Year One Chapter One
Summer 1991
"And what about you, Hermy?" a sneering voice called from behind me. I turned around and faced the speaker.
Her name was Isabelle and she hated me. The two other girls standing near her-Anna and Katherine-hated me too, but they rarely spoke. They always seemed content to let Isabelle do the torturing. I clutched my book tighter to my chest and lifted my nose at them.
"How many times have I told you not to call me that?" I asked them, though I knew it would make no difference. They despised my existence and they made that known every day of my life.
"I don't care, Hermy," Isabelle said, smiling smugly and then giggling along with her two stupid friends. "I'll call you whatever the hell I want!"
I couldn't help myself-I gasped at her curse word. "Language!" I admonished, but it only made them laugh harder. I started to turn away but Isabelle's voice drew me back. I knew I should just walk away but I for some reason I couldn't. I never could when other children made fun of me. I always had to stand there and take it. I thought it made me a stronger a person, but I think it just made me more brittle when the other shoe did eventually drop.
"I'll curse as bloody much as I want to," Isabelle said, goading me further. "And you can't do a thing to stop me."
"Your parents would be ashamed of you," I retorted, hoping the fear of authority would work on her, as it always did with me.
"Why do you always go after the ruddy parents!" she exclaimed. She stared coldly at me for a moment. "And you didn't answer my question."
I huffed and shuffled on my feet, rearranging the thick book in my arms a little. All I wanted to do was go home and start off the summer holiday by sitting in my favorite chair in our little library and reading it.
"Well, what is it then?" I asked.
"She asked you what you were doing for the holiday, dumbarse," Katherine spoke up, in a rare fit of vocalization. Of course it happened to be one of the worst insults to me at the time, because I considered myself anything but dumb. Those stupid bints were the dumb ones!
"That's none of your business, thank you very much!" I responded, loudly, as my anger was finally overcoming my rationality. "And who are you calling dumb? Didn't you score the lowest on the last few tests?"
It wasn't a good thing so say, I know, but I couldn't help myself. These spoiled girls with their perfect shiny hair and beautiful smiles and their parents wrapped around their fingers almost always managed to get the best of bushy-haired, bucktooth, bookish Hermione Granger. I never used to think of myself in those terms, but years of constant goading through primary school were not conducive to a good self-image.
Katherine grew red in the face and opened her mouth to say something else, but Isabelle cut her off. "At least she has friends, Hermy. Unlike you-unless you count your books."
I clenched my teeth against the profanity that wanted to escape. I would not give them the satisfaction. But they'd finally gone too far. I knew that I had no friends; as a matter of fact, I had resigned myself to a spinster fate at the ripe old age of seven, when I knew I had to stop pretending the fairy tales were real and that Prince Charming would never ride in on his white horse.
All I wanted to do was knock her down, put her skinny little arse on the pavement and then walk away as if nothing had happened, but I wasn't a very physical person. For an eleven-year-old girl I was actually rather small, and puberty had just, just barely grazed its fingertips across my body.
Then it happened: something at least. It had happened several times before, all when I was under duress like now, but I never had an explanation for it. It was like there was a blank moment in my memory, when something unbelievable or unexplainable or downright magical would occur. This time, it backfired a little, though. I knocked Isabelle back a step without moving a muscle, but whatever force pushed her back recoiled back at me and I was the one on her arse. The bruise there would gloat for the next several days, I was sure.
Their nonplussed looks soon turned to raucous peals of laughter, and eventually they turned away, leaving little old me bum-rushed on the pavement by the front of our school.
"Have a horrible summer, Hermy!" Isabelle called over her shoulder, without looking back.
"We won't be looking forward to seeing you next year!" Katherine called out. She did look back, and the look she gave me could have killed.
Speaking for the first time, Anna added to the deluge: "Do try and find some poor soul to be your friend, won't you?"
"You should get a perm or something, Hermy; tame that frizzy mess of yours. Maybe think about braces, too, you heard those boys calling you a beaver the other day…" Isabelle's voice trailed off as the three girls rounded a corner. The silence that followed was deafening.
Hot sensations were swirling across my eyeballs as I stared up at nothing in particular from my vantage point low on the ground. Their words hit home because I knew they were all true, and my defeated self-confidence did nothing to argue the point. But there was no way I could cry out here in the middle of the day, with everyone and-I looked around quickly-apparently no one to see me. I sniffed once, to quell the sudden tide of emotion, and scrambled back to my feet. I rubbed the left cheek of my bum absently as I readjusted the book in my right arm.
With the prickling sensations in my eyes growing stronger by the second, I turned tail and ran as fast as my little legs would carry me the ten city blocks from the school to my house. I gave it little thought then, but that day was the last time I saw Isabelle, Katherine, and Anna. No great loss there.
I turned onto Hemmings Drive out of breath and sweaty, but I was almost there and I had made it this far without crying, so I only had to make it a little further. I can't imagine what I looked like-a tiny demon sprinting along the pavement with a rather large book tucked into her arms. The edge of my skirt and my tie trailed behind me as I turned into Number Eighteen.
With nary a second glance at my modest-sized home, I raced up the drive and finally stopped in front of my door, bent at the waist a little and panting. My bum ached from falling on the ground and my heart ached from the loneliness. Sniffing again, I reached into my shirt pocket for the key, pressed it into the door, and unlocked my house.
The door swung open on a nicely appointed foyer. My parents, Paul and Jane Granger, both dentists, had acquired an understated sense of style over the years as they became more and more financially secure, and one had to look closely to know that we were fairly well off. Our house was by no means large, but it was comfortable, with the few extra rooms turned into a library, one office for each of my parents, and an entertainment and gaming room.
I moved across the threshold, threw the key and my book on the table by the door, and ran down the short hallway into the kitchen, expecting to see my mother. I stopped short when I saw that the room was empty.
"Mummy?" I called out, vulnerability lacing my voice. No answer reached my ears. Curious, I looked around for some kind of explanation for her absence, and eventually I saw the note on the dining table. Sniffing, I walked over to it and picked it up. It said:
Hermione dear
I was called into the office to perform emergency surgery that your father did not have the time to do. I'm sorry-I know I promised you that we could go shopping at Leicester and Piccadilly today, but it will have to wait until tomorrow. I should be home before dinner time.
Love
Mum
I read the note twice to make sure I understood it. Mum wasn't home and I couldn't cry my eyes out to her sympathetic ears. In fact, I was just as alone as I had been in school all day, and all year. I dropped slowly into one of the chairs around the table and watched as the note fluttered from my hand onto the polished wood surface.
I swallowed thickly and quickly brought my hands, balled into fists, up to my eyes. That urge to cry, or maybe scream, was back, so I ground my knuckles into my tightly closed eyes. It wasn't working, though, and my breath hitched as the first tear leaked through my lids and under my hands.
Why did everyone hate me? Why was it so hard for me to make friends? I considered myself a nice person, but that didn't seem to matter. Instead of having any sort of friendship with any children my age, I had driven them all away a long time ago. I couldn't understand why, and the loneliness drew in on me like a suffocating blanket. My books and my knowledge were worthless if I didn't have anyone to share them with or even appreciate them.
The kitchen soon filled with the wretched noises of my sobs as I cried my heart out for the first time in months. I drew my legs up under me in the chair and rocked back and forth a little, wincing each time the forming bruise on my bum pressed into it.
Then something happened, for the second time that day. I could barely see or hear because of how strongly and loudly I was crying, but I did hear the unmistakable crack of the chair breaking under me. I felt myself falling and then everything went dark.
---
"…ione?"
Ugh, why did my head hurt so much?
"Hermione?"
And what was that noise? Where was I? I tried to move but something held me firm against-the ground? I seemed to be sprawled out on my back. So then I tried to open my eyes, but the blinding white light that assaulted me as soon as I did so made me squeeze them shut again.
"Urrg…" I moaned, as consciousness hit me like a lorry.
"Hermione?" a frantic voice asked, and one fact penetrated my foggy brain: that was my mother's voice.
"Mummy?" I asked. My voice was raspy.
"Yes, Hermione, it's me. What happened?" she asked. Her voice had calmed considerably once she realized I could talk back to her.
I tried to sit up again, and the firm pressure holding me down abated. I opened my eyes as I came to a sitting position. The kitchen slowly came into focus, as did my mum, still dressed in her dentist's things and kneeling next to me with a very worried look on her face. The chair I had been sitting in lay splintered at my side.
Everything came back to me at once, the things the girls had said to me, my sprint home, and my discovery of the empty house, and I suddenly threw myself at my mother and started crying again. She was quite surprised at first, most likely because I knocked her back onto her bum, but soon enough her arms came up around my back and she began to whisper comforting things into my hair.
"Oh mummy, they all hate me so much!" I wailed, curling into a ball in her lap and resting my head against her collarbone. She stroked my hair with one of her hands, hair that was so similar to hers except for how out of control it was.
"Who does, sweetie?" she asked. If my father came in at that moment, I don't know what he would have thought. I was in my mum's lap and we were both on the floor, right next to a chair that looked like it had been hit with a sledgehammer.
"All the other kids," I explained. "They call me horrible names and make fun of my hair and my teeth and, and…" I trailed off, unable to go on, because of my sobs.
I don't think my mum knew what to say, because she was silent for quite awhile after that. She just continued to stroke my hair and rub my back. After a few minutes, my crying quieted and I snuggled into her.
"Do your dad and I need to go into school again and talk to your teachers and headmistress?" she asked.
I wanted to say yes. I wanted to believe that my parents could affect the change I wanted and needed in my classmates, but some part of me new that was a futile gesture. They couldn't change the attitudes of the other students and neither could the teachers; I was the only one that could really do that. But I also knew that I'd been ostracized for years, and that wasn't about to change, no matter what I did or who I talked to.
"I dunno, mummy," I responded, sniffling. "I just…why do they all hate me?"
"Oh, honey," she said, and I could hear emotion in her voice now. She squeezed me tighter to her and we began to rock back and forth again. "They don't hate you. They just don't understand you."
"But why?" I persisted. "I'm no different than them."
"But you are," she corrected me. "You're smart and studious and wholesome, something that most other kids probably haven't been brought up to think is special."
"I'm not special," I mumbled.
"Hermione Jane!" my mother exclaimed, leaning back slightly and raising my head so I had to look at her. Her brown eyes, so similar to mine, shone with sadness and anger and frustration. "You most certainly are! Don't you ever let anyone tell you different, do you hear me? You're very special to your father and I and you will be a very special friend to someone who appreciates you for what you are, not what they want you to be."
"Ok," I agreed, not really believing it. Who would ever want to be my friend?
"Now," she started, switching gears effortlessly as only a parent could, "what happened here?" She waved her hand toward the ruined chair.
"I-I'm not sure," I answered, haltingly. What had happened? "I came home and when I found out you weren't here, I guess I kind of lost it." I sniffled and wiped the back of my hand across my cheeks, trying to clear the evidence of my tears away.
"Lost it?" mum asked.
"All I remember is this loud cracking sound and then a falling sensation. Then you were here."
"Hmm," she intoned, the well-oiled wheels in her amazing brain turning over my words. This of course wasn't the first time strange things had happened around or to me, but it was definitely the most violent. The chair would need to be replaced.
"Well, how do you feel now," mum questioned.
I rubbed the back of my head. "My head hurts," I told her. "And I'm bit a sleepy."
"A sure sign that you hit your head. Do you feel nauseous at all, Hermione?"
"Not really."
She breathed deeply; I felt her chest push against me and then recede as she exhaled. "Why don't you lie down for an hour or two? I'll wake you when your father gets home for dinner."
"Ok…carry me?" I asked, looking into her eyes again. She pursed her lips briefly.
"Hermione, I think you're too old-"
"Please, mummy?" I pleaded.
"Oh, alright," she huffed, though she was smiling. She rose to her feet, shifting me in her arms, and then walked through the ground floor to the stairs, up them, and then into my room. She pushed back the comforter with a hand and then laid me onto my soft mattress. She pulled the blanket back over me smoothed it around my small form.
"Thanks," I said, yawning.
"You're welcome, dear." She caressed my hair again and leaned down to place a kiss on my forehead.
"I love you, mummy," I told her, snuggling further into my comfortable bed.
"I love you, too." She turned away and walked toward the door. I followed her with my eyes, ignoring the many bookshelves in my room for the moment. As she closed the door, she said, "Happy summer, Hermione." Summer, yes, but happiness? Hardly. Sleep came quickly.
---
Weeks passed with little change to my situation. With no friends to play with, I stayed at home and dove into my considerable store of books. Day after day and week after week, my routine was the same: get up, eat breakfast, read, eat lunch, read, eat dinner with my parents, and read until bedtime. I rarely went outside and my mother commented on my paleness because of it. I shrugged my shoulders and continued reading whatever book had piqued my interest at the time.
June rolled into July. The weather grew hot and stifling, but I was never outside so it didn't bother me. With each passing day, I was dreading returning to school and facing my classmates again, because the lovely solitude of the summer would then be over, and I would be subjected to their torments once again.
Several times I tried to work out some way to change the way people perceived me, but that would mean changing the things that made me happy-reading, doing well with my academics, and making sure the teachers knew how much I knew. One time I even considered running away, but that didn't last more than five minutes. I had basically no money of my own and I was only a scared eleven-year-old girl.
Late in July, on a particularly electric night-one of those where thunder and lightning came without rain-I had just finished dinner with my parents and was heading back toward the living room, when I heard:
"Paul, what are we going to do about her?" My mum had asked the question. I stopped, backtracked silently, and listened near the kitchen door. The water started running in the sink because they were washing the dishes.
"What do you mean?" my father responded, with a question of his own. He might not have known it right away, but I knew she was talking about me.
"Hermione," she clarified. "What are we going to do about Hermione?"
"Do about what?"
"Her state of mind!" my mum said, raising her voice. When she spoke again, it was hushed. "She's friendless and thinks that it's her own fault, and it's killing her inside."
"Do we need to go into her school again?" Despite the fact that I was eavesdropping on my parents, and they were talking about me, I had to stifle a short burst of laughter. My mom had asked me the same thing the day school let out.
"I don't know, she doesn't want us to, and I don't think it would do much good, anyway. What we say won't influence the other children in her class."
"Well," my father said, "what can we do?"
"I don't know, Paul. I just don't know." The water running in the sink and dishes being scrubbed were the only noises in the kitchen for several moments. "You've seen her this summer. All she does is sit in the house and read. I have nothing against reading, at all, but that isn't healthy for her. She should be outside enjoying the nice weather. She should be out there playing with her friends and getting into all sorts of trouble."
"Hermione never gets into trouble," dad said.
"Yeah, I know, and isn't that part of the problem?"
"How so?"
"When was the last time we had to punish her for anything? When has she ever willingly broken a rule?"
"Uh, I don't know…" he said, sounding bewildered. "That's a problem?"
Mum gave a sigh of exasperation. "No, Paul! That's not a problem! It's just that she's such an old soul in a little girl's body. She hasn't enjoyed her childhood at all and I'm afraid one day she's going to realize she missed out on it."
Dad heaved a great sigh. "You're right, of course. You're always right. So the question is what do we do about it?"
"I'm not sure," she answered. "I was hoping you'd have some ideas." The water turned off and I heard them start to load the dishes into the washer.
"Hmm… To start with we could take her to more often to entertaining things, like movies or theme parks or anything like that…"
"Maybe," mum answered. I wouldn't mind doing more things like that, but I didn't think they'd be very fun without other children to do them with. Who wanted to hang out all day with just their parents?
"That wouldn't really solve the problem, though," she added. "Hermione needs to connect with other kids her age, not do things with us all the time."
"What about-" my dad started, but I never did find out what he was going to say.
Hooo hooo.
What was that noise? It sounded like, well frankly it sounded like an owl, but what was one doing in the middle of London and, it sounded like, our kitchen.
"Why the ruddy hell did that owl fly in through the window?" Dad asked, clearly surprised. He almost never cursed. "And what is that attached to its leg?"
More noises signaled movement, and I backed away from the door toward the living room lest I be caught listening in on their conversation about me. As I turned the corner into the comfortable room, and as my curiosity about the owl peaked, a shout drew my attention.
"Hermione! Come to the kitchen!" It was my father. I raced back out of the room, down the hall, and through the door into the kitchen. There were my mother and father-he still had a dishrag thrown over his shoulder-standing next to the dinner table, where a big, brown owl looked balefully at them. As soon as I entered the room, the owl focused on me, spread its wings, and soared over to the counter next to me. I jumped back, startled.
Hooo hooo.
After hooting at me and blinking once or twice, it raised its leg toward me. Tied to it was a thick envelope made of what appeared to be yellowed parchment. I looked toward my mother and father, who were just as surprised as I was, and raised my hand in a question.
"Go on, take it," mum said. "The envelope is addressed to you."
I looked back at the owl. I had no idea what was going on. I had never heard of owls carrying post before, so this was a completely new experience for me. I ran my hands through my thick brown hair nervously and then tentatively reached out a hand to take the envelope. The owl stood stock still as I undid the string holding it to its leg. As soon as it was detached, the bird gave another loud hooo, spread its wings, and then zoomed out of the open window it had evidently come in. The ensuing quiet was broken only by a distant rumble of thunder.
I looked down at the envelope in my hands, heart speeding up mightily for some reason. This side was blank, so I turned it over. There, in emerald green ink, was written:
Miss H. Granger
Kitchen
18 Hemmings Drive
West London
I looked up at my parents again. "What is this?" I asked.
"I have no idea," mum answered, and dad nodded in agreement. "Why don't you go ahead and open it so we can find out."
"A-alright," I said, still wondering why an owl delivered this heavy envelope that was so exactly addressed to me. I slid my thumb underneath the heavy wax seal I hadn't noticed before, and now I wondered how: it was purple and had a coat of arms bearing an H surrounded by a lion, a badger, a snake, and an eagle. After getting the thing opened, I pulled out two folded pieces of the same thick parchment the envelope was made of.
I unfolded the first piece and my eyes bugged out at the first two lines, which were written in large bold letters and underlined with a wavy line.
"What? What does it say?" dad asked, probably noticing my reaction.
Shakily, I began to read aloud what the letter said: "Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry-"
"School of what?" my mum cut across me, disbelief clearly evident in her voice. Before I had a chance to repeat what I'd said, though, we were interrupted again by a several loud donging noises.
Someone was ringing the doorbell.
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