Notes: Written for Pie for President '16 for The Seasonless Secret Santa Challenge.
Hermione had always known that magic existed, even as a small girl curled up in the window seat installed in her room, her favourite copy of The Secret Garden or A Little Princess unfolded in her lap. Magic existed, and Hermione was determined to find it. When she discovered Matilda, she thought her search was over. But despite her best efforts, she could not make things move like Matilda did. She knew she was bright enough-she recited every fact along with the bright-eyed little girl-but on only one occasion did the tumbler move, and even then, it might have been a draft, a simple breath of wind that tipped the glass and nothing more.
Her parents kept a watchful, though slightly misty, eye on her, and it was because of this she managed other tricks, waving sticks over collections of tattered tarot cards, intoning made-up words that sounded as mystical as a primary-aged brain could make them. It wasn't logical, and she knew it wasn't, so she hid it from her peers, treasuring it like a bit of faerie dust set aside for a winter's eve.
Then Hermione turned eleven, and a bit of parchment tucked in a plain vellum envelope turned her world upside down.
She was right. That was the thought that first burst through her head, bright and fierce as a firework's spark, as she clutched the letter and read it again and again until the emerald-green ink smudged, determined to uncover its secrets. The next day, a very strict-looking woman by the name of Minerva McGonagall came to the door to explain to them that yes, magic was real and yes, their daughter was a witch, and the thought that she was right did not leave Hermione's head then, either.
Logical or not, magic was real, and she had it.
She went a bit mad with reading, and more than once in the months leading up to her first year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, her parents discovered her at midnight with a flashlight under the covers, mouthing stray spells to herself and flicking her wand absently at the pages, willing them to turn. Sometimes they did.
Hermione knew it was real, that it was not a dream, yet somehow it did not fully become real until she stood on the platform, lugging her trunk clumsily behind her and staring in awe at the scarlet glory of the Hogwarts Express. There were people everywhere, people just like her, magic people, and a secret smile of delight curled her mouth as she lugged her things onto the train, helped by a redheaded set of twins who kept completing each other's sentences.
She sat in a compartment by herself until a round-faced boy clutching a toad peeked in, his face painfully red and so bursting with shyness, it was blatant even to the usually oblivious Hermione.
"What's your name?" she asked, trying to be kind. The boy stammered and shook and told her that his name was Neville Longbottom and his toad's name was Trevor.
"I'm Hermione," she said. "Hermione Granger."
And a tentative friendship was born, a new experience for the overly bookish, overly bossy Hermione who had never before had a proper playmate, not just someone to spout knowledge at. Neville blushed a lot and stammered a lot, but for all that, he was a worthwhile companion. And of course Hermione had to help him find Trevor when the toad had managed a lucky leap out of his sweaty hand.
Which was how she managed to meet Harry Potter (she'd read all about him, of course), and a very freckled, red-haired boy named Ronald Weasley. She didn't know how she felt about Ronald. He had a very large smudge of dirt on his nose, but for all that, he seemed all right. And if the Boy Who Lived liked him, well, who was she to argue?
She hoped she'd keep that opinion later, after the Sorting, when they were all nodding into their platefuls of mashed potatoes and peas. Her first glimpse of the castle had been magical. When she'd discovered the only thing she had to do to be Sorted was try on a mangy sort of Hat, the relief that fizzed through her body had turned her knees to jelly. The Hat wanted to put her in Ravenclaw, but Hermione argued fiercely for Gryffindor, and after a bit, the Hat gave in.
The ratty Sorting Hat also put Neville, Harry Potter, and Ronald Weasley in Gryffindor as well. Neville sat next to her, with a very tall, scholarly-looking redheaded boy on her other side, who introduced himself as Percy Weasley, one of the prefects.
"You must have a lot of brothers," Hermione remarked, looking at the sea of redheads clustered at the Gryffindor table.
"You don't know the lot of it," Percy said with feeling as he took a controlled bite of his dinner roll. "Ron's the youngest boy. Ginny's not old enough to attend Hogwarts yet, but she's the only girl. Then there's Fred and George there," he nodded a bit further up the table, at the twins who had helped her with her luggage. "Wretched trouble-makers. Then there's Bill and Charlie, as well. They've already graduated."
"I'm an only child," Hermione confided, her cheeks pinking. Percy looked down at her, a sort of brotherly look entering his eyes.
"You'll do all right here," he promised her. "Your House becomes your family, it really does. Are there any classes you're looking forward to?"
"Oh yes, loads," Hermione said eagerly, and like that, they were off, discussing the merits of each class and what they'd be likely to do in each of them. Neville's head was drooping so much, he nearly face-planted into his pudding, and Hermione had to give him more than one discreet nudge when she noticed. She heard snippets of Harry's and Ronald's conversation, but couldn't say that she approved much. Ron seemed just as much of a troublemaker as his twin brothers. Harry just sounded like her. Lost and confused.
And until Halloween, that's approximately how it stayed. Oh, Hermione quickly found her way around the enormous castle. She'd always had a talent for that, her spatial memory was brilliant, so at least she found her classes. Her homework exceeded the requirements, the bushy-haired first year often adding sheaf upon sheaf of new information as she came across it. It was to the point her Head of House took her aside to discreetly mention that she may want to try sticking closer to the length requirements, as succinctness was also the mark of a good student. Blushing, Hermione had promised to try her best.
When October 31 dawned, Hermione nearly bounced out of bed, excited because today was the day they were to learn the Levitation Charm. Wingardium Leviosa. She'd already practised how to say it in her mind for a week now.
Pity no one else had, she discovered in class. Seamus Finnegan set his feather on fire, and Ronald Weasley was flailing his wand about in a manner that looked like he was about to put his partner's eye out.
"You're doing it wrong," she finally exclaimed in frustration. "It's levi-oh-sa, not levi-oh-sa."
"You do it then, if you're so clever," Ron scowled at her, his face turning red. Hermione raised her wand, pretending a confidence she did not feel.
"Wingardium Leviosa!" she incanted and flicked her wand. The feather bobbed and twirled its way up to the ceiling, and Hermione felt the old, familiar rush of delight spill through her, like it always had when she'd read of magic as a young child.
Ron scowled at her even more fiercely, but she didn't care, too giddy by her newfound success and the way Professor Flitwick had smiled at her and given her ten points.
It wasn't until she was packing up her books to go to her next class that she heard him, his voice screwed up to a higher pitch as he mocked her.
"It's leviohsa, not leviohsa. She's a nightmare, honestly! No wonder she hasn't got any friends!"
But I do, she wanted to protest, but the tears came instead, and she blindly shoved her way past him, needing to get away, and so she didn't even hear Harry quietly rebuking him.
Despite how terrible she felt for skipping a class, she spent the rest of the day in the loo, curled up in the stall farthest from the door, awash in quiet tears. Though people came and went, none stopped to check on her and somehow, Hermione felt even worse by this tacit acknowledgement that Ron was right. She had no friends. She never really had. Was it any wonder no one liked her? She knew she shouldn't have butted in like that. Professor Flitwick could have corrected Weasley easily enough.
But she'd wanted to be clever, she'd wanted to prove that she knew something, that she belonged here. She'd wanted, Hermione realised uncomfortably, to show off.
Sniffling as she stumbled to her feet, wincing as she stretched cramped muscles, Hermione rubbed her eyes, opened the stall door...and froze in utter terror as the biggest, ugliest mountain troll she had ever laid eyes on grunted and looked at her, raising its club in one lumpy, warty hand.
"Hermione, move!" shouted a voice. Incongruously, Harry Potter's voice. Hermione shrieked and dived back into the stall she'd just vacated as the troll swung its club, smashing into the tiled wall and sending splinters of masonry everywhere, pattering onto her hair and shoulders.
The following ten minutes were minutes Hermione tried her best to forget afterward. A confusing morass of movement, screams, and everywhere, the whistle and thud of the club. It wasn't until she was huddled under a sink, Harry was clinging foolishly to the troll's back with his wand up the thing's nose, and Ron was finally mastering the spell to send the club thudding onto the brute's head that she finally came back to herself and properly realised what was going on. Water from a broken pipe spouted constantly, soaking her hair and back until she shivered.
"Is it dead?" she asked tentatively as she made her way toward Harry and Ron. Harry looked up at her, bent from retrieving his wand and wiping it on the troll's rough clothing.
"I don't think so. Just knocked out."
Hermione nodded just as the door slammed open, and the restroom swarmed with teachers. Professor McGonagall looked like she was ready to keel over. Her face had gone a chalky white colour, and her hand, placed over her heart, trembled. But her voice was as stern as ever as she demanded to know what was going on.
"It was me, Professor," Hermione found herself saying, without a clue as to why. "I went looking for the troll. I-I read about them and thought I could handle it. If Harry and Ron hadn't found me...I'd probably be dead."
The look of reproach on Professor McGonagall's face as she rebuked her for being a foolish girl nearly tore Hermione's heart in two, but she accepted her punishment with as much equanimity as she could muster, waiting until she had escaped to the hall to allow the fresh, silent tears to fall.
By the time she made it back to Gryffindor House for the rest of the feast no one had gotten to complete, her face was clean and her eyes were only slightly red-rimmed. And when Harry and Ron sheepishly sidled in after her, she knew she had made two new friends. Proper friends.
But if she'd thought that would make them never fight anymore, she was sorely mistaken. Oh, Harry was all right for the most part. But Ronald! The way he slacked off on his work was astounding, and it never failed to drive her mad when he would rather play a game of Exploding Snap or see how many chocolate frogs he could eat before he got sick instead of finishing his work. She couldn't understand his lackadaisical attitude toward school, toward learning, toward everything. To a Muggleborn girl who'd never known magic even existed until this last year (not properly anyway, she'd not had confirmation), this attitude was incomprehensible.
Even over winter break, Hermione read and studied until it felt her eyes might fall out of their sockets. Her mum and dad only sighed as they would gently retrieve the flashlight and ink-smudged quill from her fingers and tuck her into bed. The only day she took off was Christmas, and that's because they made her.
Her pace did not slacken when they returned to school, philosopher's stone mystery or not. Not even the dragon Hagrid was keeping in his cottage deterred her for long, although the sheer idiocy of keeping a fire-breathing creature in a wooden house left the first year slack-jawed. But the grounds-keeper refused to see reason, smiling and humming and calling Norbert his sweet baby, even as the baby dragon bit Ron and gnawed painfully at the man's boot.
It was sheer luck Ronald's brother could help pick up the creature, and the relief Hermione felt at watching the baby Norwegian Ridgeback fly away between two brooms was savagely crushed by the sight of Filch at the bottom of the stairs, snaggle-teeth smirking at them. Her heart dropped to her shoes, and remained there while Professor McGonagall scolded them, while Neville stared at them with wet, pleading eyes, while Malfoy tried to smarm his way out of it all. While the entire House, the next morning at breakfast, shunned all three of them. In some ways, it was a relief because Hermione could fully subsume herself in her studies and pretend it was a natural consequence of finals looming, rather than the fact the rest of her House hated her. With their censure, the detention itself actually went fairly well, despite the...thing having a go at Harry.
Somehow, however, the thought of You Know Who's inevitable return was as dim and hazy to Hermione as the upcoming summer. There, obviously, but not a concern. Not yet. And so she felt until the end of finals when Harry sprang to his feet, weaseled out of Hagrid the knowledge about Fluffy and his predilection for taking naps when a bit of music went off around him, and the rest, as they said, was history.
Under the school, when Harry had gone on to face his destiny-You Know Who, Snape, and who knew who else included-Hermione backtracked, her heart pounding in her chest. The troll had begun to stir as she sidled past him, and she went faster, nearly tripping over the uneven stones. She didn't want to think about what might happen when he woke up, but she doubted that he would be content to stay in that narrow passageway.
Ron lay sprawled where they had left him, blood matting one side of his fiery red hair. His eyelids fluttered, and Hermione dropped to her knees beside him, hesitant to move him when he might have more serious injuries, yet all too aware of her friend, facing who knew what alone, and the slowly-waking troll.
"Ron!" she hissed urgently. A low, drugged-sounding mumble escaped his throat, and his head lolled to one side. She tried not to look, but her eyes were drawn back to the painful-looking gash in the side of his head, time and again. It was still bleeding, though sluggishly.
"Ron!" she said, louder. "Wake up! We've got to get help, Ron, we've got to help Harry."
"Harry?" Ron muttered, his eyes opening and dimly focusing on her, although she could see his pupils were dilated and he looked barely aware of anything.
"Can you get up?" Hermione asked anxiously. It took quite a bit of coaxing, prodding, and outright support, but finally, Ron was on his feet, swaying a bit and looking drunken.
"Come on," Hermione said, casting another nervous look at the innocuous wooden door at the other end of the chessboard room. It quivered, although it may have just been her imagination and the flickering torch-light, and she squeaked, prodding Ron ahead of her and fumbling her wand out. In the room with the keys, she felt a lot better, having another door between her and the massive troll.
"Now what?" she asked herself in frustration. Ron lolled against the wall, looking like a defunct toy soldier. She hadn't thought farther than this. There was no way Ron could properly sit a broom, and she herself was a poor enough flier that the chances of her making it out past Fluffy on a broomstick and down the corridor in any semblance of speed or safety were well...nonexistent.
"Help Harry," Ron said again, and Hermione nearly thwacked him. I'm trying, damn it! she longed to yell at him, but satisfied herself with a fierce glare he didn't notice.
Thankfully, it didn't matter anymore because at that point, Dumbledore himself came stumbling in the room, a long tendril of devil's snare still wrapped around his beard and a very wild look in his eyes. Hermione gave an involuntary scream at his sudden, disheveled appearance.
"Harry," Dumbledore said, looking at the both of them with eyes like glass. "He's gone after him, hasn't he." And then the Headmaster was gone, hurtling into the chessboard room, the door flapping slightly in his wake.
"Well, I guess that's that," Hermione said weakly and sat down next to the swaying Ron, hugging her knees to her chest. She didn't have long to wait.
Harry was unconscious and likely to remain so for several days, Ron was fine though being kept in the Hospital Wing for observation to deal with his concussion, and Hermione herself was declared in shock, yet relatively unscathed.
"You can go back to the dorm or you can stay in the Hospital Wing, Miss Granger," Madam Pomfrey told her, eyes kind, and Hermione opted for the Hospital Wing. She had no desire to see the rest of the school. It was bad enough how many times the mediwitch had had to eject curious passersby from the premises-so many times, in fact, that she'd ended up moving the three of them into the very back, protected by a collection of haphazardly placed privacy screens. Not much, but it was something.
Still, it left Hermione with her own thoughts as dawn approached, and that never tended to be a good thing. Lost in her thoughts, she didn't even notice when Ron awakened and sat up, automatically turning toward her and ensuring that she was all right.
"Mione?" his hoarse voice shook her from her reverie. She looked at him and smiled.
"Ron?" she acknowledged. He reached over with one bandaged hand and clasped hers. There was no need for words.
As the rest of the year passed in a whirlwind of summer assignments, goodbyes, and the last feast, Hermione felt lost, adrift in a world where magic existed, yet she could not speak of it (helpfully reminded by the end of term notice), where friends could be found where you least expected them, where magic could bloom where you least expected it.
Not, she reminded herself as the Hogwarts Express steamed its way home, Ron and Harry sitting across from her and arguing halfheartedly about a packet of every flavour beans, that she liked Ron. Not like that.
A smile flashed across her face as she saw the way the afternoon light gleamed in his hair, the way a dimple indented his cheek when he grinned. Not yet, anyway.