i have a lot of secret hermione headcanons like. she was insufferable at muggle school as well and generally not well liked. she was the girl whose parents were both dentists and she read too many books and tried to talk to people in her class about them but they generally thought she was trying to show off. so when she gets into hogwarts she throws herself into the new culture and reads as many books as her parents will pay for, including her text books and several history books and when her parents refuse to buy the unabridged history of magic and also some legends, she seriously considers hiding out in flourish and blotts so she can just read it in the bookstore. but she wears her robes around the house and sends about forty letters to hogwarts asking questions about the school year and the course load and how the grading scale works and if they’re very sure they’ve told her everything she’s going to need. and her parents are worried about her but they had been already? because she has such a hard time making friends. and they hope she’ll be able to make friends at hogwarts.
the first letter she sends them is full of descriptions of the castle and the sorting and background information on gryffindor and she mentions that she met neville and he’s very sweet, and the classes are so interesting, and she loves them very much! and the next few are also like that and kind of strained. and they suspect (correctly) that she again does not have friends.
a couple weeks into november, she sends them a letter full of complaints about ron’s study habits and how he’s teaching her wizard chess and how both he and harry are very brave but also not very good students. and she tells them about hagrid, who is eight and a half feet tall and the nicest person she has ever met.
they stop worrying as much until they get a letter at the end of term saying that hermione has broken about 20 school rules and also congratulations your daughter scored over 100% on almost every exam.
At which point they seriously consider having Words with their daughter about appropriate responses to situations and also is her headmaster insane because that letter seemed awfully approving? But she comes home and stands differently and when they bring the letter up she squares her jaw and straightens her spine and says a few stubborn words about her friends and protecting people and…you know, they’re still a little concerned, but she looks fierce as fire for a moment before she smiles and asks if they got her final scores. They would never have admitted it, but they worried about their brilliant little girl in the house of the brave, because wouldn’t she have enjoyed the house of the wise more, a whole house full of people as curious and intelligent as she is. But when she stares back at them, bold as brass, like she knows she did right and doesn’t care what the rules have to say on the matter, they decide that Gryffindor is right where she belongs.
When they meet the fabled Ron and Harry over the summer, they expect something very different from the diffident bespectacled boy and the bouncing redhead. But Hermione falls in with them like a puzzle piece, a bickering irritated puzzle piece but a perfect fit nonetheless, and for a moment all three of them have that flash, of straight backs and square jaws and the determination to face the world, fierce as fire.
(via bronzedragon)
