bloody, but unbowed
Over the course of the next few months, Hermione learned that there was quite a gap between theory and practice, when it came to Chestnut Lane C of E Primary School's acceptance of non-Christians. They had school assembly every day, with 'hands together, eyes closed' for the Lord's Prayer, and it was one thing to just sit with arms folded and eyes open, scowling, and to look around and see who else had their eyes open, but it didn't feel like enough. It didn't feel like enough to sing some of the hymns, but omitting more of the problematic lines than she was already in the habit of doing, or to open and close her mouth silently if everything in the hymn was problematic. The Vow didn't burn - she wasn't anywhere close to breaking it - but it tugged and tickled gently. And it wasn't fair. She'd asked her parents, and they'd filled in forms when they made the school application. They'd said they were atheists, so the school knew she wasn't Christian, but they expected her to pretend she was anyway. And yes, it was officially a Church of England school, and her parents had known that when they applied, but it was also the local primary school. Hermione's parents' house was squarely in the catchment area, and any of the other local primary schools would have been a much longer walk, more than twenty minutes as opposed to less than ten, and most of them were C of E schools, too, and the one she could think of that wasn't was Catholic, which was hardly an improvement.
Hermione didn't have a problem with studying the Bible in class. The stories were interesting, and the teacher would give them so much time to read the passages indicated, that she'd end up reading straight past them, and onto stories that presented a rather nastier image of the deity - and the ancient Israelites, for that matter - than the carefully curated selections that were supposed to present a particular, 'nice' version of Christianity. Frankly, she was surprised the story of Abraham and Isaac made the cut: she found that one utterly horrific, and was very glad her parents were atheists. If anyone asked them to kill her, no matter who it was, she knew they would say no. What Hermione did have a problem with was when the teacher asked them all to write their own prayer. Write a poem - fine. A short story - fine. But a prayer - no. She refused. They were supposed to draw pictures as well, decorating what they'd written, but Hermione's piece of cardboard stayed stubbornly blank. For the first time ever, she refused to do an assignment. Even the prospect of getting a zero, a failed mark, didn't make her relent. She was kept in over break to 'give her another chance to do the work', and she produced a short essay as to why compelling religious observation was wrong, even citing philosophical sources, though of course she couldn't name any of her friends directly. She was sent to the head's office, threatened with calling her parents. Of course it was Emily who came to pick her up, but her parents heard all about it.
Thankfully, her parents backed her up. They were extremely upset about having to take time out of their busy schedules to go and argue with the headmaster, but they did it. It was only right and fair, and that was what Hermione told Adrealphus, the peacock-shaped geometry expert, who was rather horrified that she had got in trouble on her friends' account.
"People have been burned at the stake for less!" he fluttered at her. "There's such a thing as making a mental reservation, people use it all the time, saying things they don't really mean because they'll be in trouble if they don't. Anything could have happened, just anything."
"Even if I could have lied," Hermione stuck her chin out, "I didn't want to. I shouldn't have to. It's not right. And they can't burn me at the stake. That would be murder, and illegal. There are rules, and laws, and they don't have the right to make people be Christian when they aren't. And if they think they do, they're wrong. This is the 1980s." And she would not relent. Not even when Crocell agreed with Adrealphus that she had been unnecessarily brave.
"It's done now," she said. "Even if maybe I could have been more discreet and not provoked a confrontation, I'm in the confrontation now, and I won't back down. I won't give them the satisfaction." Crocell had to content himself with a variety of backup plans, in case the penalties she was facing were worse than she supposed.
In actual fact, nothing bad did happen. Yes, the girl in her class who had previously been friendly enough as to accept an invitation to the cinema, Claire, now wanted nothing whatsoever to do with Hermione, since it turned out she was actually quite devoutly religious, but it wasn't as if they'd been proper friends, even if Hermione (and her parents) had cherished hopes they might be heading that way. Another consequence was that from now on, at school assemblies, Hermione spent most of them standing or sitting just outside the doors to the school hall, to be fetched back in again before the notices and announcements. At first, she felt the weight of being stared at very keenly, but she reminded herself she hadn't done anything wrong, and eventually it became the new normal. Moreover, while she started off as the only one at first, it turned out that the black girl in the year below hers was Muslim, and then there was an Indian boy in the year above who was apparently Hindu. He had been bothered less by the Christian worship, he explained, because his religion had lots of gods anyway, so adding another hadn't seemed like that big a deal, but now he had the option of not joining in, he thought he might as well take it. And on the days when the whole school had Assembly together, rather than Infants and Juniors separately, there were more of them, and the school secretary to supervise them grudgingly. There weren't any other atheists, and Hermione wouldn't say that she was exactly friends with Parish and Aisha - rather than talk to each other while they waited together, Hermione tended to read, Parish liked to draw, and Aisha played with puzzles - but there was at least a sense of fellow-feeling there, as with the other music students.
Hermione did notice that some of the teachers, as well as the headteacher and the school secretary, seemed somewhat less favourably disposed towards her than they had been before, but she wasn't sorry. If they were unfair and silly, it was better to know than not. And so what if she got fewer gold stars on her work, less praise, less singling out as a model for others to emulate? So what if she almost never got permission to sit in the school library at break-time any more, instead being shooed out to 'play with the other children'? She kept at least one book from the school library on her person at all times, and there were always mathematical equations to work through. Then, after school, she could summon one or more of her friends for company, while Emily watched television in the living-room below. Besides the time they spent teaching her Dark Arts (and Mathematics, Astronomy, French, and so on), she also cherished the times when they would read newspapers and books about recent history and science together. Her friends had such interesting perspectives: they questioned things it hadn't occurred to her to wonder about, and supplied background details she would struggle to find elsewhere.
She could tell her demon friends anything, and did, and they were always supportive, whether it was her teacher questioning her on topics they hadn't covered in class, almost as if she wanted to catch her out, or her classmates nicknaming her 'beaver', or whether she was just really upset by something she'd read in the newspaper. Their suggestions weren't always terribly practical - she didn't want any of the other children disembowelled, or even slightly disfigured, no matter how rude they were to her - but the sympathy and understanding were wonderful. And sometimes - just sometimes - they could help. Car-bombings and civil wars and massacres were rather outside their remit, but when there was a scandal at the Catholic secondary school a couple of miles away, the one near the train station Hermione and Emily sometimes took to go into Central London and visit the Natural History Museum - then Crocell had a suggestion that seemed quite reasonable. There had been 'incidents' with one of the monks who had come over to teach, and he wasn't welcome back, but he hadn't been arrested or anything, he was still living at St Mary House, in the next suburb over. What if he convinced people he was very sorry and had learned his lesson, and then did it again? It seemed very likely, and Crocell agreed. Though it was always possible he hadn't done anything - innocent until proven guilty, that was the rule, and it was a good rule - but what if he had? The police hadn't done anything, but the police didn't always get things right. And demons - or at least some demons - had the ability to read minds. They would be able to just walk up to him - waiting until he was asleep might make things a little easier - use their abilities, go through his memories, and then they'd know. And of course if he was innocent - well, innocent of being a child abuser, anyway, he was still a dedicated servant of the King of Kings and therefore a much-disliked person as far as the demons were concerned - he'd have nothing more than a very bad nightmare, possibly be more tired than usual for a few days afterwards, and that wasn't so bad, was it? Surely a good, decent person would be willing to suffer a few days of being slightly under the weather, if that protected children from harm? And Hermione had already empowered one demon, Camio, to fly about the mortal earth for a month, going wherever he liked, in exchange for the ability to talk to birds. Surely justice was an even worthier cause than personal gain, and she could always empower somebody to go and investigate first, and then they could decide together what to do.
Catching the bus with Camio, in his thrush form, sitting on her shoulder hidden by her hair, pointing out St Mary House to him in a whisper, was very easy. (Crocell, who looked like a very tall man with green hair and large black feathery wings, would have had a harder time with concealment. Ordinary humans couldn't see demons, after all, but other magic-users could, and some of them really disapproved of demons and those who associated with them.) The spell that helped him to bypass the boundary, overcoming the 'sacred ground' aspect, was easy enough since she'd practised it so carefully beforehand with Crocell, and it just looked like she was crouching down to rummage in her bag. She didn't have to stay while Camio did his work; he could dismiss himself afterwards. He'd need time to recover, of course, and maybe the sacrifice of a few beetles or worms the next time she summoned him, but reconvening in two weeks would be eminently doable. The news about the man's guilt was not easy to hear, and some of the details, the scale of his offences, his utter lack of remorse, were truly horrible. Crocell and Hermione's other friends were very powerful, with a wide range of special abilities, and had fought in wars against other celestial beings, but because of the treaty between the Heavenly Host and the rebels, the demons' ability to do anything much on Earth these days was deeply restricted. Only if she (or another mortal) gave them permission; only if it was something they were doing for her. Saying 'yes' wasn't easy, any more than it was easy reading the news about the fire breaking out, the quotation from the local fire brigade about what a dangerous habit smoking in bed was, and knowing that a man was dead because of her. But he had hurt so many people, would have gone on to hurt so many more, and been allowed to get away with it, because people assumed that those in his position were trustworthy. So she had done a good thing. Her mentor told her so. And even her mother, reading the local paper, had snorted and said "good riddance."