall detained her as the other students were packing up their books.
"Don't let them get you down, Miss Granger," she said kindly.
"I'm doing my best, Professor," said Hermione, determined to keep a stiff upper lip in front of her favorite teacher.
"It may surprise you," said McGonagall, "but I know what you're going through. I also came to Hogwarts to learn, and was appalled when many of my classmates appeared to shun the type of dedication necessary for a true scholar."
The thought of Professor McGonagall as a first-year made Hermione grin in spite of herself.
"Some students," said Professor McGonagall, "don't realize that education is a privilage, not a right. And that the results are dependant on their work, not that of the teachers. You're working very hard, and consequently doing very well. It's not your fault if other people aren't as industrious."
"But they don't want me to do well either!" Hermione was suddenly very, very angry. She wished she were somewhere else, anywhere else -- anywhere with a lot of old, smashable pottery that no one would miss. "It isn't bad enough that they're ruining their own lives, they want me to ruin mine as well just so's not to show them up!"
"Some people will always resent another's hard-earned success," said McGonagall. "You have to remember, though... it's your choice whether or not to be influenced by their close-mindedness. Just," she added, her beady eyes twinkling, "as it was your choice to be sorted into Gryffindor."
Hermione looked up in astonishment.
"I believe you made the right decision," said McGonagall. "The typical Ravenclaw has a built-in drive to learn. You are more conscious of your intelligence and capacity. You learn because you want to, not just because the knowledge is there for the taking. I don't want you to lose sight of that, Miss Granger. You learn because you choose to, not just because you can."
* * *
That evening, while going over her homework, she thought about what her professor had said.
It was true. She loved to learn. She loved it even when it was hard, and she loved it even when nobody cared. She loved the satisfaction of a job well done, and the sight of a binder full of neat, well-organized information, and the warm feeling of earning top marks for her work.
The other students were laughing over a magazine. Hermione had seen it, and concluded that it contained nothing of interest. She preferred the library's musty tomes, and the fresh, organic smell of textbooks and ink. In this strange, spooky castle in a remote corner of Scotland, walking where her parents had never been and doing things of which they'd never dreamed, the ability to learn and strive for understanding made her feel right at home.
The night wore on, and Hermione studied, because that was her job and her right and her choice. And nobody, but nobody, would ever tell her otherwise again.
END
Rating: G
Summary: During her first week in Hogwarts, Hermione Granger discovers that not all wizards see the world the same way she does.
Warning 1: People who like Lavender Brown might not appreciate some stuff in this story.
Warning 2: This story is technically finished, but I am a compulsive editor and may spiff it up a little over the next few weeks.
Title: Hermione Granger and the Powers That Be
The Hogwarts Express went over a bump, but Hermione Granger was already awake.
She hadn't slept much the previous night. She was too excited. Her parents had been excited too, ever since she got the letter. Well, ever since they'd verified the letter. It had seemed prankish at first -- everyone knew owls weren't smart enough to carry mail -- so they'd written back to see what would happen and a lady named Professor McGonagall had very kindly come over and explained things in person. She'd turned a teacup into a turtle right in front of them, and described the Hogwarts curriculum until even the Grangers were satisfied. And then... and then she'd taken them to Diagon Alley and Hermione had gotten a real magic wand and a huge trunkful of books....
Twenty of which had just spilled out of her bag.
Hermione lunged forward as Hogwarts: A History hit the floor, and her head collided with the shoulder of the round-faced, nervous lad sitting across from her. He had been jolted back to wakefulness by the train, and was now staring around with wide, terrified eyes.
"Oh, I'm so sorry!" cried Hermione. "The train just lurched and I lost hold of them, they're all over the floor now--"
"Trevor!" squeaked the boy. "Is Trevor down there?"
"Who's Trevor?"
"My toad! Oh no, I've lost him, Gran's going to go spare--"
He drew back his feet so Hermione could get at the rest of her books, and then fought his way out into the corridor.
Hermione piled the books awkwardly on her lap and dug out her school robes, which had been at the bottom of the bag.
The boy had a toad! Hermione had desperately wanted a familiar, but animals with exposure to magic evidently had different behavioral patterns than ordinary ones, and her parents had advised her to wait a bit and see which creatures had adapted the best.
Her parents were successful dentists, and they had given her lots of advice for her first year at boarding school. Keep away from bullies, snobs, and troublemakers; don't be afraid to know things; when in doubt, make yourself useful.... and, of course, the usual warnings about taking care of her teeth. She understood about her manners and associations -- that was plain common sense -- but she didn't know why anyone would be afraid of knowledge, because knowledge was her favorite thing in the whole world.
It occurred to her that this was a good time to make herself useful. She piled her books back up again, used the bag's strap to secure its bulging contents, and went up to the front of the train.
There was no one in the locomotive: they were apparently running on magic. The rest of the train was positively bustling, and the plump boy was quite lost in the crowd. Hermione checked the front compartments and began to work her way backwards. She introduced herself, in the next few minutes, to over half of the students who would be in her year. It was good, her parents said, to memorize names as soon as possible. It would make things less awkward over the next few weeks.
"Excuse me -- I'm looking for a toad -- no, it belongs to one of the first-years -- pass the word along, will you, watch out or someone might tread on it--"
The snack trolly took up most of the aisle, and she had to squeeze past (first checking that Trevor the toad hadn't got in among the Chocolate Frogs). Slipping past the plump witch behind it, she ran straight into a pale, narrow-faced boy with slick yellow hair. He recovered his balance without putting an arm out to help her, and looked her up and down with an unpleasant sort of calculation.
"Watch where you're going," they snapped at the same time.
The boy's lip curled in annoyance. "What do they call you?"
"People I don't know call me Miss Granger."
"Granger... surely I've heard that name. A wizard in--"
"I don't have any wizarding relatives," she said.
His eyes iced over. The reaction was so sudden and profound that Hermione was completely lost for a response. The boy shoved rudely past her and headed up the corridor.
Realizing her mouth was hanging open, she shut it in time to glare at the boy's cronies, who immediately thought better of shoving her as well. They merely glowered as they followed their leader toward the front of the train.
There, she thought, went a snob. She would be absolutely certain to keep away from him.
It took twenty minutes to go through the rest of the train. The plump boy, whose name turned out to be Neville Longbottom, had already done the compartments in the back, but there was no harm in trying them again. Perhaps Neville hadn't been thorough enough, or maybe the students in some compartments hadn't taken him seriously. He didn't really ask to be taken seriously, when one thought about it.
Many of the older students were in the back. Some husky second-years jeered at her and blew raspberries; she shut the door in their faces and tried to comfort a very small first-year whom they had apparently been teasing. A group of third-years, apparently led by a black boy with dreadlocks and two identical twins with flaming red hair, were prodding a large fat tarantula around their compartment. The red-haired first-year a few compartments over was obviously their brother, and next to him -- holy cricket! There was no mistaking Harry Potter. Modern Magical History had a picture of him as a baby, along with his parents. He was the image of his father, but had his mother's eyes--
Neither of them had seen the toad, though. And the red-haired boy had dirt on his nose. He was probably in trouble already.
Within an hour the train arrived at Hogwarts, and the first-years were whisked off to be Sorted. Hermione never did locate Neville's toad. It turned up on the floor of the Great Hall, and she noted with interest that magical toads were evidently smart enough not to get too badly lost.
* * *
It had been a close call, but she made it. She was in Gryffindor!
The Hat had tried to coax her into Ravenclaw, but she had been determined from the beginning to get into the House that had produced the greatest number of defenders during the last wizarding war. Professor Dumbledore's obvious eccentricity had been a bit offputting, but she charitably decided that he was allowed a little daftness at his age.
Gryffindor Tower was a cozy place, if a touch gaudy and forward. There were five bunks in the first-year girl's dormitory, and she chose one with a longish cabinet next to it. She could probably cobble up a bookshelf on there, if she could get some spare boards from Mr. Filch.
Her dorm mates, at first glance, were an unpromising lot. Two of them were so shy they would barely speak, and the other two were right twitterheads, nattering about cosmetics and fashions and popular music. When the noise got to be too much, Hermione pulled the drapes on her four-poster and read ahead by the light of her wand.
The head of Gryffindor was Professor McGonagall, who had met them in the Great Hall. She taught Transfiguration, which had looked, from the textbook, to be one of the most difficult classes of the year. Hermione made sure to get there extra early, and shook her head when Harry Potter and Ronald Weasley came in late and ran afoul of the professor, who was sitting on the desk in animagus form while the students took notes on the first chapter. Hermione glanced up in time to see McGonagall revert, in midleap, to human form, and was thrilled at the grace and precision of the shift. Transfiguration was looking more fascinating all the time.
Some of the boys were whispering that this was the only time they'd ever see McGonagall sitting on her desk. Hermione couldn't see what that had to do with anything. She liked the stern professor already.
They were turning matches into needles. The incantation, Incumus nindulus, turned out to be a broken mixture of Latin and Imp, and she spent a few moments trying to sort out which syllable came from which language. She had done the reading, but went over it again just in case, reveling in the familiar feel of the words running through her head.
The wand movement was minimal -- a simple dip and point, directing the wizard's magic toward the match. Harder, though, was the mental part of the job. There were so many things to concentrate on: the differences and similarities between needles and matches, the desired final form of her needle, the physical and magical properties of wood, sulfur, and steel, the required alteration of the object's aura and molecular structure....
Hardest of all, at least to a Muggle-born student, was the mental "shove" that got her magic working. Though her wand helped a bit, Hermione began to realize why magic was more than brainless chanting and bright sparks.
"Incumus nindulus.... incumus nindulus...."
Was something changing? She couldn't tell.
There was a fzzt! from behind her, and she glanced around at Seamus Finnigan, whose match had ignited by itself. Professor McGonagall swept into the scene, extinguished the desk with an economical gesture, and explained, in several very potent words, the difference between needles and minor explosive events. Hermione listened because it was fascinating, but turned quickly back to her needle when McGonagall turned to check on the other students' work.
"Incumus nindulus...."
The wood part of the match was definitely getting greyer. Steel, she thought, not silver, because silver had an entirely different molecular structure. The end was still sulfur, and she tried to imagine a thin hole through it, but that was really hard, as hard as maths, which her parents hadn't bothered much about because they were dentists.
The period ended. Reluctantly Hermione held up her match, and was surprised when Professor McGonagall praised it as the best effort in the class. More surprising, though, was the fact that everyone else in the room was alternately glaring at her match and refusing to meet her eyes.
The other classes were interesting, but not nearly as challenging. Except for one.
It had been promising when Professor Binns floated in through the chalkboard. He informed them that his subject was history, spelled his name out loud as he obviously couldn't write it, and told them to prepare a fresh roll of parchment with the date, time, course, and subject. Hermione was impressed with his organizational skills... right up until he began to speak.
Near the end of the class, she glanced around, taking the opportunity to work out her sore quill hand. Nearly every student had stopped writing. Weasley had his head propped up on one sagging arm, and Susan Bones of Hufflepuff seemed to have fallen asleep.
Grimly Hermione finished her notes, because someday Professor Binns would probably give them a test, and then the whole class would be grateful that somebody had paid attention.
* * *
On Friday they had double Potions with the Slytherins.
If Professor Dumbledore had looked like a great white wizard, Professor Snape looked like his evil apprentice. Snape's voice carried well and he seemed to choose his words carefully, for which Hermione was grateful -- it made note-taking so much easier. But there was disdain in his eyes when he looked at his students, and he ignored her hand every single time she raised it.
For that matter, aconite and asphodel weren't covered until the last chapter of Magical Drafts and Potions, and only in the footnotes, at that. Hermione had been intrigued by the Draught of Living Death, because it had been referred to in the histories of the last war with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, but apparently most of the other students hadn't read The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts.
Twice more she raised her hand, and twice more Snape sneered at it and turned away. Her potion, by the time Neville Longbottom managed to melt his cauldron, was almost perfect, but Snape had hardly spared it a glance.
With Snape and Longbottom gone off to the hospital wing, the rest of the students milled about, griping over backpacks and notebooks ruined by the spilled potion. Some of them put their cauldrons away without cleaning them. Others left supplies scattered all over their tables. Hermione bottled her potion in the manner approved in the book, left it on the front desk, and stormed out of the dungeon without waiting for Snape to come back.
Teatime came and went as she sat on a rock by the lake, uncomfortably aware that nobody would miss her until dinner, and then only the prefects would wonder where she was.
What was the point of a lesson like that? It was as though Snape didn't even care whether the class actually learnt anything. For that matter, why was one of the Hogwarts teachers allowed to be so unpleasant? And why had he gone on about the Draught of Living Death? The fact that he had introduced such dangerous and obscure topics in his first lesson was somewhat disquieting, but it seemed unlikely that Dumbledore would have hired a real Dark Wizard, and Hermione didn't remember any Snape from any of the historical texts she had hidden from her parents after the trip to Diagon Alley.
They would never have approved of a class like Potions. In fact, there were a lot of things about Wizarding life that her parents would never approve of -- things far more dire than straightening one's teeth with a few words and a magic wand. Professor McGonagall, she knew, had glossed over the Dark Arts. Stories about Death Eaters and Voldemort would only have worried the Grangers, and might even have prevented them from sending her into such a dangerous environment.
She'd also hid The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection. Some of the curses in there looked gruesome, if not downright evil. But honestly, if there were people in the world who were willing to use such terrible curses, wasn't it worthwhile to learn to fight back?
Wasn't it worthwhile to fight against anything that tried to beat you down?
Why had Snape ignored her during class? What was the good of having questions, of knowing answers, if the teacher didn't want to hear about them?
Her parents' words came back to her then. Never be afraid of knowing things.
Knowledge was important. It was good to know things, even if nobody cared that she knew.
She hated hiding things from her parents. It felt like lying, and even more like manipulation. If her parents didn't know what was going on, they wouldn't worry about her, but they also couldn't protect her if something went wrong.
That, Hermione Granger decided, was life.
Hogwarts had an infirmary, and enough teachers to prevent anyone from being seriously harmed by what they were learning. And Professor Snape was only one teacher. His class might be unbearable, but the subject wasn't the same as the professor, and since it was in the curriculum it would probably come in useful someday.
Schooling was important, no matter how unpleasant it was. And Hermione resolved to make every lesson count.
It was well that she did, because in their next class, she found that Snape had marked her down for bottling the potion according to the book, instead of in the preferred laboratory method which he had not explained in class.
She met his glare calmly, and went back to taking notes.
* * *
If Snape's class had been bad, Thursday's flying lesson was even worse -- for a different reason.
She'd prepared as well as she could. She'd gone to the library and found nothing but Quidditch texts, which, even though they were books, had managed to bore her silly. She read them all the same, but none of the her classmates wanted to hear about them before the lesson, even the ones who seemed to discuss Quidditch nonstop. Neville Longbottom alone showed interest. Unfortunately, as many times as she explained proper posture and the theory of manual broom control, he just didn't seem to get it.
She was still muttering statistics to herself as they trooped out to the field. Two rows of brooms were laid out on the grass. As they drew closer, something hard and sour knotted in Hermione's stomach, and it took her a moment to recognize the sensation as dread.
Hermione Granger had never been on a broom.
Flying, according to the books, was more art than science. The broom's built-in magic interfaced with that of the rider, and every broom reacted differently. Every flyer, from what she had read, reacted differently as well. The only thing they agreed on was that all the books in the world couldn't prepare a wizard for the feeling of balancing on a broomstick and taking off.
She was Muggle-born. She had never even seen anybody on a broom.
She wondered if it was anything like riding a bicycle.
Hermione hurried ahead, trying to find the best broom. There wasn't much to choose from. The books had advised her to consider the tapering of the handle, the gentle curve of the shaft where the hands were supposed to rest, the age and sheen of the twigs in the tail -- but the brooms waiting on the grass looked like they'd been chopped out of brushwood, bristled with hay, tied off with old twine, and frayed into uselessness. Some of them still had bark on them, and there were spiderwebs caught in the ragged tails.
There was no difference. She picked a random broom and tried to swallow her fear, or at least distract herself by wondering why Madame Hooch had yellow eyes.
"..right hand over the broom," the witch was saying.
Hermione held out her right hand. Was she holding it in the right place? Should it be a little further near the front? Why didn't the broom have a recognizable handrest?
If she was doing it right, the broom's magic should respond to her waiting hand. She held her hand a little lower, but couldn't feel anything.
"Up," she said, along with the rest of the students.
Her broom rolled over lazily.
Well, at least it had done something. She glanced around, noting with consternation that Potter was holding his broom already. In the end, she had to pick hers up, which was embarassing; but the feel of the broom's inherent magic reassured her a little as she swung one leg over the handle.
Then Neville Longbottom managed to push off early, fell off his broom, and broke his wrist.
Hermione decided at that moment that she hated flying.
The day went downhill from there. Again Harry Potter took center stage, squaring off against the blond-haired Slytherin from the train, who turned out to be a bully as well as a snob. Professor McGonagall's intervention apparently prevented him from being expelled for pulling dangerous stunts in the air while completely unsupervised, but the blond-haired boy provoked him again at dinner, and Weasley talked him into participating in an actual duel. Of all the irresponsible, thoughtless, selfish, barbaric... Hermione couldn't think of a good adjective, so she tried to talk Potter and Weasley out of falling for an obvious Slytherin trap. Being not only thoughtless but stubborn, they refused to listen.
Fuming, she decided to wait for them in the common room and confront them again. Nobody else seemed to care what Potter and Weasley got up to. Gryffindor House wasn't nearly careful enough about points. They were going to lose the cup if nobody managed to straighten them out.
* * *
At thirty minutes after midnight in the Gryffindor common room, Hermione Granger realized that she had never been so mad in her life.
"I hope you're pleased with yourselves!" she snapped. "We could all have been killed -- or worse, expelled. Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to bed."
Practically running up the stairs, she stomped into the girls' dormitory and slammed the door behind her, dragging a sleeve across her red face. Potter and Weasley had a nerve! Flouting rule after rule, ignoring her when she tried to stop them, sneaking out after hours with intent to duel, and then nearly getting them all caught near the forbidden third-floor corridor -- and they were lucky to be alive, really, after that business with the three-headed dog. She pitied Longbottom, she really did. He didn't deserve to share a dorm with those roustabouts.
Lavender Brown was awake, sitting on her bed with a magical cosmetics set her mother had sent her by owl post.
"Did you have fun out there?" she said nastily.
"I don't see as it's any of your business," grumbled Hermione.
"Lose any points yet?"
"No."
"'Course not," yawned Lavender. "Can't have anything happen to the perfect Granger score."
"You sound like Professor Snape." Hermione crawled into her bed, stacking her current reading material on the floor beside it. "What is it about you and scores?"
"You almost fell off your broom today," said Lavender. "There's one thing you can't do perfectly."
"I'll get it eventually," said Hermione. She could feel the heat pouring off her face.
"Perfect Hermione Granger can't ride a broom.... Serves you right for showing off the whole week....."
"I wasn't showing off!" protested Hermione. "I was doing my best! Don't you dare ask me to hold back, Lavender Brown. Just because you stay up all hours and never study--"
Lavender made a face at her and went back to painting her nails.
"Didn't your mother teach you how to be industrious?"
"Didn't your mother ever teach you to give it a rest?" sneered Lavender. "Or do you have nothing better to do than listen to your mother?"
Hermione seriously considered jinxing her. There were a couple of good ones in this year's DADA text. But that would definitely constitute getting into trouble.
"You leave my mother out of this."
"You brought her into it."
"I brought your mother into it."
"Ooh, are you crying? What's wrong, you don't like it when I talk about your mother? Little baby can't stand it when someone talks about her mother? Are you mad at her for naming you Hermione? What a stupid name--"
"Shut it," snapped Hermione, pulling her drapes to. "You'll wake everyone up."
The next day Hermione looked up 'bullying' in the library. Unfortunately the student handbook had been written by Godric Gryffindor, and advice such as "Tis alle inne your Head" and "Be wayre, in event of Insult, never to begyn it, but to gyve as gude as ye shuld recyve" seemed to have little application to her current situation.
* * *
In the following days Hermione kept her chin up and her books close to hand, and went through breaks and meals without speaking to anyone at all. Not even Transfiguration was enough to make her smile.
McGonagall detained her as the other students were packing up their books.
"Don't let them get you down, Miss Granger," she said kindly.
"I'm doing my best, Professor," said Hermione, determined to keep a stiff upper lip in front of her favorite teacher.
"It may surprise you," said McGonagall, "but I know what you're going through. I also came to Hogwarts to learn, and was appalled when many of my classmates appeared to shun the type of dedication necessary for a true scholar."
The thought of Professor McGonagall as a first-year made Hermione grin in spite of herself.
"Some students," said Professor McGonagall, "don't realize that education is a privilage, not a right. And that the results are dependant on their work, not that of the teachers. You're working very hard, and consequently doing very well. It's not your fault if other people aren't as industrious."
"But they don't want me to do well either!" Hermione was suddenly very, very angry. She wished she were somewhere else, anywhere else -- anywhere with a lot of old, smashable pottery that no one would miss. "It isn't bad enough that they're ruining their own lives, they want me to ruin mine as well just so's not to show them up!"
"Some people will always resent another's hard-earned success," said McGonagall. "You have to remember, though... it's your choice whether or not to be influenced by their close-mindedness. Just," she added, her beady eyes twinkling, "as it was your choice to be sorted into Gryffindor."
Hermione looked up in astonishment.
"I believe you made the right decision," said McGonagall. "The typical Ravenclaw has a built-in drive to learn. You are more conscious of your intelligence and capacity. You learn because you want to, not just because the knowledge is there for the taking. I don't want you to lose sight of that, Miss Granger. You learn because you choose to, not just because you can."
* * *
That evening, while going over her homework, she thought about what her professor had said.
It was true. She loved to learn. She loved it even when it was hard, and she loved it even when nobody cared. She loved the satisfaction of a job well done, and the sight of a binder full of neat, well-organized information, and the warm feeling of earning top marks for her work.
The other students were laughing over a magazine. Hermione had seen it, and concluded that it contained nothing of interest. She preferred the library's musty tomes, and the fresh, organic smell of textbooks and ink. In this strange, spooky castle in a remote corner of Scotland, walking where her parents had never been and doing things of which they'd never dreamed, the ability to learn and strive for understanding made her feel right at home.
The night wore on, and Hermione studied, because that was her job and her right and her choice. And nobody, but nobody, would ever tell her otherwise again.
END