Prologue
Hermione fruitlessly scrubbed her face, willing the tears to stop coming. She was used to this, used to the snide remarks about her intellect, used to being bullied for being a know it all, used to not having friends. So why was she crying?
It was supposed to be different here.
And that was the crux of the issue, wasn’t it?
Hogwarts was supposed to be different. Hogwarts wasn’t supposed to be like all the boys and girls in her primary school. When Professor McGonagall had come to her house, told her she was a witch, Hermione had been thrilled.
It was an explanation, an answer to all her unspoken questions. Finally she knew why she was different. She wasn’t strange or weird, she was a witch. And there were other witches and wizards, there was a whole community full of them.
A community that Hermione got to be a part of. Where she could meet other witches and wizards like her and nobody would make her feel abnormal.
This magic school, magic community, was the place where she would finally be accepted for being who she is, without having to change everything about herself. She would finally belong somewhere and she couldn’t wait.
Hermione’s hopes and aspirations were crushed shortly after arriving at Hogwarts, all the anticipation that had built up over the past year sinking to the bottom of her stomach and turning to stone.
Hogwarts was supposed to be different, yet it was exactly the same.
Two months into the year and still nobody has talked to her, not unless you count the scathing remarks said behind her back and to her face.
Hermione just didn’t understand why everyone was so mean to her. It wasn’t like she was bragging or keeping her smarts all to herself. She had tried to help the other students but that ended up making things worse.
It was becoming increasingly apparent that nobody liked it when she raised her hand in class, or spent all her time in the library. And it reign true when she studied in the common room and offered her help to others.
She hadn’t realized that being studious was an atrocious offense to the other Gryffindors, but she quickly found out.
“It's no wonder no one can stand her. She's a nightmare, honestly.”
Hermione presses her hands into her eyes until she sees stars, while Ron’s voice echoes in her head. She needs to get over this. So what if everyone hates her and she doesn’t have any friends. She doesn’t need anyone, she can be great on her own.
She ignores the voice in her head saying she doesn’t want to be all alone.
Once her eyes feel sticky and swollen, but no tears come out, Hermione goes to stand.
Hopefully she hasn’t missed too much of the feast, although it might be better off if she heads straight to the dorm. No point hanging around people who don’t want her there.
Just as she reaches for the door she feels the stone floor rumbling, vibrating beneath her feet akin to an earthquake. Before she can even think to be worried a great big bang echoes throughout the lavatory, followed by an odor so foul it makes her nose burn.
Hermione doesn’t even have time to react, to move or jump out of the way, whatever just walked into the girls bathroom smashes its way through the stalls, getting ever closer to her. She looks up just in time to see something large and heavy coming straight towards her head.
She’s going to die here, pathetically alone, without anyone even noticing she was gone.
Squeezing her eyes closed, she waits for the inevitable, hoping her demise won’t be too painful.
Interrupting her morose thoughts is the door banging open again and someone, a girl by the sounds of it, screaming a spell.
“Diffindo!”
Instead of feeling the crushing weight of whatever was coming for her head, Hermione feels shards rain down onto her, leaving a trail of blood in its wake.
Realizing that whatever was attempting to attack her had paused, Hermione jolts into action, diving to the floor and crawling through the wreckage to what she hopes is an escape.
Squinting to see through the darkness of the wood on top of her, Hermione makes her way out and scrambles to the only clearing she can see, under the sink.
Looking around the bathroom, Hermione tries to take deep breaths while simultaneously trying to keep all the dust and debris from entering her lungs.
Eyes catching on something, someone, she turns to the left, where the entrance to the lavatory is, and gawkes at the sight before her.
Stood there is Lavender, the girl who didn’t want to talk to Hermione about charms or Astronomy. And she didn’t look like the giggly girl as she had before, she didn’t look like the mean girls from primary, she just looked like a girl with a wand. A girl like Hermione.
And Pansy, someone who walked around with her nose in the air, always thinking she was better than everyone, looked as wide eyed and shocked as Hermione was.
They were all the same in that moment, just three witches who were faced with a mad troll in a bathroom and they might die any minute.
Hermione supposed silly things like Lavender liking lip gloss more than transfiguration didn’t really matter then.
“Hermione!” Pansy’s use of Hermione’s name, for the first time since they’d all become classmates, shocked Hermione from her thoughts. “Are you okay?”
“I- I think so, yes,” she said more certainly. “Run! Go get a professor!”
“You’ll die!” Lavender shrieked shrilly. “We just need to—”
All three girls screamed when the troll grunted and stomped its foot, the floor groaning like a dying man beneath it.
“We need to slow it down!” Pansy yelled, ducking when the troll swung its fists around randomly.
Hermione ran through every spell she knew, desperately trying to come up with something yet finding nothing in the vast expanse of her brain. Anything she'd practiced before wouldn’t help at all.
Though, there was one spell.
It would be risky she knew, nearly impossible to do correctly without any practice.
But it was her only option and everyone be damned if she wasn’t going to go down fighting with her last breath. She wouldn’t let Lavender and Pansy die.
“Petrificus Totalus!”
Putting everything she had behind it, Hermione casts a body bind curse, momentarily freezing the troll before it continues moving.
Barely controlling the urge to cheer at her success, she repeats the curse over and over again, hoping that the distraction will aid the other girls in subduing the troll.
Pansy and Lavender were huddled together near the door, trying not to disturb Hermione by talking in low tones, they needed to come up with a strategy, and fast.
“The only way we can subdue the troll is if we knock him out but how are we supposed to do that?” Lavender asked, choking back tears. Now wasn’t the time to lose it, she could cry as much as she wanted when they were back in the dorms, safe.
Pansy scrunched her nose while she thought, ignoring everything around her while she tried to think of spells that would help her.
Suddenly Pansy’s face lit up like a bright light bulb before settling into a cool mask of determination.
“I’ve got it!” She yells over the chaos.
Clenching her jaw against the strain on her magic, Hermione grits out, “Hurry up! I can’t do this much longer.”
“Nobody move,” Pansy calls out before pointing her wand to the floor and casting, “Glacius!”
A blue light, so bright it’s almost blinding in its intensity, shoots out of her wand, going straight to the floor. Suddenly, the light disappears as it’s absorbed into the stone and then slowly ice spreads its way across the floor, smelling of a soft, cold, death.
The troll quickly attempts to turn around at the sound of the spell, the last body bind curse sliding away. Very quickly, though, the troll realizes its mistake as it loses balance, arms swinging as if there is any hope of it grappling onto something. Eventually, the troll loses its battle against the ice, swaying on the cold substance before finally toppling over.
The sound of the troll's head hitting the icy stone floor reverberates against the walls of the now silent bathroom.
All three girls look at each other in shock and amazement, adrenaline running high and causing them to let loose small giggles.
“I can’t believe that worked,” Lavender says breathlessly.
“Of course it did. I came up with it after all,” Pansy says pompously, sticking her nose in the air.
There’s a moment of tense silence before the girls break out in loud laughter, slightly hysterical even to their own ears. Quieting down, they all bask in the endorphin released giddiness that comes with defeating a fully grown mountain troll as first years.
Hermione looks around at her fellow witches, these strangers that just saved her life, not without risk to their own, and before she can stop herself a question tumbles out, “Does this mean we’re friends?”
Pansy and Lavender glance at each other before Pansy looks in her direction and rolls her eyes.
“Yes Granger, this means we’re friends,” Pansy replies, too tired for her usual snark.
Hermione knows that this event has changed everything, that life as she knows it is gonna be flipped upside down on its head.
Nothing will ever be the same again and Hermione embraces that knowledge with open arms.