Summer Camp, Week 2

Painting: This is gonna get messy. Write about someone trying to break into the world of the arts (i.e art, performing arts).

Buzzwords: Theatre, Dance, Drama, Music

Word count: 1667

Betaed by Alex, Hailey, Crissie and Viola. Thank you so much!

"All the world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed." – Seán O'Casey

OoO

The last thing someone would ever expect Hermione Granger to answer to the question "what do you want to be when you grow up?" was an actress. Musical Theatre actress to be exact. No one could ever guess that it had been her ardent passion ever since she was eight and she'd seen Phantom of the Opera at the Her Majesty's Theatre with her parents. It had been the awakening of a wish and a desire that would last for a lifetime.

Hermione had always had a nice singing voice, she'd noticed in Music Class in school, but she never paid much attention to it. She wanted to do well in her studies and perhaps one day be as successful as her parents, an accomplished dentist. But then, that night, she'd seen Sarah Brightman sing so beautifully 'Phantom of the Opera' and such a technique that she'd fallen in love. And most importantly, singing wasn't easy. It wasn't a fluke. It was something you needed to perfect and acting was as well. Singing and acting at the same time? It was pure talent and took hours and hours of practice.

And practice she did. Her dream was to make it into the world of Musical Theatre and one day to be cast as Christine. That was when she'd know she'd made it in the art. For the following three years, she took classes and practiced every single day while at the same time keeping up with her studies. Hermione knew her parents were overjoyed that she'd found something she liked to do and something she wanted to do when she grew up. An answer that wasn't the standardised: dentist.

In the group of theatre kids in her neighbourhood, she found friends. They were all misfits like her, their peers disliking them for their geekness and fangirling over a musical or another. They took her love of books in their stride. She loved to hang out with them.

Then Professor McGonagall had come and told her she was a witch. For a moment she'd considered refusing, if she didn't work hard enough she'd never be able to sing the final notes on the 'Phantom of the Opera' when she grew up. Then her parents had helped her realise that she'd give up a part of who she was. Strange things had happened around her all the time, and sometimes on stage too. Hermione knew that she had to learn to control them. She couldn't afford to have something happening during a performance.

Hermione had accepted, but had asked the professor if it would be possible for her to continue her studies in theatre and music and while she'd been surprised, the professor had accepted, telling her that Hogwarts did in fact have a Choir and it was led by a person who had studied both theatre and music.

There, Hermione had looked disbelievingly at the professor. It sounded too convenient. However, Professor McGonagall had told her that while it was indeed a coincidence, it was true. The Music Professor was a squib who had chosen the world of arts to escape from his lack of magic. He had agreed to conduct the choir at Hogwarts because he'd always wanted to see the magical castle. And also he was good friends with the Charms Master, Filius Flitwick.

Hermione had accepted. She was to take private lessons with Professor Arnold Stritten every week once she went to Hogwarts. She'd been both disappointed and relieved that she couldn't start right away. Hermione needed the time to tell her friends that she was going away to a boarding school. She was going to make her parents give them letters from her and to lie and say that her new school had a no phone policy.

At Hogwarts, life had been lonely in the beginning, before Halloween. She was back to being the know-it-all that no one liked. Well, almost no one. The teachers always smiled at her and Professor Stritten had become more of her mentor. He'd said that in time, she would definitely be Christine.

Professor Snape had been a mystery for her, one that she had decided to unravel. Because of her many acting years, she could see beyond the facade he showed, and she'd decided she wanted to know the man better. Why was he acting the way he did if he didn't like it?

Why was he teaching when she could see clearly he disliked it?

At the same time, she'd seen through Quirrel's act. Hermione had realised that Snape had done so too, and her respect for the man had grown.

However, not to let Quirrel know she was onto him, she'd had to set Snape's robes on fire. Not her finest moment, but she had gone afterwards to pay him.

Hermione had knocked at the door, slightly weary of the response she'd get. However, it was then or never. She couldn't go back. A short and curt 'Enter,' and she opened the door. Professor Snape had been surprised to see her.

"Miss Granger? Whatever do I owe the pleasure for?"

She'd come into the room and raised her left hand in the air. In her fist she was holding a sack with galleons for his robes.

"I take acting classes." She'd blurted out.

His eyebrows had narrowed. "I am aware of that, yes."

"Sir, I know you're not really this mean." She'd started her speech, coming closer to his desk. Before he could stop her, she'd continued. "I can tell when someone is acting or not. Or when someone is lying. I also know what you actually meant when you asked Harry that first question in class. I also know you were trying to save him and that Quirrel was cursing the broom."

"Indeed?" was all he had said, but she'd seen the relief in his eyes that someone believed in him.

"Indeed," she'd answered with a smile. "I, however, had set you on fire, so he wouldn't realise I suspect him. I brought here the money for your robes, Sir. And I am sorry, but I had to do it."

She'd put the money on the desk and waited. He'd stood up and took the sack and put it back in her hands. "I can pay for my own robes, keep it girl."

That had been a start of a beautiful friendship, so to say, if nothing but a very unusual one. Severus Snape was a complicated man and a very reserved person. But he acknowledged that he couldn't fool her, and she very well was learning to be a better actress than even himself.

They'd bonded over her third year, although he'd made it clear he disapproved of her overexerting herself with the time-turner.

In time, she'd learnt how to sing the parts of Christine, and she'd also been delighted that the musical continued to have success. The Wizarding World was so complicated and stuck in the eighteen century. Hermione planned to take her grades and do her best to study, but she didn't want to work at the Ministry as everyone else assumed, not for the first part of her life. She wanted the West End.

It was a dream she'd never given up. Not when she'd learnt from Severus Snape that he'd been forced to kill both Arnold Stritten and Charity Burbage. She'd cried herself to sleep and had promised her first time making it big would be dedicated to Professor Stritten. She hadn't given up when she'd had to convince her parents to go to a trip to the North Pole and stay in their old research station—before they had become dentists—for the foreseeable future, and she hadn't given up when she'd used the galleons she'd saved to buy her friends an around-the-world trip, so they would leave the country for several months.

She'd sung around and read lines from the scripts she'd taken with her while Harry and Ron slept. Hermione always kept alive the hope that they would win, and one day, she'd be Christine.

And now, well now, her dream had almost come true. Indeed, it had come to everyone as a surprise when Hermione had decided to go to the London School of Arts instead of any Mastery or Apprenticeship. Even Harry and Ron had been surprised. Her wanting to become an actress and to make it big on the stage was a carefully kept secret in a frame of four people: Minerva McGonagall, Arnold Stritten, Severus Snape and Albus Dumbledore. And two of them had died. And yet, Harry and Ron had accepted it with open arms. They had been miffed, but she'd explained her being able to act had become a sort of necessary secret after she'd realised Quirrell was up to no good. And afterwards, she'd just hoped they would understand.

While Hermione doubted that the boys would have understood then, the Harry and Ron she now called her best friends, understood. They had grown up.

They'd supported her throughout her uni years and now they were there. In the audience. She'd been understudy for Christine for the past two years. Tonight was her first though, where she'd actually play the role.

Hermione couldn't believe she was there. All her hard work, all the years practicing, all for one night and for all that followed. Phantom of the Opera was her favourite musical of all times and Christine was the it role. She knew she still had a lot of work to do to maintain her place on the West End, but for once, tonight, she'd just feel the music while singing the lyrics. It was the point of no return.

OoO

"I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being." ― Oscar Wilde