Harry Potter.
He stared at the door of his cupboard, hidden in darkness as it was.
Was that his name?
Or was it Boy, which was how both Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia addressed him?
He scowled at the door. He was six… and a half. It was January, and his birthday was in July. But he was about halfway through first grade at school- at school, where he was supposed to respond to the name Harry Potter. And call himself that.
Then he’d asked his teacher. The teacher had been confused by his question, but answered that yes, Harry Potter was his name.
But was it really?
He wasn’t sure. He’d have to think about it a bit more. Learn a bit more. He just hoped that Dudley and his buddies- his new buddies, that followed him around like… he didn’t know what the word was. They did what he did.
Which included Dudley’s favorite activity, hitting him.
Even though he knew Dudley hit other boys when he wasn’t around- he’d seen it a couple times.
He had to admit, he’d known Dudley was going to beat him from the moment the teacher complimented him specifically for getting a perfect score on the pop quiz.
Hardly ten minutes had passed since break started before Dudley had shown up, with both of his friends, and started beating him in the playground. This was as hard as Dudley had ever beaten him with his fists, he was sure of it. Dudley even managed to land a particularly painful blow on his shoulder, that just wouldn’t stop hurting- and had an additional twinge of pain every time Dudley hit him, no matter where, because he was being held up by that arm.
But he’d had worse, the various times Dudley had pushed him down the stairs, or off the couch, or even out the upstairs window into Aunt Petunia’s rose bushes, once. That was about the only time he could remember that Dudley had been punished. Sure, he had been punished as well, and quite a bit more- but Aunt Petunia had told Dudley off.
He was beginning to wonder when Dudley would tire himself out- he was sure he could outlast Dudley- when something happened.
There was a voice. It came from behind Dudley, and sounded like a girl, but he couldn’t see anyone- Dudley was too big and too close.
“What are you doing?” it asked.
All three of them froze. Dudley, Piers, and Gordon. And he only barely stopped himself from laughing at the look of fear on Dudley’s face. Who was this girl? Why was Dudley afraid of her?
Piers and Gordon dumped him on the ground, as they turned, with Dudley, to face her.
“Nothing,” Dudley told her.
There was a moment of silence. “That wasn’t nothing.”
“Uhh… Playing?”
Another moment of silence. “Playing what, punching bag? When’s your turn to get punched like that?”
“Uh, none of your business!” Dudley sounded absolutely terrified.
He couldn’t see anything, from his position on the ground behind Dudley, except part of the girl’s blue pants; Dudley’s size hid the rest of her from view.
“I think that was very much my business,” the girl stated.
Dudley and his friends didn’t give her any time to finish what it sounded like she was going to say, though. Instead, they threw their hands into the air, screamed in terror, and fled to the four corners of the Earth.
When they did, he finally had a clear view of the girl. She was about his age, and had bushy brown hair. She was holding a pair of textbooks in her arms- and he noticed that her arms seemed to be a lot skinnier than his own. Actually, her arms were a lot skinnier than any other arms he knew.
But he hadn’t really seen any girl’s arms until then, so perhaps that was just normal?
She closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. Then, she carefully adjusted her grip on her books- her grip was slipping, however slowly- and took another deep breath. “Whew,” she muttered. “I was so sure they were just going to beat me for that.” She took a third breath, and looked at him. “You’re… Harry, right?”
“Uh,” he muttered. Come to think of it, whenever there was a line on his homework intended for his name, he was supposed to put Harry Potter on it, so he figured that was his name. “Um, yes. I think.”
“You think…? Whatever. Are you okay?”
He looked at her, then scrambled to his feet. After his left arm- the one whose shoulder still hurt from that one blow Dudley had given it- collapsed under him twice, he used the other arm to stand, and managed to stand successfully. She was staring at him, her mouth forming a circle, when he finished. “Yeah, I’m fine,” he answered. He was supposed to, and had no reason not to.
She closed her mouth, opened it again, and closed it again. “Are… Really?”
Right at that moment, her books slipped out of her hands. She let out a panicked yelp and scrambled to catch them, but they ignored her efforts and crashed to the ground.
When they did, Harry saw her math textbook land on her left foot. It wouldn’t hurt her all that much- Dudley had dropped things on his feet, and stomped on his feet, and whatever else, more times than he could remember, and it never hurt all that much.
Judging by her short scream of pain, though, she didn’t agree. She tried to leap backwards- which should have been easy, even with that book on her foot, it wasn’t that heavy- but failed, and instead crashed to the ground. As she did, a sharp cracking noise came from her foot.
That was something Harry had never had happen before, so he couldn’t blame her for the second cry of pain. He bent down and lifted the math textbook off of her foot, which was bent in a way it most certainly wasn’t supposed to- and even bleeding. “Are you okay?” he asked.
She lifted her leg up to hold her injured foot with both hands, whimpering, and didn’t respond. She stayed like that for a few seconds, took a deep breath, and looked up at him. “Y-Yeah, I’m okay,” she answered. Then she rolled over to crawl a few feet to a nearby bench, and climbed up onto it. It looked like hard work. Once she got herself seated, she lifted her foot again- funny, it wasn’t bending strangely any more- to hold it some more. “C’mon,” she said. “Sit.”
Harry only stared for a few seconds, before he looked down at her other textbook. It was an English textbook. He stacked the math one on top of it and, because his left arm refused to support the weight when he tried lifting them with both arms, he slid his right hand under the pair of books and lifted them to carry them to the bench with him.
He placed the two textbooks on the bench next to her, then sat down, on the other side of the books as she was, as she had commanded him to.
She was staring at him. He tilted his head, unsure of exactly how to ask why she was staring.
Then, she suddenly looked straight ahead, and returned her foot to the ground to take a deep breath. “So, um,” she began slowly, before looking back up at him- and at his left arm, since she was to his left. “Where does it hurt?”
It was a miracle. Normally, whenever it hurt that bad, it would take hours and hours before the pain would go away, but she made all of his pain go away in less than a minute with the merest of touches. She even made his left arm work properly once again!
Finally, he asked the most important question on his mind. “What was that cracking noise?”
She stared at him for a couple seconds, then looked at the playground sand. “... Oh. That…” She took a deep breath. “I broke my ankle. It’s fine now- see?” She demonstrated that her foot was just fine, wiggling it for him to see.
He frowned at the sand. “And the book was enough to break your ankle?”
She sighed. “I… that’s because I’m…” She took a deep breath. “Because I’m special. I’m really weak, and get hurt easy… but in exchange, I’m magical.” She smiled at him. “I can heal anything.”
“... Oh.”
She looked down at her books. “That’s… why I carry my books around all the time, actually. Working out, trying to get stronger. So I don’t have to be a total pushover.” She took a deep breath. “It’s… It’s hard work.”
He paused for a few seconds. “What’s your name?”
“My-? Oh, sorry about that. I’m Hermione. Hermione Granger.”
Two years passed. Throughout those two years, Harry knew that Dudley and his friends- his gang, as Hermione told him the word was- were afraid of girls. Not just of Hermione, even, but of all girls.
She fully expected that it wouldn’t last, though, so they were ready for it.
And finally, the time came. It was late January again, when Dudley built up the courage to attack Hermione. It was just Dudley; the other two were hanging back fearfully while Dudley charged in, yelling at the top of his lungs.
Hermione had graduated from two books up to three, but she still got hurt a lot easier than Harry did.
So, Harry took her books, freeing her to move as she saw fit. She wasn’t very agile even without her books, but with Dudley’s charge, she didn’t need to be. She stepped quickly out of his path, right up next to Harry- then snatched the top book off of the stack in his hands. While Dudley was still recovering from his charge, she raised her math textbook high over her head, and brought it down hard on the top of his head.
Dudley collapsed straight to the ground, instantly unconscious.
And from that moment on, Harry knew.
Girls were scary.
And he wanted to be one.