Hermione woke up early, as she did every day, but, unusually, she stayed there. She was thinking about happy thoughts. Yesterday was the last day of her primary school, so the last day she would ever see Charlene, the school bully. Charlene was going to Saint Brutus's secure school for incurably criminal children, and she would be going to the local comprehensive. She had passed the private schools test with flying colours but the fees were too expensive for her to go.
She would miss some of the parts of her school. Like the French teacher who everyone hated but she had found that she was nice when she got to know her; Or the toothless caretaker who grinned at everyone; or the boy in year one who she saw on the way home who liked her because he heard her humming the Peppa Pig theme tune on the way home once. She would especially miss the little boy, she had the feeling that she was his only friend, as well as likewise.
She sat up in bed. Look on the bright side, she thought, you will never see Charlene again. She would never be able to call her a freak again. It wasn't her fault that very improbable things kept happening to her! It was merely a coincidence! Like when she went to show the exchange student her room and found that it no longer had the Mikey Mouse wallpaper but was painted plain white. And it wasn't her fault that Charlene's bulldog got stuck on a windowsill on the third floor! That didn't stop Charlene punching her afterwards.
Anyway, she didn't need to worry about Charlene anymore! It's the first day of the holidays! She should be cheerful! She got out of bed and yelled "Hello!" at someone out of her window. Ignoring his startled look, she ran out of her room. She skipped down the stairs and promptly fell over.
***
As a celebration of her finishing primary school, Hermione's parents had made her waffles for breakfast. She didn't have the heart to tell them that she stopped liking waffles a long time ago, so she ate it all. She just sat for a while, enjoying the fact that she wasn't panicking about losing school books as she did every morning, for she had no bag to pack, as there was no school! She heard the letterbox open and close.
"I'll get it!"
She went to the letterbox and picked up the pile of letters. Bills, invitations to weddings for people she'd never heard of, more bills. Then one of the letters caught her eye. She picked up the letter. The address was written on an envelope made of yellow parchment and it looked like it had gone through wind and rain to get there. Hermione looked out of the window. It was still perfectly clear. The post office wasn't far away, why did it look like that?
She looked closer at the envelope. It was shut with one of those wax seals; a closer look at the purple seal showed that it had a coat of arms on it. It was split into quarters, each quarter having a lion, an eagle, a badger or a snake on it. In the middle was an ornate letter 'H'
She looked at the address, written in green ink using a quill in loopy writing, presuming it was actually for some medieval re-enactment.
Hermione Granger
Second bedroom on the left
Number 123 Acacia Road
Little Winging
Surry
Why was such an odd letter addressed to her? In fact, why was any letter addressed to her? She knew no one who would or could write to her. She stood there for a while, thinking about what to do. She could open it, she could burn it with her handmade Bunsen burner. She would give it to her parents, she concluded, and let them sort it out.
"Dad?"
"Yes?"
"I've got a letter"
Hermione's dad looked up from his newspaper. Hermione handed him the strange letter. Hermione's dad looked at it for ages then opened it and stared at the writing with an odd expression on his face. Hermione couldn't make out what it said, but she could see it was written in the same loopy handwriting.
Hermione's dad looked up and smiled at her, but it looked rather fake.
"It was nothing important" he said in a would-be calm voice, screwing up the letter and throwing the letter in the bin. Hermione was horror-struck.
"But - But -" she stuttered "That was my first letter ever! You can't throw it away!"
"It was nothing important" Hermione's dad said more firmly "Now go upstairs"
Trying not to cry, Hermione did so. She tried to slam the door, but it didn't work.
***
Hermione didn't leave her room for most of the holiday. She kept going over the letter in her head. It could've been anything! It could have been from someone wanting to be her first friend, and her dad had just thrown it away! She stayed in her room until the penultimate week, when something happened that changed the course of her life forever.
She woke up in the middle of the night, feeling that something was wrong. She wracked her brain, trying to think of a bad dream she had had, but she couldn't think of anything. She went downstairs to get some water and was surprised to see her parents cowering in the corner of the hallway, staring at the door.
"Don't come in, I'm armed!" Her dad squeaked.
In reality, he was holding a large stick he had found in the garden minutes beforehand.
The door rattled for a while, there was silence then...
BOOM!!!
The door blasted apart, to show the silhouette of a huge man standing in the doorway.
YOU ARE READING
Hermione Granger and the Philosopher's Stone (Completed)
Fanfic(book 1) (completed) Hermione Jean Granger had always wondered why strange things happened around her. Despite her many theories, she was not expecting the truth. She was a witch, and had been accepted into the best magic school in the world, Hogwar...
