Disclaimer: I'm just playing in the Harry Potter sandbox. If you recognize it from elsewhere, I don't own it.
Beat-Reader: Thanks to my Beta-reader Taylorj828 from HPFF!
Quill and Parchment
The Library was dead silent. The heavy thud of the stamp Madam Pince used to check out books had ceased hours ago. Even the shuffle of the woman's shoes across the carpet had died away. The silence stretched from the study tables up to the high, domed ceiling, suffocating everything between. The whole place felt deserted.
Of course it is, Hermione Granger told her self. It's seven o'clock on the first Friday of the school term. No one wants to do homework.
No one except for herself. Hermione had what she considered a mountain of homework to finish. She had two paragraphs for Charms class and a chapter to read for Defense Against the Dark Arts. That was only the assigned homework, of course.
Hermione had also been working through Hogwarts: A History again. Instead of simply reading, she was searching out the things and locations she read about. The only objects she had been unable to locate so far were the portraits of Headmasters and Headmistresses. She had been nearly everywhere else, from the North Tower to the Dungeons, looking for historical magical places.
She was also aiming to finish Standard Book of Spells over the weekend. Just because they had not used their wands in class yet did not mean they wouldn't need it. She had been dying to try out a really clever Charm to unlock doors, but she really didn't think she should until she finished the book, just in case she needed to lock the door again, and she hadn't found that Charm yet.
Then there were all the books she had checked out to read up on wizarding history and culture. She'd done quite a bit over the summer, but she was only one girl and there were so many books. She really wanted to find out more about magical phenomena and what Muggles had invented to replace it. Plus, she had promised her parents she would do some career research straight away to make sure she had a real future.
But there was just one problem.
Hermione stared down at the items spread out across the study table. She had brought four rolls of parchment, two ink pots, and nearly fifty quills to the Library. Anyone familiar with the wizarding world would have laughed at Hermione, but she found nothing humorous about the situation.
She took a deep breath and selected one of the quills. After carefully dipping the tip into the ink pot, she brought it to the surface of the parchment. When she drew the first line of the letter H, the quill and parchment created a squeaking so shrill and fierce that it caused her to cringe. Next moment, the nub of the quill lay uselessly broken beside a puddle of ink.
With a growl of frustration, Hermione threw aside the quill. It landed with a dull ping in a pile of fifteen or so mutilated quills. Some had broken at the nub, others were cracked, another few were snapped in half, and one appeared to have all the feathers ripped off.
The parchment was in similar disarray. A series of signatures littered the page, but none of them resembled anything close to legible writing. Most of the signatures were splotchy with ink that had dripped from the quill tip, but a few were so faint that they appeared to have been etched into the parchment without any ink on the nub at all.
Hermione dropped her head into her arms. She felt hot tears stinging her eyes, and she wanted nothing more than to scream and tear the parchment into a million tiny pieces. This was completely hopeless! She was never going to learn how to use quill and parchment. For many minutes, her shoulders shook with sobs.
Everything had been so fantastic after she'd found out she was a witch. It had all made sense. The kids at school had been so mean to her and called her all kinds of horrid names because of the strange things that happened around her. But after the letter, everything changed for her. She was so relieved to find out why she caused these things and excited about going to a school where everyone was like her. And she was going to learn how to control magic and do even greater things!
She and her parents had rushed to Diagon Alley the very next day. The Grangers didn't do anything half-heartedly. They had bought their only child the best of everything—robes, cauldron, wand, and quill and parchment. They had asked the shopkeeper at Flourish & Blotts for all the best books on the wizarding world, everything from history to popular culture to famous witches and wizards. They had left barely able to manage the miniature library.
Hermione had read and read and read. She had taken out her wand and ran her hands over it at least a hundred times a day. She had packed and repacked her school supplies. But nothing had prepared her for the grandeur of the wizarding world. Platform 9 ¾, the Hogwarts Express, the Great Hall, the Gryffindor Common Room, it had all been completely brilliant! Hermione had thought nothing could stop her.
Until she started the first homework assignment.
Oh, there was nothing difficult about the uses of bezoars and asphodel. It was all right there in 1000 Magical Herbs and Fungi. It was the writing down the facts that proved an obstacle.
Hermione had used many writing tools in her life. Like most Muggle children, she began with crayons and magic markers before progressing to pencils and colored pencils and finally pens. But wizards didn't use crayons, magic markers, pencils, colored pencils, or pens. After the first few failed attempts at using ink and quill, Hermione had taken out a trusty pen from her trunk.
The results were disastrous. While the Muggle invention worked famously with paper—super-refined tree bark—parchment and pens did not go well together. The quality of the parchment, although beautiful, was roughly made. The bumpy texture and inconsistencies in color made ink from the ballpoint pen look like children's scrawl. The R in her first name looked as though it had become overly excited and jumped high above the M. She could hardly do her homework in such illegible writing.
She had gone back to the quill and parchment so many times she had lost count: during class, in the common room, over break, in the Great Hall, while reading the chapter, out on the grounds. Nothing she had tried made the process any easier. The chairs in the common room made her too comfortable, the dew on the grass seeped through the parchment, the dishes got in the way of her elbow.
When her situation was to the point where she could reasonably call it desperate, she decided to take drastic measures. She had decided to stop doing her homework for a whole hour and do nothing but practice using quill and parchment. Hermione had thought depriving herself of one hour of homework time would motivate her into learning the skill faster. But one hour had turned into three, and three hours had become ten. Hermione had spent more time trying to write with quill and parchment than she had spent in class.
Finally, Hermione raised her head from the table. She wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her robes and looked at the mess all around her. She was a very clever girl. She would just figure out what she had been doing wrong and fix it. One by one, she picked up the quills and made a mental note of what had happened to them.
By her count, seventeen quills had broken nubs. Clearly, she was pressing too hard. Another five were snapped in half. Most likely, that was out of frustration. Ten more quills were cracked. That was probably due to uneven pressure.
Well, thought Hermione, I can fix all of those problems. I just can't press as hard.
Fourteen signatures had produced nub-sized holes in the parchment. Again, she had been pressing down too hard. Twenty-seven names were splotched. Obviously, there was too much ink on the quill. Another fifty names were incomplete. On half of those, the quill had probably broken. For the other half, she had not used enough ink.
Again, not a problem, Hermione told herself. Just don't use so much ink unless you're not using enough.
For a moment, Hermione stared critically at the parchment as if it had just given her this thoroughly unhelpful advice. She would not be deterred, however. She couldn't do her homework without learning how to use quill and parchment, so learn quill and parchment she was going to do.
Slowly, Hermione dipped the nub into the ink pot. When she judged that she had a good amount on the quill, she brought it to hover over the parchment. Carefully, she placed the quill against the parchment and brought her hand down. The result was a sloppy, wavering thick black line twice the width of a normal letter H.
Hermione's hand was shaking so badly from rage and frustration that the quill broke cleanly in two and her hand flew forward and knocked over the ink pot. Gooey ink flooded over her hands soaking her skin and nails in black liquid. The shriek had left her lips before she ever realized she was about to scream.
Her voice echoed against the high ceiling and through the empty Library. Before the one piercing note had faded away, Hermione heard another sound that made her spirits sink even lower—the scuffing of shoes against the worn carpet. She had been in the Library so often during her first week of school that she had already memorized the pattern of Madam Pince's walk.
As the elderly Librarian appeared around the bookshelf, Hermione prepared for the maelstrom. She expected detention for spilling ink around the books and shouting in the Library. She had heard the redheaded twins talking about the Librarian over dinner. One of them had called the woman "uppity" and the other had retorted, "More like a senile old biddy."
But the Librarian did not begin ranting and cursing Hermione. Instead, she took out her wand and cleared away the ink with one clean motion. Then, she thrust a red leather-bound book at Hermione. Hermione did not reach out to take it, but motioned with her ink-soaked hands. Again, the Librarian made the sweeping gesture and all the liquid vanished from Hermione's fingers.
Without a word, the Librarian shuffled off again. According to the twins, Madam Pince was a towering inferno of pent-up rage, just waiting for the moment to harass a student. Curiously, Hermione looked down at the book. She felt her cheeks burn red-hot. It was a journal with crisp parchment pages.
So Madam Pince had been watching her. She had taken account of that fact that every time Hermione came into the Library, she made piles of broken quills and mounds of ruined parchment. She considered discarding the book. She didn't like to think someone else had to help her learn to do something that should have been so easy.
In the end, however, the desire to learn how to use quill and parchment was too great. Writing in the journal would feel more natural, as she was used to doing her homework in spiral bound notebooks. Hermione simply had to acquire the skill if she wanted to live in the wizarding world. And more than that, she would not back down from this challenge.
But if Hermione was being honest with herself, she was more driven by the thought of what would happen if she did not learn how to write like wizards. She could obtain Muggle pen and paper for the rest of her life, but she would not have it be said that Hermione Granger gave up. She imagined the taunting and leering faces—faces that strongly resembled Ron Weasley—peering curiously at her as she removed a pen from her backpack.
What's that, Hermione? The faces asked. A Muggle invention? What's wrong with quill and parchment? Or aren't you smart enough to use those, Miss Know-It-All? None of the other Muggle-borns had trouble with it.
Hermione took hold of another quill and pulled the blank journal towards her. She was determined, fiercely determined that this time, she was going to use quill and parchment. Hermione closed her eyes for one moment, took a deep breath, and imagined her hand writing Hermione Granger.
She dipped the nub into the ink pot, lowered it to the parchment, and signed her name. With baited breath, she removed her hand and looked down at the words on the page.
HeRmione Grangir
The R still wasn't level with the rest of her first name, and the E in her surname looked like little more than a straight line. The G was smudged a little, and the third R bore unmistakable signs of excess ink pooling on the parchment. It wasn't at all like her handwriting.
But not bad, thought Hermione.
She could definitely do her homework now. It wouldn't be the neatest she'd ever written, nor would it be a quick assignment, but it was definitely legible and that's what mattered.
Hermione froze. She blinked many times at the quill and parchment.
That's what mattered! She questioned herself. No, no, no. Perfection mattered.
Hermione blinked again. But, no, really it didn't count for all that much. There were many kinds of perfection, and Hermione would much rather have perfect content than perfect form.
Who would have thought it of me? Hermione asked herself, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.
For once in her life, she was satisfied with something that wasn't 100 perfect. But more than that, she felt that she had finally found something that really challenged her. It brought out the real Hermione—the Hermione who refused to back down, the Hermione who believed she could accomplish anything.
Well, now I've done this, I think I can do anything.
She left the Library thinking about three-roll essay assignments and N.E.W.T exams. She never imagined mountain trolls, Dementors, and Horcruxes. But she rose to every challenge. All because of quill and parchment.
The End