Disclaimer: I own neither Harry Potter nor Matilda which belong to J.K. Rowling and Rohl Dahl respectively. Hope you enjoy and please review, they make my day :-)
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Hermione Granger knew many things. She knew 154 capitals of the world (there was a competition) and which countries they were in. She knew 294 types of dinosaurs in alphabetical order (she got bored) beginning with Aardonyx and ending with Zuniceratops. She knew she was smart. She knew that she was bullied. She knew that she was different.
It wasn't just that she was smarter than other kids, or the fact that she'd read through all the books in her local library by age seven, including the stupid ones like the Rainbow Fairy books. It wasn't the fact that by age 5 she was doing science experiments on her own with actual chemicals, or the fact that they worked. It was the fact that strange things kept happening to her.
Of course, most of these strange things could be explained. The girl who picked on her in preschool could have tripped into the pond. The wind could have shaken her books out of the tree in second year. That awful bright orange jumper that clashed with her hair could have been stained brown by the other things in the wash. But then, there were a few things that couldn't quite be explained. There had definitely been a fence between her and Fuzzball's (their neighbours cat) kittens, but somehow one of them had appeared on the other side. The pots of glue on the shelf above Anita's head when she called Hermione beaver teeth had never fallen down before, and Miss Philips had been so sure she'd put the lids on properly.
None of these things were definitely Hermione of course, but they undeniably kept happening around her. So Hermione knew she was different. And this, was why, when she was given Matilda by Rohl Dahl for her ninth birthday, the book became her favourite in the space of exactly three hours and 24 minutes (the time it took her to read it). Because here, finally, was someone like her. Someone smart. Someone picked on. Someone who could do things.
Not that Hermione was going to just assume anything. There was no proof that she was like Matilda. There was no proof that it had been her who did any of those things. And Hermione wasn't going to just assume anything. She had to prove it.
She started, as Matilda had, by trying to push over a cup. She used a plastic cup of course, no point in breaking anything, and she weighed it down with rubbers, to simulate the weight of water without the mopping up. Then she sat on her bed, and stared at the cup on the floor across the room. And stared. And stared. She'd never tried to do anything on purpose before, and for a long time, nothing happened. But Hermione didn't give up. Hermione never gave up. And two days later, the cup tipped over.
Hermione leapt to her feet in excitement, and ran across the room. The rubbers had all spilled out the side of the cup, and she knew it hadn't fallen over by accident. She'd made sure it couldn't by placing it on a hard-back book. The likelihood of it falling over by accident were miniscule. A day later, she did it again. Three hours after that, she did it again. A week later, she could do it on command.
Then, as Matilda had, she moved on to controlling a hovering piece of chalk. Over the next two months, Matilda became her most precious textbook. She learned, by trial and error, how to do every single thing that Matilda did with the book. But then, she ran out of things to learn. She'd done everything Matilda had done in the book. So she started adapting. By her eleventh birthday, Hermione could make pencils write on their own, and could lock and unlock doors without even touching the lock. She could make books come towards her from across the room, and for a brief period, she could make it hover in front of her and turn it's own pages. The last tended to make her very tired though, and she had to concentrate too hard on hovering the book to actually enjoy reading.
So when Professor McGonagall knocked on the door of the Granger residence on the 19th September 1980, the interview didn't go quite how she expected. Sure the door was opened by a parent as normal. She got the normal excited parent looks when she explained that she came as a representative of a special school, and she was invited inside. But then, when she sat down the parents and the girl and said the usual fateful words 'you're a witch', the girl did not laugh, look relieved or look offended, or any of the usual reactions. Instead, Hermione Granger just shrugged.
"I know. Are you a witch too?"
McGonagall blinked. That was not a normal reaction. "You do?"
"Yes of course. Are you a witch too?"
McGonagall pulled herself together "Yes I am. I am one of the teachers at Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry, one of your future teachers if you choose to take up your place there."
Hermione turned to her parents "Can I go?"
Here, McGonagall was relieved to find that Hermione's parents were exhibiting the usual shocked and disbelieving parents symptoms, and she could get the discussion back to more familiar grounds.
She never did understand why, in Hermione's first year, when asked how she picked up intricate transfiguration so quickly, Hermione just smiled and said that Matilda was a very good teacher.