For Your Worshipfulness
Hermione Granger hadn't been at the Slytherin table for more than ten minutes before she knew, definitively, that she would never have any friends at Hogwarts. Seated as she was next to Pansy Parkinson, who had given her a nasty look when she sat down and who somehow managed to spill pumpkin juice all over Hermione's robes to the delight of the boys seated around them, it didn't take much imagination to understand that she was unwanted.
And not just at the Slytherin table. Watching the Sorting, it had seemed to her that every single person Sorted into Slytherin had been given a particularly cold treatment by the other tables. Even Neville Longbottom, the boy whose lost toad she had personally helped search for for the last two hours, had stared down at the ground and mumbled something largely unintelligible and yet perfectly understandable. She was unwelcome.
As one of the older boys down the table mimicked her, bucking his front teeth and gesturing around his head to indicate the hair that, no matter how it was cut, refused to lie flatter against her head, Hermione felt a pang of homesickness so great she almost hunched over with the pain of it. What would her parents say, she wondered, when she told them she had been magically Sorted into a House full of children the rest of the world seemed to hate? And what did that say about her? Was she, too, going to turn out like Pansy, who was at this moment carving something vulgar into the table with her fork, throwing hopeful glances at the blond boy seated across from her? That was the boy who had talked to Harry Potter before the Sorting. Draco Malfoy. He was the youngest in a long line of Pureblood Wizarding families. Hermione knew. She'd looked it up before school had started.
In fact, looking around her, and she was craning her neck to do so, trying desperately not to care about the snickering and the mimickery from Malfoy's beefy friends, she couldn't see anyone in her year who was less than halfblood. Her research had been intense, and she had a very good memory for information. It seemed she was the only Muggleborn in Slytherin for her year. Hermione wondered if she was the only Muggleborn in all of Slytherin. It certainly seemed possible, judging by what she knew of Slytherin. Which was rather a lot, if she did say so herself. Probably more than the others at the table. She wrapped that knowledge around herself, telling herself that she was content to be cleverer than the others. One didn't become Minister of Magic without being clever, did one? Cornelius Fudge must be very clever, or he would never have been put in power. That was comforting. Out of all the children here, she imagined she was the most likely to succeed. It helped the pain a little bit. But just a little bit.
From her spot at the Slytherin table, she could see Harry Potter and the red-haired Ron Weasley where they sat enjoying the dinner she had largely ignored. He had courage, she had to admit, to stand up to Malfoy. To speak up at all, really, when everyone was looking at him.
And everyone was looking at him, all along the tables, and all across the halls, children were craning their necks to see him, just as she had done. He didn't seem cocky or self-assured like Malfoy. He didn't seem brilliant like her. During the few minutes that they had talked, he had seemed largely like any normal boy their age, albeit with exceptionally large clothes for his size. His gratitude when she'd fixed his glasses had been real. What was he like? And did he deserve all this attention?
She learned quickly, as she always did.
Lesson One: do not answer a question until waiting to see if anyone else knows it. The bruises on her arms from being pinched by girls sitting next to her were livid, though invisible under the robes. The answers stuck in her throat. She swallowed around them.
Lesson Two: the word "Mudblood" is only a word. Words only gain meaning through the hearer, never the speaker. Sticks and stones, sticks and stones. Sticks and stones.
Lesson Three: Watch and listen.
She had her own plans. She didn't need friends to achieve them, at least not yet. When she was older and people could see around her house or her blood status, then she could have friends. It didn't matter now, anyway. She had homework. She could learn. That would be enough for now.