chosen

Hermione Granger is a stuck up, swotty know it all!

Hermione snorted at the words of the bathroom wall. If she was any lower, she would write back that the girl who'd written this only thought that because Hermione knew more than her.

She didn't, however. Simply finished her business, washed her hands, and primly returned to class.

Because she was above them, these foolish girls and boys who hated her simply because she was different. What was so wrong with her being smart and liking to read? What was so wrong about her wanting good grades?

They simply didn't understand.

Her mother did. Her sweet, wonderful mother. Jean Granger had been the same in school; smart and bullied terribly for it. Her father had been the one to protect her from those bullies when they got to secondary.

When Hermione was little, she would wish and wish for a protector too. She wanted nothing more than someone who would fend off the teasing words and sometimes the shoves and pushes of her peers.

That's when...things...began to happen around her. She refused to call it magic, refused to believe it was real, at first. 

But she saw it for what it was, now. 

Three boys had ganged up on her at recess, cornered her behind the shed full of gym supplies, and tried to pull at her hair and tease her and probably do worse than that.

Somehow, they sprouted hair as long and frizzy as hers. The boys ran away, crying, and the teachers were bewildered as to what to do.

Hermione simply smiled at them and swore she had nothing to do with, and, honestly, how could the teachers really prove she had?

They couldn't.

No one ever could.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

She was a witch. 

A witch! 

Hermione couldn't believe it. 

It made sense, sure, but still. Her parents were shocked. 

She peered down at the book in her hand. It was night now.

"Goodnight Hermione, love," her mum called from downstairs.

"Night!" She shouted back.

She was not going to bed.

Holding her flashlight closer to the book, she read the title.

Wizarding History of the Last Two Centuries.

She refused, plainly, point blank refused to be behind on what was to be her new world.

Hermione Granger had spent her entire life looking in from the outside. She refused to do that again.

She had seen in Diagon Alley, there were people, other children, born into this. Born into being a wizard. And there had to be some prejudice there. Even being an eleven year old girl, she was not blind, she was not stupid enough to ignore the way prejudice seemed to seem it's way into everything. She saw the odd looks people gave her Dad and Mum. Heard them when they would ask Mum where she came from, how she looked so exotic. So maybe she was being cynically, maybe the wizarding world was perfectly prejudice free and everyone lived in harmony, but she was not naive enough to believe it so. Not when she had seen books with the words Pureblood in them in Flourish and Blotts(magic names were so funny yet it made so much sense that they were magical), had seen the way the shopkeeper saw her with McGonnagal and had to hide a sneer.

Maybe they weren't racist, but something was wrong with being a not Pureblood and Hermione obviously wasn't one. She was Muggleborn. That's what McGonagall had said.

She opened her book, and Hermione Granger began to devour as much knowledge about her new world as she could.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hermione learned quickly. She learned about what being pureblood and halfblood and a Muggleborn, or, as some books called it, a mudblood, and she learned what Slytherin and Gryffindor and Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff was.

Hermione figured Ravenclaw or Slytherin made the most sense for her. Ravenclaw made perfect sense. But Slytherin? She was cunning, sure. She lied to her teachers when required. But what really made her consider Slytherin was the ambitious part. Hermione had been ambitious her entire life. When she was young and didn't understand politics one bit, she wanted to become the Queen of England. Before becoming a witch, she wanted to be Prime Minister or something equally as important. And she did whatever she could to achieve that. Bring as smart as possible in school? Never getting into trouble? That would all help her down the line, she was sure.

Part of her deep down wanted Gryffindor. From the way most of her books made it seem, everyone loved Gryffindor. The headmaster had been one. Most of the people on the good side of the last war(she would get to that part) had been Gryffindor. But she knew she wasn't brave or chivalrous enough for that. She would never truly belong, never be able to sit and laugh and be free with them.

The Wizarding War was from the seventies. It hadn't really ever been a war; from what she could tell the Ministry didn't even have an army, just these things called Aurors that were like cops with more duties. 

A man named Lord Voldemort hated muggles, and rallied all the prejudiced twats behind him to kill and destroy the muggles and anyone who challenged their idea of blood purity. A boy named Harry Potter defeated him when he was just a baby. This Harry Potter kid was also the only person alive to survive the killing curse, Avada Kedavra. And since all these people had been in mostly Slytherin, Hermione was hesitant to even want to be sorted there.

She was a Muggleborn. The spawn of what most of the Slytherins parents had hated the most when they chose to follow this man. So Hermione was a little hesitant to plunge herself into Slytherin.

Ravenclaw was the safe option. Gryffindor was what she wanted. Slytherin, however, made the most sense.

She wasn't stupid. She knew history was written by the winners, and a tiny part of her wanted to know if she could force the Slytherins to question themselves and their ideals, to make them like her.

She was up for a challenge, anyways. She would've gotten bored if everything had been too easy.

She'd gotten other books, too. Ones on magical theories and something called Grey that had intrigued her. And her school books. She planned to memorize all of them, and she'd succeed at it, too. She had a photographic memory. She wished she could practice magic outside of school, but there was the problem of the trace. She'd learned about that when she had tried to perform a spell, just as practice, and had gotten a letter about it. Her heart had beaten so hard she'd been afraid it would pop out of her chest, and since then she'd kept her wand locked away in her trunk, too afraid she'd forget and accidentally perform magic with it again.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

She grinned up at her mum and dad. "I can't believe it's finally time," she said.

Dan Granger sighed woefully. "You make it seem like you simply hate us," he mourned.

Jean laughed, and Hermione joined in. "Shush it, Dan. She's simply excited. Oh, my sweet, smart little girl. Your going off to this big boarding school full of magic and..and I won't be there to help you," Jeans eyed pooled up with tears and Hermione was embarrassed to say hers did too.

"It'll be okay, Mum. I'll write every week. It'll feel like I'm at home," she said, hugging her mother. "I've got to go and get a seat, Mum. I love you."

She turned to her father and said her goodbyes, hugging him, and off she went. 

She was honestly a bit embarrassed at her parents emotionals, and a bit embarrassed of them. 

But deep in her stomach, she felt guilty, because what Hermione was about to do would likely make her parents embarrassed of her.

Hermione was about to lie more than she ever had before. She was about to base the next seven years, and quite possibly the rest of her life, off this one singular lie.

She could only pray it would work.