"Yes," said Amandine Malabul, who taught history at a very nice state school in London, speaking for herself and her life-long friend Pamela Ducharme, who taught English at the same school: "We certainly approve promoting the poor girl ahead a year. As for the consequences, she'll be no worse off. Really, she should have been promoted ahead twice by now, or taken a few days early for Reception. She won't lose any friends, for the simple reason that she has none."

Getting no response to that, she explained, "Well, she is a rather clumsy, plain, shy girl. But plenty of those find friends somehow, and very close friendships they are." Saying that, she smiled at Ms Ducharme. "But she is also a genius, and that is one thing schoolchildren cannot abide."

" Ah, mais qu'y avait-il à propos d'Esmerelda?" asked Ms Ducharme.

If you are wondering why the headmistress did not raise an eyebrow over their English instructor preferring French, it was because Pamela Ducharme had an enormous vocabulary, even in English, including all the words favoured on SATs and GCSEs; and after mastering French grammar, she considered the English equivalent to be child's play, and let the students know it. But that is another story for another time.

"Well," answered Ms Malbul, "It was a very private academy, and we both know Esmerelda Pâtafiel is a saint, which I suspect Ms Granger can't manage to pull off."

"It is one of our friends from L'Académie; she is very bright," explained Ms Ducharme. To which Ms Malabul responded, "And that's you saying that, Pamela."

"Oh, here we go again," Ms Ducharme said, "Yes, I did well, but you talk like you were the worst girl in the whole school."

"Not far from it," said Ms Malabul. "But we both eventually bloomed, and so will she. Keeping her with what she must regard as kiddies and dummies won't help there."

The frank talk was meant for little Hermione's benefit, and would be. However, Hermione was both curious, and a little sneaky. The seven-year-old had gotten a hunch her fate was being discussed when her parents came to school, and she'd managed to find a nook by the office which was in shadow, where she could eavesdrop.

Where older ears might focus on the good news that she wasn't to be bored in classes any longer, Hermione heard her most-loved teachers admit that she had no friends - none at all. And that she was clumsy and plain and shy, and even what would otherwise be a compliment was turned to something no one could abide.

Hermione went home in tears, and wouldn't tell her mother why.

She took out her four favourite dolls and arranged them on their chairs by the tea-table. Like some other girls, Hermione liked making clothes, and had her own sewing machine. She had dressed one doll in a maid's outfit, one in a scientist's lab coat, and one, who always seemed somehow aristocratic, got her most ambitious princess's dress. Snuggled in next to her was a doll dressed in a riding outfit that Hemione had bought her, since something that demanding was a bit beyond her skills. Their unblinking eyes seemed to stare back at her as she regarded them.

Was school worth it, or was anything, if your only friends were going to be dolls?

She really didn't deserve this. She was a very, very good girl. She always obeyed the rules. She never picked on anyone. She shared fairly and took turns. Neither parents nor teachers practically ever had to discipline her. It was massively, monumentally unfair.

The little girl's sadness and despair began to turn to rage. She was tempted to kick over the table and start smashing her nice things all over her tidy little room. She restrained herself with great effort.

If she wanted to be promoted, after all, throwing a tantrum was perhaps not the best way to go forward , she imagined the regally-dressed doll saying. But she couldn't imagine her correcting the part where she was plain.

There's nothing wrong with being smart, that's the whole point of school! the doll in the lab coat seemed to be saying, with her wide staring eyes magnified a little by her spectacles.

The way she's treated, who wouldn't be shy, she felt the maid was thinking.

And, Clumsy? Perhaps so, but who's ever given her a chance to learn not to be? would have added the horsewoman.

Hermione looked over the dolls she'd named after girls who wouldn't associate with her; Sarah, and Laura, and (after twin sisters who'd been particularly beastly to her) Emma and Gemma looked back at her. She took out her fairy wand. If she was going to play with her dolls, then being magical might calm her down even more; she wasn't quite sure why, but it often helped.

"You've no choice now, being friends," She declared. "The Mighty Sorceress Hermione honours you, and you will obey!" Well. At seven, that seemed rather pathetic. If the eight-year-olds learned how she was talking to their namesakes, it would be so embarrassing she'd have to leave England, never mind school. Despite herself, she willed it to work, like a sort of voodoo. When she opened her eyes, she was furious still.

Her parents felt a rumbling in the house. At first, they were only moderately alarmed. There had been, after all, a fairly large earthquake when they had gone to stay in Oban only the year before, and this might be no worse. Then they could hear their daughter screaming something upstairs.

Hermione pointed her wand at the dolls in turn. The table had already started moving as the floor shook.

"I'M NOT PLAIN! YOU'RE PLAIN!"

the walls shook a bit. The face of the doll in question seemed somehow to grow older. Strained. You couldn't see her as Sarah anymore. Perhaps Sarah's governess.

"I'M NOT CLUMSY! YOU'RE CLUMSY!"

the windows rattled in their frames. The horsewoman fell off her chair, but the others soon followed suit.

"I'M NOT SHY! YOU'RE SHY!"

Things began to fall off the shelves. The maid's eyes seemed to turn down a little.

"I'M NOT A G-G-GENIUS! YOU'RE THE GENIUS NOW, SEE HOW YOU LIKE IT!"

Nothing changed about the doll being pointed at, but by that point, Hermione wasn't paying any attention to anything but her anger.

By this point, her parents had realised it was exactly like before. They ran up the stairs and yanked open the door. Then they both hugged their daughter, and her poltergeist calmed down.

With all the chaos and anxiety, they missed Hemione's tumbled dolls making small movements to watch them, then keeping still before they could be seen in motion. And they never noticed that the teacup in front of Hermione had filled with tepid tea, nor that it had then spilt half of it on the still-trembling little table.


When she was nine, Hermione was reading about the younger years of Galahad the Ancelot du Lac, in a book by the American J. Steinbeck. Hermione was an avid fan of Arthurian literature. She knew he was normally referred to by his title of L'Ancelot to avoid confusing him with his son, also named Galahad, or with his friend Lord Galehaut. She was pleased to see the author giving him his correct names, but displeased at the memories reading the story conjured up.

She'd put the dolls all away, because the way they seemed to grow more lifelike over time scared her a bit. Occasionally, she unfolded the tea-table, sat on the floor in front of it, and put the special cup she'd always used in front of her. Sure enough, if there was still tea downstairs, some of it would fill the cup, you had to admit, magically.

Just a month ago, she'd shyly admitted to another girl that she believed in magic and ghosts, because she'd seen them. Being called "Loony" didn't suit her, so she'd never make that mistake again.

She arrived at a point in the book where several witches had imprisoned Lancelot, entirely out of spite. Their unfriendliness for absolutely no reason resonated with Hermione quite strongly.

When she had gone and the darkness closed down, the knight clawed in his bowl and gnawed his supper from the bones while he thought about the strange and frightening creatures who had made him prisoner.

He had two reasons for fear. In his long and relentless struggle with himself and with the world to become the perfect knight, few women had crossed his attention. Thus, in his ignorance he found a fear of unknown things. And second, he was a straightforward, simple man; the sword, not the mind, was the tool of his greatness. The purposes and means of necromancy, demons, and secrets he found foreign and fearful. His few failures and fewer defeats had been accomplished through enchantment and now he was taken prisoner by that same black and midnight art.

We are not all like that, Hermione thought. But it certainly made her stop and consider that being a magical girl - or, to put it crudely, a witch - had both good and bad consequences.

So even now when he was near to panic, his second mind probed his opponents, for although they were ladies and queens, they were also his enemies, and enemies must have purpose and means and direction.

As a good little girl, Hermione didn't approve of thinking like that about her fellow students, but it felt oddly appealing.

They could not hate him, he thought, for he had not injured them.

Hah! thought Hermione.

Therefore, revenge was not their end. Robbing was out of the question, for they were bloated with possessions and he had nothing but his armor and his fame.

What, then, could be their purpose? They must want something of him, something perhaps he did not know he had, a service, a secret. It was beyond him and he gave it up, but his fighting mind out of habit went on with its analysis.

If a man flinched under a certain stroke, or cut short on the near side, there was usually a reason-an old wound, or even an old sorrow. A man took the profession of arms for clear and definable reasons, but why did man or woman study the despicable arts of necromancy?

Necromancy was … raising the dead, right? Hermione was pretty sure this was a matter of superstitious religious folk hating magic. Then again, the author admitted Lancelot feared the unknown. As long as you admitted it honestly ...

Lancelot was lost again, and he reined and spurred his mind to a new course when a picture came to him, but a living picture in the round and clear and brilliant as cathedral glass. He saw a young, determined Lancelot, only then called Galahad, go sprawling to the hoof-mauled tourney ground under the blunt lance of a fourteen-year-old. Again Galahad tried, and again flew through the air. His short chin set and his lips were blue with determination. And the third time the blunt lance tore him from his saddle, and when he struck the earth a scream of pain went up his spine.

The tough chevroned dwarf, wide as a barrel, carried the boy to his mother, bubbling with pain. "The other boy was too big, my lady," the squire explained. "But he's outclassed his age and there's no holding Galahad here."

"But she's outclassed her age, and there's no holding Hermione here," she imagined a teacher saying. And the feeling of being up against impossible odds was familiar.

There was holding him easily for a long time, for he couldn't move. They put bags of sand against his back to keep him still. And as he lay wedged while his wrenched spine mended, his opponent grew treetop tall in the boy's mind. Waking and asleep, the blunt spear wiped him from his horse until he found a poultice for his pride.

Hermione was no longer just enjoying the story.

Under his left arm there was a tiny knob so small that only he knew it was there. Three turns to the right and half a turn back with the fingers of his left hand, and in mid-course he grew to a black cloud and overwhelmed the fourteen-year-old. But the secret knob could do more than that. Two turns right and two left, and he could fly and hover and dart. Sometimes in the joust he left his horse and flew ahead and struck the giant boy down-and last-a straight push in and he became invisible. He would wait anxiously to be alone in his sandbags to bring out his dream. It was odd that he had forgotten all about it when his real ability began to grow. And suddenly Lancelot, in the darkness of his prison, knew about magic and necromancy and those who practiced it. "So that's it," he thought. "Poor things-poor unhappy things."

Well, thought Hermione, so much for the Mighty Sorceress Hermione, may she rest in peace.

For old times sake, at that thought, she brought out her old dolls and her old tea set, and she left them out, though in a corner of her room. She left them there, and neither Hermione nor her parents ever mentioned the tea that sometimes disappeared when everyone was sure it had been filled all the way up and Hermione was sitting at the table upstairs, so couldn't have taken it.

And she didn't pack them away again until her sixth year, when she decided to reinvent herself.


[AN: the long passages in boldface are from the Lancelot chapter of John Steinbeck's 1959 The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights . These will be the only excerpts. However, they will be referred to in future chapters, but regarding Harry instead of Hermione. I may as well mention that Hemione's favorite teachers are borrowed from Amandine Malabul, sorcière maladroite by Jill Murphy. The Worst Witch series, books and shows and films, is very popular in France. I believe I am putting a spotlight on most of my other references - Caribou]