If I owned Harry Potter, there would be no point in my writing this sentence. Enough said.

This is only my second Harry Potter fic. Feel free to be harsh. I want to improve.

We'd always had an inkling there was something not quite, well, normal about our little girl. The high IQ would have been enough on its own, but there was always something a bit otherworldly about Hermione. Impossible things seemed to happen whenever she got upset or angry—not that that happened very often, she was quite a calm, reasonable child. But she always had a very strong sense of right and wrong. Fairness was all-important. Well, you know how young children are, they can't abide rule-breakers, but Hermione never seemed to get out of that stage. Always conscious of how well she was behaving. Wanted everyone to see how she could always do what she was told better than anyone else.

I remember when she was about six years old. It was Christmas, the family had convened on our house for dinner and Hermione was playing in the snow with her cousins. It wasn't long before we heard a series of enraged shrieks and Hermione herself appeared, her hair more of a mess than usual and her little face streaked with tears. She sobbed out the story of how her older cousin Chris had broken the rules of whatever game they were playing, and what was more, pulled her hair—clearly a hanging offence in her eyes. We comforted her as best we could and Chris's mother went to see about dealing out a suitable punishment. She opened the door, stopped and gave a strangled scream. The whole family followed her outside and were met with the bizarre sight of Chris, a thick-set ten year old, clutching his hands to his newly bald head. The longish dark hair he had previously been attempting to grow lay in tufted clumps on the snow. None of the children could explain it—one minute they had been laughing at little Hermione running to Mummy, and when they turned around Chris had lost all his hair. Hermione was as nonplussed as any of us, or so she said—using those exact words, I might add—but I couldn't help wondering about the satisfied smirk she wore for the next few days…

Another incident reminded me of this a couple of years later. Hermione was due to have a tooth taken out and I took on the job, as my husband was busy that day. Unlike most children, our daughter understood the necessity of anaesthetic injections—on the other hand, like most children, she detested them. She sat very still and quiet in the chair, but I could see her eyes wide with panic. When I approached with the dreaded needle, I found to my surprise that no matter how I tried I couldn't get my hand into the right position to administer the injection. As a fully qualified dentist, I had done this hundreds of times, but for some reason it just wasn't working. I gave up and postponed the operation for a few hours. Just as I began to prepare for the second time, Hermione came running in with something clutched in her fist.

"Mama, look! I was reading and it just came out by itself! It's not even bleeding or anything." She opened her hand to reveal the tooth, which two hours ago had been lodged firmly in her gums without the slightest sign of a wobble. I didn't need to be a fully qualified dentist to know that this sort of thing was highly unusual.

So I suppose you could say that first owl from Hogwarts was quite a relief, once we'd all gotten over the disbelieving astonishment stage. At last we had an explanation for what really made our daughter not-quite-normal beyond putting it down to childish fancies or incredibly high intelligence, which had until then been our only way of handling the situation. I suppose you've heard of Matilda, by Roald Dahl Honestly, that little girl sounded so similar to our own that I've often wondered whether he knew, somehow. It's silly, really—but I'm beginning to understand that a lot of things I used to think were silly really do exist, right under our noses. There are witches, and there are wizards, and they can and do perform all sorts of magic to do all sorts of things. Not to mention they actually ride on broomsticks—and play sport! You see how preposterous it all is? But I can't very well deny it, not after having seen it with my own eyes. Well, a very small part of it, anyway. That charming little Professor—and he was little; he was smaller than Hermione was at the time—well, he showed up a few minutes after the owl, before we'd had time to dismiss it as some silly prank, and explained it all to us. And then he showed us Diagon Alley.

Hermione's father and I were rather nervous, but our little witch was the girl of the hour and seemed to feel at home almost immediately. We saved buying her school books until the very last, knowing that once she was inside the bookshop there would be no coming out for anything other than supper and other basic necessities for survival. We did get a few strange looks, I remember, and one or two that were downright disdainful, but for the most part people seemed to know that it was just another Muggleborn Hogwarts first-year's initiation into the Wizarding World. We were rather surprised at being suddenly referred to as Muggles, I must say. It no longer seemed to matter that we were both highly qualified professionals—we felt very small and insignificant all of a sudden, among all these magical people with their wands and owls and flowing robes who seemed to know exactly what they were doing. I doubted, somehow, that they would feel the same as we did, had they been put in our place.

Of course we were a little worried as the weeks of Hermione's first year passed and she showed no signs of making any real friends. Hermione had never really had many friends at school, bless her. At first they would tease her, and I admit she was a bit of a target, what with bushy hair and buck teeth—not to mention being so intelligent. Of course we were both immensely proud of her, but most of her peers hadn't quite reached the level of maturity at which being smart is appreciated. But the teasing phase didn't last for long after a rumour began to make its way round the playground. Anybody who really got on Hermione Granger's nerves had all sorts of mysterious things happen to them—and none of it good. Most of this was complete garbage, of course, based on a few scant pieces of evidence—but it scared the other children sufficiently to keep them a safe distance from poor Hermione.

At Hogwarts, we had hoped she could make a fresh start, but as time went by she was still teased for her dedication to her studies, and what was more, though she "didn't want to worry us," she now had another issue to contend with—the fact that we, her parents, were not wizards ourselves. It seemed there were some families who would prefer that nobody without a purebred wizarding lineage be accepted into the Wizarding World at all! This was obviously both extremely prejudiced and extremely silly, considering that these "pureblood" families appeared to be a dying breed and most of their peers had no problem with Muggle heritages, and we told our daughter in no uncertain terms not to pay the slightest attention to any slander regarding her own heritage. After all, she was at the top of most, if not all, of her classes, and these pure-blooded bullies hadn't a hope of reaching her level, now had they?

Then one day, completely out of the blue, a letter from Hermione arrived announcing that she had made two friends, both of whom were boys. One of them was a pure-blood, who didn't seem to notice it at all. And the other was the famous Boy Who Lived! Of course as soon as Hermione had found out about the war and You-Know-Who and the whole catastrophe she had informed us immediately, and we knew the baby who had somehow defeated the Dark Lord was now eleven years old and in her year at school—even in the same House—but now, apparently, the three had helped each other out of a couple of tight spots (she was rather vague as to what these had involved, exactly, and we decided to let sleeping dogs lie) and had become firm friends.

And so they are to this day. Oh, they've had their ups and downs and arguments, as all friends do, and lately Ron and his doings seem to crop up far more frequently than they used to in her letters to me, but I doubt anything in our world or theirs could break those three apart. Except, perhaps, this new war. Hermione's hopelessly worried about Harry, and so am I—I've always felt rather sorry for the poor boy, and although I've only met him once, and that rather briefly, I feel I know him so well from everything Hermione's told me that he may as well be one of the family. Frankly, a magical war is something we'd rather our little girl not get mixed up in—but considering who she is and who she's been running round with for the past five-and-a-half years, it was almost inevitable that someday this would happen. All we poor Muggles can do—those of us who are in the know, at least—is hope and pray that the right side wins, and keeps us and our loved ones safe from dangers we can't fight by ourselves. Young as Hermione is, we are both intensely proud of her, and in these uncertain times it's some comfort to know that one of us, at least, has a foot planted firmly in both worlds.