In An Alternate Universe ~ The Prequel
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Harry Potter › Het - Male/Female › Snape/Hermione
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Adult +
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6
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Category:
Harry Potter › Het - Male/Female › Snape/Hermione
Rating:
Adult +
Chapters:
6
Views:
3,355
Reviews:
1
Recommended:
0
Currently Reading:
0
Disclaimer:
I do not own the Harry Potter characters. No $$$$ is being made from the writing of this fanfiction.
Going to Hogwarts
Chapter 2 ~ Going to Hogwarts
Granger was on platform nine and three quarters, next to a thin, sour-looking woman who greatly resembled her. A tall, burly brown haired man stood scowling next to them
James was staring at the family of three a short distance away. Granger seemed to be pleading with her father.
“. . . I’m sorry, father, I’m sorry! Listen—” She caught her father’s hand and held tight to it, but he angrily tried to pull it away. “Maybe once I’m there, I’ll be able to go to Professor Dumbledore and persuade him to change his mind!”
“I don’t—want—you—to change his mind!” said John Granger. “You go to that stupid castle and learn to be a—a. . . ”
His brown eyes roved over the platform, over the cats mewling in their owners’ arms, over the owls, fluttering and hooting at each other in cages, over the students, some already in their long black robes, loading trunks onto the scarlet steam engine or else greeting one another with glad cries after a summer apart.
“—a freak!”
Gramger’s eyes filled with tears as her father succeeded in pulling his hand away. He would have struck her if they weren’t in public.
“I’m not a freak,” said Granger, tears in her eyes.
That was a horrible thing for her father to say. But her father was a horrible man in many ways. He was angry because Headmaster Albus Dumbledore told him in no uncertain terms that Hermione was to be at the train at the proper time without a single mark on her or he’d personally hex his nads off. John Granger might be able to bully the women in his life, but not Dumbledore. He had been reduced to verbally abusing his daughter and he did so furiously.
“That’s where you’re going,” said her father with relish. “A special school for freaks. You and that Potter boy. . .weirdos, that’s what you two are. It’s good you’re being separated from normal people. It’s for our safety.”
“Freak!” he spat at her once more, then grabbed her mother’s arm and strode away.
*************************************
Granger hurried along the corridor of the Hogwarts Express as it clattered through the countryside. She had already changed into her school robes, had perhaps taken the first opportunity to take off her dreadful Muggle clothes. At last she stopped, outside a compartment in which a group of loud girls were talking. Hunched in a corner seat beside the window was James, Sirius sitting beside him.
Granger slid open the compartment door and sat down opposite James, pressing her face against the window. Sirius rolled his eyes and James glanced at her as she began to very quietly cry.
”Hermione?”
“I don’t want to talk to you,” she said in a constricted voice.
“Why not?”
“My father h-hates me. Because of Dumbledore.”
“So what?”
She threw him a look of deep dislike. “So he’s my father!”
“He’s only a—” James caught himself quickly; Granger, too busy trying to wipe her eyes without being noticed, did not hear him. He had been about to call him an abusive prig.
“But we’re going!” he said, unable to suppress the exhilaration in his voice. “This is it! We’re off to Hogwarts!”
She nodded, mopping her eyes, but in spite of herself, she half smiled.
“You’d better be in Gryffindor,” said James, encouraged that she had brightened a little.
“Gryffindor?”
One of the girls sharing the compartment, who had shown no interest at all in Granger or James until that point, looked around at the word. She was slender, red-haired and with that indefinable air of having been well-cared-for, even adored, that Granger so conspicuously lacked.
“Of course, Gryffindor. Who wants to be in Slytherin? I think I’d leave, wouldn’t you?” Lily asked Sirius, who was lounging on the seat opposite her.
Sirius did not smile.
“My whole family have been in Slytherin,” he said.
“Blimey,” said James, “and I thought you seemed all right!”
Sirius grinned.
“Maybe I’ll break the tradition,” he said, turning to Lily. “Where are you heading, if you’ve got the choice?”
Lily lifted an invisible sword.
“’Gryffindor, where dwell the brave at heart!’ I’ve read all about it, and Gryffindor produces the greatest, most attractive witches and wizards.”
Granger made a small, disparaging noise. Lily turned on her.
“Got a problem with that?”
“No,” said Granger, though her slight sneer said otherwise. “If you’d rather be breasty than brainy—”
“Where’re you hoping to go, seeing as you’re neither?” interjected another witch.
Lily cackled with laughter. Granger sat up, rather flushed, and looked from Lily to the other witch in dislike.
“Come on, James, let’s find another compartment.”
“Oooooo. . . ”
Lily and the other witch imitated her lofty voice; Lily tried to trip Granger as she passed.
“See ya, Whoremony!” a voice called, as the compartment door slammed. . .
****************************************. . .
The new first-years faced the candlelit House tables, lined with rapt faces. They were being sorted according to their positions in line rather than surname. Then Professor McGonagall announced, “Potter, James!”
James walked forward and sat down upon the rickety stool. Professor McGonagall dropped the Sorting Hat onto his head, and barely a second after it had touched the messy black hair, the hat cried, “Gryffindor!”
Granger let out a tiny groan.
James took off the hat, handed it back to Professor McGonagall, then hurried toward the cheering Gryffindors, but as he went she glanced back at Granger, and there was a sad little smile on his face. Lily moved up the bench to make room for him.
James took one look at her, seemed to recognize him from the train, folded her arms, and firmly turned his back on her. .
.
The roll call continued. Lupin, Pettigrew and Sirius, joined James at the Gryffindor table. At last, when only a dozen students remained to be sorted, Professor McGonagall looked down at Granger.
”What is your name, my dear?”
”Hermione Granger.”
”Granger, Hermione!” Professor McGonagall announced.
She walked to the stool, and the professor placed the hat upon her head.
“Slytherin!” cried the Sorting Hat.
And Hermione Granger moved off to the other side of the Hall, away from James, to where the Slytherins were cheering her, to where Lucius Malfoy, a prefect badge gleaming upon his chest, rubbed Granger on her shoulder as she sat down beside him. .
.
********************************
James and Granger were walking across the castle courtyard, evidently arguing. They were much taller now. A few years had passed since their Sorting.
“. . . thought we were supposed to be friends?” Granger was saying, “Best friends?”
“We are, Hermione, but I don’t like some of the people you’re hanging round with! I’m sorry, but I can’t stand Avery and Mulciber! Mulciber! What do you see in him, Hermione, he’s creepy! D’you know what he tried to do to Mary MacDonald the other day?”
James had reached a pillar and leaned against it, looking up into her slightly pinched face.
“That was nothing,” said Granger. “It was a laugh, that’s all—”
“It was Dark Magic, and if you think that’s funny—”
“What about the stuff Evans and her friends get up to?” demanded Granger. Her color rose again as she said it, unable, it seemed, to hold in her resentment.
“What’s Evans got to do with anything?” said James, totally ignoring the fact that Lily and her friends targeted Hermione every chance they got.
“Evans gets away with bloody murder all the time. And what about your friends, James? I know you all go out at night and there’s something weird about that Lupin you hang around.”
“He’s ill,” said James. “They say he’s ill—”
“Every month at the full moon?” said Granger.
“I know your theory about Lupin,” said James, and he sounded cold. “Why are you so obsessed with Lily and Lupin anyway? Why do you care what they’re doing?”
“I’m just trying to show you they’re not as wonderful as everyone seems to think they are.”
The intensity of James' gaze made her blush.
“They don’t use Dark Magic, though.” He dropped his voice. “And you’re being really ungrateful. I heard what happened the other night. You went sneaking down that tunnel by the Whomping Willow, and Lily saved you from whatever’s down there—”
Gramger’s whole face contorted and he spluttered, “Saved? Saved? You think she was playing the heroine? She was saving her neck and her friends’ too! You’re not going to—I won’t let you—”
“Let me? Let me?”
James’ bright brown eyes were slits. Granger backtracked at once.
“I didn’t mean—I just don’t want to see you made a fool of—She fancies you, Lily Evans fancies you!” The words seemed wrenched from her against her will. “And she’s not. . . everyone thinks. . . big gifted witch—”
Granger’s bitterness and dislike were rendering her incoherent, and James’ eyebrows were traveling farther and farther up his forehead.
“I know Lily Evans is an stuck-up chit,” he said, cutting across Granger. “I don’t need you to tell me that. But Mulciber’s and Avery’s idea of humor is just evil. Evil, Hermione. I don’t understand how you can be friends with them.”
Granger didn’t even hear his strictures on Mulciber and Avery. The moment he had insulted Lily Evans, her whole body had relaxed, and as they walked away there was a new spring in Granger’s step. . .
**************************************
Granger left the Great Hall after sitting her O.W.L. in Defense Against the Dark Arts, she wandered away from the castle and strayed inadvertently close to the place beneath the beech tree where Lily Evans and her three cohorts sat together. They were known as the Velvet Mauraders and got into all kinds of mischief. Granger was targeted by the Gryffindors the moment she was noticed, Lily casting a spell on her.
James joined the group and went to Granger’s defense.Granger shouted at him in her humiliation and her fury, the unforgivable word:
“Coward.”
*************************************
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m not interested.”
“I’m sorry!”
“Save your breath.”
It was nighttime. James, who was wearing a pair of pajamas, stood with his arms folded in front of the portrait of the Fat Lady, at the entrance to Gryffindor Tower.
“I only came out because Sirius told me you were threatening to sleep here.”
“I was. I would have done. I never meant to call you a coward, it just—”
“Slipped out?” There was no pity in James voice. “It’s too late. I’ve made excuses for you for years. None of my friends can understand why I even talk to you. You and your precious little Death Eater friends—you see, you don’t even deny it! You don’t even deny that’s what you’re all aiming to be! You can’t wait to join You-Know-Who, can you?”
She opened her mouth, but closed it without speaking.
“I can’t pretend anymore. You’ve chosen your way, I’ve chosen mine.”
“No—listen, I didn’t mean—”
“—to call me a coward? But you call everyone of my House coward, Hermione.. Why should I be any different?”
She struggled on the verge of speech, but with a contemptuous look he turned and climbed back through the portrait hole. . .
****************************************
A/N: Thanks for reading.
Granger was on platform nine and three quarters, next to a thin, sour-looking woman who greatly resembled her. A tall, burly brown haired man stood scowling next to them
James was staring at the family of three a short distance away. Granger seemed to be pleading with her father.
“. . . I’m sorry, father, I’m sorry! Listen—” She caught her father’s hand and held tight to it, but he angrily tried to pull it away. “Maybe once I’m there, I’ll be able to go to Professor Dumbledore and persuade him to change his mind!”
“I don’t—want—you—to change his mind!” said John Granger. “You go to that stupid castle and learn to be a—a. . . ”
His brown eyes roved over the platform, over the cats mewling in their owners’ arms, over the owls, fluttering and hooting at each other in cages, over the students, some already in their long black robes, loading trunks onto the scarlet steam engine or else greeting one another with glad cries after a summer apart.
“—a freak!”
Gramger’s eyes filled with tears as her father succeeded in pulling his hand away. He would have struck her if they weren’t in public.
“I’m not a freak,” said Granger, tears in her eyes.
That was a horrible thing for her father to say. But her father was a horrible man in many ways. He was angry because Headmaster Albus Dumbledore told him in no uncertain terms that Hermione was to be at the train at the proper time without a single mark on her or he’d personally hex his nads off. John Granger might be able to bully the women in his life, but not Dumbledore. He had been reduced to verbally abusing his daughter and he did so furiously.
“That’s where you’re going,” said her father with relish. “A special school for freaks. You and that Potter boy. . .weirdos, that’s what you two are. It’s good you’re being separated from normal people. It’s for our safety.”
“Freak!” he spat at her once more, then grabbed her mother’s arm and strode away.
*************************************
Granger hurried along the corridor of the Hogwarts Express as it clattered through the countryside. She had already changed into her school robes, had perhaps taken the first opportunity to take off her dreadful Muggle clothes. At last she stopped, outside a compartment in which a group of loud girls were talking. Hunched in a corner seat beside the window was James, Sirius sitting beside him.
Granger slid open the compartment door and sat down opposite James, pressing her face against the window. Sirius rolled his eyes and James glanced at her as she began to very quietly cry.
”Hermione?”
“I don’t want to talk to you,” she said in a constricted voice.
“Why not?”
“My father h-hates me. Because of Dumbledore.”
“So what?”
She threw him a look of deep dislike. “So he’s my father!”
“He’s only a—” James caught himself quickly; Granger, too busy trying to wipe her eyes without being noticed, did not hear him. He had been about to call him an abusive prig.
“But we’re going!” he said, unable to suppress the exhilaration in his voice. “This is it! We’re off to Hogwarts!”
She nodded, mopping her eyes, but in spite of herself, she half smiled.
“You’d better be in Gryffindor,” said James, encouraged that she had brightened a little.
“Gryffindor?”
One of the girls sharing the compartment, who had shown no interest at all in Granger or James until that point, looked around at the word. She was slender, red-haired and with that indefinable air of having been well-cared-for, even adored, that Granger so conspicuously lacked.
“Of course, Gryffindor. Who wants to be in Slytherin? I think I’d leave, wouldn’t you?” Lily asked Sirius, who was lounging on the seat opposite her.
Sirius did not smile.
“My whole family have been in Slytherin,” he said.
“Blimey,” said James, “and I thought you seemed all right!”
Sirius grinned.
“Maybe I’ll break the tradition,” he said, turning to Lily. “Where are you heading, if you’ve got the choice?”
Lily lifted an invisible sword.
“’Gryffindor, where dwell the brave at heart!’ I’ve read all about it, and Gryffindor produces the greatest, most attractive witches and wizards.”
Granger made a small, disparaging noise. Lily turned on her.
“Got a problem with that?”
“No,” said Granger, though her slight sneer said otherwise. “If you’d rather be breasty than brainy—”
“Where’re you hoping to go, seeing as you’re neither?” interjected another witch.
Lily cackled with laughter. Granger sat up, rather flushed, and looked from Lily to the other witch in dislike.
“Come on, James, let’s find another compartment.”
“Oooooo. . . ”
Lily and the other witch imitated her lofty voice; Lily tried to trip Granger as she passed.
“See ya, Whoremony!” a voice called, as the compartment door slammed. . .
****************************************. . .
The new first-years faced the candlelit House tables, lined with rapt faces. They were being sorted according to their positions in line rather than surname. Then Professor McGonagall announced, “Potter, James!”
James walked forward and sat down upon the rickety stool. Professor McGonagall dropped the Sorting Hat onto his head, and barely a second after it had touched the messy black hair, the hat cried, “Gryffindor!”
Granger let out a tiny groan.
James took off the hat, handed it back to Professor McGonagall, then hurried toward the cheering Gryffindors, but as he went she glanced back at Granger, and there was a sad little smile on his face. Lily moved up the bench to make room for him.
James took one look at her, seemed to recognize him from the train, folded her arms, and firmly turned his back on her. .
.
The roll call continued. Lupin, Pettigrew and Sirius, joined James at the Gryffindor table. At last, when only a dozen students remained to be sorted, Professor McGonagall looked down at Granger.
”What is your name, my dear?”
”Hermione Granger.”
”Granger, Hermione!” Professor McGonagall announced.
She walked to the stool, and the professor placed the hat upon her head.
“Slytherin!” cried the Sorting Hat.
And Hermione Granger moved off to the other side of the Hall, away from James, to where the Slytherins were cheering her, to where Lucius Malfoy, a prefect badge gleaming upon his chest, rubbed Granger on her shoulder as she sat down beside him. .
.
********************************
James and Granger were walking across the castle courtyard, evidently arguing. They were much taller now. A few years had passed since their Sorting.
“. . . thought we were supposed to be friends?” Granger was saying, “Best friends?”
“We are, Hermione, but I don’t like some of the people you’re hanging round with! I’m sorry, but I can’t stand Avery and Mulciber! Mulciber! What do you see in him, Hermione, he’s creepy! D’you know what he tried to do to Mary MacDonald the other day?”
James had reached a pillar and leaned against it, looking up into her slightly pinched face.
“That was nothing,” said Granger. “It was a laugh, that’s all—”
“It was Dark Magic, and if you think that’s funny—”
“What about the stuff Evans and her friends get up to?” demanded Granger. Her color rose again as she said it, unable, it seemed, to hold in her resentment.
“What’s Evans got to do with anything?” said James, totally ignoring the fact that Lily and her friends targeted Hermione every chance they got.
“Evans gets away with bloody murder all the time. And what about your friends, James? I know you all go out at night and there’s something weird about that Lupin you hang around.”
“He’s ill,” said James. “They say he’s ill—”
“Every month at the full moon?” said Granger.
“I know your theory about Lupin,” said James, and he sounded cold. “Why are you so obsessed with Lily and Lupin anyway? Why do you care what they’re doing?”
“I’m just trying to show you they’re not as wonderful as everyone seems to think they are.”
The intensity of James' gaze made her blush.
“They don’t use Dark Magic, though.” He dropped his voice. “And you’re being really ungrateful. I heard what happened the other night. You went sneaking down that tunnel by the Whomping Willow, and Lily saved you from whatever’s down there—”
Gramger’s whole face contorted and he spluttered, “Saved? Saved? You think she was playing the heroine? She was saving her neck and her friends’ too! You’re not going to—I won’t let you—”
“Let me? Let me?”
James’ bright brown eyes were slits. Granger backtracked at once.
“I didn’t mean—I just don’t want to see you made a fool of—She fancies you, Lily Evans fancies you!” The words seemed wrenched from her against her will. “And she’s not. . . everyone thinks. . . big gifted witch—”
Granger’s bitterness and dislike were rendering her incoherent, and James’ eyebrows were traveling farther and farther up his forehead.
“I know Lily Evans is an stuck-up chit,” he said, cutting across Granger. “I don’t need you to tell me that. But Mulciber’s and Avery’s idea of humor is just evil. Evil, Hermione. I don’t understand how you can be friends with them.”
Granger didn’t even hear his strictures on Mulciber and Avery. The moment he had insulted Lily Evans, her whole body had relaxed, and as they walked away there was a new spring in Granger’s step. . .
**************************************
Granger left the Great Hall after sitting her O.W.L. in Defense Against the Dark Arts, she wandered away from the castle and strayed inadvertently close to the place beneath the beech tree where Lily Evans and her three cohorts sat together. They were known as the Velvet Mauraders and got into all kinds of mischief. Granger was targeted by the Gryffindors the moment she was noticed, Lily casting a spell on her.
James joined the group and went to Granger’s defense.Granger shouted at him in her humiliation and her fury, the unforgivable word:
“Coward.”
*************************************
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m not interested.”
“I’m sorry!”
“Save your breath.”
It was nighttime. James, who was wearing a pair of pajamas, stood with his arms folded in front of the portrait of the Fat Lady, at the entrance to Gryffindor Tower.
“I only came out because Sirius told me you were threatening to sleep here.”
“I was. I would have done. I never meant to call you a coward, it just—”
“Slipped out?” There was no pity in James voice. “It’s too late. I’ve made excuses for you for years. None of my friends can understand why I even talk to you. You and your precious little Death Eater friends—you see, you don’t even deny it! You don’t even deny that’s what you’re all aiming to be! You can’t wait to join You-Know-Who, can you?”
She opened her mouth, but closed it without speaking.
“I can’t pretend anymore. You’ve chosen your way, I’ve chosen mine.”
“No—listen, I didn’t mean—”
“—to call me a coward? But you call everyone of my House coward, Hermione.. Why should I be any different?”
She struggled on the verge of speech, but with a contemptuous look he turned and climbed back through the portrait hole. . .
****************************************
A/N: Thanks for reading.