Chapter one – The First Eleven Years
Hermione Granger could have been considered an odd child from the very moment she was born. Instead of bawling at the top her lungs like most newborns do, she simply cocked her head to one side and studied her mother and father intently, as if she were trying to work out something by staring deeply into her parents' eyes. She had an expression on her small red face that said, "Well hello, you must be my parents. What are you like, then? Why am I here? What's all this noise?" It was quite odd, indeed.
From then on, it became increasingly obvious to Hermione's parents that their daughter was different from other children. At only four and a half months old, Hermione could talk, and by the age of one she has forming coherent sentences. She was up and walking when she was seven months old, and most amazingly of all, she could read by the time she was only two years old. By the time Hermione went to nursery school, she had begun to read proper books by authors like Michael Morpurgo, whilst her peers were more interested in playtime and brightly-coloured toys than novels.
Despite Hermione's apparent genius, it could not be ignored that she also had many odd and unusual qualities as well. Her mother remembered looking out the window one morning, three years after Hermione was born and seeing a little sparrow sitting on her daughter's arm, chirruping merrily. Hermione was laughing sweetly at the bird, which didn't seem scared of her at all. There were other incidents as well her mother got a phone call one evening from Hermione's nursery school teacher, telling her that another boy at the nursery had been teasing Hermione about her flyaway hair. The boy had said that Hermione looked like she had a bird's nest perched on top of her head. The teacher had called to tell the Grangers that the boy had come out in a nasty rash immediately after the incident and that his parents were blaming the ailment on Hermione. The teacher could see in no way how they were connected, but just thought she had better warn Hermione's mother.
It wasn't until Hermione started primary school that she herself realized that she was different for another reason. She didn't have any friends. In all the books Hermione had read by that age, most of the characters had at least one friend. Hermione had none. Once she had realized this fact, she tried to make some. Instead of sitting on the playground with her nose in a book, Hermione marched up to a gathering of girls in her class and tried to join in their conversation. But something went wrong. Instead of listening to things she had to say and sharing their own opinions with her, the girls were scared of the long words she used, and mostly didn't understand the things Hermione said. They giggled and ran off without another word, leaving Hermione confused and bewildered as to what she had done wrong. The answer came to her that night as she lay in bed. To make friends, she realized, she had to try to be more like the other children she knew. The next day at lunchtime she joined in a game of hide and seek with the other girls from her class, but it all went wrong again. The girls very clearly did not want Hermione to play with them, and spent much of the game avoiding her—Hermione was left hiding all by herself for almost twenty minutes before she realized that she was not welcome.
From that day on, Hermione largely returned her attention to her favourite companions, her books. Every break and lunchtime she would lose herself in an adventure or be dazzled by some amazing fact while the children around her screeched and ran around at playtime.
But Hermione still wanted friends, despite the company of her books, so every now and again she would approach the girls in her class and join in with whatever they were playing, but time after time they wouldn't even try to throw the ball to her or wouldn't even bother tagging her. As Hermione got older she became more and more determined she decided that these girls would have to be her friend, whether they liked it or not, she would demand that they play with her properly and let her join in with everything. At first they laughed at her, but after a while they just grew tired of Hermione's nagging and told her firmly to leave.
Although Hermione loved lessons she already knew what the teachers were telling her and despite the fact they tried to handle such a gifted child her teachers soon found it difficult to know what to do with Hermione in lessons other than make sure they had enough spare questions for her to answer. As the years passed, Hermione's classmates became meaner and nastier. They laughed at her hair and her oversized front teeth. They called her names like Know-It-All and Teacher's Pet. No matter how many different ways Hermione tried to tell them they were wrong, or laugh with them in order to make new friends, nothing ever seemed to help her. She always seemed to end up alone in the girls' toilets, hiding from everyone.
When Hermione was eight or so, things began to happen that did not help her status as the odd girl out of her class. Once, a little girl called Primrose had called Hermione a name. A few moments later, a huge chunk of Primrose's hair fell from her head onto the ground, and the little girl had run away from Hermione in terror.
Not long after, a boy named George ended up with his trousers around his ankles when he told Hermione that she should go live in the circus. But the worst of all had to be when little Mickey Pearce had seen Hermione playing with a flower on the grass behind the Wendy house. Hermione was holding the flower before her, and then letting it drop to the ground. Much to the little boy's surprise however, the flower didn't just fall straight to the ground like it should. It danced and spun downward, as if caught in a whirling breeze, before landing neatly on Hermione's foot. This happened every single time Hermione would drop the flower. Mickey was so terrified by what he had seen that he leapt from his hiding place and began yelling all sorts of things at Hermione, who was very startled at his sudden appearance. Mickey continued to yell at her, telling Hermione that she should be locked up, that she shouldn't be allowed around normal people, that she was nothing but an ugly freak.
Hermione was more upset and angry than she had ever known, and opened her mouth to scream back at him. But the next thing she knew, Mickey was on the ground, yelling in pain as he clutched his stomach and sprayed sick all over the grass. The teachers had come running to find Hermione pressed up against the Wendy house hands pressed over her mouth, eyes wide in shock.
Hermione's teachers never knew what to make of all these odd incidents. From their point of view, Hermione was a very sweet-tempered girl who wouldn't hurt a fly, but all her classmates would insist that she caused these things to happen to them.
So Hermione went through her first ten and a half years with books as her only company, reviled as a freak by other children her own age. She avoided them as well, sure that if she did, she would only do something odd that would make them hate her more. She sat and waited patiently for the day when something great would happen to her, to finally allow her to just be normal.
Hey and welcome to Hermione's story, this is just a quick intro into the whole thing, thank you for reading this and please carry on
p.s sorry for any of my readers who have noticed that it disappeared for a while, then came back then went again then came back. I had one major edit then i noticed that i'd left Mrs Granger? Name? in there which i'd written down quickly so i didn't lose ideas and forgot to come back to. sorry!