Not All Bookworms Are Alike
Introduction: A Change of Spirit
If there is one thing Hermione Granger knows, it is that you can't rely on anyone else. Someone might claim to be acting in your best interest, or give you nice sounding advice, but the truth is, you can't trust a word they say. Her parents still try to say that they're in a happy marriage, but practically every night she can hear them fighting about some inane facet of their apparently miserable lives. Every 'Best Friend' she's ever made at school has eventually abandoned her, finding her personality too prickly, her choices in entertainment to boring, or just becoming tired of their social status as 'friend of the nerd.'
These things on their own, she might have been able to rationalize, ignore, or simply persevere with hardly a change to her view of the world, but there was one event that truly cemented her mistrust in the world. It was an event that left not only deep mental scars, but deep physical ones as well.
A group of girls had recently decided to escalate their abuse from pure verbal taunts to something a bit more physical. It started with a simple push, but, finding no repercussions for their actions, the girls soon turned to throwing her to the ground. Hermione did her best to avoid finding herself alone with them, but as she walked home from school every day, it was impossible to be sure she could avoid them. She knew that she had to do something to stop them, but everything she tried ended with failure. She told both of her parents about the situation, but the sum of their advice seemed to be, "Stay away from them." as if she didn't already try to do that. She alerted her teacher to the problem and was assured that it couldn't be that serious, and she was recommended to talk with the girls about their problems.
Hermione grew tired of the constant abuse, but had been unable to find a way around it. No matter what she did, it continued. At least twice a week, usually after school, she was taunted, surrounded, and then shoved somewhere unpleasant, like into a bush or a puddle of mud. One day, a very ordinary day, she was thrown into something a bit more solid. It was a pile of trimmings cut from an overgrown tree nearby. With the leaves covering the branches, it didn't look very substantial, but when Hermione's face was thrown down into it, the sudden scream of pain that echoed from her lungs was more than enough to cause the girls to run away in fear of being caught.
After awakening in the hospital several days later, she quickly learned that the event had been witnessed by a woman from a nearby house, who quickly called an ambulance once she realized the seriousness of the situation.
Eventually, she was informed the extent of the damages, with one horrific scar crossing from the top right corner of her face down to her chin, and several smaller ones scattered across her face. The most unpleasant part was the damage to her right eye, or rather, her current lack of one.
Hermione's world was in tatters after that event. Her parents pretended they cared, but she still heard them up at night arguing. They still never listened to what she said. They never even pretended to be sorry for dismissing her worries. Her teacher happily welcomed her back to class, as if she hadn't ignored her pleas for help, as if she wasn't at all responsible for the scars that crossed her face.
Hermione's parents thought that she was taking the whole ordeal quite well. The only noticeable change in their daughter's behavior was a slight drop in scholastic performance. That, being a change from absolutely perfect to just usually perfect, was not entirely remarkable. Such a traumatic event could not go by without effecting her in some way. Hermione seemed to be a bit quieter around them, but between running their dental practice and their frequent arguments, they didn't have time to notice too much of a difference in her behavior.
To Hermione herself, everything was different. Previously, she had spent nearly all her free time reading and rereading material for school. Her academic perfection was what made her special. It was the only thing she really cared about. But now, she couldn't find it in herself to bother much with her school work. It turned out that with only a minimal effort, she was able to get near-perfect marks. That shook her up almost as much as the loss of her eye. What she had considered her true purpose so far in life, her scholastic perfection, was easy. She had worked so hard, devoting every minute she could, to doing something that turned out to be no problem at all. She took solace in the fact that the other students seemed to struggle, even the ones who put in a modicum of effort, but it still stung deeply to know that she had wasted so much time on something so pointless.
The first thing to lighten her mood at all, was when the legal proceedings against the girls who did this to her started. Revenge, however, was not as satisfying as she had hoped. She had expected that seeing her tormentors finally punished, would allow her to finally feel as if the nightmare was over, but instead she only obsessed about how it could have happened. She couldn't understand how her classmates could become so awful. Surely, most of the blame could be laid at their parents feet, but there were several people aware of the situation. Her teacher was aware of the abuse and had done nothing about it. Even her own parents were somewhat culpable in allowing it to continue. Most of the students in her class were also peripherally aware and as far as Hermione knew, none had any qualms with it. In fact, after returning, several students blamed her for the disappearance of their friends, as if it was her fault they were such terrible people.
Hermione had no one she could trust, no one she could believe, and no one she could talk to. Yet at the same time, she had more eyes on her than ever before. Whether it was false sympathy, or simply gawking stares, she couldn't get a moments peace. Others at school would point and stare, people on the street would do double-takes, . There were cosmetic surgeries that could, mostly, remove the scars, but Hermione refused to even think about that. In a way, she appreciated the scars. They were a constant reminder of what happens when you trust someone else to take care of your problems.
Being alone in the world, Hermione sought out and found someplace where she could be left alone in peace to be by herself. It didn't hurt that it would help on her mission to understand why something so terrible could have happened. She initially started skimming the shelves at the local library, hoping to find clues to her attackers' motivation. Her search led her to read books on psychology, which led to philosophy, which led to history, and before she knew it, she was absorbing more information than she had imagined could exist. Her initial reason behind her expanded reading was soon overshadowed as she learned about the true horrors the world has seen. So much of history was concerned with people going around killing one another, that it didn't take too long for her to realize the truth. She was the strange one. The world at large was full of violence and death, she just happened to live in a fairly nice part of it.
Depressing though her discoveries were, she forged ahead, learning as much about the world as she could. She would need all the knowledge she could get if she was to achieve her end goal. Her goal in life, she would admit, is a rather ridiculous goal. Even she would admit that it is not likely possible to accomplish and it's meaning too vague to properly contemplate how to do it. However impossible it might be, this goal is what drives her to learn all she can, for she must understand the world before she can fix it.