Chapter 2: Realization

"I've found very little information on this Violet Peekins," Hermione announced as she cut her chicken into cubes and pushed her chips into a neat pile on the rim of her plate. "I was excused from my literature class today so I used the time usefully."

Rather than focus on this revelation of information, Archibald and Adeline sighed and set down their utensils. "Archie, will you...?"

"Yes, Addie, no problem." He looked at his daughter sternly. "Hermione, why were you excused from literature class?"

"I finished my homework early."

"For the day?"

"For the week. I could have kept on and finished the semester, her approach is predictable enough, but I didn't want to show her up too badly. It's a habit I'm trying to rectify in an attempt to be 'normal'." She delicately popped a piece of chicken into her mouth and followed with a swig of water.

"That's all?"

"Well, yes; when I finished she asked me why I wasn't working on anything and I explained I'd finished everything for the week and asked if it would be alright if I discreetly worked on my maths homework. I have a calculus test in two weeks, you see, and I covered the material on my own a month ago and wanted to brush up."

"Hermione, just... at what point did she ask you to leave class."

"Oh, right then. She said something about 'if you're too good for this class why don't you just leave, already?' so I did. No sense remaining there if all she's going to do is berate me. However, by leaving I am afraid I affirmed her notion that I think I'm too good for her class." A shadow of regret passed over Hermione's face. "So I went to the library."

Archibald and Adeline, or, Archie and Addie, as they called one another out of the office, weren't surprised at this occurrence in the least; it was a common one, and the more accelerated Hermione became, the more it seemed to happen. She was ahead of everything in the school system. Soon there would be nothing left for her. She'd earn a reputation as a know-it-all, as an arrogant wunderkind who couldn't respect her elders, and her gift would work against her rather than for her. It was a vicious downward spiral they didn't know how to stop.

"What did you discover on Violent Peekins, dear?" Addie stepped in, knowing full well a lecture on her behaviour wouldn't help the situation. Hermione simply couldn't understand the concepts of keeping quiet, or keeping a low profile.

"Like I said a moment ago there wasn't much. Offbeat news articles. She was also featured in a local, low-budget occultist magazine."

Addie paled and looked at her husband. "Occultist?"

"Yes, but not the sacrificing cats, stick pins in an effigy sort of occult, from what I gathered. More of the seeing the future. Crystals and such. New Age," she finished, cutting a chip in half and sticking it in her mouth. "Can you pass the salt, please?"

Archie complied while Addie pushed her barely touched plate away. "Is this what we're reduced to? New Age? Untested and uncharted, and unapproved, treatments? Dr. Briar just wanted to get rid of us. That's all. He doesn't care. He can't do anything so he sends us to a... to a... a witch!" she exclaimed furiously.

"Spiritualist," Hermione corrected after hastily swallowing her mouthful of chips. "And if you were willing to go to a psychologist, which is practically the same thing, I don't see what the problem is with this."

"Psychology is an accepted science. Like medicine. Or dentistry," Archie pointed out. "We know the brain functions certain ways. But the spirit or soul..."

"I know. According to many organized religions the human spirit and or soul is what separates us from animals. Though I've not found much use for religion, outside of the interesting sociological implications."

"Hermione... are you arguing for or against going to see this Peekins woman?" her mother asked wearily. "I just can't tell anymore."

"I'm indifferent, really," Hermione answered with a shrug, tucking a wayward lock of her bushy brown hair behind her ears. "I was just enjoying debating psychology and spiritualism and the occult, albeit briefly." She turned her attentions to her green beans. "You added mushrooms. Nice touch." She smiled.

"Thank you, it was your father's idea." Addie shook her head. "What am I doing? Don't change the subject like that, Hermione Jane! Look, maybe your father and I should talk, alone, for a moment. Please excuse yourself."

Hermione smiled as she hopped out of her chair and grabbed her dinner plate. "Done. But... maybe sometime you can talk to me?"

"That's the thing, darling," Archie said gently. "We love you, we do. You're our only daughter. Of course we love you. But sometimes... you're hard to talk to," he finished. He averted his gaze from his daughter. "Please, just... go to your room, or the sitting room... your mother and I need to discuss this."

Hermione gave a nod and turned, headed for the kitchen. She scraped her plate into the trash then rinsed it in the sink and left it there. Normally she had no problem just washing it, drying it, and then putting it away, but if her parents wanted a normal child, she'd be one. Starting with the dirty dishes.

She then headed up to her bedroom, but halfway up the stairs changed her mind and bounded back down and into the sitting room. The upright piano stood against the wall that backed up to the dining room. They could excuse her from the dinner table, but they couldn't ignore her entirely! With a sardonic grin she perched on the piano bench and struck a quiet C# minor chord. The notes reverberated menacingly through the piano strings and out into her hands and arms and very core. She smiled and struck a C minor this time, reveling in the way the notes seemed to jolt her very body. She closed her eyes and launched into Chopin. She was immediately transported back to being five years old.

Music. Music on the radio. Classical. She listened to the repetition of patterns, the variations on chords and scales and modes. She heard motifs and themes. She felt the music. She saw the music, in her mind. It was all numbers, really, steps and intervals and counting. She'd been able to count for years now. She saw the music, then saw the piano. She hoisted herself onto the bench, tottering dangerously. She looked at the keyboard, which she'd been told before not to touch, but now, now she had to. There was no time to not touch. She saw the music, felt it in her bones, aching, pounding, threatening to destroy her if she did not play it. She quickly counted: eighty-eight keys. Seven octaves and a minor third. She knew this because the prefix oct- meant eight. She heard the radio. She was supposed to be reading, and she wasn't supposed to touch the piano, ever, until she was old enough, whatever that meant. But now she had to.

She scanned the piano. She heard the radio and thought a moment, then struck a note. No, wrong key. She tried another and seemed satisfied, but with what, she couldn't quite know. She added a third and a fifth, making a chord, but it sounded wrong. She took the third down a half step and struck the chord again. There, a better sound; a sadder, darker, more melancholy sound. This was the scale she wanted. She listened another moment, then began, she knew not how, to imitate what she heard.

Of course they came running, with reprimands and reproaches on their tongues, which of course fell flat when they saw the five-year-old imitating Chopin nearly flawlessly.

Since hearing him for the first time Hermione had been in love with Chopin. She'd been told she should identify with Mozart, himself a prodigy, but after reading about him she wasn't fond of him. Besides, Mozart and Chopin were different musically; Mozart wrote in an era that favored precision and form over expression of emotions. Chopin... you knew what he was feeling when he wrote his music, and you wound up feeling that way yourself when you played it. He could sound playful, and you felt excited and playful as your hands danced along the keyboard. But he could also sound profoundly melancholy, which was how Hermione felt right now.

She sighed and closed her eyes and let her hands roam over the keys, just letting the intricate motor connections between brain and fingers work, never questioning it, never wondering or marveling at how she just innately seemed to know what she was doing.

She couldn't help herself. She couldn't help being herself. She was what she was. She was supposed to be proud of it. She wasn't supposed to touch the piano. She wasn't supposed to give cheek back to her elders, but they didn't want to hear what she had to say. She was supposed to keep quiet and do her work and not draw any more attention to herself than she already did. She struck a particularly violent chord and followed it with a mournful run of sixteenth notes up the scale. Supposed to. Supposed to. Everything about her life was either something she was supposed to, or not supposed to do.

With that realization Hermione felt her mood change, from melancholy and misunderstood to flat-out angry, and her musical choice reflected that. She launched into Beethoven. Beethoven was another one she felt used his music to work through his emotions. He was also one of the few composers she found did anger well, and that was why, now, she launched into his fifth symphony, pounding out those four notes, the four notes of fate knocking on the door. She felt somehow that fate was knocking on her own door, even though she knew that fate probably did not exist. It was merely a series of clever coincidences. People made their own choices and paid the consequences. For every action there was an equal and opposite reaction.

"Hermione! Go to your room!" her father's voice yelled through the wall, waking her from her reverie of emotions and thoughts.

With one last furious chord, which she spitefully let reverberate through the walls, she dashed up to her bedroom, where she leapt on her bed and buried herself under the bedclothes. She didn't know if she should laugh or cry, or feel angry or depressed or just nothing at all. While most people would find the mixed feelings frustrating, Hermione rather enjoyed it in some strange way, because it meant there was something she didn't know. She was so used to knowing everything ahead of time, or knowing more than anyone around her, that for once not knowing something felt... refreshing.

She emerged from the blankets and shoved her hair out of her face and looked around her room. She had to do something; lying here, staring at the ceiling, wasn't stimulating enough. She already felt antsy and agitated as it was; staring at the ceiling and allowing her restless mind to wander aimlessly was asking for something dangerous. It was asking for her to come up with solutions nobody wanted, to problems nobody knew existed. It was asking for her to wallow in her own angst over the fact nobody, parents included, understood the situation.

She climbed back out of bed and picked up her physics book. Once again Misters Feinman and Einstein would be her friends for the evening. She thought about Kimberly Wright, her next door neighbour. Right now Kimberly would be working on her spelling words for the week. She'd probably be doing her long division. And when she was finished she'd have a snack and watch an hour or so of television programming. Then she'd go to bed and dream about ponies or fairies, then wake up, go to her typical year 7 class with her typical year 7 classmates, and learn things Hermione had learned and understood at the age of 6, then repeat her evening routine again, as would just about every other eleven-year-old in the United Kingdom.

This was not working for her, she realized. Going to normal school, at such an accelerated pace, that whole routine was not working for her. Trying to be as normal as possible wasn't working, because it was impossible for her to be normal, at least by anyone's textbook definition of normal. There had to be something, somewhere, for her, that would cater to her undoubtably special needs.

And maybe, just maybe, this Violet Peekins woman was the one to help her. She wasn't sure; she didn't know exactly what to expect, or even if she should bother with this venue. But she had come to a realization this evening. She realized that desperate times called for desperate measures. And that as much as she knew her parents were desperate to do something about her, she was desperate for something to be done.

She pulled out the photocopy of the article on Violet Peekins from The Spiritualist Informer, dated March 1991, just two months ago. She scanned the article again. She put away the thought that she was crazy, tucking it in the back of her mind, reassuring herself that it was just a desperate measure to help resolve the desperate situation her family found itself in. Then she took a deep breath, swallowed her pride, and marched back to the dining room.