There Was Once

There Was Once a Little Girl...

Hermione's fingers trailed lightly across the scar at first, then dug into it more firmly, testing the bruise, wincing at the echo of former pain. It wasn't the pain that was occupying her thoughts, though, but the events which had brought it about. They had been big, important events. For her, possibly the biggest and most important of her life so far, and it wasn't as if she had had any shortage of adventures. Harry, who came into the hospital wing to visit frequently, often seemed to be withdrawn in thought as well, but she knew it was for a different reason. Fights to the death were, and it broke her heart to know it, fairly run of the mill for him by now. For her, on the other hand... She had encountered danger before, yes- but this had been people actively trying to kill her. It had been, quite frankly, terrifying, and therefore it was no surprise that the shock was forcing her to reconsider... well, everything.

It was strange, how when you remembered the child you had once been, you could barely believe that it was the same person. Part of you wished that it had indeed been a different person, so as not to cringe with embarrassment when you recalled how you had behaved, how you had thought back then. She didn't like feeling responsible for the ideas of someone who she now felt as if she had so little in common with... and yet, that little girl would always remain a part of her. Strange, how when things were their most eventful in the present, your thoughts were drawn ever more to the past...

There was once a little girl, although she would have hated to be described as such. Little was bad enough, but even if she was becoming reconciled to rather regrettably being one, girls were, as Enid Blyton books reliably informed her, slightly weak things to be. If she were a good little girl it would be in the expectation that she would one day be a good little housewife, relying on her husband for everything which didn't fall into her narrow housewife's remit. Hermione didn't need any husband. She could, as George had always maintained in the books, do anything the boys could do, and often do it better. Of course, she didn't mean climbing trees or swimming or any of the silly things George had wanted to do. She had never really seen the point in any of that stuff, and besides, she wasn't much good at it. What she was good at was lessons. Hermione was clever, her parents had said so, and her teachers too, and she could beat any of the boys in class, even and especially at maths.

There was once a little girl who didn't need anyone. She hated it when Tom and Simon, who sat across the desk from her, gave each other the answers to questions. If you couldn't do something yourself, and it was something worth doing, then you had best learn how to do it. But the painful twinge which she ignored every time she saw them muttering together was an unwelcome clue to the other reason she hated it. After all, she didn't have anyone to swap answers with.

She was greatly looking forward to starting secondary school, because there would be new subjects, and the teaching would be more formal, and she would get treated more like a grown-up. She wasn't scared at the thought of all of the new fellow pupils she would have to meet there, because she didn't like being scared of things. She did hope, though, that at secondary school, people wouldn't mind so much someone who took classes seriously and worked hard. She didn't have many friends at primary school, or any, in fact. She tried to admit it to herself matter-of-factly, but she winced mentally at the thought despite herself. She did her best to immerse herself in irritation at the fact that she didn't understand why. It wasn't often she found something she wanted to understand but couldn't, and she just couldn't fathom this. She was sure it was someone's fault, but didn't know if it was hers, or the other kids'. Perhaps her mother was right when she said that people were jealous of anyone special, like Hermione.

There was once a little girl who had an owl fly in through the dining room window during breakfast in the summer holidays. It was bringing a letter offering her a place at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, but bringing also new questions, new excitement, new worries. This was, after all, even more new stuff to learn, and perhaps at a school that was all for special people, no-one would have any reason not to like Hermione. But those thoughts fell to the back of her mind when the worries surfaced. She wasn't scared, of course. But the letter had said that a lot of the other children had parents who could do magic. What if they already knew all about everything Hermione still needed to find out, or if they were just better at it than her? She wasn't scared, but... Hermione had always, always been good at school, ever since their very first spelling test in Year Two. How would it be to not be the best any more? Well, that wouldn't do at all. So she got all of her books as soon as she could and spent the summer poring over them, so she was sure she knew as much about it all as she possibly could.

There was once a little girl who fled to the fourth-floor toilets in tears. Adults often sagely say what it really means when little boys pull little girls' pigtails, but when you are the eleven-year old, you may not see beyond the pain. And when Ron said she had no friends... it hurt, because she realised it was true. She had been so busy making sure that she proved that girls were as good as boys, that Muggleborns were as good as purebloods, that she hadn't even noticed, hadn't gotten used to it like she had at primary school. Here it came as a jarring shock, and the sudden realisation cut into her and drew tears.

And because she hadn't had a chance to numb herself to this pain, she felt its full force and realised finally how much the concept meant to her. She still couldn't manage to understand why she needed friends, or why she didn't have any, or why it all had to be so difficult. And she didn't know what to do, but cry at the hopelessness of it all. It was a bitter understanding, and one she could not find a way to cope with then. And her tears continued to flow.

There was once a girl who was rescued from a troll by two boys. And contrary to what might be expected, she was far from being pleased about this. Because this girl didn't need saving, and if she did need saving, then, she reasoned, she didn't deserve to get saved. People had to be able to stand on their own two feet, take care of themselves. It was weak to always be reliant on others. The girl didn't need a knight in shining armour to come and rescue her. She had always despised damsels in distress, and had no wish to be one of them.

But fortunately for the girl, she quickly had an opportunity to prove her equality by rescuing the boys in their turn, although which was the more fearsome, the troll or their Head of House, was something to be debated. And the girl knew now that she desperately wanted friends, and here these two were... and the girl was on the edge of a new type of knowledge.

In this area, however, she for once proved to be a slow learner. She softened, yes, began to understand the sort of compromises that friendship brought, even accepted that she was improved by their company as much as they, naturally, were improved by hers. But it was still years before the whole picture fell into place, and it took a fairly serious shock- a recognition of her own mortality, not something most 16 year old girls have to undergo- to awaken her fully to the knowledge she had begun learning all those years ago.

There was once a girl who told one of the boys that book-learning, that type of knowledge, wasn't anywhere near as important as other things. She had known it in her head in those brief, intense moments, however the idea hadn't stuck, really, because up until now she had never felt it in her heart, been struck to the core of her being by it. She had always strived for book-learning knowledge, worked long and hard at getting it, in a way she hadn't for the other stuff. Because you were always praised for the book-learning type of knowledge, she had learnt to value it. You were expected to work at it, whereas everyone seemed to take the other types for granted. Or perhaps the other types didn't usually need to have their rewards explained. And so she hadn't prioritised them in the same way.

And two nights ago, down in the labyrinthine underground Ministry-complex, what use had all her academic knowledge been to her? That was the question which occupied her mind now, which cast a new light on her past and made her curiously ashamed of her old priorities. What good was knowing something just for the sake of knowing it? She hadn't been able to save her friends, hadn't even been able to save herself. Her fingers rubbed angrily across the scar as if blaming it for her own failure.

Not her own failure, really, because what could she have been expected to do? More the failure of everything she had always believed in, the failure of her system of values. The failure of her book-learnt knowledge. Back in third year, her greatest fear, as demonstrated by the Boggart, had been that same knowledge failing her, her being found wanting scholastically. And yet in comparison with what had so nearly happened a couple of days ago, what had happened- the Slashing Hex directed at her, the brains seizing hold of Ron, Harry facing You-Know-Who, Sirius, for heavens' sake- suddenly her 'greatest fear' didn't seem anywhere near as terrifying as it once had. The prospect of losing every spell in her head didn't seem half so bad as the idea of losing her friends.

She had finally realised that she didn't just want them, she needed them, needed them desperately. Before, she had always shied away from admitting it, because admitting you needed someone else was like admitting you weren't up to the task yourself... and it terrified her, gave her a feeling of vertigo, because if you needed someone else, what would you do if ever they weren't there?

But maybe this was growing up, for Hermione felt somehow wiser than before, more inclined to accept and understand the world and herself than rebel against it, rebel against her nature. Now she embraced the need for others, for the best friends she had ever known, because she realised that the whole was greater than the sum of its parts, that she was more when she was with them... And that just because you could be independent, it didn't mean you had to be.

There was once a young woman who, a year later, when she had the choice between either venturing out into a dangerous world with a friend who would, she was sure, need her help, or finishing her schooling, doing her NEWTs... she didn't hesitate for a moment. Because school was good in its way, and she enjoyed it, but really, in the end... some things were just more important. She pressed a thumb against the scar across her belly, and she had no regrets.