This takes place in the 90s, but features several players from Tom Riddle's Hogwarts era. AU

By age 21, Beverly Brown had grown quite tired of being the lightest of her sisters and the only one able to sit at the front of the bus. She was tired of drinking gingerly from colored fountains, only to be ushered to use the white one. She was tired of being treated well at the grocery. When news of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s murder reached her Kentucky hometown, Beverly had been sitting in a diner, and when the chef had grunted a short, "Serves him right," Beverly was quick to make a gracious exit, much to the bewilderment of the surrounding customers. She was tired of the light colored eyes which met hers when she stared into the mirror, tired of the pale skin, and the ringlets, and much preferred the wide nose and big lips of her grandmother. She even got tired of staring at her sisters, who, in her opinion, were far too close to what they weren't.

In short, Beverly Brown was tired of passing for white. She was desperate to see if pastures were greener elsewhere.

At first, she had tried New York, and found northern prejudice smarted just as much as the southern variety. Taking a note from Malcolm X, she had even tried moving to Africa, but found she was still too light to be black. From there, she had not stopped running, instead scraping up the last of her savings to fly to London, where she promptly enrolled in dental school.

There she met a man named Nathaniel Granger, who didn't bat an eye when she took him back to Kentucky to meet her mixed family, and didn't bat an eye the entirety of the flight back. When Beverly asked him if he had an issue with her being a mulatto, he had drawn his lips together and informed her, in no uncertain terms, that if he'd had an issue with her, then he had an issue with his half-brother, who was a delightful product of his father's extramarital affair, and that he was affronted she would assume he'd have an issue to begin with, thank you very much. Granger men do not have issues, and I intend to have you, he declared.

Shortly thereafter, the two were married, had started their own practice, and had, at Beverly's insistence, kept abreast with the racial going-ons of the States.

And then, during September, the Grangers welcomed their only little girl into the world. And Beverly was delighted to see her daughter, Hermione, had inherited Beverly's frizzy curls, full lips, Nate's brown eyes, and lovely caramel skin like Beverly's grandmother. She was an inquisitive sort of child, getting into everything. Once Nate had found their infant daughter on the top of the refrigerator, gnawing on a cold teething toy. Hermione had never hurt herself, never cried, and started walking and talking extremely young. Instead of a terrible two, toddler-Hermione demanded to have the ways of the world explained to her with calm, expectant whats, whys, hows, and can I concludes.

So it was no surprise when a nine-year-old Hermione came home with tufts of her curly, frizzy hair chopped from her mane, her latest book ripped to shreds, and, instead of crying, regarded her parents with a frown, and said, "I thought color wouldn't matter in London."

She shared how her classmates had been starting rumors, attempting to convince Hermione she was adopted, or that her mother had had an affair with "a dark, dirty man." She told her classmates she was not adopted, that her aunts, grandmother, and great-grandparents all looked like her, and that it was rude to assume she was anything but what she was, which was the only daughter of the Grangers. And honestly, didn't the lot of them have other things to do?

That was when it got ugly, and now Hermione was looking at her cut hair and her shredded copy of Great Expectations and frowning at her parents, who were speechless. Nate immediately resolved to call her primary school, and Beverly decided it was time to have "the talk."

"Color does not matter. People think color matters," she started.

"And there's a difference?" Hermione asked, still holding the remnants of Great Expectations.

"Yes. And let's find you another book, shall we?"

That satisfied Hermione for a few months before she came back, this time showing her parents a copy of As I Lay Dying and a tearful face. Nate had gone to ring the school, and Beverly had coaxed their daughter into her lap, pressing kisses to her temple, and saying:

"They're no better than you. They're no better than you. They're no better than you," over and over she whispered it into Hermione's hair.

The third time, it was a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, a book her aunt had sent her. One look at her face and Nate had snatched his little one up, wooden and stiff as she was, cooing:

"Aunt Helen won't mind a bit, darling girl. No need to worry, yes? Some people are right mean, for no reason at all. They've no clue what they're missing. Such a strong girl, aren't you? Pro'bly better than the lot of them. They've no clue, I swear. They've no clue."

But Hermione kept coming home with shredded books, and then one day they received a call from her school, where her teacher informed them Hermione had purposefully stomped on the shoe of one her tormentors. The Grangers fought back smiles as the teacher recounted Hermione had put her nose in the air and said, "Well, if you think I'm so inferior, kindly try keeping up with me in spelling, you absolute ape." The teacher had congratulated the couple for encouraging Hermione to read, complimented their daughter's vocabulary, and suggested Hermione read The Miseducation of the Negro when she was older.

A couple weeks later, Beverly and Nate walked in to find Hermione flipping through a newspaper. On her writing desk was a destroyed copy of The Phantom Tollbooth, a book which Hermione had first discovered at six and read once a month since. When Nate asked why she hadn't said anything, Hermione had looked up, and, with a certain sort of steel, said she had determined she couldn't be bothered to care if some people treated her poorly, nor would she trouble her lovely parents with the reminder that some (and here, Hermione had given a very snobbish sniff) still ascribed to the idea of racial supremacy. The fact was, she informed her parents as she flipped to the funnies in the newpaper, she would very likely be made to deal with idiots all her life, and not a single one would ever hinder her in any significant way.

And with a snap of her fingers, The Phantom Tollbooth had repaired itself. Beverly and Nate watched the book straighten its binding out with twin expressions of wonder.

So, when her letter came by owl, and when her time came to put on the Sorting Hat, she told it, It doesn't matter where you place me, I will succeed.

"SLYTHERIN!"

The first time someone in her House called her "Mudblood," it was a scant two weeks into her first year. Hermione had been in the middle of practicing Wingardium Leviosa in a shared Slytherin-Hufflepuff Charms class. The boy had been lanky with a shock of blond-white hair and a set of big, gray eyes. He was in Slytherin, and she had had the misfortune of sitting next to him at breakfast earlier in the day. He had scooted away as if she had rabies.

"Pardon?" she asked, brown eyes daring him to say it again. She might not know what the word meant, but she knew what a slur sounded like, the ugly way it spilled from the speaker's mouth.

She knew it well.

With a slight flick of her wand, she moved the cup of water she was levitating over the head of the blond boy, unbeknownst to him.

"Would you care to repeat yourself? I'm afraid I didn't hear you," she furthered.

"Mudbl—" The water tumbled from the cup and fell all over the hair of her offender. The cup hit his shoulder before rolling away.

After the boy wiped at his eyes, Hermione put a hand to her mouth and kept her gaze neutral. "Were you in the middle of saying a word? I didn't hear you, ehm, Abraham, was it?"

Instead of throwing a tantrum, the boy drew himself up and said, "Abraxas."

The two stared at each other before turning their heads at the announcement, "Perfect enunciation, Mister Riddle! Ten points to Slytherin."

At that, Hermione had given a huff and a flounce, returning her attention to her fallen cup.

That would not be the first time Hermione was called "Mudblood," and she found her beloved Hogwarts: A History was woefully unable to properly define the term. Bloodlines: The Sociological Study of Magical Concentrations in British Populations, however, dedicated two chapters to the moniker. Its companion book, The Empirical Study of Magical Concentrations in British Populations, was a collection of data which charted the frequencies of powerful wizards and witches in pureblooded English families and compared it to those same frequencies existing in those from muggle heritage. The conclusion was a marginal difference in the quality of magic; in other words, the difference between muggleborn magic and pureblood magic was negligible. Hermione immediately thought of being in her mother's arms, and her whispered assurances of Hermione's validity.

Through Interviews/Essays: Attitudes about Blood Status, she shortly realized muggleborn wizards were rare—a minority among European wizards. She also learned many disagreed on the definition of "pureblood;" some thought the Sacred Twenty-Eight were the only pureblooded wizards. Others believed the third generation of any wizarding family was undoubtedly pure—even if a great-grandparent had been muggleborn. She read the opinion of "blood traitors" in favor of treating muggleborns with the same respect as pure- and half-bloods. She read accounts of muggleborn witches and wizards who encountered glass ceilings at their jobs and shared difficulties with landlords, bartenders, property owners, and others.

Finally, with growing coldness, she read about Grindelwald in The Daily Prophet.

Hermione was a quick study; she knew coded language when she saw it. When the Prophet reported on the rash of mass-murders stretching across continental Europe, and stated that most, if not all of the victims were of "undeterminable patronage," and thus made it harder to inform the families of the dead without violating the Statute of Secrecy, Hermione could read in between the lines. As the madman continued his march toward Britain, the Prophet speculated if Albus Dumbledore would be responsible for leading the effort against him.

The second significant time she had been called "Mudblood," she had entered her dormitory to find the newest parcel from her parents had been opened, and the new bras, sanitary napkins, and painkillers had been charmed to float around Slytherin's common room. It had been in her third year, and a fifth year girl had sneered:

"You're a witch, aren't you? Dirty Mudblood."

She shoved Hermione on her way past, being sure to bump her shoulder. Hermione almost paid her no mind, instead raising her wand to recover her underwear. She didn't see the spell hurtling toward her and gave a cry when her front teeth began growing at an alarming rate.

Mouth twitching in amusement, a prefect had begrudgingly delivered her to the school nurse, and once her front teeth had been shrunk, the first question Hermione had asked the nurse was, "Do you know how to ward strangers from your belongings?"

The nurse had been somewhat surprised at Hermione's detachment from what had just occured, and replied she did not.

"Well," Hermione replied in an impatient tone, "could you tell me the name of that prefect?"

When Hermione had returned to her room, she found a letter from her parents. She had sent it after a particularly frustrating day of her muggleborn existence. Her parents, sweet as they were, had collected words of encouragement from her mother's extended family. They had been careful not to break the Statute, instead explaining Hermione had been having trouble with some prejudiced roommates at her boarding school. A line from her Aunt Beulah stood out:

I've got no idea what people out in England say, but in America there is a saying among people like us: we must work ten times as hard to get half.

While Hermione couldn't correct her aunt—people in the Wizarding World cared about blood, not color—she felt the statement could translate nonetheless. As Hermione ran her tongue over her newly shrunken teeth, she resolved succumbing to the handicap of her blood status would simply not do. She would not be caught unaware ever again. She would not be called "Mudblood" without retaliating ever again. Not a single person would be able to doubt her magical prowess ever again.

Hermione Granger would make herself beyond reproach.

This is something new. What do you think?

Thank you for reading.