The Exploding Glass

Hermione Granger had always wanted to be normal. She had always wanted to fit in, but something about her had always been undeniably different. And you couldn't exactly say that she didn't have her quirks.

The way she looked was relatively normal - well, if you asked her she would say that she was relatively ugly, as she thought. She was slightly shorter than average height, and she had two overly large front teeth, which she hated. Her long brown hair, which she so yearned to be straight, was tremendously bushy, and when she tried to flatten it out, it only seemed to get all the more wild.

Mr. and Mrs. Granger were loving, caring, attentive parents, and as Hermione reasoned, lucky, for they were both perfectly normal. Her parents were dentists, a job she considered rather boring.

Now, she did have her talent - her studies. She passed everything with flying colors, was the smartest in her grade, and in her class was seen as a know-it-all.

As you can imagine, because she was a know-it-all, she didn't have too many friends. But they had their reasons for avoiding her. She was always correcting and criticizing people. She held her head high and always seemed rather pompous. She took learning and studying to the extreme. But it wasn't only that.

Strange things happened when she was around, things that couldn't be explained. When she was angry, or upset, she caused weird occurrences. For example, in first grade, when Billy Jenkins had pushed her down on the playground, she had glared at him as hard as she could, and suddenly, as if someone had given him an invisible push, he fell down too. After scrambling up, he had looked at her oddly and run away.

And then in third grade, Tina Nettles had made fun of her bushy hair and had called her bucktoothed. In the middle of her laughing, Tina had put a hand to her own throat and opened and closed her mouth, almost as if she had lost her ability to speak. It apparently regained in a few minutes, after which Tina had presumed to call her an evil witch.

And so Hermione had been dubbed "the freak", the person to avoid and make fun of, and though Hermione always tried to act as if she didn't care that she was strange, and that it didn't hurt her that she had no friends, the comments always managed to wound her in some way.

It was one particular day that something unusually strange happened in Hermione Granger's fifth grade class.

The day itself was completely normal. It was warm outside, with light filtering through the windows, making the classroom uncomfortably stuffy. The only person who wasn't in the least bit of discomfort was the one ironically sitting farthest away from the windows and any chance of a breeze, in the middle of the first row - Hermione Granger herself.

"This is the equation: 54 + x = 75," the math teacher said. "Can anyone tell me what we must do to find the value of x? Anyone at all?" She said this as if she honestly believed someone other than Hermione, who was fervently waving her arm in the air, would raise their hand.

The math teacher's name was Miss Benson. She was a woman in her early thirties with bright, red, frizzy hair and glasses. She was a kind woman overall, and she always tried to give the other students a chance to answer the question before picking Hermione. The students, either asleep, in the process of falling asleep, or utterly bored, didn't take it.

Miss Benson sighed, not so much from annoyance as from disappointment.

"Hermione, perhaps you have an answer?"

"Of course she does," Sierra Windsor, the prettiest girl in the class, remarked lazily, loud enough for everyone to hear and for Hermione's cheeks to turn a light shade of pink.

Taking a deep breath, Hermione began talking as if she hadn't heard the comment.

"Well, to solve the equation 54 + x = 75, you would subtract 54 from both sides, therefore isolating the variable and making x equal to 21. If you wanted to further check your work, you would plug in 21 instead of x in the equation, only to find that 54 + 21 does indeed equal 75." Hermione said this all in a clear, loud, confident voice, but she failed to keep the bit of unhappiness out of it.

"Yes, Hermione. That is correct. X = 21. Now, next question…"

The next hour continued much in this fashion. It was at the very end that it happened.

"Alright, class, it will be time for lunch in just a few minutes, and I want to water the class plant now before I forget." As well as being their math teacher, Miss Benson was also their science teacher, and their class plant was part of a lab they were working on. Each day a different student watered it. "Sierra, I believe it is your turn."

Sierra nodded in a way that showed that she had absolute no wish to do it. Getting up slowly, she walked to the back of the room with the glass she had just been handed and filled it with water. She then turned and made her way to the front of class where the plant stood, aware that she was moving at an excruciatingly slow pace. Just as she passed by Hermione's desk, however, she made as if to stumble, and somehow managed to spill the water all over Hermione.

Hermione let out a small shriek as she was drenched, and then felt anger course through her. She was sure Sierra had spilt it on purpose. She glared at Sierra, waiting for the teacher to punish her somehow.

But Miss Benson only slightly frowned. "Do be more careful next time, Sierra. Hermione, you can get cleaned up at lunch."

That made Hermione even more indignant. "She did it on purpose!" she said in a high-pitched and yet angry voice.

"Nonsense," Miss Benson said, waving her hand as if to dismiss the idea. "Did you do it on purpose, Sierra?"

"Not at all, Miss Benson," she replied overly sweetly.

The whole class laughed. Even they knew Sierra had done it on purpose.

Hermione felt anger erupt inside her, past her usual indignation or hurt. She was done with letting them make fun of her, run all over her, laugh at her.

She felt the anger, and she channeled it all to one place. To which place she wasn't sure, but she could feel it all there. And then, somehow, in a way that was beyond her, she let it loose.

The glass held in Sierra's hand exploded. Shards went flying everywhere - well, to be more exact, they went flying toward Sierra. Hermione remained unscathed.

Sierra screamed. As she finally stopped moving, afraid to step on the shattered glass that surrounded her on the floor, Hermione saw how Sierra had been hurt. She had a few on her arms, and several more on her hands. She had tears streaming down her cheeks.

Hermione was in shock. She wasn't sure how, but she knew whatever had happened was entirely her own fault and doing. She started shaking.

Miss Benson meanwhile was upset. "Oh my," she said. "Oh my, oh my, oh my." She took a deep breath.

"Alright, Sierra, try to get out with as little contact with the floor as possible. Hermione, are you hurt?" She didn't pause for an answer. "Both of you, go to the nurse, and during lunch I'll have the janitor clean up the glass on the floor."

Sierra scowled. "It was her," she said, pointing at Hermione. "I don't know how she did it, but it was her!"

"Now, now," Miss Benson started, clearly unsure of what to say.

Hermione looked around the scared faces of the students. Just like her, just like Sierra, they knew she had done it.

"And," Sierra added, taking a deep breath, "you're a horrible witch, and you'll never have any friends!"

"Now, Sierra, a-apologize immediately…" Miss Benson trailed off.

Hermione felt tears pinprick her eyes. And at that moment she was sure that whatever pain Sierra was feeling from her cuts, it was nothing like the pain Hermione felt at being called a witch.

That night at dinner with her parents, Hermione was near hysterical.

"I did it! I swear I did it!"

"Darling, you couldn't have done it. How could you have broken the glass that Sierra was holding?" Mrs. Granger comforted her daughter.

"But I'm sure -"

"Dear, it was an accident. How could you have broken it?"

"Magic." The word had come out of Hermione's mouth before she had realized what she was saying, but now that she had said it, it felt right. It felt like the answer to everything that had been happening to her ever since she was a child.

Her father started laughing. "Exactly. The only way you could have broken that glass was with magic, and since we know that's impossible, you didn't break it. There, matter closed."

Hermione sighed. It was obvious her parents weren't going to believe her. But it didn't matter, because it was her fellow students that believed she was at fault for the exploding glass. Sure, they had already been making fun of her, but now she had a feeling it would get much, much worse.

That was because before, Sierra had simply made fun of Hermione because everyone else did. But now she had a personal grudge that she was going to enforce, and no one willingly went against Sierra Windsor.

God, my life is going to be miserable, Hermione thought unhappily.