November 1, 1985,

A bushy-haired girl of 6 sat sullenly in the back seat of her parent's car. Her yellow backpack tossed on the seat beside her looked far too cheerful for the mood she was in. She tried to push it to the floor of the car, but her chubby arms couldn't reach past the side of her car seat and she screamed her frustration. The girl's mother looked concerned. It was rare for her daughter to act out like this. Stopped at a light, she reached behind her and carefully brushed away some of the wayward hair that was covering her daughter's face.

"Hermione, why don't you try to tell me what happened?"

Hermione sniffed and wiped furiously at her leaking eyes.

"Mum, I didn't do anything wrong. I was just reading ahead a bit. Ernie Steadson leant me his book, and he is in year three. Lisa tattleded on me." For once the girl did not have perfect grammar, Hermione was so upset that she sounded like the child she was.

"Dear, you need to tell me the whole story. I talked to Mrs. Wigglestone on the phone for over an hour, and she definitely wasn't so hysterical about my six-year-old daughter doing some extra work in school. I need you to explain very clearly why she claimed that you lit your desk on fire" Mrs. Granger was having a hard time understanding the day's events, but she did understand that her daughter was once again at the center of a very unusual incident.

"What is hysterical?" Hermione asked, ignoring the fire that flashed with danger in her mother's eyes.

"I'll explain another time. Right now, you need to do some explaining yourself." Hermione's mother was usually delighted by her daughter's boundless curiosity, but right now she was seriously losing her patience.

"Mrs. Wigglestone was upset that I was working so far ahead. She told me that I needed to wait for the rest of the class. I showed her that I had already finished my class workbook for the whole year, and she put a new one on my desk and said that I could start over. It really wasn't fair Mum. I was just trying to learn new things. But the new workbook sorta.. burst into blue flames? Mrs. Wigglestone yelled at me about playing with fire.. And I might have yelled back a bit because I DIDN'T play with fire. I'm not stupid." Hermione finished crossing her chubby arms indignantly over her chest with a small pout.

Mrs. Granger sighed. She wanted to believe her daughter. Hermione rarely lied, and she could clearly see from the young girl's face that she believed she hadn't done anything wrong. Mrs. Wigglestone didn't know what to do with her precocious six year old. The teacher had been overwhelmed from the day her daughter marched into that school and corrected Mrs. Wigglestone's use of the word amphibian declaring that she had read about them the day before. Unfortunately the tension between the two of them had only grown as the year went by. Mrs. Granger was looking forward to Hermione being in Year Two next year and out of Mrs. Wigglestone's class. She was pretty certain that Mrs. Wigglestone was looking forward to it too.

However, playing with fire was a serious offense, and this was not the first time that Hermione had been sent home with angry notes or phone calls from her teachers. The trouble was that strange things often happened around her daughter, and it was hard to say for certain who was at fault. Mrs. Granger realized what she needed to do. She had to impress upon Hermione how serious the accusations were. There had been so many times that she and her husband had let the weird incidents that surrounded their daughter pass with a shrug, but now she had to put her foot down. Mrs. Granger steeled herself for what she was going to say next. She wished that her husband was here with her to help soothe the coming tantrum, but he had stayed late at their shared dental practice with a patient.

"Hermione, I'm going to have to ground you. These are very serious accusations from your teacher, and I need to know that you understand how dangerous it is to play with fire. Someone could have been seriously hurt, you could have been hurt. I'm taking away Matilda for one week." Mrs. Granger hated to punish her daughter by taking away books, but she had learned long ago that it was the only punishment that had an effect on the girl. Her daughter rarely left her room and didn't mind being sent to it, but she could not stand to be kept away from her books.

By the time Mrs. Granger pulled up on their red rock driveway, Hermione was staring resolutely out the window and refusing to talk to her mother. Tears of fury streamed down the girl's face as her mother unbuckled her from the car seat. Mr. Granger, who had barely beaten them home, grinned as tiny feet flew past him and slammed the upstairs door.

"Long day dear?" He asked, pulling the sleeve of his wife's sweater to get her to turn around and kiss him.

"Her teacher believes that she set her workbook on fire. Hermione, of course, swears that she didn't do it, and I want to believe her… but I just can't take that chance anymore. I took away Matilda for the rest of the week." Mrs. Granger finished, looking thoroughly miserable.

Mr. Granger let out a low whistle at the punishment. A week without her favorite book was akin to treason in his young daughter's eyes.

"That will be fun. Did you have to take it away for the entire week?" Mr. Granger whined.

"You and I both know that her room is full of books. I'm sure she is up there reading something else right now. We can't keep letting this go. This is the third unexplained fire this year, and Mrs. Wigglestone strongly hinted that expulsion would be in Hermione's future if they could prove that she had anything to do with it." Mrs. Granger looked worried.

Mr. Granger put his large, dark hands on his wife's shoulders. His eyes flashed up to the hastily slammed door that was still shut upstairs. He loved his daughter endlessly, but he did not understand her. Mr. Granger knew how smart she was, but she was also willful and stubborn. Hermione did not like when things did not go her way, and there had been more than one fire or unexplainable consequence when his daughter was scared or displeased. The Grangers tried once again to put it out of their minds. They stood together in the living room with their arms wrapped around each other and tried to ignore the question that was heavily punctuating the room, what exactly had happened today, and why was it always their daughter? Mr. Granger finally broke away and unzipped the purple backpack grabbing the worn copy of Matilda and placing it high on the mantle.

"I doubt we will ever know." He murmured gently to his wife, and he was right for many years. They wouldn't get any answers about the strange events that swarmed their daughter until the year she turned 11.