I'd like to start by saying that this story is dedicated to my Granny; I wouldn't have published such a different story without her encouragement and enthusiasm.

Another Gellert/Hermione story. I know, I write too many of them. This one is very different though, slower moving and more about them than the fight against Voldemort. They start out young and will likely stay young for about half the fic, so please be patient.

Before we begin though, I believe 11 to be a very arbitrary age to start learning magic - other than it conveniently being the age that primary school finishes in the UK. I can't see any reason why a family like my Grindelwald family wouldn't start teaching their son magic as soon as he showed he had it. After all, you wouldn't want your heir to be seen to struggle in class, and time at school could be much better spent forging connections and alliances than learning.

WARNING - this fic contains child abuse. A significant portion is set in the 1800's, when child abuse was acceptable and almost expected. That doesn't justify it now and I in no way support it, but it did happen when this was set and there would have been no consideration of how unfair it was. Then, that was life.

'Ew.' Jessica Manly sneered in the direction of Hermione's lunch. She flushed and turned the box so that the lid disguised the contents. Jessica peeled open one of the brightly coloured wrappers in her own lunch, garnering pleas from the other girls to share. Hermione watched wistfully as small pieces of chocolate were distributed among the group, her brief moment of popularity ruined by a single word.

She picked up one of her carrot sticks and glared at it resentfully, before dropping it back into her box. She left the table without anyone noticing and headed for the library. Jessica had glossed past it on her tour, pointing out the doors but not going inside, now a Hermione had almost her entire lunch time to explore.

A teacher took her outdoor slip as she went back inside, and the librarian welcomed her with a measure of surprise as she entered. She introduced herself like her mother had taught her; offering her hand and shaking the librarian's, maintaining eye contact all the time. Then she was free to wander the shelves to her heart's content... all four of them.

Five minutes later she held 'The Animals of Farthing Wood' in one hand and 'Pretty Women' in the other whilst the librarian clucked about age appropriateness and offered her 'Peter Rabbit'. In the end she had to leave 'Pretty Women', and resolved to bring her own books in future.

There was a large tree in the quad which seemed wonderfully quiet and she quickly claimed it, spreading out her new blazer to sit on and pulling out her lunch again. She opened the book on her lap but ended up staring wistfully at the tight cluster of other year 4 girls. Jessica was applying lip gloss in a small glittery compact mirror, to the admiration of all her fellows.

Hermione forced herself back to her books.

She sat alone at the front of maths and art, and was resigned to her status as loner by the time her parents picked her up at 3. She should have known better than to think she would be able to make friends at this new school. She was a weirdo, a freak, boring... she'd been called many names at her last school and she was almost convinced they were true.

Her parents asked how her day went, her mother tutted at her unfinished lunch and her father offered to enrol her in piano lessons. She hated piano, but agreed anyway because it would make him happy. Her father had the most wonderful, elegant piano hands and he played wonderfully. Her mother would often sing along with him, her voice clear and magical. Hermione's own voice lacked that bell like clarity, so piano it would be.

She nodded off all their chatter, then escaped to her room where she could read her books and pretend to be in a different world. One where she wasn't bookish and weird and people respected how clever she was instead of whether she had chocolate and sparkly mirrors.

She wished, that night, that someday she would meet someone like that, someone who was as fond of learning as she was, who appreciated books and who was as strange as she was.

...

He hurried down the corridor, his mother's screeched summons ringing in his ears. She'd found his potion in the lab, he knew he hadn't hidden it well enough... or perhaps she had found out about his tutor's continued frustration with his calligraphy. He tried, he honestly did, but he just couldn't get the flowing shapes right.

She was waiting in the morning room, cutting an impressive figure against the streams of morning light. His mother always dressed as if she were about to go out, dark robes only a shade above mourning and bedecked in jewels that only a house like theirs could afford. She turned, her dark hair somehow staying perfectly smooth and glossy as she moved.

'It has come to my attention that you have been sullying yourself.' Her voice chilled his blood in his veins and he wished for nothing more than to disappear. It had only been once, an experiment, desperation. He couldn't believe she'd found out. He knew better than to argue, and he knew better than to show how terrified he was. 'If you wish to scorn your gift, if you wish to run amok with muggles, I shall adjust your status to suit.' She threatened. His eyes flicked to her drawn wand. 'Do you have anything to say for yourself?'

'No, Mother.' He muttered, then corrected himself, projecting his words so that she could hear them and forcing his chin up.

'Did you find anything of value in the village?' The words dripped with scorn.

'No Mother.'

'So you were wasting time, time that could have been spent preparing yourself for your future.' Her heels clicked against the tiles as she approached, her wand forcing his chin up so that their eyes met. He forced his mind clear but her legilimency was too strong for him, and she tore painfully through his mind. He cried out, claw-like fingers digging into his chin to hold him up as his knees threatened to collapse. She watched his memories of the night with scorn, then flicked through his lessons, he stopped fighting. There was nothing left to hide.

She dropped him with a sniff. His knees cracked against the floor and his arms snapped out to catch him instinctively. His mother's foot lashed out, hitting his extended wrist with a snap and white hot pain turned his vision blank. He whimpered, cradling it to his chest, barely catching her muttered assessment of his strength.

A heavy black book landed in front of him with a dull thud and he had to repress a moan. He knew this punishment, but he'd never had it inflicted so severely before. Never upon himself - his belongings, his owl, even his beautiful horse, never himself. The pain was so blinding, throbbing, making his vision pulse, he doubted he could do it.

'I will not see you until next week.' His mother dismissed, he forced himself to stand, grab the grimmoire and shuffle from the room. Tears streamed down his face, so he kept his head bowed to hide them. He needn't have worried, his mother was already facing back out over the estate, her son forgotten.

He didn't remember the walk back to his rooms, but he remembered forcing himself to uncurl from his painful ball and unwrap the grimmoire from it's velvet wrapping. The letters blurred as he scanned the index, different handwritings varying as generations of his family added to the book. He was lucky, this was a newer one.

The page on broken bones was early, he flicked to it, then forced himself to read the spell through his pain. His elf could fetch ingredients, that was the rule, but he had to fix the damage himself.

He remembered the first time this had happened, three years ago on his seventh birthday when he had performed his first accidental magic. His mother had held the traditional celebrations, gifting him his first wand from the family collection and announced his birth to society. Then she'd handed him the grimmoire and told him to repair his own windows. The freezing mountain air had battered him for weeks as he struggled with the simple enchantment. Next had been his owls wing, broken for interrupting the visiting minister. Heirs were to be seen and not heard, to learn from their betters. His horses' leg had been broken when he'd ridden instead of attending a runes lesson...

He was familiar with the spell, sage leaves crushed with milk; difficult to do with only one hand. He pulled his wand from his sleeve and tapped the mortar three times, reading the spell out. He bit down on his leather belt as he daubed the mixture over the broken bone and repeated the incantation. His world went red, then white, then black.

He woke up about an hour later, a dull ache in his arm remained but nothing like the blinding pain of before. He flexed his fingers, one at a time. There was no glow of pride anymore, there had been once, but now he knew that this kind of thing was to be expected. If he couldn't heal himself by 10, he could hardly call himself a wizard.

That didn't stop him from climbing into the window seat, curling up beneath one of the furs there and peering down into the village below wistfully. They were an hours ride away, but from his castle window he could see the villagers in the fields as they harvested.

The day down in the village had been wonderful, ironically more magical than any spent in his home. They had been suspicious at first, his clothes finer and his accent refined, but they had let him join in their games soon enough. He'd kicked a lumpy leather ball around the street and tossed little wooden rings over sticks in the ground. They'd told jokes and chatted about girls without any of the inhibitions that plagued the heir to an influential family. But he couldn't go again; next time it wouldn't be a broken wrist, it would be worse. His mother could never catch him infringing twice.

Yet, still, he closed his eyes for a moment and wished. He wished that he could have a friend like that.

There was a soft pop, and he opened his eyes in surprise. Then he scrambled back, hitting the window and banging his newly healed arm against the wall.

There was a girl in his bed, rubbing her eyes sleepily and blinking at their surroundings with more than a little confusion.