Brightest witch of her age, they whisper in awed voices about Hermione Granger, and a Muggleborn too!
And they're right, absolutely right: that she is. There's something they don't know, though, something that almost nobody knows, and that is that before Hermione there was another brightest witch. She, too, was a Muggleborn, and her score on the Charms OWL is one of only two to have ever beaten Hermione's.
Her name was Emma Fairbrooks, and here is her story.
Her parents didn't think the letter was real.
"What kind of nutter sends these?" her father had said, examining the paper.
"It's probably one of those boys from down the street," her mother sighed. "Here, give it to me to throw out."
Emma's protests had been drowned out, and the envelope, emerald ink and all, had ended up in the fireplace, burned to a million tiny pieces that had drifted slowly up the chimney.
Emma had cried, just a little bit, watching them float up, up, and away from her. She knew that she was being ridiculous. Her parents always said she was, when she talked about how she could understand what the birds were saying or when the dresses that she didn't like started to disappear from her closet.
Still, she needn't have worried. Two days later a very nice, if odd, man who called himself Professor Mallard showed up at their house and proved to Mother and Father that perhaps they shouldn't have thrown out the letter quite so soon. Mother was extremely suspicious, even after Professor Mallard explained all about Hogwarts, and she and Father talked for a very long time that night. Emma, eavesdropping from the room over as she paced back and forth across the patterned carpet, heard the words witchcraft, sin, and what are we supposed to do?
Emma didn't know the answer to the last question, but in the end it was decided that she would in fact become a student at Hogwarts, despite both of her parents' concerns.
Standing on platform nine and three-quarters with a heavy carpet bag in her right hand (it had been her grandmother's) and an umbrella (in case of rain) in her left, Emma didn't allow herself to feel the slightest bit of doubt. There would be time for doubt later. Right now, she was going to magic school.
People kept asking Emma if she was sure that she didn't have any magical ancestry. She knew that it was a compliment, albeit a rather odd one, but she was beginning to resent the fact that no one thought that a Fairbrooks could master Hovering charms before a Black.
She was a Ravenclaw, wasn't she? Didn't that mean that she was supposed to be good at classes? What about it was so strange?
Emma worried a lot. She wanted to stand out, but only because she was talented and smart and pretty and, as Father liked to say—or at least had used to like to say before she'd gotten the letter—practically perfect in every way. Now it turned out that she wasn't perfect, and that she couldn't be perfect as long as she lived, all because of who her parents were. It wasn't fair.
The only time when Emma didn't worry about all of this was when she was flying. She loved to fly, it turned out, even though she hadn't expected to enjoy it. The whole act of sitting on a broom, of controlling it with your knees seemed very indelicate, very unladylike. There was something about flying, though, something about soaring higher and higher until all the other students were reduced to mere specks and your insecurities were blown away by the piercing wind—there was something magical about it.
And, as she was rapidly learning, Emma Fairbrooks was good at magic.
Emma was very, very good at magic.
She learned this almost entirely by accident one evening in her fourth year, when she wanted to move a book onto her bedside table from where it had been lying on the floor. As per her habit, Emma, rather than reaching for her wand, made a small hand movement and watched with some satisfaction as the textbook settled itself neatly by her bed. And that would've been the end of that if one of her roommates, a pureblood named Agatha Darkow who grudgingly accepted that Emma was more talented than she would ever be, hadn't walked into their room at that moment and screamed.
"What?" Emma asked, startled.
"You—" Agatha was visibly trying to collect herself. "You just—how did you—I didn't know you could do wandless magic. It's—that's supposed to be impossible!"
Emma blinked at her, mind spinning rapidly. She'd never had any particular trouble with making things happen without using her wand; she just thought about the spell she wanted to use, and it tended to sort of… happen.
"Are you saying that no one can do wandless magic?" Emma asked carefully.
Agatha shook her head quickly. "No, that's not it—but only people who are really, really good at magic can do it, like Headmaster Trimble. And I've also heard that—there's a Gryffindor two years above us, his name is Albus Dumbledore, I think, and apparently he can do wandless spells too."
"But I can do them."
"Apparently."
Agatha sniffed at her, composure returning, and Emma returned to her book, trying to figure out what this new piece of information meant.
It wasn't often that one saw the protégé of Albus Dumbledore himself, the young man rumored to be the most powerful wizard in Britain, running down the hall of St. Mungo's for Magical Maladies and Injuries and looking visibly panicked.
"Excuse me," Emma was saying, pushing past a man in lime green Healer's scrubs. "Excuse me, sorry, must get through!"
Emma's usual policy was of cool, unfriendly politeness, both towards her superiors, in which class she included no one, and to her inferiors, which was everyone else. Right now, though, there was only one thing on her mind: to get to whoever the hell (pardon the language) was in charge of the Magical Bugs wing of St. Mungo's.
"Pardon, excuse—ah, there."
Emma stopped abruptly in front of a dark, gold-embossed door that announced Office of Healer Camilla Pye. She took a moment to neaten her hair with an automatic wandless Charm, breathed deeply, and walked in without knocking.
"Albus, did you even hear what I said? They won't do it! She said he was a Muggle, and she can't bring a Muggle in unless it's an emergency, which it is—are you been listening to me?"
Albus peered at her over the top of the pair of glasses he bought recently in a way that Emma knew was supposed to look wise but that served only to irritate her, especially when coupled with the wispy beginnings of a beard that he'd never quite been able to grow out.
"I told you so," he said, and Emma clenched her fists before she could accidentally-on-purpose blow him up along with half of the castle.
"He's going to die!" she shouted, distantly thankful that Albus lived in the middle of nowhere and that she didn't have to worry about neighbors overhearing their conversation. "He's four years old, Albus, and he's going to die because they refuse to recognize that he's a human being!"
Albus raised an eyebrow. "Is anyone denying that he's a human being? I thought they were saying that he isn't a wizard, which even you can hardly argue against."
Whoof! went a sound, and Emma whirled around to find a pillow cushion from the sofa aflame.
Before she could react, the fire was put out by a sprout of water from behind her, and when Emma turned again it was to meet Albus's suddenly-angry gaze.
"Control yourself, Emma," he said. "I won't have you starting fires like a toddler because you're upset about some Muggle."
"Some—" Emma stopped, breathed, felt herself freeze and harden. "I understand."
Albus squinted at her, suspicious. "Are you sure that you do?"
"It's as you always say, isn't it? For the greater good."
Albus nodded slowly. "Yes, I suppose it is."
"Come on, Matty, come on, you can do it, Matty, please, Matty, hang on, don't leave me, Matty, I'm so close, I'm almost there, Matty, please…"
Emma kept up a constant stream of dialogue as she worked, trying not to panic as she watched Matty's breathing falter and slow. The potion was almost finished; she'd broken so many laws to get him here, to get all the ingredients she needed—for him to die now would be almost insulting.
Matty coughed weakly, and Mother paused her crying to look up and fix Emma with a frightened but determined stare.
"If he dies now," she said, "you'll be happy to know that I'll no longer consider you my daughter."
Emma didn't have time for this; not now, not ever. "If he dies now," she muttered through gritted teeth, "you'll be happy to know that neither will I."
The potion frothed and bubbled, Emma's mind raced in a circle of what if what if what if, Mother cried louder than ever, and Father went to make some tea.
Hours later, Emma ordered her parents out of the room for the final step because she didn't want them to see her hands shaking as she fed Matty the potion that would either cure him or kill him. Emma had bargained that it should work just as well on a Muggle as it did on wizards and that the only reason that it was forbidden to Muggles was prejudice, but it was possible that there was some ingredient that would make his death even more painful than it would already be.
"Please, Matty, please, Matty, please…"
The vial trembled in her hands, and she spilled a drop down his chin. Time stretched and bent like one of the rubber bands he so liked to play with. What if, what if, what if. Emma couldn't get enough oxygen, and neither could Matty, and he was going to die.
Seconds, minutes, hours later, Matty took a shuddering breath.
Emma stared at him, unable to believe her luck.
"'Mma?" he asked weakly. "Hi!"
Emma noticed that she was crying and did her best to stop.
"Hi, Matty," she said.
They broke her wand and they made her swear an Unbreakable Oath never to enter a Wizarding location. They threatened to throw her in Azkaban, and they did memory spells on her entire family, plus a couple other people she knew just for the fun of it.
"Aren't you sorry for what you've done?" Albus asked. It was the last time she'd ever see him, she knew; even Albus Dumbledore wouldn't defy the Minister of Magic and the Wizengamot just to see a friend.
"No," Emma said. No one liked her at that moment, she wasn't feeling very pretty, and where she was going talent or intelligence wouldn't matter. Still, she had done what mattered.
"I did the right thing, you know," she said, after a brief pause."
Albus seemed somehow very old when he looked at her, lifting his face out of his hands.
"I know."