Written especially for Owluvr on Fanfiction as a very belated GGE present.
Inspired by if-dementors-were-pink's tumblr post regarding Hermione reading Matilda.
I don't own Matilda, the few quotes I use, or Harry Potter.
It was an oversimplification to say that Hermione Granger did not believe in magic. Most magic, of course, she did not believe in. (Although it was getting harder to ignore how often something implausible - impossible - happened around her.) The magic of fairy tales helped show the moral of the story. But magic in other books bothered her. This was why she had never finished reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Finding a magical world hiding among the ordinary served no moral purpose. It was nonsense.
No, the only magic Hermione Granger believed in was the magic of words. And her mother had just spoken them.
It began as a terrible day at school, where Hermione was once more reminded just how unlikeable she was. Her mum followed her to the door of her bedroom and held it open before Hermione could slam it. "Tough day?"
"Hmph!" She crossed her arms and turned away toward the wall. She didn't see how even her mum, whom she loved dearly, could make it any better.
"Why don't you read a book?"
Hermione turned around slowly. "I've already read all of mine." She paused, then added, "Twice." Except Chronicles of Narnia, but Hermione had no interest in reading that book again.
That was the moment when her mum had said the magic words. "Would you like to go to the bookstore, then? I think you're well overdue for a new story."
Memories of Lisa Smith and Maggie McDonald were wiped from her mind entirely. "Do you mean it?!"
"Of course I do, dear," she said, coming close and kissing her daughter's forehead. "Get your shoes on. If we don't leave now I don't know if I'll manage to get you out before dinner!" The teasing wasn't lost on Hermione, but she smiled anyway.
Books were the only places Hermione felt like she had true friends. Like Meg Murry and Calvin O'Keefe. Or Peter Hatcher. Or even Sheila Tubman. Characters didn't judge her. Characters, Hermione liked to think, enjoyed it when she read about them. As much as some of the highly unlikely settings annoyed her - time travel! magic! - she could forgive them because there was something about a geeky, ugly heroine that Hermione found comforting. If someone like Meg Murry could find friendship and adventure and happiness, maybe one day she could, as well.
Now that she had turned nine, Hermione preferred to shop in the adults section of the bookstore, but her mum was stern on the matter. "Not yet, Hermione. Not yet. If I find a good adult book I think you will enjoy, I'll let you know. But read children's books for now, please," she would always say.
So today, grumpily, Hermione made her way to the children's section. At the end of a row was a bookshelf proclaiming "Best new titles of 1988" and, as Hermione was rather certain she'd already read the best old titles, she began to look around. A simple yellow cover with a young girl on the front drew her attention first. Maybe it was the pile of books the girl was sitting on. Simply called Matilda, she was intrigued enough to pick it up, even though it was by Roald Dahl.
Over the summer, she read The BFG and hated it. Giants in London - what nonsense. Not to mention the low-brow humour. It wasn't Hermione's style. But despite her hatred for the last Roald Dahl book she read, she knew Matilda was the book for her. A lonely girl who read Dickens before she turned seven? Hermione thought she was the only one.
"I'd like this one, Mum," she said, finding her mother in the back of the store under a section marked Harlequin. Hermione didn't know the word. She made a point to look it up later.
Her mother took the book from her and turned it over. "Are you sure that's the one?" Hermione nodded. "I didn't think you read Roald Dahl anymore."
"I know. But it looks interesting."
"Then do me a favor, okay?"
"What's that?"
She winked. "Read slowly."
It was longer than The BFG, but not by much. The font was large and the pages small. She could probably finish it in the course of one dreary afternoon - and November had no shortage of those. But it truly had been a while since she savored a book. "One new chapter a day," she promised.
Her mum found the table of contents, her finger moving down the page as she counted the chapters. "Three weeks? When was the last time a book took you three weeks?"
Hermione thought about it. "When I read Great Expectations last year."
Taking her daughter's hand and going to the queue for the register, she looked down and said, "Good luck, then."
Within half an hour of dinner, Hermione was already regretting her promise. The first chapter took her precisely six minutes to read, and only four and a half minutes the second time. She chuckled that Matilda's first look at Dickens had been her most recent one, and paused at the list of books to jot down the names of the ones she hadn't read.
The characters were over-the-top, caricatures to say the least, but Hermione found solace in Matilda's antics. Matilda experienced a level of neglect Hermione had never known, and while she was ostracized at school, she couldn't imagine her own parents treating her the way Mr and Mrs Wormwood treated Matilda.
Matilda's pranks were well-planned and well-deserved, but the course humour still had Roald Dahl's signature style to it. The balance between a character she loved and an author she loathed was precisely what Hermione needed to keep her promise to her mum.
At dinner, a week after she bought the book, Hermione's mum turned her attention to her daughter. "How's your book, Hermione? What did you think of the ending?"
"I'm not there yet, Mum. I've only finished seven chapters."
Her mum opened her eyes widely, mocking surprise and horror. "My daughter, taking her time with a book? I am so pleased. If you keep your promise for the next two weeks, maybe I'll buy you another."
This left her with the perfect incentive to follow through, even as the over-the-top Trunchbull was introduced, and Matilda somehow managed to get along with her classmates and not be teased. She's quite the Mary-Sue, Hermione mused after the tenth chapter, but I can't help but like her. Everything in her life has been so horrible.
With every passing day, Roald Dahl slipped further off her list of "most hated authors," and she hardly noticed.
The morning of the fourteenth day, Hermione didn't have time to read before going to school. She wasn't looking forward to facing Lisa and Maggie again, but that was true every school day. She put on her school uniform and brushed through her wild hair. It wouldn't tame, but at nine, Hermione had decided there was no earthly substance that could tame it. It made her think of one of Mrs Wormwood's quotes from earlier in the book: "You chose books, and I chose looks. And who's finished up the better off?"
Mrs Wormwood thought she was better off, but Hermione knew the better off was Miss Honey. And hopefully herself. She had no choice but to choose books over looks, after all.
Sometimes, though, she wished she could choose the other way. Maybe then she would have friends.
"Hey Hermy One!" Lisa called as Hermione walked solemnly up to school and closed her umbrella. "You look extra hermy today. What did you do, bathe in the stuff?"
Too many years' experience had taught Hermione not to correct them, that hermy isn't a thing. She knew they knew how to pronounce her name, as well, so for the moment, she ignored her.
"You know, Hermione," Maggie added, "Keeping that know-it-all head of yours up in the clouds is going to land you in a puddle someday." Then, to prove her point, she stuck out her foot.
Hermione knew it was coming, but reacted too late. Maggie had timed her trip well, and Hermione splashed into a puddle, covering her stockings and skirt in mud. Her bookbag had landed beside her, now sopping wet. Maggie and Lisa hadn't yet learned that it was best to walk away from their victims and pretend they didn't do it. Instead, they crowded around her and started taunting her in sing-song voices. "Hermione's wet and frumpy! She'll go home and tell her mummy! She'd tell her friends but she's not got any! Hermione the lonely!"
Anger flowed through Hermione like something tangible, turning her skin red-hot. She could feel the energy in her fingertips and her brain, pulsing hatred toward her bullies. "Leave. Me. Alone," she said, her voice so calm she scared herself. "Or else."
"Or else what? You'll tell the teacher? Teacher's pet," Lisa accused.
"No. I won't tell," she said. Matilda's tricks on her own bullies had made Hermione brave. She liked being brave. "I'll get even."
"You're too goody-goody to do that," Maggie said. "We'll be just fine, Lisa. No trouble from Hermy One today."
They began to walk away, but Hermione couldn't let her attention falter. She focused on the two bullies, wishing with all her might that they could understand what they put her through. Suddenly, puddles appeared in front of them where none had been before.
Except that couldn't be right, Hermione told herself. Puddles are formed when water falls to one area of the ground and can't drain properly. More importantly, puddles take time. And these had sprung out of nowhere.
As if that weren't enough, Lisa and Maggie tripped at the same time, but what they tripped over, Hermione couldn't be sure. Nothing was there. Their shoes weren't untied. There were no other witnesses. But regardless, Lisa and Maggie now sat overturned in muddy puddles, their skirts bunching, their shirts wrinkled. Maggie began to cry.
Hermione got up, pleased they got what was coming, if confused about how, and went to brush the water from her uniform and book bag. But there was no water to brush off. Her muddy clothes were clean, and her books (she was quick to check) had not a single sign of water damage.
The thoughts troubled her so much, she was only the first to raise her hand during class once. After school, her teacher, Ms Hamilton, stopped her. "Hermione? Are you feeling ill? You didn't seem present today."
"I'm fine, Ms Hamilton. Just fine."
"If you're sure…"
"I'm sure. I'll see you tomorrow," she said.
It wasn't the first impossible thing Hermione had witnessed. But it was the first time she felt certain she had somehow caused it, like the anger welling up inside of her had somehow been the source of a miracle. For an altogether different reason than usual, Hermione couldn't wait to escape into her book when she got home.
The First Miracle, the next chapter was entitled, and Hermione almost put it down. She'd had enough miracles for one day. However, the world of Matilda was more appealing than her own, and she curled up on her bed to read it, skipping her usual tradition of re-reading all the previous chapters. She wanted to know what kind of miracle this book would bring her.
The chapter opened with nothing at all miraculous. Matilda's bullying was so much worse than Hermione's, she understood, since it came from the headmistress herself. There was no one for Matilda to turn to. She bottled all her anger at the injustice up inside of her, the same way Hermione had. Until it turned into electricity. And a miracle.
"Could it be…?" Hermione wondered, and for the first time, she broke her vow to her mother. She kept reading.
Matilda had tipped over a glass of water with her eyes. And in the next chapter, Miss Honey called it the greatest miracle since Jesus. Was making puddles appear out of nowhere, and automatically drying her clothes when they had been sopping wet, a greater miracle or a lesser one?
No, she told herself. I didn't do it. Coincidences.
But she wasn't convinced. Hermione kept reading, saw Matilda perform the same miracle again, intentionally. Watched her, a few chapters later, begin to try to refine her powers. Could I do that? Hermione wondered.
She checked the clock on her nightstand. She'd only been reading for thirty minutes. Dinner was still hours away. She went down to the kitchen and got a plastic cup. "What are you doing, Hermione?"
"Just thirsty, Mum. Do you mind if I drink in my room?"
"As long as it's only water, I don't see why not."
Meeting her mother in the kitchen forced Hermione to have to actually put water in the glass. But no matter. She could finish it before she tried to imitate the miracle. As she drank it, she felt more and more like she was out of her mind. There was no such thing as magic. There wasn't. But puddles also didn't appear out of nowhere. Nor did sopping wet clothes simply stop being wet. Finally, she decided there was no harm in trying. It's not like she was trying to do magic after all. She was simply conducting a scientific experiment.
About the plausibility of magic. But she tried to forget that part.
When the glass was empty, she set it carefully on her desk, making sure other objects were out of the way. Then she focused on the glass, thinking, like Matilda had, tip it. Tip it over. Nothing was happening. Hermione found herself frustrated, rather than pleased. She tried to concentrate on a feeling of electricity behind her eyes, and energy shooting out of them, but no such feeling came.
After a few attempts, she was ready to give up. As she got ready to do her homework instead, her mind washed back over years of school and bullying. Teased for her hair, for her brains, for her lack of friends. The teasing making the possibility of friends even more remote. No one liked her. She would be stuck going through life brilliant and friendless.
Her eyes, though still pointed toward the cup on her desk, blurred with tears. She focused not on the glass, but on her own bitterness and anger. How was it her fault that she was gifted? She did not choose her hair or her brains. She could not choose her friends. Alone. Alone. She felt the words repeating in her mind. There was no worth in genius without anyone to share it with.
The cup began to tip.
She focused her anger on Lisa and Maggie, instead of trying to will the cup over with her mind. It clattered to the floor.
The book described the feeling beautifully. Matilda seemed to go off into a far away place, serene and happy and otherworldly, while all her extraordinary brain was focused on the miracle. And Matilda said, when she was fully recovered, that she was "flying past the stars on silver wings."
Roald Dahl was obviously making all of this miracle stuff up, because it was nothing like the real thing. Hermione felt no serenity and no calm. Instead, it was a blaze of emotions - ones Hermione had learned to repress - that led to her own miracle. It wasn't like a concentration of willpower. It was, Hermione had to admit, exactly how she pictured magic.
The idea of having magic inside of her (she couldn't bring herself to think "being magical" in relation to herself) was more terrifying than anything else. Sometimes it gave her solace: I could do anything I want to Lisa and Maggie. Directly afterwards, it would scare her: I could do anything I want to Lisa and Maggie. She slowed her reading back down to a chapter a day, and even as Matilda practiced, Hermione did not.
She wanted to un-think her magic out of existence.
It didn't work, though, and as the week continued, strange things kept happening. They had happened to her before she turned nine, before she started reading about Matilda, but never this frequently. She hardly trusted herself to have any emotions at all, lest they lead to something inexplicable. So far, she was lucky that nothing had been pinned on her. No notes had been sent home, except the usual one: "Hermione has been secluded this week. She should work on having more friends."
The twentieth day came to pass and Hermione read the second-to-last chapter of her book. Matilda, a jokester in the beginning, had learned to use her powers for good. She saved the school. Just for fun, Hermione took out her pencil box and set a pencil down. For the first time since her first attempt, Hermione intentionally tried to make a miracle happen. It worked. It was stressful and put her in a foul mood, but it worked.
Maybe she just had to do like Matilda did and wait for the time she could use the powers for good, intentionally, instead of just being a walking accident-causer.
Then, the next day, she read the end of the story.
Matilda, whose magic was fueled by excess brain function that studies weren't using up, lost her powers when her brain was challenged properly. And as much as having power terrified Hermione, the idea of doing something good - something that would make people want to write a book about her - with her magic, had seeped into her mind.
For her, though she knew she was a bright child, her magic (if that's really what it was) wasn't fueled by a bored brain. It was fueled by bullying. By teasing. By friendlessness.
If that was true… Hermione vowed to never make friends. It wouldn't be difficult to keep that promise, with how little luck she had making friends anyway. All she had to do was keep being herself.
It took determination and resolve, but Hermione spent the rest of the school year, and the whole year after that, avoiding friendships. Even when Lisa transferred out of her primary school and Maggie became kinder, Hermione didn't relent. She was the brainy one, the know-it-all. The one who could make miracles happen when she was angry enough. She still practiced once a week, but didn't let herself focus on mastering her talent. If she spent any more time at it, she might have to explain to her practical, kind parents what she could do.
And even if they didn't lock her up in an insane asylum, they would still probably think she was crazy.
On her eleventh birthday, her dad was in the kitchen frosting her birthday cake while her mum sat with her on the sofa. "Are you sure there's no one you want here to celebrate with you?"
"I'm sure, Mum."
There was a knock at the door.
"Oh, Hermione. Were you just tricking me? I hope we have enough food!"
Hermione, however, knew the door could not be for her. No one even knew it was her birthday. The knock was probably just a neighbor looking to borrow sugar or something. Curiosity got the better of her, though, and she went to the hallway, where she could watch the interaction. An old lady, in strange velvety clothes, stood at the door. She looked odd, but also dignified. "Is this the home of Miss Hermione Granger?"
"It is. Would you like to come in, Miss-"
"McGonagall."
"Thank you," she said, stepping across the threshold. "Surely you noticed something unusual about your daughter. Something extraordinary."
This woman spent no time in small talk. It made Hermione smile; she was the same way. Plus, the conversation reminded her of a book she had never quite forgotten. Miss Honey had a similar conversation with Mr and Mrs Wormwood. Maybe she had been accepted to a private school for secondary! That would be like a dream for Hermione, although she had no intention of making friends.
"We know she's bright, certainly. What brings you were today?" Hermione's mum asked. "I'm not sure if you could have known this, but it is Hermione's birthday today."
The woman smiled knowingly. "Oh, I'm aware. In fact, Hermione, I've brought you a present."
Hermione looked at the envelope this Miss McGonagall was holding, then anxiously turned to her mother. "May I open it now, Mum? Please?" She couldn't remember the last time someone outside her family had bought her a birthday present. Even a card, as this appeared to be.
"Just a moment, sweetheart. Miss McGonagall, would you like some tea? We'll have cake here shortly if you plan to stay."
"Tea would be lovely, thank you."
"Wait for me, Hermione, and then you may open it."
While her mother was out of the room, the old woman eyed Hermione with curiosity. "What do you enjoy, my dear?"
"Reading," she replied certainly, then her words sped up. "I love to read. And learn things, although the people at school find I'm a bit too bookish for them. I don't really mind, though. After all, I learn so much from books. How to do things, history - I find history fascinating, don't you? - and even novels. Even ones about magic, even though I know it's all nonsense-"
"Is it now?" Miss McGonagall raised her eyebrows accusingly. It was as if she knew Hermione was lying to cover up the strange things she'd learned.
She was spared having to answer, though, by her mother re-entering the room. "All right, Hermione. You may open your present."
Carefully, Hermione turned over the envelope in her hand. There, in beautiful green calligraphy, was her full name and address. The back was sealed with a real wax stamp, a thing she'd only read about. Inside were two pieces of parchment - there was no better word. It wasn't standard A4 paper by any stretch of the imagination.
"Dear Miss Granger," she read. "I am pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at-" Hermione could read with her eyes much faster than she read aloud. And she was already to the end of the sentence when she read the 'at.' Instead of finishing the thought, she said, "No. Impossible."
"Ah, but is it really?"
"What are you talking about, Hermione?"
Hermione looked at her mother with wide eyes, then returned to the letter. "I am pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at… Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."
"Impossible," said Mrs Granger.
Hermione looked smug. "I told you so."
"Has nothing strange ever happened around you?" the old woman accused. "Something you couldn't explain?"
Looking at her mother, her eyes asking for forgiveness before she needed it, Hermione said, "It may have started much younger, but it got worse when I was nine. I made puddles appear out of nowhere. I fell in one and didn't stay wet. Then I read Matilda-" she paused, hoping for recognition in the woman's eyes, but none came. "A book about a girl that can make objects move with her eyes - and I found out I could do the same thing.
"But I got scared, because at the end of the book, when Matilda is happy again, she loses her magic and even if I never used it, I wanted to keep it."
"You were afraid you would lose your powers?"
"Yes, Miss McGonagall."
"Call me Professor McGonagall, please. And I can assure you that you will not lose your powers."
"You're certain?"
"Much of my life was unhappy, as it sounds like you are. I have since become a content old woman, with nothing to complain of. And yet…" Professor McGonagall stopped being human. Instead, Hermione and her mum watched the old woman turn into a cat.
Before they had time to react, a dignified old woman was once again sitting across them. She pulled a stick from the sleeve of her dress and pointed it at the tea tray. The teapot lifted itself up and poured three equal cups.
"Your magic, Hermione, yes it's magic. Don't look at me like that. Your magic is part of who you are. It won't leave you any sooner than your eyebrows will. In fact," Professor McGonagall added, chuckling, "I would bet good money that you'll lose your eyebrows in a mishap long before you lose your magic."
The conversation continued for more than an hour, passing from tea time to cake, as the Grangers discussed their daughter with this strange professor as if Hermione wasn't even there. Finally, she turned to Hermione and said, "I'm sure you have many questions of your own. If your parents will agree to it, I can arrange for the four of us to go to Diagon Alley - the best wizarding shops in London, understand - sometime soon. You can pick up a few books and get the supplies you'll need, as your acceptance letter says."
"I would like that very much," Hermione said, and the date was set.
Hermione hesitated as she packed her newly purchased trunk. Most of her books were thrown in without ceremony, but she stopped with one in each hand: Matilda, and Chronicles of Narnia. As much of a relief as it had been when Professor McGonagall assured her that she would keep her magic forever, it was reading Matilda that changed her life. Not the conversation that came with the professor later. As for The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe? Maybe the idea of a magic land in a wardrobe wasn't so ridiculous as she once believed. After all, she was on her way to walk through a brick wall into a magical world of her own.
She packed them both.
Maybe she would find more than magic at Hogwarts. Maybe she would find friends.
Arriving early to the train station, standing alone on Platform 9 ¾ as a scarlet train waited patiently for her, she knew that Matilda had described it best, and it didn't just apply to reading books. Hermione was off to fly past the stars on silver wings, and there was nowhere these wings couldn't take her.