Let Your Wings Unfold
Hermione doesn't expect to be Sorted by a Hat, even a talking one. It feels a bit cheap, somehow, to know that her future will be decided by a piece of clothing that looks like it belongs in a museum.
'Oy!" A voice inside her mind says as soon as the Hat is dropped on her head though, and suddenly Hermione understands that the Hat is more than it seems.
(everything is, in this new world, or so it seems)
'Well at least you catch on quick,' the Hat grumbles, and Hermione can feel him ruffling through her head, looking for the place she'll belong best.
'You're very clever,' the Hat hums, and something tightens in Hermione's chest.
'Thank you,' she tries thinking back, 'but I don't want to be simply clever. I want to be brave.'
There's a moment of silence, like the calm before the storm – Hermione holds her breath and counts her heartbeats as they get louder and louder until the volume is nearly deafening, and then something clicks inside her mind.
'I see,' the Hat answers, and he sounds sad, almost tired. Hermione didn't know hats could wound tired.
But he sees, and she remembers…
.x.
When Hermione is seven, her class gets a new kid. Her name is Sarah, and she wears her pale blonde hair in pigtails. She looks very shy, and small as she stands in front of the class and stutters through her introduction, and she flinches like every laugh that comes after is a direct hit.
Sarah is weird, but not like Hermione herself is weird. There's no bright spark in her, no burning need to know everything like in Hermione, and no unusual events happening around her either.
But Sarah always wears long sleeves and she's not allowed to practice any sport at school. Hermione hears that her father told the school that she has a fragile health, and something doesn't quite fit there. Sarah certainly looks weak, almost like a strong breeze could knock her over, but she also doesn't look sick.
Just awfully tired, almost resigned.
(it chills Hermione down to the bone when she realizes that the last person she knew who had that look was her mother's father, just before he died of cancer)
(Sarah doesn't have cancer)
Still, Sarah is a little bit of an outcast, just like Hermione is, and she spends enough time at the school's library that Hermione knows she likes to read too.
It doesn't take her long to approach her – Hermione doesn't have a friend here, and Sarah doesn't either, but maybe… Maybe they could change that now. Maybe they could be friends. That would be nice, Hermione thinks, to have a friend of her own for when books aren't enough.
They don't become friends immediately, but they do grow somewhat closer. They sit together in the library and smile at each other over their books sometimes, Sarah more shyly than Hermione, and they eat together at lunch.
Sarah's mother is gone, Hermione learns – dead even, maybe, though Hermione can't be sure when Sarah looked so defeated just admitting she and her father were alone.
That's another thing too – Sarah's father. She sees the man every evening, when he comes to pick his daughter up, and there's something about it that rubs her the wrong way. Maybe it's the way his smiles when he greets his daughter are just a little too wide and never quite reach his eyes, or maybe it's the way Sarah always seems to be dragging her feet when she has to go to him, like she knows something bad will happen next.
But what bothers Hermione the most though, is that she quickly realizes that Sarah isn't so much shy as she is scared, of everything.
"I have to get good grades," Sarah confesses one day, when they've been studying in the library for a long time even by Hermione's standards. Sarah doesn't look so good either. Her eyes are bloodshot, and she keeps rubbing at her wrists, even though there's nothing there.
Well, not nothing – she catches glimpses of it sometimes, dark browns, yellows and greens, bruises at various stages of healing. Always, Sarah answers that she's clumsy when Hermione expresses her worry, and Hermione wants to believe her, does believe her. What reason does her friend have to lie after all?
"Me too," Hermione answers, nonplussed, because for some reason she feels like there's something important there, like Sarah means 'have to' in a different way that Hermione does. "But that doesn't mean you should neglect your health."
"I'm not," Sarah answers curtly, her eyes suddenly hard and cold, anger slipping in her tone.
Hermione frowns. "Are you sure? You look kind of sick, maybe you should get your father to let you stay home…"
Sarah blanches. "No!" She cries out, reaching for Hermione's wrist with a panicked look in her eyes. "You can't-I can't-You… Promise me you won't, Hermione, promise me you won't," Sarah begs.
"I promise," Hermione answers, her heart beating wildly, even though she's not sure what she's promising, exactly. She twists her wrist up so she can grab Sarah's hands, and holds them tightly. "I promise, okay?" She repeats softly.
"Okay," Sarah states, and the she deflates. She snatches her hands back, holding them against her chest before laying them on the table. They're trembling a little. "I'm sorry," she says, and Hermione doesn't think she has ever seen anyone have eyes so sad and yet so grateful at the same time.
"I'm sorry too," Hermione whispers back. "I shouldn't have pushed."
And just like that, the incident is brushed away. Brushed away, not forgotten.
For the next month, whenever Hermione sees her parents, she wants to tell them about Sarah's odd behavior. But every time she even thinks about it, Sarah's brown, sorrowful eyes flash back in her mind, and she stays quiet.
In a way, she's grateful for the Christmas' holidays. She gets two weeks with just her parents, away from school and all its drama, and they're leaving London to go see her grandmother.
She'll miss Sarah terribly, and of course she leaves her with a gift – a copy of The Hobbit, because Sarah loves fantasy but hasn't read Tolkien, and an assortment of sugar-free sweets, because Sarah is far too thin underneath her long-sleeved shirts, and loves sweet things even though she rarely eats any – but Hermione is also awfully, guiltily relieved to leave her behind for a few days. Or at least, to leave behind the terrible gnawing in her stomach that tells her that something is going to go wrong, and the promise tearing at her chest.
When they come back, the police cordoned off the street a block and a half away from Hermione's place.
She knows something went wrong the moment she sees the flashing red and blue lights, and she slips out of the car when her father stops. She hears swearing behind her, and doors slamming as her parents take after her, but she ignores them.
"That's Sarah's place," she explains when they reach the yellow tape, and her mother makes an odd kind of strangled sound, tugging Hermione along until Hermione is tucked in her side.
She sees the police carry something out of the house on a stretcher, a white sheet spread over it, and it doesn't take a genius to guess at the only thing the small form she can guess at beneath it can be.
She clutches at her mother's clothes hard enough to leave tears, a high pitched keening sound leaving her mouth. Something salty wets her lips, and Hermione realizes she's crying.
It's like somebody opened up the floods – once she knows, there's no stopping it, and she heaves, great, big sobs racking through her body as she struggles to regain control of her breathing.
"It's not fair," she repeats on and on, the words muffled in her mother's shirt, and she tries to feel better as her mother attempts to comfort her.
It doesn't work, and somewhere down the street a lightbulb explodes in a shower of sparks.
"I know, sweetheart, I know," her mother whispers back, rubbing circles on her back, sounding almost as sad as Hermione feels.
From what sounds like much further than it actually is, she hears her father talk with a policeman who identifies himself as Officer Daniel Jones.
"I'm sorry to bother you, officer, but is there any way you could tell us what happened there?"
"We don't discuss open cases, sir," the man answers, sounding apologetic.
"I know, but… My daughter's best friend lives in this house and we were just passing by… Is there any way that the girl is…"
The man's silence is all the answer that is needed, but Hermione's father keeps pushing, his voice harsher now.
"Do you know who did this?"
Officer Jones sighs, but he replies, his tone bitter. "Yeah. Don't worry though, he's in custody already."
"It was her father, wasn't it?"
Hermione doesn't realize that she spoke until all eyes turn to her, but then she repeats herself, louder this time, drawing away a little from her mother, though she keeps a tight hold on her hand.
Officer Jones sighs again, but his eyes tell them all they need to know.
Hermione blanches and drops her mother's hand, wrapping her arms around herself as she shivers. She feels sick.
"What makes you say that?" Her father frowns.
Hermione flinches. "I don't-"know, she means to say, but her voice sticks in her throat like tar. Truth is, she does. "She was scared of him," she finally says.
"Hermione! Why didn't you say anything?" Her father sounds dismayed – distraught even.
"She made me promise," Hermione confesses in a soft voice, blinking back tears. The words taste rotten in her mouth. "She made me promise I wouldn't tell," she repeats, and then she breaks down again. "It's all my fault – I should have told anyway, I should have, I should have…"
Her next words are muffled against her mother's chest again, as she's dragged into another tight hug.
"Hush, of course it's not your fault," her mother says.
"Your mother's right, kid," comes Officer Jones' deep voice. "There's nothing you could have done."
Hermione lets herself nod, but she knows they're wrong.
She could have helped, if she hadn't been so much of a coward. She could have saved her friend, if she had been brave.
.x.
'I want to be brave,' she thinks once again to the Hat, trying to throw at him all of her determination, all of her resolve, and it must work because she can feel the Hat moves on her head, feel the way his voice echoes not only inside her mind now.
'In that case, better be…. Gryffindor!'