Age 6
Last Updated: Jan 10 '24
Current Status: Acceptable
Possible Statuses: Unfinished Comedically Bad Mixed Readable Acceptable Exceeds-Expectations
Situated in a cul-de-sac in the northern London suburb of Hampstead is a spacious three-level, six-bedroom home with a classic, verdant back garden; there lived two dentists, Mr. and Mrs. Granger, and an endlessly-studious daughter often happily discussing her homework in their light-filled living room.
The girl's name, "Hermione", was the latest reference in a long-lived motif of romance between Mr. and Mrs. Granger. They had met while in school, but were in separate years, and in the first four months of their shared time at school each was dating someone else. So the two didn't really meet until fate intervened. On a particularly romantic snowy night, they both were taken by their partners to a showing of a lovely bit of theater called "The Winter's Tale". Mrs. Granger had quite a spill on the front steps, which her date refused to stop for, saying he'd "go on ahead". Despite being tugged forward by his own jealous date, Mr. Granger refused to continue forward and helped the woman gather the contents of her bag. Their hands touched in the process.
It was quite the meet-cute.
After noticing each other constantly from then on when their paths crossed in school, Mrs. Granger (at the time known as Miss Wilkens) eventually got up the courage to tell Mr. Granger how she felt - in a letter, which she hid between the pages of a collected works of William Shakespeare, amidst the words of the play that had made her notice him. This allowed her to give him her letter under the guise of a gift for helping her pass her midterms, and successfully escape both the potential mortification of instant rejection and also avoid the wrath of the dagger-eyed woman clutched possessively to the man's side.
He climbed her window that night, to tell her that he had loved her since meeting her, but had never had hope she'd return his feelings.
Two years later, on a snowy evening while perusing a bookstore, "Miss Wilkins" spotted a works of William Shakespeare with gilded-edged pages. It was beautiful, its cover a masterpiece. There was a strange bulge in the middle - surely no one would dog-ear such a beautiful book, and before it was even bought?!
As she opened to the midst of The Winter's Tale, a folded note fell into her hand.
"Will you marry me?" Read the bottom of the note in large letters.
And to her right, Mr. Granger got down on one knee.
And so, when they had their daughter, it was easy to find a name that immediately filled their hearts with love upon its hearing - the beautiful queen of the piece that had marked every moment of their coming together.
Hermione Granger had heard this story often. Bedtime had been story time since the very day she was born: her maternal grandmother had arrived with books as she bustled into the hospital, knowing exactly what would soothe her daughter the most.
Hermione liked the story about her parents very much. She requested it often. And her parents liked very much the story that had resulted when Hermione had scolded her father for having climbed such an irresponsibly long way in the story. It was a perfect example of exactly the kind of person Hermione had always been. Capable. Careful. And terribly likely to scold others at the slightest provocation.
Draco Malfoy's house had much more than six bedrooms, but only two levels. It was exactly the sort of pedantic matter that he might pick a fight over with Hermione Granger in the future, a mix of insecurity of Miss Granger having ANYTHING better than him and a deep need to lord over her everything he felt assuredly superior in. Not that Hermione's house would ever come up - after all, hers was a muggle house. And Draco Malfoy would never step foot near one of those.
The young Draco had never met a muggle, nor a witch or wizard who was raised as one. His parents were concerned that it would lessen him by mere contact alone, and had seen to it that he had never crossed paths with anyone sharing such a barbaric history. Lesser creatures, muggles, without magic or class or breeding or capabilities worth anything in this world.
The Malfoy family was proudly "pure-blood", a term that meant that no muggle had ever married a Malfoy heir. They were not so particular as the Blacks, the Lestranges, nor others of their ilk who only accepted witches or wizards marrying their offspring if they could prove their history to have no muggle history in it at all stretching back for many generations. The inbreeding that resulted from such a practice was unnerving to Draco even from a young age, an opinion quietly matched by both of his parents. No, to stay appropriately pure, Malfoy heirs like Draco simply had to make sure that neither of a witch's parents were muggles or mudbloods, the unwritten law of the Malfoy history stated.
This "lax" protocol was needed, for in all other ways, any Malfoy had to be the best.
The most elegant, the most sophisticated, the most educated. The most well read, well mannered, well situated, well connected. The Malfoy name was synonymous with class itself, and no witch would be accepted into the family nor groom arranged for a Malfoy daughter who was not a paragon of beauty and intelligence and social cunning.
The young Draco was smug and excited in equal measure knowing that his bride would the best creature his generation had to offer.
It never occurred to him that he'd have to earn it.
Neville Longbottom was not a squib. He had magic. It's just that it didn't want to show itself when anyone else was around.
It wasn't his fault. He knew that, on a solely logical level. But at a certain point, enough things go wrong, with enough regularity, that you just accept that it's you, it's always going to be you, and it might as well be your fault because nothing would ever have gone nearly as badly if you hadn't been there, you know it.
By the age of six, Neville tiptoed into rooms, winced at loud crashing noises, and had grown wearily used to his grandmother's sighing, "Oh, Neville..."
He was a walking disappointment. No magic that would show itself to his eagerly awaiting grandmother or his extended pureblood cousins and aunts and uncles.
And all this was added to by the greatest weight of them all: the haunting specter of knowledge that his parents had gone mad, couldn't remember him, were locked up in a special hospital forever, and though no one would say it to his face, he had overheard enough to know with evidence-heavy certainty that it had been all his fault.
The doctors and nurses would whisper about it, and sometimes he could inexplicably hear it from rooms away. His grandmother would admonish uncles of his who would speak too bluntly to her whilst they thought him enraptured by the television set.
He was the reason his parents were like this. Their babbling words and swaying heads and strangely hummed tunes, the way they needed to be protected from themselves... they had made the mistake of having him.
Neville Longbottom was six years old when his tears seemed to just... run out.
His sense of feeling, ever so softly, had started to fade. His distress and longing looking at all the pictures of his parents started to dull.
He didn't know what was happening, or who or what he was. But Neville Longbottom did know one thing.
He was not a squib.
If you had asked Harry Potter what a magic-less child of a witch and a wizard was, he would not have correctly told you that the common term was "a squib".
He would have blinked at you, many questions in his eyes and tempting his tongue. But he would have kept them in - after all, "Don't ask questions," was the very first rule of his life with the Dursleys.
There were many questions he wanted the answers to, and witches and wizards - imaginary things, of course - would never have made the first cut. His first questions would be, "Why do I sleep in a cupboard under the stairs when Dudley has two bedrooms?" or "What were my parents like?" or "When will I get a present for my birthday or Christmas or something like that, like Dudley always does?"
But young Harry knew better than to ask his aunt and uncle questions.
Besides - his cupboard wasn't too bad. It was his. And he had figured out how to lock it from the inside just as his aunt locked him in it from the outside at night or when she decided he should be punished or put away from sight.
That meant that though his cousin Dudley could jump on the stairs above him, shaking the small space and making sawdust rain from above, he couldn't actually reach Harry with his meaty, vicious hands and fists.
That was enough to be grateful for. And little Harry was grateful for everything he had. After all, he never knew when it might be taken away.