A Different Hermione
Disclaimer: Harry Potter does not belong to me.
The Grangers had known right away that they had brought themselves home a curious infant and were unsurprised when she grew into an even more curious toddler. They answered her demands of "why" as best they could and smiled at each other over the top of her head when that morphed, instead, into a demand of "how." The telephone, the toaster, and the thermostat as well as every other item with the option of "on" or "off" to its name were treated in a similar fashion. Their little girl wanted to know and understand everything which she encountered.
[more]
People interested her even more than things and strangers (be they in line at the grocery store or sitting near her in the pediatrician's office) were only people whom she had not yet asked questions. She learned to read early, and they read books and sections of the encyclopedia together when something in one of the books was found to require further explanation. The Grangers thought it was adorable and were quite proud of their daughter's fascination (and wide eyed wonder) with discovery. Thus, they all tripped happily along through her early childhood.
All of that came to an end within the first six weeks of Hermione starting school. The Grangers were unprepared for their bright, inquisitive, friendly child not to function well in school. They had expected her to be happy there. Instead, they were troubled to find her growing more withdrawn and less open to the people she encountered by the day. By the time they convinced her to confide in them, the damage was already done. Hermione Granger had learned to value being invisible to people outside of her immediate family as nothing short of a survival skill, and she would cling to that goal with every bit of tenacity that she possessed for the next six years of her life.
Then, there came the invitation and visit that would change her family's entire view of what was and was not real in the world.
She had had brief thoughts that maybe things would be different when her invitation (and the attendant explanations) had first arrived. She did not entertain those thoughts for long. She would watch and wait, but she would not get her hopes up that anything significant might change. Her beliefs were only reinforced as she watched and listened to the other children on the train and at the sorting feast. Children were children whether they were wizarding children or not, and they had an inherent knack for being hateful to each other. She kept to the same strategy of carefully perpetuated invisibility that had gotten her through her primary years.
She ducked her head when the teachers asked a question and no one else raised their hand to answer. She knew, of course, she always knew, but she knew better than to ever let that fact come to the attention of her peers. She had had enough mocking to last her a lifetime already. Avoiding it was the only way that she knew how to function. She clung to that method of coping despite its shortcomings.
It wasn't as though her policy of silence was winning her anything in the realm of friendships (it never had). She spent so much time carefully guarding her tongue that her responses to any overtures of others were always succinct and closed ended (as well as scrupulously polite). They wrote her off as quiet and self-contained, and they left her mostly alone. She thought that that was the best that she was going to be able to ask for out of her school years. She, at the very least, had no one with a knowledge of her early blundering through the world of standardized education around to make waves in the solitary but unhindered life she was making for herself (children also had long memories).
She wrote long letters home filled with all of the things that she was learning and details of some of the more intriguing aspects of the castle. She ate her meals on her own but without being pushed at a distance from her counterparts. No one here made it their business to tell her to move. They (more often than not) simply didn't register that she was there. She was finding the anonymity as soothing as she was finding it frustrating.
She really had convinced herself that she hadn't gotten her hopes up that things would change here, but she knew that she (on some level) must have let some of that hope get beyond her defenses. If she hadn't, then she wouldn't be finding herself so disappointed that she was still lonely.
She told herself that she really had it quite good here compared to before.
Her roommates didn't steal her stuff and hide it the way that the items in her backpack had always gone missing in primary. They even waited on her before going to breakfast some mornings. It was very thoughtful of them, and it was far more positive attention than she was used to receiving from anyone close to her age. The two of them talked and laughed, and she was too relieved to feel safe in their room to be bothered much by her lack of inclusion in the conversation. They noticed her letter writing and reckoned her homesick. They had even offered her reassuring words about getting used to the differences from time to time. They were nice to her in a detached sort of way, but they were not her friends.
Even if she had allowed that small smidgeon of hope that she would be less lonely here, she hadn't allowed herself to expect to have any of those. She had never had any before, and she wasn't sure that she would know what to do with one if one had suddenly appeared.
She told herself that she would get used to the kind of lonely that didn't have parents waiting for her at the end of the day. That didn't mean that she didn't feel the pangs when she watched her roommates giggle with their heads together in the common room or the boys from her year sitting in a circle playing Exploding Snap. It still hurt to be reminded that such things seemed to belong to a world that she was apparently destined to remain barred from forever.
She had always had a home with a bedroom away from prying eyes when things got to be too much for her before, but one of the drawbacks of having roommates was that enough time to get all of the crying out of your system when things got to be too much was a luxury that you did not get to have.
She ducked into a bathroom on the night of Halloween knowing that her roommates would forget soon enough that they had insisted she come down to see the decorations at the feast with them after she excused herself. Everyone else would be in the Great Hall, and she could have an hour or two to herself without anyone realizing where she was or what she was doing. Or, at least, that was what she had thought.
"You were crying." A voice startled her some time later.
Hermione blinked at the apparition in front of her. It was one of the castle ghosts entirely too far into her personal space for comfort. Hermione had seen them, of course, but none of them had ever addressed her directly before.
"I was just . . .," she started to explain.
"You were crying in the bathroom," the girl who appeared to have been only a few years older than herself when she had died stated as if it was an accusation. "You shouldn't, you know," the girl pouted. "It isn't enough that everyone makes fun of Myrtle. They have to copy her as well." The girl crossed her arms and retreated so that she was hovering next to one of the sink basins.
"I don't know what you mean," Hermione responded. She had just come to have a few minutes to cry on her own. She most certainly hadn't been making fun of anyone.
"They were teasing you, weren't they?" The girl (Hermione was assuming her name was Myrtle from her earlier comment) continued tilting her head to the side and looking at Hermione speculatively. All of the sudden her eyes darted back and forth as if she was looking for something. When she spoke again, it was in a whisper. "You shouldn't come here when they tease you. Bad things happen."
Something about the way the apparition said "bad things" sent a shiver down Hermione's spine. She didn't like it.
"No one was teasing me," Hermione insisted. "I just . . .," she let the words trail off as she shrugged her shoulders.
"Someone has teased you," Myrtle replied, "or you wouldn't be so defensive about it." Hermione didn't have an answer to that. She was quite out of practice at answering questions. "That's what I thought," Myrtle smiled. "You haven't any friends, have you?"
"That's hardly . . . ."
"I know what it looks like."
Hermione blinked at her.
"I didn't have any friends when I was here either," the apparition continued making it perfectly clear that she didn't care whether Hermione wanted to hear her story or not. "They teased me something dreadful. Couldn't take what they dished out though, could they?" Myrtle was nearly muttering to herself. "Having me restricted so they didn't have to remember what they had done." Her attention suddenly shifted back to the red rimmed eyed girl sharing the room with her. "What's your name?"
"Hermione."
"Myrtle. You know what it's like to be scared of them, don't you?" She didn't elaborate on who she meant by them, but Hermione didn't need her to explain. Memories of name calling and hair pulling and being shoved into mud puddles while someone tore her notebook to pieces came bubbling up to the surface. She bit her lip in an attempt to keep herself from resuming her earlier tears. She didn't want that to be her life here. It's why she had to keep quiet. It's why she had to keep them from seeing her. She found herself nodding in answer to Myrtle's question.
The sound of something dragging along the stone of the floor in the hallway filled the room. Myrtle's eyes temporarily widened before she looked at Hermione with something that might be considered a smirk across her translucent features. "Bad things," she repeated.
Hermione wasn't entirely sure what she was doing. She just knew that she was scared - the phrase frozen in fear that had peppered the pages of her books all of her life had suddenly become something real and tangible instead of words that conjured some vague idea. There had been something huge pushing itself through the doorway. Some place in the back of her mind had provided the designation "troll" to identify it. She didn't think she had screamed - she was so used to making sure that she didn't say anything at inopportune moments. It had simply been there, and she had had no idea what one was supposed to do when faced with such a creature.
She had been frightened and then she had hurt. The pain in her head was really the sort of thing that precluded all manner of deep thinking (or any thinking at all really). She couldn't see, and she hadn't known whether her eyes had actually been closed or whether the pain was so intense and throbbing about her temples that her vision had gone to black in response to it.
"Stay here, Hermione," she heard someone saying close beside her. "Do you hear me? Whatever happens, you remember that you want to stay here." There were other words, but she couldn't make any sense of them. The "stay here" echoed around her head bouncing off and in and around the pain while the blackness crept inward from her vision and took over everything.
The Grangers had known right away that they had brought themselves home a curious infant and were unsurprised when she grew into an even more curious toddler. They answered her demands of "why" as best they could and smiled at each other over the top of her head when that morphed, instead, into a demand of "how." The telephone, the toaster, and the thermostat as well as every other item with the option of "on" or "off" to its name were treated in a similar fashion. Their little girl wanted to know and understand everything which she encountered.
[more]
People interested her even more than things and strangers (be they in line at the grocery store or sitting near her in the pediatrician's office) were only people whom she had not yet asked questions. She learned to read early, and they read books and sections of the encyclopedia together when something in one of the books was found to require further explanation. The Grangers thought it was adorable and were quite proud of their daughter's fascination (and wide eyed wonder) with discovery. Thus, they all tripped happily along through her early childhood.
All of that came to an end within the first six weeks of Hermione starting school. The Grangers were unprepared for their bright, inquisitive, friendly child not to function well in school. They had expected her to be happy there. Instead, they were troubled to find her growing more withdrawn and less open to the people she encountered by the day. By the time they convinced her to confide in them, the damage was already done. Hermione Granger had learned to value being invisible to people outside of her immediate family as nothing short of a survival skill, and she would cling to that goal with every bit of tenacity that she possessed for the next six years of her life.
Then, there came the invitation and visit that would change her family's entire view of what was and was not real in the world.
She had had brief thoughts that maybe things would be different when her invitation (and the attendant explanations) had first arrived. She did not entertain those thoughts for long. She would watch and wait, but she would not get her hopes up that anything significant might change. Her beliefs were only reinforced as she watched and listened to the other children on the train and at the sorting feast. Children were children whether they were wizarding children or not, and they had an inherent knack for being hateful to each other. She kept to the same strategy of carefully perpetuated invisibility that had gotten her through her primary years.
She ducked her head when the teachers asked a question and no one else raised their hand to answer. She knew, of course, she always knew, but she knew better than to ever let that fact come to the attention of her peers. She had had enough mocking to last her a lifetime already. Avoiding it was the only way that she knew how to function. She clung to that method of coping despite its shortcomings.
It wasn't as though her policy of silence was winning her anything in the realm of friendships (it never had). She spent so much time carefully guarding her tongue that her responses to any overtures of others were always succinct and closed ended (as well as scrupulously polite). They wrote her off as quiet and self-contained, and they left her mostly alone. She thought that that was the best that she was going to be able to ask for out of her school years. She, at the very least, had no one with a knowledge of her early blundering through the world of standardized education around to make waves in the solitary but unhindered life she was making for herself (children also had long memories).
She wrote long letters home filled with all of the things that she was learning and details of some of the more intriguing aspects of the castle. She ate her meals on her own but without being pushed at a distance from her counterparts. No one here made it their business to tell her to move. They (more often than not) simply didn't register that she was there. She was finding the anonymity as soothing as she was finding it frustrating.
She really had convinced herself that she hadn't gotten her hopes up that things would change here, but she knew that she (on some level) must have let some of that hope get beyond her defenses. If she hadn't, then she wouldn't be finding herself so disappointed that she was still lonely.
She told herself that she really had it quite good here compared to before.
Her roommates didn't steal her stuff and hide it the way that the items in her backpack had always gone missing in primary. They even waited on her before going to breakfast some mornings. It was very thoughtful of them, and it was far more positive attention than she was used to receiving from anyone close to her age. The two of them talked and laughed, and she was too relieved to feel safe in their room to be bothered much by her lack of inclusion in the conversation. They noticed her letter writing and reckoned her homesick. They had even offered her reassuring words about getting used to the differences from time to time. They were nice to her in a detached sort of way, but they were not her friends.
Even if she had allowed that small smidgeon of hope that she would be less lonely here, she hadn't allowed herself to expect to have any of those. She had never had any before, and she wasn't sure that she would know what to do with one if one had suddenly appeared.
She told herself that she would get used to the kind of lonely that didn't have parents waiting for her at the end of the day. That didn't mean that she didn't feel the pangs when she watched her roommates giggle with their heads together in the common room or the boys from her year sitting in a circle playing Exploding Snap. It still hurt to be reminded that such things seemed to belong to a world that she was apparently destined to remain barred from forever.
She had always had a home with a bedroom away from prying eyes when things got to be too much for her before, but one of the drawbacks of having roommates was that enough time to get all of the crying out of your system when things got to be too much was a luxury that you did not get to have.
She ducked into a bathroom on the night of Halloween knowing that her roommates would forget soon enough that they had insisted she come down to see the decorations at the feast with them after she excused herself. Everyone else would be in the Great Hall, and she could have an hour or two to herself without anyone realizing where she was or what she was doing. Or, at least, that was what she had thought.
"You were crying." A voice startled her some time later.
Hermione blinked at the apparition in front of her. It was one of the castle ghosts entirely too far into her personal space for comfort. Hermione had seen them, of course, but none of them had ever addressed her directly before.
"I was just . . .," she started to explain.
"You were crying in the bathroom," the girl who appeared to have been only a few years older than herself when she had died stated as if it was an accusation. "You shouldn't, you know," the girl pouted. "It isn't enough that everyone makes fun of Myrtle. They have to copy her as well." The girl crossed her arms and retreated so that she was hovering next to one of the sink basins.
"I don't know what you mean," Hermione responded. She had just come to have a few minutes to cry on her own. She most certainly hadn't been making fun of anyone.
"They were teasing you, weren't they?" The girl (Hermione was assuming her name was Myrtle from her earlier comment) continued tilting her head to the side and looking at Hermione speculatively. All of the sudden her eyes darted back and forth as if she was looking for something. When she spoke again, it was in a whisper. "You shouldn't come here when they tease you. Bad things happen."
Something about the way the apparition said "bad things" sent a shiver down Hermione's spine. She didn't like it.
"No one was teasing me," Hermione insisted. "I just . . .," she let the words trail off as she shrugged her shoulders.
"Someone has teased you," Myrtle replied, "or you wouldn't be so defensive about it." Hermione didn't have an answer to that. She was quite out of practice at answering questions. "That's what I thought," Myrtle smiled. "You haven't any friends, have you?"
"That's hardly . . . ."
"I know what it looks like."
Hermione blinked at her.
"I didn't have any friends when I was here either," the apparition continued making it perfectly clear that she didn't care whether Hermione wanted to hear her story or not. "They teased me something dreadful. Couldn't take what they dished out though, could they?" Myrtle was nearly muttering to herself. "Having me restricted so they didn't have to remember what they had done." Her attention suddenly shifted back to the red rimmed eyed girl sharing the room with her. "What's your name?"
"Hermione."
"Myrtle. You know what it's like to be scared of them, don't you?" She didn't elaborate on who she meant by them, but Hermione didn't need her to explain. Memories of name calling and hair pulling and being shoved into mud puddles while someone tore her notebook to pieces came bubbling up to the surface. She bit her lip in an attempt to keep herself from resuming her earlier tears. She didn't want that to be her life here. It's why she had to keep quiet. It's why she had to keep them from seeing her. She found herself nodding in answer to Myrtle's question.
The sound of something dragging along the stone of the floor in the hallway filled the room. Myrtle's eyes temporarily widened before she looked at Hermione with something that might be considered a smirk across her translucent features. "Bad things," she repeated.
Hermione wasn't entirely sure what she was doing. She just knew that she was scared - the phrase frozen in fear that had peppered the pages of her books all of her life had suddenly become something real and tangible instead of words that conjured some vague idea. There had been something huge pushing itself through the doorway. Some place in the back of her mind had provided the designation "troll" to identify it. She didn't think she had screamed - she was so used to making sure that she didn't say anything at inopportune moments. It had simply been there, and she had had no idea what one was supposed to do when faced with such a creature.
She had been frightened and then she had hurt. The pain in her head was really the sort of thing that precluded all manner of deep thinking (or any thinking at all really). She couldn't see, and she hadn't known whether her eyes had actually been closed or whether the pain was so intense and throbbing about her temples that her vision had gone to black in response to it.
"Stay here, Hermione," she heard someone saying close beside her. "Do you hear me? Whatever happens, you remember that you want to stay here." There were other words, but she couldn't make any sense of them. The "stay here" echoed around her head bouncing off and in and around the pain while the blackness crept inward from her vision and took over everything.