AN: I had trouble writing this chapter as my muse decided to desert me halfway through. - I'd like to thank my wife for helping me get it back. While it was gone, it occurred to me that Ron genuinely seems to be a nice person. But he doesn't seem to have a concept of personal space or conversational norms. We see this in canon with the way he sticks his foot in his mouth on more than a few occasions. Additionally, apart from his love of chess, he always struggles with his homework, leaving it to the last minute and getting people to help. So as someone with a bit more distance this time, and going through a period of involuntary social isolation, Hermione is more receptive to doing something with him. Then seeing his passion for chess, she decides to ask her parents if there are any resources that tie in general learning to chess. This prompted them to visit a school to ask a teacher who pointed them to the relevant resources, and then also pointed out that a child like that could also have other learning difficulties, and pointed them to those. And suddenly there's a box full of stuff and McGonagall gets a surprise. I might mention it in the next chapter if it seems to fit, but I make no promises.
Over the next week quidditch fever rose to a crescendo, crashed a couple of times, and then continued to rise towards the first game on Saturday. Harry started to get into the feel for it until Ron forgot what McGonagall had spent a few detentions at the beginning of the term drilling into him. A couple of grabbed arms later and the only time she was seen in the common room was on her way through going somewhere else. McGonagall managed to find the time to have a house meeting during the week, and people were able to bring up issues and get them resolved.
Albus sat at his desk, a 3 large piles of paperwork on one side of the desk. The Hogwarts one far larger than the other two. He held his head in his hands as he sighed. Fawkes trilled a song of commiseration, but even that couldn't lift the bone deep weariness that he felt. Apart from the Halloween feast which he was required to attend he hadn't had time to visit the great hall, or even see any of the promising students. Merlin, he only found out that something happened that required Harry to be pulled out of school for a couple of days when they came back on Sunday. What's this one? Complaint about Severus, well if he hasn't cursed anyone or assaulted them, then it's not as important as having Severus here is. Points appeal, what's this even doing on his desk, Minerva should be dealing with these, oh, she did and passed it on. She never used to do that. He was off to the ICW again at the weekend and he'd have to miss the opening game of the season. Couldn't they just give him a break?
Saturday rolled around and Hermione was sitting opposite Harry chatting and eating breakfast, "Sliver, Slice, and Dice, a home potioneers guide to ingredients and their preparations" open beside her. She noticed to people walking up behind Harry, and looked up to see who it was when the twins placed a hand on each shoulder. Harry froze, and then started shivering as the Twins said "Harry mate, we've spoken to Ron and he shouldn't cause you any more problems."
"You two are complete idiots, you came over here to tell Harry that you'd sorted out Ron, and before you even open your mouths you do exactly the same thing as Ron. ARRGH! Professor McGonagall!" Hermione exploded up and turned around, a loud cracking sound coming from the table and the twins went flying back into the wall and collapsed in a heap unseen behind her as she let out the frustrated scream. She finished turning towards the teachers table when she called for McGonagall.
McGonagall looked up at the loud Crack, then heard her name and started to hurry over, to an angry looking Hermione. Snape already up and moving at the first sign that trouble may be brewing at the Gryffindor table, his customary scowl on his face.
"15 points for assaulting a student, and a detention with me on Monday evening." Whatever he expected to happen it wasn't an angry 11 year old to round on him.
"And you, you call yourself a teacher, a professional. You should be ashamed of yourself. Your constant picking on and belittling Harry in your class, taking any opportunity to accost him out of class. Do you even know why he was out of school last week?"
"He probably needed to have his hair done." As soon as the words came out of his mouth he realised that it was the wrong thing to say as magic started to arc from Hermione grounding into the castle stones. Merlin, she must be on the level of Merlin to have a display of accidental magic like that and not collapse.
The rest of the teachers immediately started ordering the prefects to clear the Great Hall, Quirrell's eyes sparkling at the display being put off by the young girl. If he could get the stone he knew who the sacrifice for the ritual would be now.
Lost in her anger Hermione continued to advance on Snape, as she laid out in bald words everything she'd learnt about Harry's life before Hogwarts, and the entire reason why they had to leave Hogwarts last week.
Vainly, Snape fired off a couple of Stunners only to have the wild magic skewer them mid-flight. No, at this point it was either pit his reserves against hers and force her down or wait her out and deal with it when she ran out of magic. He thanked his lucky stars that the school was designed to absorb accidental magic surges like this, though it had been centuries since those requirements had been needed. As his back hit a wall, his vision narrowed down to the girls eyes as she continued to stalk towards him, hoping to see some sign of sanity in there.
Hermione was stalking towards the person who had hurt her first and best friend the most since school started, her anger piling all of the slights, knocks, flashbacks, breakdowns, and more undeservedly at his feet. It was then that a hand softly touched her shoulder.
"Hermione, he's not worth it. I don't want to lose you."
She turned her head to lash out at the person that dared to interrupt her. She found herself looking at the most glorious sight, as she saw Harry's brilliant green eyes. She reached up her hand and touched his cheek.
"You're OK." She said softly and then collapsed.
"I am, and I'm sorry for worrying you." He responded before collapsing beside her.
Snape slid down the wall, his adrenaline starting to flush out of his system making him shake. It took him 3 tries to cast a Patronus to McGonagall give her the all clear and that they needed Pomfrey. A pain in his leg made him aware of the fact that he hadn't escaped as unscathed as he thought.
Hermione awoke to the unfamiliar sensation of a hospital bed. As she went to get up Madam Pomfrey's familiar tone spoke out like a whipcrack.
"Oh no you don't young lady, you are suffering from magical exhaustion so you will be lying right there for the next couple of days until I'm happy that you're reserves are back to normal."
Laying back in the bed she asked "Can I at least borrow one of your books?"
Shaking her head, Pomfrey levitates a book over to Hermione, "Why you weren't sorted into Ravenclaw I'll never know."
A short while later Lavender came in with Parvati and, skirting the bed shooting fearful glances at Hermione, makes her way over to Madam Pomfrey. Parvati approached the bed somewhat apprehensively. As Hermione saw Lavender's hair she noticed that it had been done by hand, which was odd.
"S.. So, how are you doing?"
"Hey, I'm not going to bite." Parvati flinches at the slightly sharp tone.
"I'm doing OK, and I'm sorry. I'm still me."
"I know, but that display. Even though I'm from India where our legends of powerful magicals that could level mountains are much less recent. They're also not tainted by darkness. With Grindelwald and You-know-who both within living memory everyone associates power with them. While they know that the headmaster is up there with them, he doesn't display that power most of the time. Anyway I just wanted to see how you were doing, and let you know that people have started calling you Morgana. It looks like Lavenders done trying to let you have Chirpy. Did you know that he's an absolute terror when you're not around, we couldn't practice our charms or transfiguration homework yesterday, and I think the last straw for Lav was when he ate the charm she was using to do her hair. You know she's been using that religiously since she learnt how. Anyway, got to go."
This signified the worst four weeks of her life as she found out that there was something worse than being shunned for her intelligence. Being feared for her power. It attracted people she didn't really want to know, and the people she liked but didn't know well shied away. Harry was the only one that was unchanged, but even he was distant as he recovered from the trauma of the previous few weeks and the flashback that the twins inadvertently caused. For the first week she took a perverse pleasure in seeing Professor Snape flinch, and he seemed to be less antagonistic towards Harry, but that wore thin very quickly. The only teacher that seemed to be unaffected was Flitwick. So she did what she'd always done before and buried herself in her first friends books.
It was the middle of December when Hermione stalked from the great hall after lunch, her nose in one of her schoolbooks, as she tried to distract herself from her thoughts. It was getting intolerable, everyone was looking at her in fear, envy, or appraisingly. She'd even had the blond ferret trying to cosy up to her and gain favour even while calling her a mudblood. She stomped up the main staircase, never even noticing that every one was where she needed it. That wasn't the worst bit, no the worst bit was the whispers that stopped just as she came within earshot, it was worse than primary school. A startled yelp accompanied her walking through the portrait hole without stopping. At least there she knew what to expect. She sat down in her favourite spot and started taking notes. At least things in the Gryffindor dorm were starting to get back to normal.
She was brought out of her thoughts when the human pig's shadow fell across her work.
Ron's voice finishes the distraction "That was cool, how did you do that?"
"Huh?"
"Your parchment, quill and ink came downstairs right to where you needed it. It was so cool."
Hermione looked down at her hand and tried to remember getting her stuff out.
"So it did." She replies weakly.
"Wandless magic is supposed to be really hard, but you just did it. What's your secret, how are you cheating? I think it would be really cool to be able to do magic like that, classwork would be a breeze."
She looked at him with a bemused expression as he continued.
"I mean, I don't get why we have to do so much homework. Let's play a game of chess, you can be white."
It dawned on her that he probably wasn't actually deliberately rude, he just wasn't that intelligent, and was only really good at chess. Because of that his only way of being friendly was to play chess with people and talk about his favourite sport. Coming to a decision she put her book down.
"Sure, I've not played chess this way before, so bear with me."
Over the next couple of games she came to the conclusion that while he was better than her, he was only good for a casual player. The few times she'd played her uncle, she'd been much more badly outmatched. She smirked to herself as she suddenly thought of how she could leverage his obsession to improve his ability to learn and scribbled a note on her parchment.
She was rescued from her fifth game when his brothers came over and firmly informed him that she was looking a bit chess'ed out. They then sat down on either side of her and started to play twin tennis.
"Hermione dear,"
"We would like to apologise for our actions at breakfast last week."
"It didn't occur to us that we would be doing the same thing we'd warned Ron away from."
"We'd have apologised to Harry, but he"
"she"
"is always up in the girls dorm."
"So in addition to accepting our apology."
"We would be grateful if you would pass our apologies on to Harry too."
Hermione laughed as their expressions became more and more over the top morose as they kept speaking.
"Sure you're forgiven. I'm sorry that I blew up, it was uncalled for. It's just that with everything that happened the week before it was the last straw."
"No problems, it happens to all magical children occasionally, though from what we understand our magical breakdowns aren't usually as."
"I think what my twin is trying to say, is that we were told that you put on quite a lightshow."
"It was just unlucky that you had yours in the great hall, most people end up having it in the common room or a classroom."
"Very occasionally the library, we think that's why Pince is so strict."
She laughed again, a clear laugh full of amusement.
That seemed to signal the end of the problems in Gryffindor, and the effects spread through the rest of the school over the next few weeks.
The only noteworthy occurrence before the Christmas break was McGonagall receiving a large cardboard box full of muggle books, teaching aids for children with developmental difficulaties such as Dyslexia and Dyspraxia, as well as a variety of tools such as pen grips, a phonetic dictionary, books on different ways to record thoughts such as mind mapping, and more. Sitting face down at the bottom was a letter written on parchment.
Deputy Headmistress McGonagall
We recently received a note from Hermione asking for some books on chess including ones that linked chess to other subjects as a way of learning. She explained that she thought that one of her classmates may have difficulty learning normally, so she wanted to give him the books. We figured that where there's one there's likely to be more and as he wasn't getting any special help, maybe it was a problem that hadn't been identified in the magical world. Which given that we have only been recognising and finding ways to work with it since the 70's isn't that surprising.
In this box you should find some teaching resources, we've only included one of each device, though there are two copies of each book. Before you discard the idea out of hand, we were told that the books on how children learn and identifying special needs were required reading.
Kind regards
Daniel and Emma Granger
P.S. Don't worry about the costs. We're firmly part of the magical world now regardless of how we might have wanted it to be 6 months ago. So we've decided that the least we can do is make you aware of things that have been developed in the muggle world that may not have been identified in the much smaller community of the magical world.
Putting a couple of books to one side, she placed the rest back into the box and levitated it over to Madam Pince along with the letter. Who grumbled about muggle books, all while starting to sort through them interestedly. McGonagall almost laughed at that, no matter her distain for the muggle world, which given that she might be older than Dumbledore is probably understandable, her love of books trumps all.
"Irma, only one copy of those is for the library, I'm sure that you can rebind them if the covers are too out of place.", Irma's face brightens at the reminder that rebinding books is part of her duties in the library.
The arrival of the box at the teachers table distracted from the arrival of a much smaller box that arrived at the Gryffindor table.
"What's that?" Harry asked as he saw Hermione open the box.
"It's a thank you present for Ron, as he played a few games of chess with me as his way of cheering me up. This book is his Christmas present." She held up a book titled 'Games of the Masters, the greatest chess games of the 20th century', the rest I think will help him with learning. With that she got up and went over to Ron.
"Ron. Eww, swallow before you try to talk."
"S'rry" he swallows.
"Thank you for playing chess with me the other day. It was very thoughtful of you. Anyway, it got me thinking and I thought you might like these." She handed over the box.
He was about to object when he saw the word chess at the top of the box "Cor thanks, this is brilliant."
All thought of food was forgotten as he pulled out a muggle chess set and books with titles like 'The chess mysteries of the Arabian knights', 'Science, math, checkmate', 'Chess mysteries of sherlock Holmes', and 'Mathematics and chess', along with a couple of books for intermediate and advanced chess players.
That evening the twins walked into the common room after the first years initial curfew, saw Ron reading a book and talking to his chess set before walking out and in again a couple of times.