Author's Notes: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended. Reviews are printed out, framed, and hung upon my wall.
Hermione Granger has grown up knowing that she is strange – her classmates at primary school have made her painfully aware of this fact on a daily basis. But strange things also happen around her. Once, while she was washing dishes, she dropped a glass and it shattered, cutting her hand. She screamed, bringing her parents running into the kitchen, but by the time they ran in, both the glass and her hand were healed as if nothing had ever happened. Another time, she forgot her key after school, and she was tugging on the doorknob when suddenly the door unlocked, swinging open in front of her.
She never told her parents about that.
She feels like there's something about herself that she's just waiting to discover, something that she doesn't know about herself, but she'll find out. She's different, she's special, she knows that, but she doesn't know how or in what way.
Her eleventh birthday falls on September 19, 1990, and she celebrates it with a small party with her family. The next day, she comes home from school to find, unusually, her parents home from their surgery, perched uncomfortably on chairs in the living room, and staring with bemused interest at a stranger wearing a midnight blue bathrobe, who has seated herself on the sofa.
The woman stands when Hermione enters the parlor, extending a hand. "You're Hermione?" she says.
"Good afternoon," Hermione says, shaking the woman's hand, but looking at her mother.
"Hermione," her mother says, sounding strangled. "This is Professor Sinistra. She says she's from a school called Hogwarts."
"Yes," Professor Sinistra says. "I'm glad you're here, Hermione. It's very important that I speak to you. You see, Hermione. you're a witch."
Hermione feels like the air has gone out of the room. The room is absolutely still and Hermione knows both her parents are holding their breath.
"A witch?" she asks. "Really? But there's no such thing as –"
"Oh, there is," Professor Sinistra says, chuckling, and then proceeds to tell her about Hogwarts, the school for all the magical children of England, where they learn to manage and control their magic. She speaks about the classes at Hogwarts, the grounds, the history and the tradition. Hermione listens raptly – an explanation for the weird things that happen to her? A school where she won't be the freak in the front row? – but her mother frowns deeply.
Professor Sinistra finishes speaking and watches Hermione's parents. This is it, this is the missing piece, Hermione realizes. This is what she has been waiting to find out about herself. She is bursting with questions, foremost of all being "when can I go?", but her mother has questions of her own. "But what will she learn?" she asks.
"Excuse me?" says Professor Sinistra.
"But what will my daughter learn?" Catherine Granger repeats. "What history? What philosophy? What about math and science? Do you teach literature? Hermione is gifted. She needs a complete education, not just this focus on magic."
Hermione freezes, unable even to protest. Professor Sinistra blinks and speaks again about the classes offered at Hogwarts – Charms, Transfiguration, History of Magic, Potions, Herbology. It sounds like something out of a dream to Hermione, classes infinitely more exciting than what she is learning now, but her mother shakes her head.
"No, no," Hermione's mother says. "You're just going to teach Hermione. You're not going to give her an education. That's what she needs. My Hermione is going to be someone, someday. No, she'll keep her place at Avonhurst, and that's that."
Professor Sinistra argues with Hermione's mother for at least half an hour. Hermione sits mutely, her hands pressed in her lap, while her father leans back in his chair and passively watches the discussion. Finially, Professor Sinistra, eyes glittering, asks Catherine Granger, "So that's your decision?"
Hands on hips, Hermione's mother says, "She's not going, and that's final."
"Very well then." Professor Sinistra raises a small wooden stick above her head – a wand, Hermione realizes – and cries, "Obliviate!"
Hermione blacks out.
She jerks awake and has to look at the clock to see what time it is. Her parents wake up shortly after, and observe rather confusedly that they all must have been tired to take a nap at the same time.
After that, the strange incidents stop.
