Winky: Not L/J, for a change.
Dobby: A different take on Hermione.
Winky: Hopefully, it's original.
Dobby: Why is it that most fics with Hermione in them are just R/Hr or H/Hr fics?
Winky: None of that here, don't worry.
Dobby: Read and review!
David and Elizabeth Granger had no difficulty thinking up a name for their beautiful, newly-born daughter.
She had her father's wise, honey-brown eyes and wisps of her mother's brown hair. They decided to call her Hermione, a name befitting the daughter of two intelligent book-lovers.
As she grew up, and she resembled her mother a lot, but had her father's eyes. Though her hair was brown like her mother's, her parents did not know where the bushiness came from.
Hermione was a curious and intelligent child, always embracing new knowledge and concepts. Elizabeth began to teach her how to read, and by the age of four, she could read quite well. By this time, she could also do simple addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. She was an extraordinary child.
Soon, on her fifth birthday, the day came for her to begin school. On the first day of school, parents were to accompany the child to school and meet the teacher. It was only a half day, time for the children to get to know each other.
When they arrived, Hermione clutched one hand from each parent and for the first time in her life was nervous. There were other children all around them, all clutching onto their parents for dear life. Hermione was by no means the one with the worst nerves. One little girl was clutching her mother's legs and screaming that she didn't want to go.
David and Elizabeth led Hermione into the classroom where chairs were arranged in a semi-circle. Children were already sitting in them, fidgeting and looking nervous. Their parents were flanking their chairs like bodyguards. At the centre of the semi-circle was a chair in which the teacher sat. Hermione took an empty chair next to a tall blonde boy who was picking his nose and her parents stood behind her like all the others.
The teacher was young, in his mid-twenties. He had a friendly smile and eyes full of laughter. Yet there was also a hint of nervousness there. David and Elizabeth decided that this was his first class. This was both good and bad: young teachers brought out new ideas and generated enthusiasm, but weren't as experienced in handling difficult situations.
Soon, the chairs were filled with nervous little five-year-olds and everyone looked at the teacher. He smiled and said, "Good morning, children. My name is Damien Bertram. I'll be teaching you for the next few years. At this school, you will learn new and interesting things, make lots of new friends and hopefully, it will also be fun." A few of the parents laughed.
"Let's introduce ourselves, okay?" Mr Bertram turned to a small dark-haired girl sitting on the edge of the semi-circle. "How about you? Why don't you tell us your name and a few things about you?"
The girl started when she was addressed and said nervously, "I'm Melanie Mantle. I turned five last week. I like swimming."
Mr Bertram smiled at her. "Do you know anyone else here?"
Melanie pointed to two blonde twins. "They live next door to me."
In this manner, several children introduced themselves. Some were confident and offered information by themselves, others had to have it coaxed out of them. Most of them knew each other. David and Elizabeth noticed that Mr Bertram refused to let a child get by without answering, but coaxed them gently without intimidating them. Soon it was Hermione's turn. Elizabeth put a comforting hand on her shoulder.
"I-I'm Hermione Granger. I turned five today. I like reading."
"You can read already?" asked Mr Bertram, mildly surprised.
"Yes. I can read and write and add and subtract and…"
The teacher's smile faltered. He clearly wished he hadn't asked the question. Elizabeth squeezed Hermione's shoulder a little tighter. She got the message. My smart girl, thought Elizabeth.
"…and tell different birds by their calls," Hermione finished prematurely. David hid a grin. He knew she could go on for quite a while, listing all the things she could do. He glanced around at the other children and was relieved to see no envious or hostile looks in Hermione's direction. Most children looked curious, and others were looking at nothing in particular.
"Do you know anybody else here?" asked Mr Bertram, smiling.
Hermione's smile faded. She shook her head.
The last few children introduced themselves and Mr Bertram stood up.
"Very good. Now I suggest you all get to know each other better. I will talk to your parents."
The children dragged their chairs noisily across the room and sat in little circles, talking to each other. Hermione was in a mixed group of boys and girls.
Mr Bertram talked to the parents about how the classes would be run and the lesson structures. He hadn't gotten far when there was a yell from the other side of the room.
The blonde boy who had been sitting next to Hermione and picking his nose was on the floor, his chair broken with a shocked look on his face. Hermione was standing over him with a look of equal shock on her face. There was a stunned silence for a minute, then the blonde boy started crying.
Mr Bertram was in for the first test of his career. "What happened here, Andrew?" he asked, not shouting, but still strict. The children fell silent at once, with the exception of Andrew who was still weeping.
He pointed a finger at Hermione. "She-she…"
David tensed. He didn't like people pointing at his daughter like that.
"Hermione, what happened?" asked Mr Bertram.
"I don't know," said Hermione loudly, her eyes wide. "I didn't do anything! He was mean to me! He called me a name!"
"I didn't!" yelled Andrew.
"You did too! You called me a woolly know-it-all!"
"Calm down, children!" exclaimed Mr Bertram. "Sarah, what happened?" he asked, addressing a fair-haired girl who knew Andrew.
Sarah cast a fearful look at Andrew. "N-nothing," she stuttered. "Just talking."
Mr Bertram examined the broken chair. All four legs had broken cleanly off and there was no sign of rotting or damaged wood.
"She did it!" screamed Andrew. "She broke the chair and made me fall!" He resumed sobbing in his mother's arms.
"A five-year-old couldn't do this," said Mr Bertram quietly. "It was just an accident, Andrew."
David put his arm around Hermione's shoulders and led her away. She shot a nasty look at Andrew, who was picked up and carried away by his mother. David turned her so that she couldn't see the boy and knelt down opposite her. Elizabeth knelt next to him.
"Now, Hermione," David said gently, "what happened?"
Hermione stared at him, then burst into tears herself, her anger gone.
"Come on now, calm down. It's over. Nothing bad has happened."
"He called me names," she sobbed, "and he laughed at me, and I stood up and wanted to shout and his chair broke. I don't know why. But he was mean to me! Serves him right!"
"Now don't say that. That's a bad thing to say," David said, stroking her hair. "Shh, everything's alright now. Hush, my girl."
"Dr Granger?" Mr Bertram said quietly. He knelt down next to them. "Are you alright?" he asked Hermione. She sniffed and wiped her eyes, but nodded. He smiled.
"Good. Now, I need to talk to your father for a moment."
She nodded again and sought the comfort of her mother's arms instead.
David and Mr Bertram went to the back of the classroom, where Andrew's father was already waiting. He appeared to be a generally easy-going man, but right now he was looking extremely disgruntled.
Mr Bertram looked at the two, wondering what to say.
"Did your daughter have much contact with other children before school?" he finally asked David.
"No. Not much at all. She mostly kept to herself."
"What about your son, Mr Smith?"
"Quite a bit. He knew most of the children that sat with him before."
Mr Bertram steeled himself for a difficult question.
"Has he…shown a tendency to…be a bully before?"
"What makes you think he-" Mr Smith started, but Mr Bertram cut him off.
"Please, Mr Smith, calm down. We must face the facts. That insult sounds rather likely to me, and I could tell that Sarah wasn't telling the truth. Five-year-olds don't make good liars."
Mr Smith's face was very red, but his logic finally won over protective instinct.
"I just can't imagine Andy doing such a thing. He's a good boy."
"I don't doubt it. But there's a very common group phenomenon, especially at this age: inclusion through exclusion, to tighten a group by excluding people from it. I think that's what happened there."
"So what are you going to do about it?" asked David.
"I'll have to watch them in the future." Mr Bertram thought for a moment. "For now I'll have them apologize to each other. There's not much else I can do."
"But-"
"Mr Granger, Andrew thinks Hermione did something, and it's quite hard to explain that she just couldn't break that chair. So it's best if both apologize. After all, she wanted to yell at him, if I understood you correctly." He gave David a questioning look.
David considered this and decided that the teacher was right. He nodded.
"Very well. Should I tell Hermione or do you want to talk to her yourself?"
"I'll talk to them both. Mr Smith, I'll be with you in a minute."
Mr Smith returned to his wife and son while the teacher and David walked over to where Elizabeth and Hermione had been watching the discussion. Hermione had calmed down completely by now and was standing next to her mother, holding her hand. Mr Bertram knelt down in front of Hermione again so he could speak with her eye to eye.
"Hermione," he said, "I'm going to ask Andrew to apologize for calling you names. But," he added as Hermione nodded in satisfaction, "I want you to apologize too. You wanted to shout at him, and that's not nice. So just say you're sorry, alright? You don't even need to say for what."
She nodded again, a bit reluctantly. Mr Bertram smiled and walked over to the Smiths where he talked to Andrew in the same way. David couldn't help grinning. The boy would get the apology he thought he deserved and Hermione wouldn't resent giving it. Hopefully, that would be that.
Mr Bertram stood up and stepped aside, leaving an open space between Andrew and Hermione. Like a duelling area, David thought. The two children cast uncertain looks at each other and David gave Hermione a light shove. She stumbled forwards and Andrew did the same. They met halfway. Andrew was the first to speak.
"Sorry, Hermione," he said quietly, so that David could hardly catch the words. "I didn't mean it."
"I'm sorry too," she answered. Andrew stretched out his hand. Hermione took it. After a moment they broke apart and returned to their respective parents without looking back. David took his daughter into his arms and stroked her hair.
"Very well," called Mr Bertram. "If no one has any more questions then you can go home. Tomorrow school starts for real."
Hopefully there would be no hard feelings between them, thought David. Things would still be okay.
Little did he know.
The long years of her primary schooling passed slowly and things did not get better for Hermione. She was teased at school for her 'nerdiness' and her bushy hair. This got worse after her adult teeth appeared, large and sticking out more than it was usual. This earned her the flattering nickname, 'Beaver'.
For the two years or so at school, Hermione had tried in vain to make friends, but she was ostracized from the others because of her looks and love of books. The chair incident on her first day of school did not help matters at all.
Hermione was always the last to be picked in sporting teams and nobody ever wanted to be in her group for anything. This increased when some strange things began to happen around her. Once when Julia Winters pulled on her hair extra hard, a few strands came out and wrapped themselves around her arm like a thin snake. She screamed and tore them off but they slithered back toward her as one. When a teacher arrived, however, they were just harmless strands of hair. Children who pursued her after school to call her names kept tripping over. This things earned her the nicknames 'freak' and 'witch'.
Hermione put her heart and soul into her studies to make up for her lack of friends. She would read textbooks during break time when the other children were outside playing and would answer every question in class and pass every test perfectly. She would do extra credit whenever possible and while this pleased her parents, it didn't get rid of her terrible loneliness.
Finally, she finished primary school and was thinking of going to a boarding school for gifted children.
One day, an owl flew in through her window.
Let's just say her plans for boarding school changed slightly.
Dobby: Well?
Winky: Do you guys understand Hermione better now?
Dobby: What's the verdict?
Winky: What's our grade?
O Orange
E Eggs
A Apples
P Pear
D DRUNKIES! WOOHOO! Dobby (No, it's actually D…D-orange! Yeah, D-orange! Winky)
T Toucan (It's not a fruit, but still)