Story Title/Link: What goes around
School and Theme: Hogwarts: King's Cross
Main Prompt: Muggle playground
Additional Prompts: Superior, Segregation
Year: Four
Wordcount: 1806
a/n I've interpreted the theme of "discovering magic" by writing about Hermione's childhood accidental magic. This is my own headcanon, and not based on any of the breadcrumbs in the books.
It all started with a playground.
Jean can still see it, now, in her mind's eye. The roundabout, listing brokenly off its axis. The little blond boy, flung metres away onto hard asphalt, his knee oozing blood and his eyes oozing tears.
He should have known better than to pick on her daughter. What goes around, comes around.
…...
Jean had always had a pretty high opinion of her own superiority. She didn't mean to be arrogant, or to make any kind of moral judgement of her acquaintances and neighbours. It was just a fact–she was running a dental surgery by the age of thirty, and that's not something everyone manages.
It wasn't just the dental surgery, either. She had a picture perfect life, with a respectable husband and precocious child. On the rare occasions that something would crop up and threaten to interfere with this blessed existence, she would apply her superior skills of logical thinking and find a way to outwit the problem.
She was well aware that both her income and her IQ placed her in a rather special percentile, and she wasn't about to hide it. She wasn't about to hide Hermione's promising intelligence either, but she did try not to show off about it too much. She supposed that it wasn't necessarily Mrs Johnson's fault that her child wasn't reading novels by the age of six.
Try as she might, though, Mrs Johnson never warmed to her much, and little Davey Johnson certainly didn't warm to Hermione. The Jones family weren't much better, either, and nor were the Coopers or the Garretts or the Thompsons.
It was just as well Hermione had inherited Jean's self-confidence and self-sufficiency, really. Because it appeared that she might also have inherited her inability to make friends.
…...
They kept trying, without much success. They went to the playground, every afternoon, come rain or shine. And every afternoon, they attempted to make conversation.
But Mrs Garrett didn't want to talk about the children's latest project for Science class. Dr Thompson wasn't interested in musing on whether her son would follow her into the medical profession. And as for little Davey Johnson, he continued to be an absolute pest.
He teased Hermione. Jean knew it, and she mentioned it to Mrs Johnson approximately three times a week, but it continued all the same. Jean could see Hermione growing upset, increasingly angry, ever more distressed. But they persevered and kept going to the playground, because Granger women were not quitters.
"Why doesn't he like me?" Hermione asked her mother for perhaps the hundredth time.
"He's just jealous," Jean offered, that age-old lie. "He's just jealous because you're such a clever girl. He's jealous that you're better than him at school."
Alas, Hermione was rather bright for her age. She'd already learnt enough about human society to have worked out, at the tender age of eight, that her mother was stretching the truth.
"I don't think he cares about school," she said thoughtfully, but all the same the matter was dropped.
…...
They kept going to the playground. Hermione's hurt grew deeper, Jean's rage grew stronger. Mrs Johnson's apathy remained absolutely stable.
Until one day, it didn't.
Jean couldn't have said how it happened. One moment she was making awkward small talk with Dr Thompson–the only other mother who really spoke to her out of choice–and the next the air was filled with screams.
She looked up, fearing the worst. Had the children's bullying taken a physical turn?
She sighed in relief when she realised Hermione was fine. But she regretted that, moments later, when she saw little Davey Johnson lying tumbled on the ground and his mother striding forward in a state of high dudgeon.
Jean couldn't work out what had happened. Last thing she knew, Hermione and Davey were both on the roundabout. Hermione was still standing next to it, and the ancient piece of playground furniture in question was listing dependably to the side, as ever.
But Davey was several metres away, and she couldn't see how he could have got there.
"Your Hermione pushed him," Mrs Johnson claimed.
Jean was less than convinced. "How could she have? She's an eight year old girl!"
"She pushed him. She's had it in for him for years, that girl!"
"She's nowhere near him. How could she have pushed him all that way?" Jean asked in some exasperation. This was why she was proud to be more logical than your average mother–she would never go around suggesting this could be Hermione's fault when it was blatantly a physical impossibility.
No one ever did answer her question. But not even Dr Thompson made any attempt to defend her.
…...
"I didn't do it," Hermione was still bleating the next day. She was an anxious child, and this unfair accusation was the last thing she needed, Jean felt.
"Of course you didn't, Hermione. It's absurd. You were nowhere near the boy. They're foolish to even suggest it."
"Then how did it happen?" Hermione wondered aloud. "I was angry with him, and then he fell. Do you think maybe... maybe I did do it?"
"What a ridiculous idea. It's just luck, dear. He's always been horrible to you, and it serves him right. What goes around, comes around."
…...
The other neighbourhood mothers did not see it like that. In the weeks that followed, even the Thompsons stopped welcoming them to the playground. At one point, Mrs Garrett and Amelia actually crossed the street when they saw Jean approaching outside the newsagent.
It was a difficult time for Jean. For thirty-four years, she had been proud to say that she was an exceptional woman. But now she was being ostracised–and for what? Because her daughter had cross words with a boy who then fell over?
It was foolish beyond belief. It made no sense. And Jean really hated things that didn't make sense.
She began to wonder whether this was partly her fault. Had her neighbours felt offended by her contentment with her own status and achievements? Perhaps she should put more effort into being warm and likeable.
She really tried, in the weeks that followed that idea, to reach out with more kindness. She invited the Coopers over for supper, and kept smiling inanely when they rebuffed her with scarcely an attempt at politeness. She offered to have Flora Jones over for tea, and even took a home-baked pie round to the Johnsons.
It didn't work. If anything, she seemed to be making the situation worse, and that made no sense to her at all. It reached the point where no one would speak to them on their daily visits to the playground. There was even a sort of invisible barrier between Jean and Hermione and the rest of the occupants of the playground. All the other children would enjoy the swings and the see-saw, and Hermione was left with that sad, listing roundabout.
Jean was angry to see her daughter treated like that. She didn't deserve to be cast out because of a silly accident.
Then came the day when she realised it was no accident.
…...
The sun was shining. Jean wondered about offering to buy ice creams for the children, but she supposed that she would be snubbed. Hermione was sitting listlessly on the roundabout, not even pretending that she wanted to take a spin.
Then James Thompson walked past, making a beeline for the sandpit.
"James!" Hermione jumped to her feet at the sight of him. "James, d'you want to play?"
He averted his eyes and kept walking. Jean looked up and saw that Dr Thompson wasn't looking at her, either.
"James, please!" Hermione reached out to tug his sleeve. "Please come and play on the roundabout. We used to have fun playing, didn't we?"
"I can't play with you."
"Why not?"
"I can't play with you."
"Just tell me why!" Hermione exploded, rage blooming in her voice, light blooming in her eyes.
And then James flew into the seesaw–actually flew–and slid gracelessly to the ground, knocked out cold by the impact.
…...
Jean and Hermione stayed until the ambulance came for him. Hermione wouldn't leave until she'd heard the paramedics say that he'd be OK, that her inexplicable outburst hadn't caused any lasting damage.
It had caused lasting damage, of course. It had damaged their standing in the neighbourhood irreparably, damaged friendships the two of them had spent years failing to shore up.
And more than anything else, it had ruined Jean's belief in her own superiority.
How had a daughter of hers caused an accident like that? It wasn't just a question of how she had become so angry–Jean could well understand her rage, given the circumstances. It was more a question of how she had actually been capable of causing the accident. How does a child make another child fly?
It defied logic. That was the problem. It defied logic, and Jean's logic was her pride and joy.
…...
Hermione continued to defy logic in the years that followed. Thankfully, physical injuries were not a feature of future incidents. They took to avoiding the park, and their neighbours, and almost every other form of social interaction. But that was fine. They had books and were a happy family of three.
The other incidents were smaller, more subtle, but confusing nonetheless. Hermione found her father's missing spectacles in the back garden and said she knew they were there because a cat showed her the way. The following year, she accidentally glued her uncle's mouth shut when he made a racist remark at Christmas dinner.
Jean couldn't explain any of it, and that worried her.
…...
It all makes sense, now.
That's not the reaction Jean would ever have expected to have on finding an elderly woman in a robe sitting in her front room and claiming that her daughter was a witch.
But it makes perfect sense. No wonder her daughter can defy the laws of nature. No wonder she can bend gravity to see that playground bullies get their comeuppance.
"It's important that you take your responsibilities as a witch seriously," the woman who introduced herself as Professor McGonagall is saying now. "You may be tempted to think yourself superior to non-magical folk, but that is not our way at Hogwarts. We show respect to all people."
"You don't have to worry about that," Hermione pipes up earnestly. "I know what it's like to have other people look down on me. I wouldn't do that to anyone."
That, Jean thinks, makes the most sense of all. What goes around, comes around.
a/n Thanks for reading!