There were books! There were books upon books upon books, and Hermione could hardly stand it. All of that magic! All of that knowledge! Just waiting for her!
Forcing herself to calm down, Hermione focused on her mission: figure out what McGonagall meant by "power reserves". It sounded important, and like something so basic that it might be assumed that everyone already knew what it was.
It took Hermione a while to work out the library's organization and filing system, and she was grateful when she finally found a card catalog. Moreso, the card catalog was enchanted, each card leading her directly to its book, and Hermione had quickly amassed three books that looked promising.
As she headed to a table, she was surprised to see two others in the library.
"Harry! Neville!"
Harry Potter and Neville Longbottom looked up at her, surprised, and she hurried over to sit with them. Madam Pince, the librarian, shot them all a glare, and Hermione quickly lowered her voice.
"I'm so excited to see you again," she said. "How are you? How is your first day going?"
Harry and Neville exchanged a slow look, before Harry spoke up.
"We had Defense and Charms so far," Harry told her.
"Charms was kind of fun," Neville ventured. "Professor Flitwick is really nice. He showed us how to make the ends of our wands glow. None of us quite got the hang of it, but he just told everyone to practice it for homework instead of assigning an essay, so that was nice."
Hermione shot him a smile. "That sounds nice," she said. "Transfiguration was pretty intense. You're lucky you got something simple on your first day."
She smiled at them, and slowly, Harry and Neville started to smile back.
"What did you think of Defense?" Harry asked. "Quirrell said that he had the Slytherins right after us."
Hermione immediately made a face.
"He's an awful teacher," she proclaimed. "All the jinxes he went over? He did them wrong. I double checked him in two different books. And his lecture was terrible. I stopped listening halfway through."
Harry and Neville grinned at her.
"I thought he was awful, too," Harry said. "Just being in the same classroom as him lecturing gave me an awful headache-"
"Guys! I got them—what's this?"
Hermione looked up to see Ron Weasley standing over them with two books on vampires, glaring down at her.
"I go to find books, and you guys start associating with a Slytherin?" he spat, and Hermione was struck by the venom in his tone.
"What are you talking about, Ron?" Hermione said, shocked. "We all sat on the train and talked together. It's not like you don't know me."
"That was before you were sorted into Slytherin," he said, sitting down next to Harry in a huff. He folded his arms and proceeded to glare at her, and Hermione paused, uncertain how to handle such unexpected rancor.
"I'm still the same person I was when we were all talking and laughing on the train," she said slowly. "Does the color of my tie really matter so much?"
"It does if it's green," Ron said firmly, and Hermione sighed.
"Why?" Hermione said. "What do you have against Slytherins?"
Ron's eyes flashed, and Hermione immediately regretted asking.
"Slytherins are all a bunch of self-serving snakes," he said. "All of You-Know-Who's followers? They all came from Slytherin. All Dark Wizards come from Slytherin, and Slytherins are famous for doing awful pranks to the other houses and not getting caught. They're all fighting for the top spot, and they betray anyone they have to so they can get there. They cheat at Quidditch, too, and they're Pureblood elitists, who want to eradicate anyone who's not a Pureblood."
He snarled this last bit, and Hermione blinked.
"…you do realize that my parents are Muggles, right, Ron?" Hermione asked slowly.
Ron's eyes fell on her, confusion coming to them, as he slowly settled down from his rant.
"Your parents-?"
"Both muggles. Dentists," Hermione said, nodding to Harry. "I don't know about the others, but I'm certainly not going to go on a campaign to eradicate anyone, for any reason, but especially not for blood status."
Ron was looking at her with obvious confusion on his face now.
"Then- how'd you get sorted into Slytherin?" he asked, bewildered.
Hermione shrugged. "Probably because I'm ambitious," she admitted freely. "I always had high career aspirations as a child, and that hasn't changed – I just have magical goals now."
Carefully, she offered him a small smile.
"If you think all Slytherins are snakes who betray each other, can you consider that I'm 'betraying' them to come and hang out with you?" she asked. "Most of the Slytherins don't want to talk to me because my parents are Muggles."
Harry's eyes jerked to hers, widening.
"They're not talking to you?" he said, green eyes bright.
Hermione nodded, then paused.
"Well, except to make fun of me," she said. "Theo Nott challenged me to a bet, earlier, on who'd complete the Transfiguration assignment first, saying I'd have to be his House Elf for a week if I lost, and dress up in the uniform and everything."
Harry's eyes didn't change, but Ron and Neville gasped with horror.
"He didn't," Neville whispered, his eyes wide. "He did that to a fellow Slytherin?"
Hermione blinked, somewhat confused. "Yes. Over breakfast. Luckily, I won the bet, but he still challenged me. I get the idea that I'm missing something, though. What's a House Elf?"
Neville grimaced, while Ron shuddered.
"They're these half-size, ruddy little things," he said. "They do all the rich Purebloods' scut work. And they wear these gross tunic things, like a pillowcase with holes in it. They're filthy all the time."
Hermione's eyebrows rose until they couldn't climb any further onto her head.
"He wanted to make me his slave?" she said, her voice somewhat shrill. "He wanted to make me wear a pillowcase?"
A sharp command from Madam Pince paired with a harsh glare had them all quieting down, but Hermione still felt enraged.
"I didn't realize it was as bad as all that!" she said, furious. "I don't feel nearly so bad for making him carry my books now for losing the bet. And wizards have slaves?"
"They're not really slaves," Neville said quickly, looking down. "They're… they're a different species. They like the work. They live off of the bond they have to the family they serve, though some families abuse them. But it's not that bad, Hermione. Really."
Neville was looking at her hesitantly, and Hermione wavered, before finally settling down in a huff.
"Well, alright then," she said. She shot Ron a look. "Are we all going to work on our Defense essays together, or are we going to go on about how the Slytherin Muggleborn isn't allowed to sit with you anymore?"
Ron looked ashamed, and he cracked open a book without another word.
"I can't believe he gave us homework the first day," he groaned, and Hermione took the other book from him.
"We'll be fine," Hermione said confidently. "Six inches is barely two paragraphs. We'll be able to get this done before dinner."
Hermione finished her "essay" within half an hour – six inches was nothing, even if she shrunk her handwriting to try to get in enough detail. While her compatriots groaned and poured over the books she'd left out, Hermione had cracked open one of the books she'd found, The Powerful and the Pitiful, and begun to read.
It was a fascinating read. The book dealt with the difference between powerful wizards and pathetic wizards – and, thankfully, barely mentioned blood status at all. Most of the difference seemed to come down to level of magical skill, but there seemed to be an assumed undertone that Hermione could pick up on.
As far as she could tell, wizards and witches had sort of a "magical reserve" inside of them, that contained their magical power. More powerful wizards had a larger reserve, while less powerful wizards had a smaller one. The book seemed to assume that the reserve grew with age, but there was no outright statement of what made one wizard have a larger magical reserve than another.
Hermione found this curious but interesting, and highly promising. If one of the characteristics of a powerful wizard was literally "lots of power," it seemed like that could be gained. Hermione suspected that a person's magical reserve got bigger not just from growing older, but from drawing on it consistently while learning magic, thus exercising it like a muscle. If Hermione could find spells that used unusually large amounts of power for her age group, and use them consistently (perhaps before bed), she could "exercise" her own well of power and grow it at a faster rate than her peers.
…well. That was the idea, anyway, Hermione thought ruefully. She didn't actually know if that was how it worked.
But it certainly couldn't hurt.
"Granger?"
Hermione looked up to see Theo, who was smirking at her from nearby. He gestured to the nearby clock, and Hermione leapt to her feet.
"Dinner time," she told the others, her voice musical. "I'll see you later!"
Hermione scooped up her three books and checked them out with Madam Pince, before slinging them into her bag. She didn't want Theo to see the titles – it'd be better if no one knew she was working on becoming more powerful.
This time, Theo took her bag with no resentment, and to her surprise, offered her his arm as they went down the stairs.
"Why, Theo," Hermione remarked, pleased. "How gentlemanly of you."
Theo rolled his eyes. "I know my manners. I was raised a Pureblood, after all."
As far as Hermione could tell, the expectations upon Pureblood men seemed to be those of Da Vinci's ideal Renaissance man – perfectly trained in everything.
"You didn't extend them to me earlier, though," Hermione said, raising an eyebrow. "What changed?"
There was a silence as Theo led her down the stairs.
"I overhead McGonagall talking to Sprout," he said abruptly. He looked at her sideways. "…you managed to change that dowel into a pipe?"
Hermione's face flushed, and she squirmed.
"Only at the very end, and it wasn't lead," she admitted. "It was too shiny for lead, and not heavy enough. Maybe steel or aluminum?"
A smirk flickered on Theo's lips.
"That's what you're worried about?" he remarked, amused. "Not the fact that you were able to transfigure that as a First year?"
"Why wouldn't I be able to?" Hermione tossed her hair. "Professor McGonagall told me to. She said she'd give me points if I managed it."
"Apparently, you beat McGonagall's own record in transfiguring that," Theo told her, enjoying the way Hermione's eyes grew wide. "McGonagall wasn't able to do that until her fourth class. Dumbledore managed it on his third."
There was a silence.
"She did give us points for it though, right?" Hermione ventured. "She wasn't mad that I beat her record?"
"Quote the opposite. She seemed proud of you, even though you're a Slytherin," Theo told her. "And she gave you fifty points for Slytherin. Fifty. The most anyone else has earned so far in one go has been five."
Theo led her back up a staircase and down a hallway, avoiding Peeves throwing water balloons at students as they screamed and scurried down the stairs.
"So now you believe me, is that it?" Hermione said. "You heard what I did, and you think I'm powerful now, so I must not be a Muggleborn?"
Theo gave her a slow look.
"I've never heard of this New Blood thing, but it makes sense," he admitted. "All the houses started from somewhere. And there hasn't been a new one in ages, so it makes sense it'd be hard to find knowledge about them in books, especially if you weren't hunting directly for it. So I'm willing to suspend my disbelief," he told her, and Hermione tried to hold back her surprise. "If nothing else, I've been taught to respect power, and you've already proven you have that in spades."
Hermione raised an eyebrow.
"And the others…?"
Theo smirked.
"Blaise never cared what your blood status was – he cared that you were Slytherin, female, and attractive," he told her, and Hermione flushed. "And Tracey and Millicent are in no situation to be making any judgements about blood status. Daphne is holding out to see what else you can do, as is Draco – they're not willing to make a call about what level of power you have just based on one class, though they didn't overhear what I did. And Pansy? She's not likely to accept you anytime soon – she likes being on top, and she's not going to be keen to give that up."
"If they're not ready to make a call yet, why are you?" Hermione asked, suspicious, and Theo smirked.
"If I support you, and you turn out to be super powerful, I've established myself as a trustworthy confidant and friend from the very beginning," he told her, eyes glinting. "If you don't, I've got enough status as one of the Sacred 28 that my youthful indiscretion will be entirely forgotten, and it won't hurt me past, say, third year at the most."
Hermione laughed.
"You're the perfect Slytherin," she said aloud. "Scheming and making connections already."
"Thank you." Theo swept her a bow as he held open the door to the Great Hall. "Now… dinner, my lady?"
Hermione smirked. "Lead the way."