Chapter Text
You understand you’ll have a hard time fitting in.
That doesn’t matter to me. I don’t fit in anywhere. I’m too loud, or too opinionated, or too smart, or too quiet, or too- this is inside my head, which means I don’t have to pause to breathe. Would you like me to keep going?
No, I see your point. You’re less concerned about fitting in than about realizing your potential. Or, wait, that isn’t it, is it? Because you’ll do that no matter where I put you. No, you want to be recognized for reaching your potential. Respected. Rewarded.
Well if you can read my mind, then you’ll understand it would be a nice change of pace.
Silence. Stillness. Then-
If I can be...great, they’ll accept me? Maybe even want to be my friends?
Maybe. They look after their own. This path will not be an easy one to walk.
I didn’t ask for easy.
You’re very brave. You would do quite well in Gryffindor.
I’m brave when it counts. I want to be great, and I want real friends.
Very well. Better be…
“SLYTHERIN!”
Hermione politely ignores the jaws that have dropped all around the room and the smattering of half-hearted, confused applause that accompanies her as she joins Goyle comma Gregory at the Slytherin table.
-
Pansy’s heart is pounding as she unpacks her things. A mudblood? In Slytherin? The house has been home to plenty of half-bloods she knows, but the muggleborns are few and far between. What is she going to be like? What if she’s savage? Her hair certainly indicates that as a possibility. Her hands tremble and she checks again to make sure she can reach her wand quickly if she needs to.
A hand slamming her trunk shut knocks her out of her stupor and she jumps, finding Daphne’s furious blue eyes suddenly boring into her. “You’re being ridiculous.” She hisses. “She’s normal. Kind of awkward. Good at school, which you are not.”
“Excuse me?” Merlin, the mudblood is right behind them. “I can hear you. I mean, I have rather good hearing, but also you’re talking at full volume in an enclosed room.” She shifts her weight from foot to foot. “Everyone is talking around me, but not to me. I get it. I’m muggleborn and that’s rare for Slytherin.”
She’s attracted Millicent and Tracey’s attention and the two of them have wandered over to listen. “I’ve read every textbook we were assigned from cover-to-cover. I’ve read Hogwarts, A History twice. I know what it means to be pure-blooded and I know that’s what most of this house is and I’ve already heard five upper-years say the word ‘mudblood’ and at least three of them were talking about me.” She sighs. “I’m not saying I expect us to be best friends, but I am saying that I will do my best to bring honor to Slytherin house. I can do it with academics, but I may need some help with customs.”
Daphne nods, eyes bright. “Of course. We can help with that. We’re all here for the same reason.” Speak for yourself, Pansy wants to say.
Millicent speaks then, her voice low and steady. “You should be prepared for people telling you you’re bringing dishonor on Slytherin house just by being in it.” Off Daphne’s glare, she continues, “No one in this room is saying it, not even Pansy. She’s just scared of muggles. But you should be prepared.” Belatedly, Pansy realises that she should be offended that Millicent thinks she’s scared of muggles. Except, she’s not wrong.
Tracey pipes up, "You should be prepared for the other houses to be pretty unfriendly. They think Slytherin means evil. I'm honestly not sure how you ended up here. Most of us are hereditary Slytherins."
The mudblood purses her lips. "It's ridiculous to label schoolchildren as evil and equally ridiculous to assume we're all alike," and Pansy notices her very deliberate use of we. "Slytherin is the house of people who want to do great things, no? Ambition and cleverness?"
Millicent chuckles. "Cunning, I think they say."
The mudblood shrugs. "Semantics," and Millicent, Daphne, and Tracey all laugh. While Pansy’s head is still spinning, Daphne actually reaches out to shake the mudblood’s hand.
"Well, welcome to Slytherin. Good luck."
-
Hermione doesn't fall asleep for a few hours. Instead, she stares at the top of the canopy bed thinking about what on Earth she's gotten herself into.
At the very least, none of her new dorm-mates have called her a mudblood to her face, though she's almost positive she hears Parkinson comma Pansy mutter it in a whispered argument with Greengrass comma Daphne.
From what she can gather, Pansy, Millicent, and Daphne all know each other from before Hogwarts and it sounds like they knew of Tracey. Tracey is a half-blood whose father is fairly prominent in the Ministry of Magic and her mother is some fabulously talented and beautiful actress, but her parents aren’t together anymore.
Then there's her. Mudblood. Freak.
It could have been so much worse today. No one's lobbed a spit ball at her or thrown her books into the mud. No one's commented on her hair or her clothes. There are even other black kids in her dorm, Tracey and Zabini comma Blaise, who had given her a haughty sniff when he settled at the Slytherin table and proceeded to ignore her for the rest of the night. Actually, all the boys had ignored her, except for Goyle comma Gregory when he couldn't get his tie on right. She'd fixed it for him twice over the course of dinner and he'd smiled and said thank you instead of telling her to buzz off because he didn't want help, especially from her, which was what she'd been expecting.
Hogwarts could be a perfectly ordinary boarding school and it would already have surpassed every other school she's ever attended. But Hogwarts isn't ordinary. Hogwarts has magic and that means that it is officially the best place in the entire world. And if she can make friends by being the best? She's going to be just fine.
The next morning, she wakes early. They're supposed to get their timetables at breakfast and she wants to be ready. She spends longer than she's proud of assembling her outfit for her first day and trying to figure out if she should do something with her hair before giving up.
When she reaches the common room, it's quiet, though there is a fire burning low in the grate and early morning sunshine is filtering through the lake. She spares a moment to take everything in. She's at a school for magic surrounded by witches and living in a dorm room built from a literal dungeon that looks out into a magical lake with mermen and a giant squid. She's in the house of ambition, the house of greatness. Never mind that they hate her.
Daphne finds her just before she reaches the door. "Granger, hey. Wait up." Daphne's red hair is rivaling Hermione's in messiness, though since it's straight and thin she'll have a much easier time taming it. Her eyes are bleary and she clearly got dressed in about thirty seconds. "I'll go up to breakfast with you. Um, would you mind giving me a minute to brush my hair?"
Hermione nods, a little bewildered, as Daphne pulls a small brush out of her bag and begins to use one of the mirrors in the common room to pull herself together. "It's very kind of you to come with me. You needn't have troubled yourself."
Daphne glances over at her and there is something sharp in her pale blue eyes. "To be honest, I don't really think you should be going places alone, at least not until you've settled in a bit. People might...well, people like to play tricks. I don't think you'll need to worry about our year, but I threw some basic wards up around your belongings just in case."
Wards. Right. She should have thought of that. Daphne must read something in her expression because she says, "This must all be a lot to take in. You're doing well. Much better than some muggleborns. You came prepared." She pauses, tilts her head. "And you came with thick skin. That's important too."
Daphne talks the whole way down to the Great Hall. Her mother is on the Board of Governors at Hogwarts so she's privy to some information that the general student population wouldn't be. Apparently everyone is holding their breath because Harry Potter starts Hogwarts this year and there are rumors that Death Eaters or other Voldemort sympathizers might target him now that he's away from his family. Daphne, Hermione notices, uses "You-Know-Who" to describe the dark wizard Voldemort. She'd been expecting "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named," so she makes a mental note to try "You-Know-Who" when it's casual conversation. Maybe she can practice with Daphne if Daphne ever stops talking to take a breath.
"I mean, sure, he's supposed to be this great wizard, but he's eleven. You know? And anyway, Draco didn't seem terribly impressed with him." Right, that would be Draco Malfoy, the rude little boy who stared at her like she was something he’d scraped off his shoe. Apparently his father is also on the Board.
"I met Potter on the train," Hermione volunteers. "He was pretty quiet, seemed a little overwhelmed. He and that Weasley boy were no help at all finding Neville's toad."
Daphne’s eyes brighten. “Oh, Neville Longbottom! His grandmother is on the Board as well and I’ve seen her at a few events. She’s incredibly intimidating and she goes around in a hat with a stuffed vulture on it that probably wouldn’t be fashionable except it’s being worn by Augusta Longbottom. Rumor has it that Neville’s a bit of a dud though.”
Hermione's heart twists. She'd thought Neville was quite sweet actually and he was very grateful when she helped him track down Trevor. Neville isn't in her house though, so she demurs. "I don't know anything about his magic, but he does seem to have trouble keeping track of his belongings."
Daphne snorts. "He'll fit right in with Tracey then. I would put a galleon down that she comes to breakfast without her tie."
Tracey does come down to breakfast without her tie, though she squeaks and sprints back to the dorms to retrieve it, earning rolled eyes from their Head of House as he distributes their timetables. When he's safely out of earshot, Daphne whispers, "If she'd been in another house, he'd have taken points."
Professor Snape terrifies Hermione a little bit. He’d said very little to them on the first night in the Dungeons, but the gist of it had been ‘If you embarrass me or Slytherin, I will make you wish you were never born.’ He’d also stared at her for what had probably only been a second or two longer than everyone else, but it had felt like eons.
“So he favors his own house? That doesn’t seem sporting.” Hermione freezes, realizing she’s going to have to learn to bite her tongue if she’s going to get anywhere. Daphne doesn’t seem offended though. She just shrugs.
“I’d wager all of the Heads of Houses favor their own. Pass the bacon?”
Potions is their first class of the day. So far, the only person who has spoken more than a few words to her is Daphne, so she’s more than a little relieved when it’s Daphne that sits down at the table next to her. Parkinson has cozied up at a table with Malfoy and Millicent and Tracey are sitting with each other.
As it turns out, Professor Snape is still terrifying, but in a very engaging way. Hermione listens to his speech about brewing fame and bottling glory and starts off on a high note, earning five points for Slytherin when she’s able to answer his increasingly tricky series of questions. She notices a couple of the other students giving her considering looks then, but it’s quickly overshadowed by how transparently Snape loathes Harry Potter. She tries to start a conversation about it later when they're at lunch, but she mostly gets shrugs and rolled eyes. Snape loathes Potter because Potter is loathsome. Well...okay then.
She gets a few people more to notice her when she’s the first person in Charms class to levitate her feather and she earns a smile from Gregory Goyle when she corrects his pronunciation of wingardium leviosa. She also earns a glare from Draco Malfoy, but he glares a lot, so she just shrugs it off. Goyle’s feather sort of halfheartedly bounces on the desk, but his eyes light up and Theodore Nott claps him on the shoulder.
Daphne sits next to her again at dinner, so she feels like she can’t just wolf down her meal and go to re-read the texts for tomorrow’s lessons. Something must show on her face though, because Daphne asks, “Were you planning to go study after dinner?” Somewhat abashed, Hermione nods.
Daphne bites her lip. “Okay. Well I guess- do you want to go to the library?” Across the table, Pansy Parkinson scoffs and Theodore Nott’s eyes have gone a little wide. Daphne rolls her eyes. “Don’t look so shocked. I can go to the library if I want to go to the library.” She swigs her pumpkin juice and then stands as if to prove her point. Hermione hurries to follow.
As they’re making their way down the hallway, Hermione asks, “I don’t mean to be rude, but why were they so surprised that you offered to go to the library with me?” She’d have thought it was because Daphne was willingly choosing to accompany a mudblood anywhere except that Daphne’s reaction had seemed to suggest something different.
Daphne smiles, though it’s more like a smirk. “School is maybe not so much my thing. Pansy and I shared a tutor with Draco and Theo and we were a rather...spirited group. In the end, I think he despaired of all of us save Draco. He’s a bit of a swot when you get to know him.”
Hermione has been thinking of a few words that she would use to describe Draco Malfoy and ‘swot’ isn’t one of them. That must show on her face too, because Daphne laughs all the way to the library.
-
Draco is more tired than he’s proud to admit on the first night after classes. He heads straight back to the common room after dinner with Vince and Greg dutifully traipsing after him. They play a few half-hearted rounds of Exploding Snap while he gets a head start on his Potions essay, but pretty quickly filter back to the dorm to find Blaise and Theo already getting ready for bed. They look up when he walks in.
Theo chews on his lip for a moment before asking, “Are we going to...do anything about the mudblood?”
Draco sighs. He’d known this was coming, but he’d been hoping to talk to his godfather or his mother before he talked to his housemates. In retrospect, that’s what he should have been doing tonight instead of watching Vince and Greg’s mutually assured Exploding Snap destruction.
He’s saved from answering by Blaise. “I don’t think we can. Daphne’s stuck to her like glue. She’s clearly trying to make a point. They went to the library together.”
Draco feels his eyebrows shoot up. “Daphne? Willingly stepped foot into a library? She knows there are books there, right?” Blaise snorts and Theo giggles softly. Draco leans back on his heels. “Well, that’s our answer then. We do nothing and we wait and see. Maybe the mudblood problem will solve itself.” Maybe there isn’t a mudblood problem. “Although if we see Pansy heading for the library, we go straight to my father and we tell him the apocalypse is nigh.”
The other boys laugh again and some of the tension dissipates, only to reform a few minutes later after they’ve all climbed into bed when Theo says, “Did you notice she knew all the answers in class today? She didn’t even look anything up. She must have studied it ahead of time.”
Vince nods. “She helped with Greg’s feather.”
Draco leans back on his bed and stares at the ceiling. “So what you’re saying is she’s smart for a mudblood?”
Blaise is muffled and he sounds half asleep when he chimes in, “I think what they’re saying is she’s smart for a smart person.”
Draco doesn’t have a response to that. Theo isn’t done thinking out loud though. “Do you think maybe that’s why she got put in Slytherin? Because we’re the house of greatness and she’s good enough that being a mudblood won’t hold her back?” When no one answers him, he hums and says, “I guess we’ll see. Anyway, did you guys notice Daphne’s hair?”
Draco rolls his eyes. Daphne’s red, formerly blonde hair was impossible not to notice. So was Theo’s long-standing crush on Daphne. “She got that creepy house elf thing of hers to get her the potion to color it, I bet. That or it brewed it for her.”
Blaise groans. “I like Roska, I like Daphne’s hair, and I like my bed. I’d like it a whole lot better if I was asleep right now. We’ll see Daphne and the mudblood tomorrow.” There’s a beat of silence and then he says, “We should probably learn the mudblood’s name.”
From Draco’s other side, Greg rumbles. “It’s Granger. She’s right after me.” It’s the most words he’s strung together all day.
The dorm falls silent, but for as tired as he is, Draco can’t sleep. He should have written immediately to tell his father that there was a mudblood in Slytherin. Since he didn’t, he's going to have to assume that his father has heard from other sources and just keep going on like everything is normal. He’ll write his parents at the end of the week with an update on classes, a hello from Severus, and a promise to be a credit to the Malfoy name.
He squeezes his eyes shut and tries to will himself to sleep. Tomorrow is Transfiguration and Defense, and those will require energy he doesn’t presently have. When all the squeezing does is give him a headache, he resigns himself to being awake and lets his eyes drift open, staring at nothing.
Between Harry Potter and the mudblood, his first year at Hogwarts is really not turning out the way he thought it would.