The Arrival
She was used to the stares. To the harsh looks filled with unfiltered disgust and hatred. She almost preferred the ones who ignored her, the few who turned their eyes away, shunning her as if she didn’t exist. She would rather be invisible than attract the attention of everyone in the room. Yet, no matter how much of a wallflower she ached to be, Hermione Granger could never avoid the glares. In the corridors, the great hall, the potions classroom, even in Hogsmeade, she drew them to her like a magnet. Solace only found her in dark corners. She sought safety at a small table in the back of the library by the restricted section where no one seemed to ever find her, in the Ravenclaw common room to an extent, where her house mates at least tried to ignore her, and within the confines a single office, hidden deep in the dungeons.
Hermione Granger wasn’t the average witch of her age. The first muggleborn of her generation and the first to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in nearly a century, she was dirt compared to her peers. But, alas, she was held in the spotlight, illuminated for the world to see, by her professors who donned unwanted titles upon her. Passing exclamations of “brightest witch of her age” and “the best to enter Hogwarts since Bellatrix Black” followed her through the halls like a heavy shadow. Hermione hated the attention the titles garnered her and frequently attempted to shy away from it all—refusing to verbally answer questions in class and rushing to eat her meals before or after her peers (often eating late at night with the house elves in the kitchens).
While a muggleborn witch, Hermione had no relatives. Her parents, if they could even be called such (for she never knew them), died or vanished into the night without a trace leaving a six-month-old Hermione to fend for herself within the cold stone walls of a muggle orphanage. Growing up in a system that did the bare minimum, Hermione learned the value of silence and manners early. She learned to never speak unless spoken to unless she valued sleeping out in the cold with no food or bed in sight. She mastered the art of cooking by the age of four and could clean a room spotless not even a year later. Most importantly, Hermione had learned how to be a shadow, how to blend into the background enough that the older children finally forgot she existed.
With such a background, it came as a great surprise to 9-year-old Hermione when a tall woman with a pointed hat arrived on the dreary grey steps of her orphanage one cool summer evening. The first signs of autumn already brushing through the air. The woman was odd, standing out plainly against her backdrop, long black and purple robes brushing against the ground as she waited. Hermione had not been alone in her surprise that, of all the children, the woman had been looking for her specifically. It had taken the woman nearly half an hour to convince their matron that she was there for Hermione and that she would not be persuaded to speak to any of the other children.
When the woman finally was allowed to speak with Hermione alone, she spoke of madness. Of a world existing within the world Hermione knew—a world of witches and wizards, a world of magic. Hermione instantly deemed the woman to be mad for nothing so extraordinary could exist—the words surpassing Hermione’s deepest imagination and igniting an unwanted curiosity within her. She certainly did not believe the woman when she claimed that Hermione was a witch, yet that conversation changed her life inevitably.
Now, nearly 6 years later, just shy of her 15th birthday, Hermione Granger hid in the Hogwarts owlery, gazing out across the Black Lake as three tall masts proudly emerged from its depths. The Hogwarts student body crowded the shoreline, their cheers echoing across the lake as they excitedly waved their hands at the approaching ship. Slowly, in its majestic glory, the proud ship glided up to a dock (which surely must have been magically constructed as it had not been there only hours before). As she watched from her high perch, the Durmstrang delegation strode to the edge of the deck and stood at attention like a line of soldiers. A horn sounded in the distance as they glared out across the foolish crowd of students. In the center of their line, two men stepped forward, encouraging even more cheers from the rambunctious crowd at their feet. Hermione quickly deduced from the growing chant of ‘Krum!’ ‘Krum!’ that the two men must be the Durmstrang High Master and the famous, or rather infamous, Viktor Krum—a quidditch star and the clear cause of all the commotion.
Within moments however, Hermione’s gaze was drawn towards the sky. She beat her classmates in noticing the quickly approaching carriage drifting through the clear blue expanse as their sighs of awe only reached her ears several moments later. Her eyes were glued to the sky, she couldn’t pull away from the beautiful sight. She had, of course, read about Beauxbatons and their flair for the dramatic, but she had not expected something so magnificent. As the carriage neared a haphazard runway—roughly cut into the grass in a small clearing beside the lake—Hermione was amused to see the annoyed looks on the Durmstrang delegation as the Hogwarts students rapidly moved their gazes to the white horses and the giant Headmistress emerging from the delicate white, blue, and golden carriage.
As the cheers settled down and Hogwarts professors began to emerge from the crowd to herd their flock of wild students towards the great hall, Hermione watched as first the Durmstrang and then the Beauxbatons delegation slowly and elegantly left their chariots to follow the crowd inside—both sets of precise, ordered lines in stark contrast to the crisscrossed paths of the Hogwarts student body. It was while she was watching this migration that she noticed two figures freeze. The girls were of a similar height and wore pale blue robes, their golden and bronze hair topped with elegant bonnets. Slowly they lifted their heads in unison and seemed to gaze directly at her as the crowd parted to move around them. Surely they couldn’t see Hermione, so high up in the tower, but she felt as though they were staring not only at her, but directly into her soul. These stares were nothing like she had experienced. Unlike the others, which she had come to loathe and resent, their golden gazes made her feel safe, protected even. She could almost convince herself that she could feel their magic reaching up and wrapping around her, hugging her tightly in a warm cocoon, not uncomfortably, but snug, like a warm, soft blanket on a cold winter night. She shivered slightly at the sensation. But she must have been imagining it because no magic was powerful enough to be so pronounced from so far away. As their headmistress placed her hands on their shoulders, eyes straining to see what her two students were looking at, their eyes flashed before they steeled themselves to move forward. While their feet carried them, their eyes did not leave Hermione’s hiding place until they were out of sight.
As she observed the last few stragglers rush towards the castle, Hermione was startled out of her musings by a surge of warmth in her chest and a voice emerging from the stone doorway behind her.
“Shouldn’t you be in the great hall?” the voice asked.
Hermione whipped her head around and took in the smug figure leaning carefully against the arch of the doorway, her arms crossed against her chest. Breathing out a sigh as she took in her favorite professor, Hermione allowed her wit to shine—something she never did except around Professor Black, and, even then, it was something the professor had to work for, breaking down Hermione’s walls and wiggling her way into the girl’s heart with her care and patience.
“Shouldn’t you?” Hermione joked, “Or do snakes have a sudden disregard for slithering up to such heights?”
“Ha, ha, Miss Granger,” the woman replied with a smirk, “you should know by now that snakes can fly as much as ravens.” She gestured to the doorway, “Now, as much as I would love to hide out here myself, you know as well as I do that any absence from the opening ceremony will not be tolerated. Come, Miss Granger, before I am forced to remove some of your hard-earned house points.”
Hermione hopped down from the ledge with a small chuckle knowing the woman’s threat was entirely harmless. Turning her head one last time to take in the two new forms by the lake, Hermione sighed before moving past the professor and down the stairs towards the great hall.
The closer they got to the room, shoes tapping their way through the empty hallways, the stranger Hermione began to feel. At first, the sensation was barely noticeable, like a tickle in the back of her mind, present but not overwhelming. But, with every step she took, the more pronounced it became. Approaching the doors to the great hall, it was as though her entire body was covered with snakes, coiling tightly around her, locking themselves to her form. The sensation was warm, hot even, as it travelled through her. She even felt two snakes make their way up her torso and wrap around her neck and across her shoulders, their theoretical heads meeting atop her own. She paused for a moment, absorbing the curious sensation, before Professor Black’s hand landed gently on her back, pushing her forwards towards whatever lay ahead.