Another Guest: Yes, Nature vs Nurture will be a theme here. Hermione in canon was raised to believe that the system basically works, and that by obeying authority and working hard you succeed. My Hermione was raised with... different lessons about the system.
BOOK 1: HERMIONE GRANGER AND THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE
Chapter 5: Classes
Hermione woke up dreading her first day of school.
After a troubled night, she had woken up late, and still felt tired. From the light pouring in through cracks in the curtains it looked like the sun was well and truly up, and she could hear the rest of the girls in the room getting ready for the day.
"Um, Hermione?" a small voice asked at last from beside her bed. Hermione thought it belonged to Sue. Hermione muttered an acknowledgement. "The other girls said they're going down for breakfast. If you want to come."
Sue left as well, and by the time Hermione decided there was nothing left to be gained by staying in bed and pulled the curtains back, she was alone in the dorm. She trudged through her own toilet, not even caring that her hair had reverted to its natural state, a wild mess of tangles. She fished out one of her heavy-duty hair ties and managed to pull it back into a ponytail, though she was sure that from the back it looked like she was making out with a gorgon.
When she reached the common room, Hermione stopped and stared. She had assumed that they were high up, given how many stairs they had climbed last night, but exhausted and distracted with her own thoughts, she hadn't put too much thought into what the room would look like when the sun was up. But now she could appreciate the spectacular room for the first time. Ravenclaw tower stood even higher than she had anticipated; they were surely in the tallest tower in the castle. The graceful, arched windows that ringed the room rose from waist-height to well above the heads of even the oldest students, and invited the sun to fill the airy space. No other lights would be needed during the day. And the view! Hermione looked out to see Hogwarts castle laid out before her, looking like an enormous, detailed model from this height. Past the castle, a large loch stretched across the grounds, wrapped on one side by a forest that extended out of view to the east–that must be the Forest Izzy had talked about. To the west, past some open ground and what looked like some sort of sports field, mountains rose up in terraced layers, bright emerald slopes tiled against deeper green and russet patches, all shot through with patches of heather that still bloomed purple.
Hermione sighed. It was hard to hate this place when it looked like that.
She looked around the common room and realized there was only one other person there: Draco Malfoy, who was sitting in one of the armchairs as if he had been there all night. From the looks of his clothes and hair, he might have been.
"You coming to breakfast?" Hermione asked tersely.
Draco gave her a sneer, though in rather an automatic way, as if the expression came to his face without really thinking about it. Then, he muttered, "Sure."
They arrived at breakfast to find tables full of bacon, kippers, scrambled eggs, orange slices, melon balls, some other fruit that Hermione didn't recognize, muffins, toast, and small plates with sticks of soft, golden butter.
"No corn flakes?" said Hermione. Draco merely glared at her.
As she ate, Hermione looked around the Great Hall. The ceiling was now a clear blue, dotted with the occasional cloud. It was a nice effect, giving the feeling of eating outside on a lovely fall day without any of the downsides like wind and insects. What sort of enchantments, Hermione wondered again, had those ancient wizards put into the beams and tiles, and how had they survived all these centuries as the castle grew and expanded? Surely wooden beams didn't last that long–they must have been replaced at some point. Yet the enchantment was still there.
Hermione had barely sat down when Professor Flitwick came by, handing out pieces of parchment that contained timetables for each student.
"Ohh, Looks like Herbology this morning—with the Gryffindors," Mandy said with a shrug, as if to say that some difficulties simply cannot be avoided, "and then Potions this afternoon with Hufflepuff. And then," Mandy frowned at the slip of parchment with their classes listed, "History of Magic and Defense Against the Dark Arts tomorrow, and Enchanting after that? We'll barely be using our wands until Friday!"
Hermione frowned. "That's not so bad. At least we'll have time to ease into things." The truth was that Hermione still wasn't confident in how her wand would perform, and was in no rush to try it out in front of her classmates.
"Not so bad?" asked Mandy, and the other Ravenclaws were, once again, looking at Hermione incredulously. She wondered if it were possible for her to say something, anything that wouldn't make her classmates look at her as if she were some strange animal that occasionally mimicked human speech. Hermione heard a low whisper from down the table that sounded a lot like "creepy demon girl."
"Muggleborns," Malfoy sniffed from beside her. It seemed at least that looking down on Hermione was one thing that could bring the boy out of his stupor.
Before Hermione could make any retort, however, Malfoy's face went blank, as he spotted something above them.
Hermione looked up and saw a hundred owls streaming into the Great Hall. She realized this must be the post when the owls started circling the tables, tracking down their owners and dropping letters and packages onto their laps.
Draco seemed frozen, until the last of the owls entered the hall. They were flying around the hall in a great circle, individual owls peeling off as they spotted the recipients of their messages.
Draco, though, had apparently seen enough. "Well," he said, standing up, "if we're done being amused by the bawgwaed," ("Draco," hissed a shocked Mandy) "I have to get ready for classes." He tried to put on his usual haughty sneer, but it was clear that he was about thirty seconds from tears again as he stomped out of the Great Hall, breakfast uneaten.
Hermione glanced at Izzy, who looked troubled but said nothing.
A large Northern Hawk Owl landed in front of Mandy, and she squealed at the evidently unexpected package her parents had arranged for her first day.
Hermione got up. She didn't need to stick around to know that no owls would be landing in front of her.
In the end, Hermione was glad she left the breakfast table early. Unfamiliar with the grounds, she went the wrong way once outside and ended up walking almost the entire way around the castle, at one point climbing a low stone wall, to get back to the greenhouses where Herbology classes were taught. She barely made it before the Professor was opening the door to let them in.
Herbology was taught by Professor Sprout, a witch with gray, flyaway hair, rough hands stained with dirt, and a kind face. She introduced the class, gave them a short summary of what they would be doing for the next month or so, and then explained the day's task, which was to make notes on a selection of red-bellied ferns, and decide if each needed water, fertilizer, or both. She was, Hermione decided, a competent teacher.
The problem came when the class was asked to pair up. Hermione was not going to approach anyone, and the feeling seemed to be mutual. This meant that, for the moment, she was stuck with the only other person who made no effort to find a partner: Draco Malfoy.
As it turned out, the arrangement wasn't too bad. Hermione quickly gathered up what the plants needed. Draco started off ripping one of the ferns out so angrily that Professor Sprout doubted it would survive. But then they switched tasks so that Draco was dealing with the fertilizer, which, being not alive and having already passed through a large ruminent's intestines, was somewhat less sensitive to the boy's rough handling. Hermione and Draco settled into a workable, if silent, routine. By the time they were done, Hermione realized with a jolt that they were the second pair to finish the day's task, after Neville Longbottom and Michael Corner, which earned them four points for Ravenclaw.
"So," said Hermione, mostly to fill the silence as they sat and watched their classmates work, "you don't like it in Ravenclaw?"
Draco glared at her. "I wouldn't expect someone like you to understand," he sniffed.
"Someone like a muggleborn, or someone like a creepy demon girl?" Hermione asked. Draco stomped off rather than answer.
After Herbology, they went back to the dorm to change out of their now dirty clothes for lunch. ("What is the most common reason engorgement charms fail?" asked the door.) Hermione was starting to feel like she would spend more time at Hogwarts climbing stairs than actually attending classes, but she supposed that was simply one more price of attending school in an enchanted castle.
Lunch was a spread of cold meats, fresh bread, several different salads, gazpacho, and macerated berries. Hermione ate quietly, listening to Anthony Goldstein and Terry Boot explain a sport called "Quidditch" to Michael Corner.
After lunch it was time for potions.
Potions lessons took place down in one of the dungeons. It was colder here than up in the main castle, but Hermione rather liked the room: rather than try to be something it wasn't, it embraced the dungeon aesthetic, and the various colored mixtures, ingredients, and pickled animal parts all hinted at endless possibilities.
Professor Snape, the Potions Master, was waiting for them. He had sallow skin and a hooked nose, and greasy black hair that fell to his shoulders. He looked faintly bored, and surveyed the class as it entered with a raised eyebrow but no comment.
Once they were seated, Professor Snape began with a roll call, then filed away the parchment and looked directly at the class.
"You are here to learn the subtle science and exact art of potion-making," he began. He spoke in barely more than a whisper, but they caught every word – Professor Snape had the gift of keeping a class silent without effort. "As there is little foolish wand-waving here, many of you will hardly believe this is magic. I don't expect you will really understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses… I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death - if you aren't as big a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach."
More silence followed this little speech. Many in the class looked rather alarmed. Hermione suspected that stoppering death was more of an aspirational goal than something they'd be set to do this term.
"What," said Professor Snape suddenly, "would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?"
As the silence stretched on, and nobody else in the class volunteered an answer, Hermione's instincts warred within her. On the one hand, her teacher had asked a question and she knew the answer. On the other hand, she didn't care. She didn't!
Professor Snape showed no sign of ending the awkwardness, however, so as it became physically painful for Hermione to keep her hand down, she slowly raised it.
"Yes, Miss… Granger?" said Professor Snape, glancing at the class list.
"Asphodel and wormwood make the Draught of Living Death, sir. It's a powerful sleeping potion."
"An understatement, Miss Granger, but correct in the essentials."
Professor Snape turned back to the class. "Where would you look if I told you to find me a bezoar? Somebody other than Miss Granger, please." Hermione had already started to raise her hand again by force of habit.
Finally, finally, somebody else offered an answer.
"It's, uh, a stone from a goat's stomach," said Mandy
"I did not see a hand, Miss Brocklehurst," Professor Snape said silkily. Mandy blushed red, but Snape wasn't finished. "And what is it good for?"
"It will save you from poison?"
"Are you asking me, Miss Brocklehurst?"
"It will save you from most poisons. Sir."
Professor Snape breathed in deeply through his nose, surveying the class as if deciding whether he could stand to go through any more questions with them. Apparently deciding that he could not, he flicked his wand at the slate behind him, upon which a recipe appeared.
"Well," said Professor Snape, "Let us begin today's brewing. And…" he glanced a look at his class list again. "Two points to Ravenclaw."
Professor Snape put them all into pairs and set them to mixing up a simple potion to cure boils. Hermione again ended up with Draco Malfoy. She only hoped that she was not in for a repeat of Malfoy's angry work in Herbology—already she had the impression that Professor Snape would not be nearly as forgiving as Sprout had been.
As it turned out, though, once they started working Draco calmed down, and proved to be actually quite skilled. The two students quickly reached an unspoken agreement: Hermione would carefully read out the instructions and stir the cauldron while Draco, with sure hands that showed signs of long practice, sliced, skinned, and prepared the various ingredients. As in Herbology, the pair finished their work much more quickly than the rest of the class, and the potion they made matched the textbook's description so precisely that Professor Snape, who spent the period roundly excoriating the class's efforts, raised an eyebrow but said nothing. Once they were finished Draco simply sat at the table, staring ahead. He only showed interest when Professor Snape moved past them. He was clearly trying to catch the Professor for a talk of some sort, but Professor Snape seemed intent on ignoring him, and Draco, for whatever reason, was never willing to simply raise his hand or ask a question. It made for a rather awkward half hour.
After Hermione had eaten dinner (stewed lamb with a ridiculously heavy treacle tart for desserty), she and the other muggleborns went to their evening Cambrian lessons. Hogwarts taught lower level courses exclusively in English, but it was made clear to the muggleborns that for upper levels, and obviously for any sort of career afterwards, they would need to speak the language of wizarding Britain. Cambrian, as far as Hermione could tell, was related to, but not identical with, Welsh.
For that lesson there were no Professors, only older students who volunteered to tutor. And the tutors took an immersion approach. From the moment they entered the classroom, all conversation and instruction was only in Cambrian.
It was immensely frustrating to Hermione. She couldn't follow instructions she couldn't understand. Even trying to write down and look up what the tutor was saying–the few times the tutor slowed down enough for her to write anything at all with the still unfamiliar quill pen–was useless. Cambrian spelling didn't work like English spelling, so matching up what someone was saying with the words in the dictionary in front of her was as much guesswork as anything.
By the time Hermione climbed the stairs back to the dorms ("What is the final destination of the wind?") she was exhausted and nursing a headache from straining to make out unfamiliar words. The other Ravenclaw first years had started on their Potions essay right after dinner, and by this point were mostly done.
Hermione turned to Sue and Michael, the other muggleborns among the first year Ravenclaws. "Do you want to start working on Potions? It looks like they're already well into it."
"Oh," said Michael awkwardly. He was very carefully looking at his shoes. "I think… I think I'll just join them and catch up. Tony and Terry said it wouldn't be a big deal."
With that, he shuffled over to the larger group, who indeed seemed to welcome him in without any rancor over the fact that he'd now be benefiting from their earlier work.
Hermione couldn't bring herself to do it. She hated writing information she didn't know, through her own study. And in any case, the anxious looks the first year girls were giving her led her to believe she wouldn't receive nearly as warm a welcome as Michael.
"Well then, I'll just go work on Potions on my own then," Hermione said, to nobody in particular.
"Oh. Okay," said Sue in a quiet voice, as Hermione walked away.
The second day at Hogwarts went much like the first.
The morning was filled with History of Magic. The class was the only one taught by a ghost. Professor Binns had been very old indeed when he had fallen asleep in front of the staffroom fire and got up next morning to teach, leaving his body behind him. The class was certainly boring, but this at least was a problem that Hermione felt she had tools to solve. Hermione could take notes as well as anyone, though she was still adjusting to the quill pen and her writing hadn't looked this messy since Reception. When she felt her attention start to drift, she moved to one of the strategies she had learned at Oakbank, and started sketching the scene Professor Binns was describing. It was a way of keeping her hands busy and her mind engaged, while still listening to what the droning voice of the ghost in front of her was saying.
She was pleased to find that the quill pen was actually well-suited to sketching. The quick strokes she could use to create graduated cross-hatching gave her a satisfying feeling, and soon she had filled a row of her parchment with tiny goblin warriors in black ink.
Then one of the Slytherin students, who Hermione thought was named Zabini, muttered a charm that brought the image to life on her page, much like the portraits around the castle. The goblin warriors proceeded to band together to attack the notes Hermione had actually managed to write down as the amused Slytherins sitting behind him looked on. Hermione had no idea what the counter-charm might be, so she made the best of the situation by quickly sketching a group of wizards to defend her notes. Soon a pitched battle commenced on the page, which unfortunately involved the cartoon wizards grabbing letters from above them to repurpose into fortifications. Professor Binns was so unaware of what was going on in his class that he seemed not to notice that by the end of the hour half of his students were arranged behind Hermione's desk to watch the cartoon contest, and probably-Zabini had actually begun taking bets. Hermione was annoyed she hadn't thought of that first.
The move seemed to earn her a certain measure of respect from at least some of the Slytherins. But, Hermione couldn't help but reflect after class, it wouldn't help her pass the exam later in the year.
And it seemed to somehow offend Draco. At the start of class, when the students had been chatting before the lecture started up, Hermione had noticed that the Slytherin students were offering Draco polite greetings, like they would any stranger.
"S'mae, Malfoy," one of them said quietly. Draco said nothing and simply gripped his chair tighter.
Hermione was confused. She had assumed that Draco had wanted to be in Slytherin to be with his friends. But the Slytherins acted like they didn't know him at all, and he returned the sentiment. Then at the end of class, as Zabini and the others congratulated Hermione on an entertaining bird battle, Draco looked—angry, somehow, like Hermione had insulted him and should have known better. Hermione, having first met all these people two days ago, hadn't the slightest clue what was going on.
Hermione had hoped that Defense Against the Dark Arts would at least be interesting, even if it would require her to use her wand. But both her hope and her fear proved unfounded. Professor Quirrell had just started at Hogwarts, and apparently this was his first teaching job. Hermione believed it; the Professor looked barely old enough to be out of school himself. With trembling hands and a constant twitch in one eye, the Professor seemed very unsure of what he was supposed to be doing. There was no wand work at all, but neither did they learn any magical theory. Rather than any coherent lecture, Quirrell stammered his way through disconnected stories about vampires he had encountered, and a hag, and… Hermione wasn't really sure. Quirrell wore a large, purple turban that he said was a gift from an African prince as a thank-you for getting rid of a troublesome zombie, but when one of the Gryffindor students, who they shared the class with, asked eagerly to hear how Quirrell had fought off the zombie, Quirrell went pink and started talking about the weather. At the end of the period Hermione reviewed notes, and the only clear thing she had gotten out of the lesson was that vampires don't like garlic-the scent of it was so strong in the classroom that Hermione felt like she could smell it the rest of the day.
Then it was another evening of Cambrian immersion and cramming in homework while listening to the other first years, work finished, chat and laugh about events and people Hermione had never heard of.
Wednesday brought Enchanting. Hermione went in with very little idea of what to expect. Of all her classes, this was the one that had not had any textbook assigned. Like Potions, Enchanting took place in the dungeons, though in a very different part. Hermione had overheard some of the Slytherins complaining that you couldn't get from their common room to the Enchanting class without first climbing to the main levels and then descending again in a different part of the castle.
The Enchanting classroom brought Hermione a wave of nostalgia. Most of the other classrooms she'd seen so far had been the same: dusty rooms with tall windows and tables laid out in a grid, paneled walls with oil paintings hanging on them. But this room–this room was a workshop. The floors were polished stone, with a layer of sawdust in parts. The walls rose in plain brick, and there was not a painting in sight. And best of all–
"I was not expecting the classroom to be a junkyard!" This comment came from one of the Gryffindors, who Hermione realized with a start must be Padma Patil's twin. She didn't have a problem speaking English, Hermione noted, though thinking back the only times Hermione heard her say anything at all was to complain about some aspect of Hogwarts's substandard materials.
"It's not," said Hermione, and as soon as she said it she realized how much the stone floors and walls made her voice carry. The entirety of the Ravenclaw and Gryffindor first years turned to look at her.
The other Patil looked disdainfully
"That's for glassblowing," Hermione said, pointing at one corner of the cavernous space. "Woodworking is over there, that corner is ceramics and stone, and the cabinets along the wall are for jewelry. It's all very well organized."
"O'i gymharu â'i gwallt, mae'n drefnus iawn!" Patil said to the girls next to her. Padma snorted at her sister's joke, and there was tittering from wizard-raised kids in the class.
"You dislike it here?" said a soft voice that seemed to come from everywhere at once. A woman stepped out of the shadows in the far corner of the room, making some of the students jump. Hermione rubbed her eyes; the shadows hadn't been that dark, not enough to hide a person. Patil practically jumped backwards, which made Hermione smirk, even though, truth be told, she had been close to jumping back herself.
The woman who now stood in front of them had a preternatural beauty. Her skin was a rich brown, smooth and flawless and symmetrical. She was completely bald, but did not look any less feminine for that, with large eyes and full lips a red so deep it bordered on black. For all that, there was something unsettling about her–a sharpness that had nothing to do with her looks but which Hermione could feel all the same.
"Miss Granger," the woman said, "how did you determine the purpose of each workspace?"
Hermione gulped, but did not even consider refusing this woman an answer.
"That," she said, pointing to the glassblowing corner, "is a kiln, and those are blowpipes. Those tools on the shelf are paddles, reamers, and picks for lampworking." There were also a set of strange devices next to the tools, which Hermione didn't comment on but guessed were the magical equivalent of torches.
"Over there," Hermione gestured to another corner of the huge space (and truly, it was impossibly huge - a far longer room than should have been possible given the spacing of the doors in the corridor) "next to all the wood, are the rasps, planes, chisels, and knives. Though I don't know who dumped all those loose branches and driftwood."
"That," said Hermione, pointing to a third section, "is a pottery wheel, and those tiles look like stone and ceramic. The chisels are stone chisels as well.
"And finally," said Hermione, who was starting to feel a little self-conscious about how long she'd been talking in front of the class (but the teacher did ask), "the wire, snips, torches, and such all used in metalworking and jewelry, and I would guess the locked compartment is where more valuable gems are kept."
"Well reasoned, Miss Granger," said the woman. Her voice was as otherworldly as her face. It was deeper than Hermione would have expected, but musical, with a smooth, pure tone like a large bell. "This is my classroom, and not," here she paused and gave the Gryffindor Patil a cold look, "a junkyard." Patil looked rather sick.
"Enchanting," the tall woman continued, "is the art of imbuing objects with magical properties. Of course in that goal we overlap with several of your other classes. You will learn charms that mimic many of the effects you see in my class, and transfiguration allows a great deal of control over an object's properties. So what, you may ask, is different about what we do here, hmm?"
"Because, um, true enchantments don't fade away?" Terry Boot offered.
"Precisely! A charm may mimic an enchantment, but an enchantment is a part of the object, just as its weight or color is.
"This room, for example. Some of you may have noticed that it is larger than it should be?" A few heads around the room nodded. "That is a space expansion enchantment. The same effect can be achieved with a charm, but should the charm wear off when you are inside, well." The woman gave the class a predatory smile, and Hermione thought her teeth looked a little too sharp to be natural.
"But this room was enchanted as it was built, by the people who built it. And that will never 'wear off', any more than the strength of the wood and the stone can wear off. It will last as long as the room does."
The woman was walking among the students as she gave this lecture. Walking, but apart from her voice, not making any sound.
"In this class you will learn enchanting through creation in a number of different media. You will therefore also be learning the crafts associated with each creation."
"We have to build the things we're going to enchant?" asked one of the Gryffindor girls who had laughed earlier at Patil's Cambrian insult. She was clearly not impressed.
"Yes, Miss Brown, you do. Can anyone tell me why that is?"
For the first time since classes started, Izzy offered an answer in her soft voice. "Because, Doamna, enchantments resonate much more strongly with the hands of the one who made it."
"Exactly," said their teacher. "To enchant an object with any sort of power, you must truly know both the object and the enchantment. You must know it in a deep way, beyond simply a description or even study. You must know it as the craftsman knows the work of his hands. So you will build with your own hands, and know. Five points for Ravenclaw. Oh, and you do not need to refer to me as Doamna here," she added at the end, "Professor Trocar will do."
Professor Trocar then put them in groups for an introductory task. They were to make a simple bracelet out of metal links, carve a series of symbols into them that the Professor provided, which were a little like runes but simpler, and then chant a repeated line while holding it. If they did everything right, the bracelet should resize itself to the first person to put it on.
"Can anyone explain why a self-sizing bracelet is an easy first task?" asked Professor Trocar.
Hermione thought for a moment, then raised her hand. "Being the right size is closely tied to the bracelet's function."
"That is one part of the answer, yes. And the rest?"
"The bracelet only has one function, to fit around your wrist," added Izzy.
"Yes! Enchanting requires a focus of intent. A single purpose helps with that. So, for instance, if we were creating a helmet, a sizing enchantment would be more difficult, because the helmet is meant to fit well and provide protection."
This made Hermione wonder, though. "Professor Trocar?" she asked, "but couldn't you view fitting well as part of protecting, since a helmet that doesn't fit well won't protect well?"
The tall woman gave a delighted peal of laughter. "I hoped somebody would spot that! Five more points for Ravenclaw. What you have just touched on is something called subsumption. If different purposes can be conceptually linked, the enchantments around them can be made that much stronger.
"Please make note of what you do here, and how effective it is. For the first term, we will be creating a large number of small enchantments, to get you used to the ideas and principles involved. After winter break, however, you will each pick a larger project for the remainder of the year. Examples of older students' projects are scattered around the room if you want ideas. Your term project will go much more smoothly if you pay attention now to what types of enchantments resonate with you most strongly."
With that Professor Trocar set them to work. For this class they were put in groups of threes. More unusually, before Hermione had a chance to simply fall in with whoever couldn't find a third member, Ron Weasley actually approached her to ask her if they could form a group.
"Sure, why not," was her response, so Hermione, Ron, and one of the Ravenclaw boys, Anthony Goldstein set to making a bracelet.
The construction wasn't difficult, simply making loops of wire and linking them together. The pattern wasn't the absolute simplest of chain links but it was close.
As they worked, Anthony and Ron talked about Quidditch, which Hermione was quickly realizing seemed to be just about the only thing the wizard-raised boys in her year talked about.
"So the parchments are enchanted so you can record each play with a symbol," Anthony was saying.
"That link goes on the outside of the other one" Hermione corrected sharply.
"Right. Anyway, and then you can feed them all into this machine - it's a bit like an orrery, you know? - and you can predict–"
"Not that one!" said Hermione just before Ron cut the wrong section of wire.
"I guess that's cool," said Ron, "but I don't want to take notes during a Quidditch game. That sounds like too much school to me."
"Gryffindor," said Anthony, but both boys laughed as he said it. "Okay so Michael - did you know he's a complete math whiz? - he had this idea, and we think we'll be able to–"
"That one goes inside, then outside–oh, just give it to me," said Hermione in exasperation. She quickly finished the chain pattern and connected the last links together. Since the point was to make the bracelet resize itself, there was no clasp. Hermione thought she rather liked the clean look.
For some reason Ron was grinning stupidly at Hermione when she finished.
Then the symbols—Anthony ("it's Tony, really") turned out to be a daub hand at detail work, and best of all, in Hermione's opinion, it took too much focus for him to keep talking about Quidditch.
Ron spoke the incantation, which seemed like by far the easiest part.
The group nominated Ron for their test subject, so they called Professor Trocar over and slid the bracelet over Ron's wrist. As soon as it was on, the bracelet shrunk down to be snug but not tight. Strangely, it didn't shrink in all dimensions; the chain was as thick as it had ever been. This earned them additional points from the Professor, who told them it was a sign of a well focused enchantment.
As Hermione looked around the room, she realized that once again she was finished before much of the class. Most other groups were still struggling with uniformly curling the wire, leaving bracelets that looked lumpy and misshapen.
"Knew we'd make a great team!" exclaimed Ron, on realizing how far ahead they were. "Dad always says muggles are geniuses at working with their hands."
"Well they have to be, don't they? With no magic? They have to do everything by hand," added Tony.
Hermione felt a prickling, cold sensation seep through her stomach.
"Muggles?" she asked Ron, narrowing her eyes.
"Yeah, because they build so much stuff! Not that you're a muggle, obviously, but you were raised with them, right?" Hermione took a step towards him. "Hey, it's a compliment, right? You're really good at making stuff with your hands!"
The bracelet Ron was still wearing started shrinking again. It didn't take long for Ron to notice, and it was quickly uncomfortably tight. Soon the links started unraveling, opening to sharp wire ends pricking into the skin of Ron's wrist.
"Professor! Professor!" Ron called in a panicked voice. Professor Trocar was there in an instant, and with a quick motion of her hand the bracelet broke apart and fell to the ground. Another wave and the scratched skin on Ron's wrist was healed.
"Be careful," she said to the group. "When you make something together, some part of the enchantment is bound in the unity of purpose of those who made it. If that unity turns to discord, the enchanted object can become… savage. A lesson you'd do well to remember." She said this directly to Ron, which made Hermione think that Professor Trocar had heard more of their discussion from across the room than she let on.
"I think I'll just look around for a bit on my own," said Hermione, doing her best to keep a level tone. "For ideas for a term project."
"It's never too early to start," said the Professor.
The old class projects scattered around the workshop, each with a small card describing the enchantment, were truly fascinating, and an excellent distraction for Hermione to get over her anger with Ron.
One particular object caught Hermione's eye: a small wooden sculpture, about the size of a baseball. It had been carved into a vine that looped and knotted around itself, and was covered in the proto-runes Professor Trocar had shown them earlier. The card simply read, "In a pair, to sense that which is far away."
Thursday brought flying lessons. This was something that had almost every one of the first years excited, particularly the muggle-borns. Mixing potions and taking notes on magical history was all well and good, but flying was the first big, yes-you're-really-a-witch-you-have-a-flying-broomstick moment for many of them.
Hermione didn't share their excitement. She hadn't mentioned this to anyone, but she had always had a rather extreme fear of falling. Heights themselves weren't too bad - she could appreciate the view from Ravenclaw tower, for instance - but she hated elevators and would climb quite a few sets of stairs to avoid one. Even driving over a hill crest too fast in a car created a terrified panic in her chest.
After lunch, Hermione walked down the front steps onto the grounds for her first flying lesson. It was a clear, breezy day, and the grass rippled under their feet as the first years marched down the sloping lawns toward a smooth, flat lawn on the opposite side of the grounds to the forbidden forest, whose trees were swaying darkly in the distance.
There were no texts assigned for flying class. Hermione had wondered if there might be something useful in the library, but between all her classes, the homework each Professor had assigned, and the evening Cambrian lessons, she had had very little time to look for anything.
They met the Hufflepuffs, who they were sharing the lessons with, in the middle of the lawn, where about twenty broomsticks were lying in neat lines on the ground. Their teacher, Madam Hooch, arrived. She had short, gray hair, and yellow eyes like a hawk.
"Well, what are you all waiting for?" she barked. "Everyone stand by a broomstick. Come on, hurry up."
Draco had been complaining to her on the walk over about the school broomsticks. There were different models of broom, some better and some worse, and apparently the ones the school kept for lessons were definitely worse. Hermione, lost in her own fears, had only vaguely registered that this was the first time that Draco had initiated a conversation that wasn't an insult or strictly required for class work. Reaching the broomsticks, Hermione looked down at the broom next to her and realized that the blond boy may actually have had a point. The broom was clearly quite old, and some of the twigs stuck out at odd angles.
"Stick your right hand over your broom," called Madam Hooch at the front, "and say 'Up!'"
"UP!" everyone shouted.
A couple of the brooms jumped up to meet the hands of the students standing over them, but most simply twitched or rolled over. Hermione was pleased that hers had stayed put on the ground. "Well, I guess that's that, then, I'd better-" but as she started to turn back towards the castle, Madam Hooch interrupted them.
"That was a quick check - you can practice summoning your broom later, for now, if the broom didn't rise to your hand you can simply pick it up and place it at the correct height."
Madam Hooch then showed them how to mount their brooms without sliding off the end, and walked up and down the rows correcting their grips. Hermione winced when the teacher told Draco he'd been doing it wrong for years. She had gathered that flying was a point of pride for him.
"Now, when I blow my whistle, you kick off from the ground, hard," said Madam Hooch. "Keep your brooms steady, rise a few feet, and then come straight back down by leaning forward slightly. On my whistle, - three - two - one -" and she gave a sharp blast on the whistle.
Hermione quickly realized that all of her fears about brooms were… completely justified. Hers was jerky and unstable under her grip. The broom felt unnatural, and the motions Madam Hooch ran them through - the basics of moving forward, turning, climbing a few feet then coming back down again - all seemed to require movements that were the exact opposite of the intuitive motions she'd have expected. As they all tramped back up to the castle, Hermione wholeheartedly agreed with Izzy that she hoped they never had to fly on one of those devices again. Of course, she also didn't want to ever ride one of the great flying horses that Izzy evidently preferred, but she kept that opinion to herself.
At least she made it down without injury. The period immediately after their lesson was the Gryffindors' turn to try the broomsticks out. Neville had apparently lost control of his completely, fallen from twenty feet up, and broken his wrist. Hermione heard about this at dinner, and she realized with a glance at the Gryffindor table that Neville's housemates had left him alone in the hospital wing. This meant both that he might be grateful for some company, and that this might be her one chance to talk to him without a gaggle of Gryffindors looking in to see what creepy thing she'd do next.
"Hey," said Hermione as she peeked through the curtain around Neville's bed. Neville grimaced at seeing her. Hermione thought that was probably fair.
"So… Hermione began, "I just wanted to say I'm sorry. I'm really sorry, Neville, I should never have tried that ritual out on your road. And I should have said this at the time on the train but…" Hermione swallowed, reminding herself that she wasn't here to provide a justification. "I'm just sorry."
"It's…" Neville began, "you were just trying to help. It's okay."
"I'm still sorry," said Hermione again.
"You know… I don't really like toads," said Neville after a moment. "My Gran thought it would be the easiest pet to keep track of though." They both smiled at the irony.
"So how do you like Hogwarts so far?" asked Neville.
Hermione just shrugged. "It's apparently been decided that I'm officially 'creepy demon girl', so there's that."
Neville just shrugged. "There's one in every Ravenclaw class."
"What do you mean?"
"It's just a thing, you know? Every class of Ravenclaws has one person. Sometimes they're a seer, or fae-touched, sometimes they can speak to the dead, that sort of thing."
Hermione simply stared. "You wizards are so weird, you know that right?"
"Says the creepy demon girl." But Neville laughed as he said it, and Hermione smiled.
"But classes are okay so far. Except, you know, brooms."
"Brooms," Neville moaned, "are the absolute worst."
"I would rather," said Hermione, "travel by riding a porcupine than by broom."
"I would rather," added Neville, "be dragged behind the Hogwarts Express by my ankles."
"I would rather," continued Hermione, "have a herd of cats grab my hair and pull me by it than travel by broom!"
"I would rather be swallowed by a dragon and then spit out at the end."
"Are there really dragons still?" asked Hermione.
"Sure," replied Neville.
At this point Madam Pomfrey came over to shush them, and the two children collapsed into a fit of giggles over their shared broom hatred.
"Hey," said Hermione after they regained their breath, "what's the deal with Harry Potter?"
"What do you mean?" asked Neville.
"Well, it's just–the way my dorm mates talk about him, it's like he's a rockstar. I actually heard that Brown girl say she thinks he's holding back because he hasn't been doing advanced magic in the corridors. But we've met him, he's really just this normal kid, right?"
"I think he is. It's just…" Neville seemed to struggle with what to say. "I don't remember this, obviously, but my Gran says that you-know-who had all but won. Back when we were babies. The Ministry had basically collapsed, most of the aurors were dead, you-know-who was just plain murdering anyone who opposed him, and a bunch of the guilds had abandoned the Wizengamot to make their own terms with him. Everyone said it was only a matter of time before anyone—anyone on the wrong side was rounded up and killed. And then, well then Harry happened and suddenly it was all over. I guess for a lot of people it was like this salvation after they'd given up hope. So I think people are just– Harry means a lot to them."
That made a twisted sort of sense, Hermione thought.
Suddenly Hermione noticed the time. "Oh no, I've got to get to Cambrian, I'm going to be late," she said in a hurry. "But, um, thanks, and… we're good?"
"We're good," said Neville from his hospital bed.
The next morning they had Transfiguration. Hermione was alternating between hopeful and terrified over their first real spell-casting class. The students had all been trying out their wands in the common room and outside on the grounds during free periods. Because of this, Hermione had now confirmed that whatever was going on with his wand was unique to her. The other students all described what Mr. Ollivander said they should: the warm feeling they got handing their wands, the feeling of ownership and belonging. Hermione continued to feel like she was holding the terminals of a car battery.
Maybe, she told herself, once you start using your wand in class it will get better.
Or maybe, the other part of her brain said, you'll just be worse than everyone else.
Hermione sighed and tried to convince both parts of her brain that she didn't care what wizards thought of her.
As the Ravenclaw students arrived at the Transfiguration classroom, they came upon the Slytherins. The scene from History of Magic repeated; the Slytherins being extremely polite to Draco, who looked furious about it. Hermione looked to Mandy, who seemed to know the most about the social politics of wizard-raised students, but she only shrugged.
The Transfiguration teacher was Professor McGonagall. Hermione took a deep breath before entering the classroom. She could do this. She had to do this.
McGonagall gave them a talking-to the moment they sat down in her first class.
"Transfiguration is some of the most complex and dangerous magic you will learn at Hogwarts," she said. "Anyone messing around in my class will leave and not come back. You have been warned."
Then she changed her desk into a pig and back again. The other students were all very impressed and couldn't wait to get started, but soon realized they weren't going to be changing the furniture into animals for a long time. After a very thorough set of notes, they were each given a match and started trying to turn it into a needle.
Hermione pulled out The Standard Book of Spells. The spell movements, she'd noticed, were provided in a compact notation. This one was listed as A85-90-1→C-90-9→D-100-12→!S-30-6. It wasn't too complicated; the larger numbers stood for shoulder and elbow angles, the smaller numbers for rotations like on a clock face, and the letters indicated the type of movement. It was just a pain to be constantly flipping to the table at the back of the book to remind herself what each number meant. And what did a 100 degree elbow look like? She didn't even have a protractor on her. It all felt jerky and disconnected, nothing like the smooth, fluid motion McGonagall had used in her demonstration.
Hermione was sharing a table with Draco again, out of convenience, and she noticed that he was not flipping back and forth through his textbook. Draco simply read off the wand motion and then did it, as smoothly and fluidly as McGonagall (or at least Hermione thought it was; from the advice the Professor gave him as she walked past she gathered there were subtle differences).
"How do you do that?" Hermione couldn't help herself from asking.
"Practice," Draco sneered.
"When have you had time to practice?" It was only the fifth day of class!
"Every day since I was five," came Draco's deadpan reply.
Of course. Hermione felt stupid for not seeing it earlier. Even if she believed that children in wizarding families were not allowed to do magic before coming to Hogwarts, she should have realized that this wouldn't prevent them from preparing in other ways.
At the end of the class, Professor McGonagall asked Hermione, Sue, and Michael to stay behind. Hermione noticed none of the Slytherins joined their little group.
"Some students," she began without preamble, "through no fault of their own, start the class without any background in wand movement or notation. To remedy this, each year we prepare a set of exercises. These are proven to quickly raise your familiarity with the notation, provided you are all willing to put in the work."
"Some students?" Hermione couldn't help herself. "You mean us bawgwaed."
"Miss Granger!" said McGonagall, almost shouting, "Ten points from Ravenclaw. I do not know where you heard that word, but be aware that slurs of any kind are not tolerated here!" She took a breath to gather herself. "Hogwarts hosts students from all backgrounds and experiences. Every student who comes here is given all the tools he or she needs to succeed, provided they are willing to work for it.
"As I was saying, in addition to these exercises, tutoring sessions are scheduled throughout the day, in which upper year students will provide practice drills in wand motion. Attendance at these tutorials is optional, but please know that your Professors simply do not have time to provide additional instruction to students who do not avail themselves of the opportunities given them."
Hermione looked down at the tutorial schedule. It looked like, having lost her evenings to Cambrian, she was about to lose her free periods during the day as well.
"What was–" Mandy started to ask as Hermione caught up with the group heading into the Charms classroom.
"Nothing important," Hermione said shortly, and before anyone could ask any more questions, she sat down next to Draco, who at least didn't care enough about her to pry.
It was ironic, but Hermione found Draco's overt hostility easier to deal with than the well-meaning enthusiasm of Mandy, or, heaven forbid, Ron Weasley. Draco was a granite cliff face: harsh and painful but reliably so. Hermione's dorm mates were a fen, and she never knew which step was going to sink her.
Hermione wasn't really listening as Professor Flitwick gave what was by now the familiar introduction and roll call. She mechanically jotted down the notes they were to take on sticking spells, and mutely took the piece of parchment Professor Flitwick handed her for practice.
The motions for the sticking charm were much simpler than the toothpick transfiguration, Hermione was unsurprised when her wand buzzed and tingled in her hand, but she was a little surprised when her first attempt actually did something: the piece of parchment she was practicing on dutifully stuck to the wall, for about 30 seconds before fluttering down to the ground. As Hermione looked around the room, though, she realized that this was simply a much easier spell than the one McGonagall had set them. Everybody else was pointing excitedly at their pieces of parchment stuck firmly to the walls. Many of the students had a strong enough charm that the parchment ripped when they tried to pull it off, and Mandy was all smiles as she showed Professor Flitwick that her parchment was so thoroughly stuck to the wall it couldn't be pried off even with a pocketknife.
Hermione went back to her parchment, but by the end of the period, there was no denying that she was the weakest of the Ravenclaw first years. She shared her issues around the unfamiliar movements with the other muggleborns, but she had her own weirdness with her wand on top of it.
After class, Hermione stayed behind to ask Professor Flitwick a question.
"Miss Granger, yes?" said the tiny man. Hermione nodded.
"Sir–the different branches of magic–would a spell to erase somebody's memory be covered in Charms?"
"Oh yes," Professor Flitwick replied, "memory charms, they're called."
Hermione swallowed to ask her next question, but Professor Flitwick wasn't done. "But those won't typically be covered until NEWT level - that is, year six or seven. They are, as you might imagine, very dangerous."
Hermione forced the next question out. "And healing, or reversing a memory charm–is that covered earlier?"
"Oh no, I'm afraid not," said Professor Flitwick. "Reversing a memory charm is a tricky business. It's something that only trained Healers are able to do, and even they aren't always successful. Much depends on the type of charm–because there are different varieties, you know–what types of memories were affected, even the mood of the caster at the time can be a factor."
"Oh," said Hermione in a small voice. Years and years of study at the least, in what she was already sure was one of her worst subjects.
"Miss Granger," Professor Flitwick said gently, "You know that as your Head of House I received your file from Professor McGonagall, and–"
Whatever he was about to say was lost, as Hermione, tears in her eyes, stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind her.
Author's Note:
This is probably the chapter I've struggled the most with. The challenge for me was the tone: I want to show how and why Hermione is struggling with the school, but I also don't want this to be pure misery. She's still an eleven-year-old kid in a magical castle. So the struggle was to balance that without making the chapter feel like it's jumping around too much in tone. Let me know if it worked for you!