Hogwarts (Challenges and Assignments).
Assignment 6 — Media Studies — task 12 — write about someone starting a new school
Writing Club— Disney Challenge — The Little Mermaid — songs — "Part of Your World" — write about someone who wants to belong somewhere
HPFC.
Ultimate Writer challenge — write 3 AUs of your choice — 2/3
Ultimate AU Promptathon challenge — deaf!AU
A/N: I do not speak British Sign Language. All my information is off the internet.
Hermione's heart pounded in her chest as the train pulled up to the platform. She held onto her trunk and clutched a handful of her new black robes in her fist. Other kids pushed past the tiny brunette, and she watched as a huge man waved his arms and shouted something. She couldn't hear him.
In one sleeve of her robe was a small notebook. In the other, a Muggle pen. She couldn't lose them, or she would have no way of speaking to the other students — that they would understand, at least. She was fluent in BSL, but not many people who could hear learnt it. She knew she wouldn't have if she'd been born with the ability to hear.
The giant man — Rebeus Hagrid, the groundskeeper, she remembered the tall woman with the pointy hat telling her — motioned the first years toward the water, ushering them along in a loud voice. Or so Hermione assumed from the way the students winced whenever he opened his mouth.
They sailed across the water in small boats that required no steering, and Hermione puzzled over that fact the entire ride. Having Muggle parents meant that she would be stepping into this new world completely unprepared — though she'd read several books about it.
They disembarked; Hermione helped a plump boy out. He smiled shyly at her in thanks. Hagrid led them up to the large wooden double doors and knocked. Seconds later, Professor McGonagall swung them open and led the first years inside.
Hermione was instantly terrified by the amount of students sitting in the hall. The walls, despite the room's size, seemed to be closing in on her. Several hundreds of kids, just waiting to taunt her, to remark about her supposed stupidity. Just because she was deaf and mute didn't mean that she was dumb! She could read and write probably better than most adults, and was quite good at BSL. But that didn't make her seem any brighter in her peers' eyes.
The ceremony flew by fast. She stepped forward when McGonagall beckoned — and ignored the sight of the students whispering to their neighbors and wondering why her name hadn't been called. She sat on the stool and let the Sorting Hat fall down over her eyes.
"You would do well in Slytherin," it told her straight off. She blinked in confusion.
But that House only accepts Purebloods, she thought, wrinkling her brow.
"True," mused the hat. "A shame...it would help your self-confidence and ensure that you always have allies behind you. If nothing else, Slytherins are true to their own."
I want Gryffindor, Hermione insisted. Gryffindor or Ravenclaw. Please.
The hat sighed in her ear. "You would make a very good Ravenclaw. But the House would not challenge you enough. Better be...GRYFFINDOR!"
She slid off the stool, handed the hat back to Professor McGonagall, and made her way over to the Gryffindor table. They were cheering, but Hermione knew their excitement wouldn't last long once they found out that she could neither hear nor speak.
She slid onto the end of the bench and looked around at her Housemates. She waved and smiled. A redhead boy with a badge that read Prefect pinned to his robes smiled back and said, "I'm sorry. I don't believe I caught your name."
Hermione tilted her arm down and let her notebook slide from her sleeve. She pulled her pen out as well, and flipped the little notebook open. Hermione Granger, she wrote. Pleased to meet you. She held it up and showed the page to the boy.
"Percy Weasley," he said, extending his hand. Hermione grasped it and shook it firmly. "Pardon my rudeness — why are you writing?"
I am unable to speak, she explained. For some reason, she felt completely at home with Percy. I cannot hear, either.
He nodded in understanding. Then, to her complete shock and amazement, he signed, You speak BSL?
She gasped and grinned like a loon. Yes! she signed, movements rushed from her excitement. She packed her notebook away, calmed, and gestured, How did you come to learn?
He shrugged. It looked fun. My grandmother deaf. Seemed appropriate.
Hermione beamed at him. Thank you. Relief filled her as she realized that, perhaps, she wouldn't be quite as isolated as she had thought.
Percy patted her on the shoulder and signed, Welcome.
She watched as the rest of the students were Sorted. Another red-haired boy was Sorted into Gryffindor, and he walked over. Percy met him with a clap to the back, and two other gingers that looked like twins gave him noogies. She was pretty sure his name was Ron and he was Percy's younger brother. Several more people were Sorted, then the Headmaster stood up and said something. She tried to read his lips, but he was too far away. He got a standing ovation before everyone sat down and food appeared on the table before them.
Ron heaped huge piles onto his plate and dug in, face close to the mountain of food and talking with his mouth full. He spewed crumbs on Hermione, who was sitting directly across from him, and she made a face and shook her robes off. He gave her a dirty look and turned to the black-haired boy next to him, who Hermione had met on the train — Harry Potter.
"Why doesn't she speak?" he asked Harry, not even bothering to lower his voice. "Is she dumb or something?"
Her eyes filled with tears that she pushed back. She would not appear weak. She wouldn't let it show that the comments hurt.
How had she ever thought this would be easier?
Classes were hard. Hermione had never heard the incantations for the spells before, and was constantly second-guessing herself at her lip-reading talent. Ron Weasley had somehow managed to revert his needle into a lit match, which got out of control and singed his eyebrows, by using an incorrect spell. She didn't want that to happen.
She spent most of her time with Percy, oddly enough. He was a fifth year, but she continued to amaze him with her intellect. She was very smart and her fingers flew at a tremendously fast pace when signing. Percy was an amateur at BSL, at best, but Hermione taught him more words and signs than he had ever hoped to know and understand.
Hermione's dorm-mates thought she was odd because she didn't speak. They didn't know that she couldn't. They did, however, know that she was deaf — and got annoyed when she couldn't read their lips as fast as they spoke.
Harry ignored her for the most part, which she often felt sad about. After all, they'd met on the train and he had seemed like a nice boy. Ron Weasley got there first, though, and the two boys were almost inseparable. She convinced herself that she wasn't jealous. No, she had one friend. That was better than her entire life.
Despite being deaf and mute, Hermione was and always had been an exceptionally bright child. Her teachers sang her praises — usually after they commented on how surprising it was that she was unable to speak or hear and yet was so smart. Her peers disliked her because she was a "teacher's pet," and she disliked them because they made fun of her disability. In front of her — to her face — because they thought she couldn't understand what it was they were saying about her.
But Percy was wonderful. He signed everything he said, even if he knew she was able to read his lips. He defended her to the mean kids, saying that she was smarter than all of them put together even if she couldn't hear or speak. He abused his Prefect position just for her, she thought in bemusement one day.
She couldn't remember a single time someone other than her parents had treated her with such kindness and equality before.
The year wore on.
Ron insulted Hermione practically to her face. Though she couldn't hear what he was saying, the scowl and flapping of his hand imitating her mouth told her all she needed to know. Sniffing, she pushed past him and Harry, head down. Why did she insist on pretending that she wasn't an outcast — that people actually did like her?
She stayed in the girls' bathroom for hours. One of her roommates, Lavender Brown, got Percy, but she wouldn't come out even for him. He stood at the doorway and signed jokes to her until she finally snorted at a very stupid one.
That's my H. They had decided that her entire name was too long, so Percy had decided to call her "H." Cheer up, he signed, spreading thumb and index finger across his lips in an upward arc. He will come around someday.
Hermione sighed. I hope so. She crossed her fingers in the sign for hope. He walked into the bathroom then, wrapping his arms around her and squeezing. She held him tightly.
She had not felt so welcomed for years.
The months flew by after that, and soon she found that it was nearing winter vacation. Her time at Hogwarts so far had certainly been an exciting one — if not exactly what she had expected.
Just minutes after she had hugged Percy, a troll had been locked in the bathroom with them. Together, they had been able to magick the club over its head and drop it, knocking it out. They later learned that it had been Ron and Harry who had locked it in the girls' bathroom with them.
The boys got an earful from Percy — which she had actually been thankful she couldn't hear; he paced around in front of them waving his arms and yelling at the top of his lungs — and another earful at the station from Ron's mum, Molly Weasley. She was pretty sure both boys were also deaf by the time Molly and Percy finished and Molly swept them all into a motherly hug.
Hermione had been pressed against Ron, who pulled away from his mother and gave her an awkward hug. "I'm sorry," he said — and then signed it. She was astonished.
Who taught you? she demanded. He grinned sheepishly and jerked his thumb at Percy. Hermione beamed, bounced over to her very first friend, and hugged him tightly. Molly watched on in pride. Her third son had never been one for friends; he always had a strict work ethic and no use for people who messed with that. But this Hermione, from what she had heard in Percy's letters, complimented that part of him and also drew out the fun side she hadn't seen since before he started Hogwarts.
Hermione spotted her mum and dad waiting for her by the brick wall leading out into King's Cross, and hurried towards them. They bundled her into a group hug and then walked out after she waved goodbye to Percy, Molly, and her hopefully new friends.
You made friends? signed her mother eagerly. Hermione smiled.
Yes, she replied hesitantly. Her parents glanced at one another before wide grins spread across their faces. They bombarded her with questions, and she had to dig out her notebook — which hadn't been used all that much, really, since she'd had Percy translating for her — so that she could write down all the spells she had learned that didn't have sign names. She explained what had happened towards the beginning of school, which her parents frowned about, but then told them with a smile that since the accident — she didn't state what exactly had happened — the kids that had shunned her had crowded around her, asking how she'd managed a silent Wingardium Leviosa. (Her response had been, "I'm mute. That means that I can't talk. Which means that I obviously can't say Wingardium Leviosa.")
There was much laughter and many more hugs, and Hermione Granger found herself waiting excitedly for the end of Christmas break, for the return to Hogwarts. For her friends.
She had always struggled with self-worth, with fitting in.
But she had finally found the place she belonged.
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