Chapter 1: Reverse Desperation
"You understand that most people who come to see me about problem children have children who are indeed problematic," Dr. Briar said, peering over the gold rims of his spectacles. "They have a history of violent behaviour, harming themselves or others. They're disrespectful toward adults and can't seem to get on with their peers. They usually do poorly in school. I just don't really understand why you've come to see me about your daughter."
Adeline Granger, DDS, cast a sidelong glance over at her husband, Archibald Granger, also DDS, and sighed. Their daughter, eleven-year-old Hermione Jane, sat primly on the edge of her chair, looking around the room. She wasn't merely spacing out, as most children her age would do. She wasn't bored by her surroundings. If anything, she was more fascinated by them than was considered healthy.
"Child psychology isn't an exact science yet, you know," she piped up, averting her gaze from Dr. Briar's ballpoint pen, and drawing the mortified gasps of her parents.
"Hermione, please," Adeline said nervously.
"No, it's alright, this is my field after all," Dr. Briar said with a stony smile. "And why would you say that?"
"Well, for starters, psychology in and of itself is concerned with the human brain; we only utilize ten percent of it, so how can we, utilizing ten percent, presume to try to understand how that ten percent functions?"
"I see your point."
"You're patronizing me," Hermione said, but it wasn't a cross accusation, merely an observation. "You're listening to me and thinking I can't possibly know what I'm talking about. That according to Piaget, I should only be in the concrete operational stage of my development, when I am, in fact, in the formal operational stage, and have been for some time now."
"You've read Piaget. Interesting."
"Not so much interesting as it was necessary," she said with the wisdom of someone at least thrice her age. "When my parents started discussing a psychologist, I thought it would be necessary to know about the frameworks you'd be using to analyze me."
"This isn't really an analysis, Hermione," the doctor said pleasantly. "I just want to talk to you and your parents, and find out what the problem seems to be."
"Oh, there's no problem," she told him firmly. "May I see your pen, please?"
"My–my pen?" he asked, startled, yet handing it over to her.
"Thank you." She took the pen, her brow creasing, and narrowed her gaze at it.
With that pause, Dr. Briar turned his attentions back to the Doctors Granger. "She's intelligent," he stated, his voice a tad cooler than it previously had been. "I don't think you need me; I think you need an IQ test."
"We've had those," Archibald said. "She's taken the WISC-IV several times. She's scored in the 99.9th percentile every time. The numbers always hover around 189 or so."
"And what does she seem to think about this?"
"She accepts it, and the... consequences? No, that's not the right word, and it makes it sound like she's done something wrong," Adeline said, closing her eyes and covering them with her hand. "She doesn't think it's a bad thing, I don't think. But... we're at the end of our rope."
"Why? You have a genius child," Dr. Briar said.
"No, a prodigy," Archibald interjected. "She started forming words at 13 months. She started reading at 15 months. At two she had an immense vocabulary... now at eleven she's taken top marks in her A-levels in Sixth Form. She'll probably be an Upper Sixth in a few months at the rate we're going... We'll have a twelve-year-old applying to University!" he finished. "Addie and I aren't sure it's the best thing, or if it's healthy for her socially."
"Well, certainly the academic acceleration would have some social impact," Dr. Briar said, casting a furtive glance over at Hermione, who seemed deep in though contemplating the simple device that was his pen. "Are you finding that fascinating?" he asked, both perplexed and irritated by the little adult sitting in his chair.
"Well, yes, actually," she said, looking up and hitting him with the full force of her wise, deep brown gaze. "It's amazing to see how simple a design this is, how easy to make, and yet it took hundreds of years to get to this point. Years of sticks and woodcuts and runes and quills, and finally we get to the fountain pen, and eventually the ballpoint pen. I think it's revolutionized things a bit."
"Hermione," he began slowly.
"Yes?"
"How do you feel, being this way?" he asked.
"I've never been any other way, so I've never felt any other way," she said sagely. "I really have no basis for comparison, you see."
"Yes, I see. I suppose I should ask you how you feel being eleven, and already looking toward Upper Sixth Form. I'm probably not mistaken to say you're the youngest in your courses?"
"That'd be right," she said, setting his pen on the edge of the desk and flicking her eyes around the office again. "I've always been the youngest in any year, and I've never completed a full year." She demurely crossed her ankles and folded her hands in her lap. "Most kids my age are concerned with games and play, I know. I also know I should attempt to find an interest in those things as well, and maybe I can reduce my feelings of isolation."
"Isolation. So you feel isolated because of your... talents and abilities?"
She smiled, revealing slightly large and slightly crooked front teeth. "Talents and abilities. Now there's a euphemism I haven't heard before. And I've heard them all. Genius, prodigy, gifted child, et cetera."
Dr. Briar nodded once, slowly, and equally slowly took his pen back. Something inside of him made him look at it, focus in on it, wondering what Hermione Granger saw in it that he could not see. What was so fascinating about something as simple as a ballpoint pen? And what about her interest in it was so perplexing?
"She's well aware of her... condition," Adeline piped up.
"That's another euphemism I forgot to mention," Hermione interjected.
"We know she has intelligence of genius proportions," Archibald said firmly. "It's the other pieces that have us concerned, the social and emotional aspects. Addie and I just want her to adjust and be normal."
"As normal as she'll be able to be," Adeline added, grasping her husband's hand.
Dr. Briar looked at the couple in surprise, and then at Hermione. "What do you feel when they speak about you that way?"
"Oh, that," she said lightly. "Not many people talk to me. Mostly about me. I'm rather used to it, actually. It doesn't bother me. Especially from Mum and Da. I know they only mean well. I'm an only child, and they just want the best for me."
"That's a very... mature way of looking at things."
"I'm wise beyond my years," Hermione replied. Coming from just about any other child it would have sounded petulant or bratty, or downright arrogant. Somehow, coming from this bushy-haired child with the deep, old, dark brown eyes, it sounded oddly like truth. This was a child who was more than a child, but an adult mind trapped in a child's body. The mind had accelerated and grown far more quickly than the body, and now the intellect of a University professor was trapped in the body of an eleven-year-old girl!
"Yes, yes you are, Hermione," he conceded with a slight smile, turning his attention to the blank file in front of him, and wondering how he could even begin to fill it when Archibald interrupted him.
"See, you're a specialist in these areas," he said. "You know how to deal with it when she talks to you like that. But other adult figures aren't so, well, understanding or sensitive about it. She's been known to correct her teachers. Last year in Year 11 she corrected her chemistry teacher. Rather than being impressed, or accepting the critique he had her sent to the headmistress's office for discipline. Three years ago she got into a bit of a row over an interpretation of a Tennyson poem. When the teacher didn't quite understand Hermione's Lacanian interpretation, Hermione left the classroom."
"She's smarter than any teacher or professor she's ever had," Adeline added, leaning forward in her chair. "We're sure she means well when she shows that, but they see her as a show-off. It undermines their professionalism, especially in front of other, more age-appropriate students."
"Understandable."
"And it's not just her teachers," Archibald jumped in. "We can hardly watch the news anymore, because of how she goes on about it, you see. And we cut short our visit to the Houses of Parliament just a fortnight ago because she started questioning foreign policy and got quite vocal with a guard who asked her to turn away from an off-limits hallway. Not to mention how brutal it was waiting with her in the queue to get in to begin with." Adeline nodded emphatically, looking between her husband, the doctor, and her daughter.
"The concept of a queue for an attraction like that is asinine," Hermione spoke up. "Not to mention the attitudes the Prime Minister is taking toward exporting—"
"—And this is what we're dealing with," Adeline finished with a bright, yet false smile plastered on her face. "Public schooling is only doing so much for her. She's clearly not quite ready for University—"
"Or University isn't ready for her," Archibald pointed out. "On a couple of levels."
"Either way, we need to do something, and we're just not sure what. We've looked for gifted children's groups and they've helped, but only for so long," Adeline said. "As much as she questions things and authority and such, she's got this thing about the rules, and tends to be rather bossy around the other children. She's too much even for children like her, because, I think, they're not as much like her as any of us think." This time it was Archibald's turn to nod.
"Have you considered private schooling?" Dr. Briar asked, flicking his gaze at Hermione, who was skimming book titles on his shelves, and nodding to herself occasionally. What she was doing he could only guess, and unfortunately, any guess he could make was based on his experiences with case-study "normal" pre-teens, and thus frustratingly unsuited for making conjectures about Hermione Granger.
"We have, but none of them can provide the sort of environment she needs. They're all also highly structured."
"Structure can be good for the highly intelligent child. It gives her expectations. Some studies are showing that high intelligence doesn't equate high degrees of common sense."
"Pardon," Hermione said suddenly. "I have plenty of common sense, thank you." She turned her attentions from the books and back to her parents and the doctor. "I'm a prodigy, not a savant. There's absolutely nothing wrong with savants, of course," she added sensibly. "However, there are many factors differentiating an autistic savant from a child prodigy, and none of what I've read gives me any reason to believe I would be a savant. I'm asymptomatic."
"And you can see we absolutely cannot keep her at home," Adeline said, sounding weary for the first time that afternoon. "She's our only child, and we love her dearly and all, but it'd be a disservice to her. Yet anything else..."
Archibald patted his wife's knee and looked imploringly at the psychologist. "So you see we are in fact quite desperate at this point."
"Yes, yes, I see that," Dr. Briar said, fixing his gaze on Hermione, who stared back calmly. "It's odd, but it's a reverse desperation in a way. Most of my clients come to me out of desperation, in the sense that their child is engaged, or engaging in, deviant behaviours. They have the potential to take away from society if there is no intervention of any sort. On the other hand..." He took a deep breath. "Your daughter is unlike anything I've seen before. Her behaviours have the potential only to contribute to society, and to do it in great ways. Yet at the same time they're deviant."
"Yes, it's fascinating, we know," Archibald said, finally slouching in his chair. "But we need advice. We need someone to tell us where to go or what to do with Hermione."
"You make me sound like some horrible problem," Hermione said sensibly. "I can understand your frustrations, I'm sure I'm not the easiest person to have around. At least, that's what teachers tell me. I'd love to explain to them how I feel, but I know it'd make no sense to do so. They wouldn't listen."
"Why do you think that?"
"I don't think that, I know that. They won't listen because they know I have a gift. I've been blessed. If I were to tell them how I feel about it sometimes, and that those feelings are less than grateful or thankful to be blessed in this way, they'd be angry because they wish they could have this. They don't understand what it is to have it and always be five steps ahead of some people. Seven steps ahead of most. And meters and meters ahead of the others my age. I'm quite isolated, but that doesn't seem to be a concern. How I use, or abuse, as some believe I've done, my intelligence is more of a concern."
"...I see."
Dr. Briar was quiet for a moment, tapping his pen on the file. "Quite honestly..." he began. "To be honest, I don't know that there's much I can do to help you all. I usually deal with children who don't understand themselves or their feelings, and unfortunately, Hermione is very well adjusted, as well as in touch with her feelings and the blessings and curses of being such a prodigy."
"You can't do anything?" Adeline exclaimed, sitting up straight in her chair, face paling.
"Unfortunately, I'm not really certain; traditional child psychology hasn't prepared us for working with the sort of child your Hermione appears to be. Medication is completely unnecessary, even if I could prescribe it. It would only harm her gifts more than it could help them anyway."
"There's got to be something. Anything."
"Do you have anyone you can refer us to?" Archibald asked, his desperation evident in his voice. "Like, a different angle of looking at this. We've been doing testing and statistics and bell curves and percentiles, maybe we need something a little bit on the different side. Spiritual or emotional or something."
"Even more imprecise than psychology, you realize," Hermione put in with a nod.
Dr. Briar looked between the haggard dentist couple and their precocious and alert genius child. He thought about other children he'd had placed in alternative programs or diagnosed with newly named disorders. And the he thought of Violet, Violet Peekins, a friend of his wife's. It was clear Hermione Granger wasn't a fan of alternative treatments or anything of this sort, but perhaps Violet could at least give the Grangers the help he could not give them. And even as he thought it, he realized that he was trying to do to the Grangers what they were trying to do with their daughter: pawn off this most unusual problem to the first person willing to handle their extremely unusual case.
He smiled politely and flipped through his Rolodex. "I have a family friend who just might be able to help you out a bit," he said with a smile, but even as he said it he caught Hermione's eye, and that wise, knowing gaze seemed to see right through him, piercing through his insecurities and lies, and quickly piecing together the situation ahead of both her and her family.
