Written for the QLFC Round 6

Team: Pride of Portree

Position: Seeker

Word Count: (excluding Author's Note): 1269

"What's with the stupid name?"

"Her parents probably thought it matched her stupid face!"

"Yeah, stupid face with stupid teeth in it!"

"Hey, Amy, bet you can't make it look any stupider!"

Hermione crouched on the floor of the playground, trying desperately to block out the voices of her classmates. The slimy chocolate cake they were smearing across her face and into her wild hair would wash off, but the insults seemed to stain her very soul.

One of the other girls poked Hermione hard in the side, making her cry out in pain. Suddenly the pressure of the hands holding her vanished and the voices were no longer taunting. Instead they were screaming, along with many others. Hermione didn't dare move; she stayed huddled on the floor, arms hugging her knees, waiting for the daily torment to resume.

"What in Heaven's name is going on here?" Hermione recognised the voice of her teacher, Miss Moore. She didn't normally intervene in matters of bullying, whether because she didn't care or because she knew it would do the victims no good. It was unusual to hear her voice at Torture Time.

Hermione lifted her head slightly, hopefully not enough for the movement to be noticeable, but enough to survey the playground. The three girls who had been teasing her were no longer crowded around her, but instead lying on their backs a good few metres away, screaming and crying. Hermione still didn't move until Miss Moore pulled her up by the arm.

"Feeling a little guilty are we?" Miss Moore asked. Hermione shook her head, knowing better than to bother discussing the bullying issue with a teacher, particularly this one.

"Well, you should be," Miss Moore continued. "Hurting those poor girls! What have they ever done to you, hmm? Nothing, that's what." Hermione's eyebrows flew up to her hairline in incredulity, but still she said nothing.

"We do not tolerate bullying in this school, Hermione," Miss Moore said. The three affected girls had crowded behind her now, and were nodding along with tears in their eyes.

"She pushed us, Miss," said Amy, the ringleader of the gang.

"Yeah," her friend agreed. "We were just talking to her and then she pushed us away!"

Hermione could hardly believe her ears. Five years of torment at the hands of these bullies, and she was the one being told off for bullying. Couldn't anyone see the muck on her face? As she thought this, however, she realised she could no longer feel the telltale stickiness or the trails of grease that had been traversing her face. Reaching up and feeling across her nose revealed nothing but clean skin.

Hermione didn't understand what was happening to her. One moment the bullies had been teasing her as normal and the next they were halfway across the playground, injured, and all traces of their nastiness was gone. It was almost like magic.

Miss Moore escorted Hermione and her 'victims' to the headmaster's office, where they sat awaiting judgement from the all-powerful Mr Flynn. No-one ever saw him unless they were in trouble, or a witness to someone else getting in trouble. Hermione was starting to get rather worried, although she hoped the others wouldn't be able to tell.

"Now you're done for, you cow!"

"Yeah, that's what you get for thinking you can stand up for yourself."

"Now they're gonna kick you out of school and you'll fail all your exams and have to work down the rubbish dump."

"You'll fit right in there, though, won't you? Down there with all the other worthless crap."

"Shut up!" Hermione screamed, tears finally spilling over and falling down her cheeks. Knowing she was already in about as much trouble as she possibly could be, and knowing they couldn't really do much to her sitting right outside the headmaster's door didn't really make it any better when she saw the murderous glares on the girls' faces.

Amy opened and closed her mouth as though trying to speak, but no sound came out. Hermione gaped at her. Quickly putting two and two together, Hermione realised that things she was hoping would happen were happening. First, she wanted the girls to stop touching her, and they were pushed away. Now, she had told them to shut up and it had worked! Hermione didn't really understand what was happening, but she certainly wasn't complaining. Whatever strange magic this was had helped her more than anyone else ever had and she was going to accept that help without questioning it.

When Mr Flynn called the girls into the office, Hermione saw an opportunity.

"I wish everyone would just forget what happened today," she said confidently, hoping it would work. The eyes of everyone else in the room seemed to slide out of focus.

"What exactly are we doing here?" Mr Flynn asked, sounding slightly dazed.

"You were going to call my mum and ask her to pick me up. I'm feeling a little unwell, you see," Hermione said, smiling.

"Ah yes, of course, dear. Just one moment, I'll have her here as soon as possible."

Hermione sat back on the chair outside the office, watching her regular tormentors walk back to class. She had discovered something wonderful today. She had magical powers, like the wonderful characters in her books, and in television shows she had seen as a younger child. No-one would ever be able to harm her again, she thought with glee.

Unfortunately, she didn't account for the possibility of gaining new bullies.

Hermione's parents were perfectly normal people, and they prided themselves on their social standing. When Hermione ran into the house that afternoon shouting "look what I can do!" and started to make the furniture dance, they were horrified.

"What do we do?" Hermione's mother screeched. "She's a freak!"

Hermione immediately stopped. The furniture fell to the floor as Hermione looked up at her parents with tears in her eyes.

Freak. Weirdo. Crazy bookworm. She'd heard them all before, but never from her own parents. Of course, her father had never fully understood her love of fiction books, but accepted that she had an inquisitive, academic mind. Her mother nurtured her intelligence. Now, however, they were both looking at her with disgust.

"We'll make it stop. We'll make her normal somehow," Hermione's father said. "We know doctors who can be discreet. All problems can be solved by science, somehow."

Hermione's life for the next few years involved being dragged from pillar to post, seeing a variety of medical professionals along the way. Her parents tried to act as though they didn't hate her, but she could see it in their eyes every time they looked at her. She was a freak.

When Professor McGonagall showed up on her doorstep, years after her first display of accidental magic, Hermione was ecstatic to learn that she was not the only freak in the world. And, of course, happy to hear that even a freak could excel in life enough to become a professor, albeit a professor of freakery, as her father put it later that night.

Hermione lay in her bed and sighed. Denied all books except academic ones she was unable to escape to a better world. However, she knew that in a few short months, she would be taken to somewhere where she would fit in. She drifted off into fantastic dreams of the elegant and powerful Professor McGonagall adopting her and allowing her to live in a wonderful mixture of the fantasy realms she had read about years before.

If only it were as simple as that.