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When she was six years old, Herman Jean Granger found a book of baby names in her parents' extensive library. It was sandwiched between "What to Expect When You're Expecting", which she had already read, and came before "Waking Twilight: An Anesthesiology Guide", which she recognized as a bit beyond her current reading skills. She took both. "Waking Twilight" had interesting pictures, and she at least recognized the formula N2O from the bottles of nitrous oxide that sat behind the treatment chair in her parents' dental office. The baby naming book was alphabetized, which was a pleasure of its own, and the explanations were quite interesting. But when she came to her own name, Herman, it was circled and starred in her father's preferred green ink -- but the derivation was off-putting: it meant "Army man". She knew she was named for Great-Grandfather Herman, Grandmama Emily's dad, but it still didn't seem a very nice or fitting name for herself. So instead of continuing directly through to find out what horrors might lie hidden in "Jean" (which was for Uncle Jean-Pierre, Mum and Dad's favorite classmate) she skipped straight ahead to the second part of the book, where the girls' names were. That section was more interesting, anyway. There were more girls' names than boys', apparently, and many of them had beautiful meanings and sounds. "Anthea" meant "lady of flowers", and it sounded a little like "panther", which was already one of her favorite words. It was also a name for Hera, a goddess from Ancient Greece. Herman liked that. Maybe secretly that should have been her name. Hera J-Something-For-A-Girl Granger. If only her parents hadn't thought she was a boy.That line of thinking had not led her very far yet, though it was also never very far from her mind. She set it aside and continued to read. When she came to the H's, there were a few circles -- "Hallie", "Hazel", "Heather" -- but no stars. "Hera" was not even listed, which was sad. But she turned the page and there it was, circled and starred not once but twice:Hermione."Her-my-own," she sounded out, and laughed -- it made perfect sense that way, and she loved it fiercely. But the book continued: "Pronounced: Her-MY-uh-nee. Feminine form of Hermes, Greek god of messages, travel, luck, thieves, wealth, and sleep. In Greek mythology also daughter of Helen and Menelaus. In Shakespeare's "A Winter's Tale", wife of King Leontes." She said it again, in four syllables as instructed, and she loved it still.She flipped ahead to the J section, and to her surprise and pleasure, found "Jean" already there: English and Scottish, from "God is gracious." Perhaps her parents hadn't been entirely unaware of her girlhood? The notion made her smile. Hermione Jean Granger. It suited her very well.If she had been two years younger, she would have written it over the "Herman Jean" in the artistic family tree that hung in their living room. But her parents had cured her of writing on things outside of notebooks shortly after the "And Daughter" incident, mainly by providing her with an environment saturated with notebooks and chalk slates along with writing instruments in every conceivable color. At a mature six, she found a new notebook (a good, serious one, with grid lines and hard white covers) and a red ink pen, the kind used for correcting mistakes. On the first page, she wrote "Hermione Jean Granger" in her best and clearest print. Beneath that, in smaller letters, "her my own".For a week, that notebook became her project. She used different colors and multiple tools, including a rather grand feather quill pen that the family had inherited from a great-aunt, which came out splotchy but nevertheless felt wonderful in her hands. Her mother was a bit of a language buff, and the collection of phrasebooks made for wonderful opportunities: Ich heisse Hermione Jean Granger. Mi nombre es Hermione Jean Granger. Ha-shem sheli Hermione Jean Granger. Lebitso la ka ke Hermione Jean Granger. Vocate me Hermione Jean Granger.It felt wonderful to do in all kinds of ways, although faintly embarrassing; she felt like she would melt into the ground if anybody saw this particular notebook. She had plenty of others, though. So she was sitting with her father and a notebook of cat drawings when he pointed at one (a study of an Abyssinian yawning, showing fangs) and said "This is wonderful, Her-my-own," and she gasped. He laughed and hugged her, and said, "Sorry, Hermione." Pronouncing it properly. As if it were ordinary, something he did all the time, something he always had done. She couldn't see it from the couch, but when she slipped off his lap, she crossed the living room to look at the artistic family tree. There it was, beautifully calligraphed, as if it had always been there: Hermione Jean Granger.Her head spun. She had no idea how she'd done it. But she had, and it was the best thing she had ever accomplished, and she was amazed. It felt like magic.
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From then on people always called her "Hermione", which was lovely, and her dad occasionally used "Her-my-own", which she adored. But they still also called her "he" and "him", and although she was used to that, she never had liked it. According to the dictionary, masculine words like "he" and for that matter "men" could be used to refer to people of any or unknown gender, including women and girls. But Hermione was pretty sure nobody called Mum "he" on any sort of regular basis, nor other girls. It was part of people thinking that she was a boy. So it was irritating.She considered writing "her" and "hers" and "she" and "herself" into the white Hermione notebook, but worried that doing so might somehow disturb the magic. Fiercely protective of her accomplishment, she wrapped the notebook in pretty paper printed with the constellations, left over from a birthday gift, and slid it in among her favorites in the bookshelf in her bedroom. She tried using a new notebook, first a white one and then a red, with different languages and technical pens and interesting inks and so on, but somehow she could not recapture the magical feeling, let alone any effect as she had previously. It became a frustration of its own after awhile, and she set the project aside.Finally she couldn't bear it anymore. It was a Sunday morning in early May, a beautiful day, and they were eating breakfast in the living room. Her father had made pancakes and fresh-squeezed orange juice. While Hermione was helping herself to thirds he smiled and said to her mother, "Look what an appetite! He's going to grow up tall like you, I'll bet."Mum was doing the newspaper crossword and nodded without looking up. But Hermione burst out, "Why do you have to call me 'he'? I'm a girl, you know I am. I've got a girl's name and...." Her hands flew up to her mouth. Orange juice spilled."Oh honey," said her dad, and went off to the kitchen. Hermione knelt, trying to collect pancakes back onto her plate. She was crying. Mum put down the newspaper and came to kneel beside her, regardless of the mess."Of course you are, dear," said Mum, and Hermione blinked. "But you know, we didn't know that when you were first born. You didn't know how to tell yet yourself, and grownups just guess as best we can. It's all right to guess and be wrong, isn't it? Later when you know better, you just have to set things right." Hermione was shocked into wide-eyed silence. "Dad didn't mean to upset you, Hermione," her mother said seriously. There were tears in her eyes, too."It's true, I didn't," said her father, coming back with paper towels. "I'm sorry, love." He took Hermione's plate and cleaned up the floor, then wiped her chin with a paper towel. "Forgive me, Her-my-own?:"Hermione hugged him hard, burying her face in her father's soft belly. She couldn't think of anything to say. But he patted her bushy hair, and she knew they were going to be all right.
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The "Vector Addition" incident occurred three months into Hermione's first term at school, and after that, her parents decided on homeschooling. This meant that Hermione and her maths tutor, Mr. Sieracki, sent problem sets back and forth through the mail and met for a chat the third Thursday of each month. For other subjects, her mother assembled topics and read her assignments. Also, Hermione had a library card.Mrs. Fields, the librarian, was one of Hermione's favorite people. Not only did she smell like pipe tobacco and Earl Grey tea, she appeared to know everything. When Hermione told her so, Mrs. Fields sniffed with mild reproof. "Of course I don't, child," she said. "What I know is how to find things out."The phrase remained Hermione's touchstone. But after her name change (which did not seem to register with Mrs. Fields at all; the librarian always called her "child", and her card listed her as "Granger, H.J."), she became slowly frustrated with determining how her great accomplishment fit into the greater world of known things. The library's resources were astonishingly unhelpful. There were shelves full of materials on "Magic", but those were only sleight-of-hand. "New Age" and "Folklore" contained titles that seemed promising, but on study, were disgracefully vague about processes and results. Sometimes she wondered if she hadn't imagined some aspect of that part of her life, but she still had the notebook, and could not lie to herself. She considered whether it was a miracle granted by the grace of God, but that did not ring true either: she felt certain that she, herself, had done it.On the grounds that some information was better than none, though, she chose one of the more explicit examples available under "New Age": she would try manifesting a written intention. Despite the confusion regarding sleight-of-hand, the word still rang true in her mind: I want to learn about magic. (If she found herself gaining skill at sleights and trickery, she figured she would be no worse off for it.)Hermione created a new notebook, matching the name-changing one (that one itself she kept otherwise pristine, lest its charm somehow be broken). Her mother's phrasebooks were less helpful with this sentence, so she became a regular in the library's language-learning resource area. She struggled with sentence structures, and with dictionaries that lacked any entry for "magic" at all. Then she discovered an English thesaurus and added "witchcraft" and "alchemy" and "spells" -- she was tempted to do an entire version in English, and started a third notebook structured that way, just for the experiment. She considered but discarded "voodoo" and "thaumaturgy". "Soothsaying" was a hard call, but eventually she decided it was the best word possible: being Hermione revealed the truth, and that somebody had said it mattered deeply.Still, nothing happened. No new tutor appeared, nor any books. When she outright asked her father, he replied rather sententiously, "We all have magic inside us, dear." Her mother hardly looked up from the x-rays she was reviewing, but said, "Go make yourself a magic wand. They've been pruning the hedgerows behind the Willis's land; I'm sure you can find something suitable there." When Hermione rushed in with questions -- how to make it magic, what would make it suitable? -- her mother brushed her off. "Just experiment. It'll do you good to be out of doors."Hermione put on boots and a jacket and went. It was a bright day and warm for early March, and the Willis gardens were a wild wreck of digging and planting. The hedgerows that separated the back fields from the gardens were surrounded by cut branches, and inside the heavy planting, sparrows sang. Hermione knelt in the dirt, inspecting clippings and sorting them into collections. By the time it was getting dark, she had chosen what seemed to be a promising selection (if anything about this difficult project could seem promising) in an assortment of woods and sizes, all of which felt comfortable or even inspiring in her hand. Those she took home to show Mum over supper.Her mother examined the sticks and twigs, and Hermione watched with some anxiety. How much did Mum know about wands, or magic for that matter? Certainly the library hadn't been much use, and where might she have learned? It was scary to think that all books must have had people to write them, and they must have gotten the knowledge on their own, somehow, first. Mum stood up from her desk and Hermione followed her into the kitchen, where Mum took out a ball of twine, a basket, and the utility scissors. "Sort these into types," she said in her assignment voice, "using whatever features strike you as important. Then find a field guide, or a gardening book about hedgerows, and see if you can identify them to species."That was only botany, and Hermione was annoyed. "That doesn't seem like magic," she said, and Mum smiled."Start with understanding what you have," she replied, severe voice at odds with her expression, "and then you can try to do magic with it."So it was back to the library again. Hermione decided on wood color and bark patterns for her bundles, since she didn't think length would be something a field guide would mention, even though it somehow seemed like it should matter for magic, somehow. Then she took the basket to the library, picked out half a dozen books, and spread everything out across a big table.It was satisfying after all to classify the woods: yew and hawthorn, purple beech and green beech, holly and holm oak. She drew sketches and copied out the taxonomic Latin. Best of all, it turned out that nearly half of the gardening books contained what seemed like magical advice. Some woods were masculine or feminine, and certainly Hermione knew that gender was susceptible to magic; some were protective, and others special to the fairies. And holly, for instance, was particular for people going on spiritual (or she thought, equivalently intellectual) quest.Considering her collection, she set aside the "he-holly" with its plain-edged leaves, keeping the "she-holly" with its sharp, pretty prickles. She had one particularly nice piece, where her hand fit in to the woody part with the leaves surrounding it, that made her feel a bit protected and dangerous herself. She put the rest of her pieces back in the basket with her notebook, and returned to the library's Folklore section.Wand in hand, she touched down the familiar row of titled spines on the shelf. There were the authors' names: Solomon, Edwards, Cornelius, Crowley. At the end of the row, the leaves seemed to push forward into the plain metal end of the bookshelf, and Hermione took one step to the right to follow.Her eyesight seemed to go blurry for a moment, and she could nearly swear she saw Granger first on the elongated shelf. She blinked, and there was a whole new row of books before her. They were a little dustier than usual for Mrs. Fields' library, but possessing the usual sort of shelving information stamp, and all of the titles were thrilling and new: Arithmancy First through Fourth Grades. Charms for Children: A Suitable Introduction. Enchantment in Baking. Hogwarts, a History. Men Who Love Dragons Too Much.Simultaneously impressed by her own success and a little bewildered at how easy and straightforward things seemed now, after all, she pulled down Charms for Children. Inside were step-by-step, entirely peculiar and irrelevant-seeming directions on how to scramble an egg without breaking the shell, understanding the language of house sparrows, and Ten Tricks To Tidy The Toyroom. One said things and gestured and used unusual objects (Hermione did not understand why a twisted lock of one's hair should be better for scrambling eggs than a fork, inside the shell or out), and, apparently, that was magic. Or at least a Charm for Children.She approached Mrs. Fields at the checkout desk with two books on tree lore, one on garden planning, and that last one from the strange new shelf. The librarian ran her card as always, and put the due-date tickets into each book's pocket without comment. Hermione, driven nearly mad with curiosity, finally asked, "Did you know there's a magical shelf here, full of really proper magical books? I found it with a bit of holly, like a wand, and that's where I got this." She thumped the cover of Charms for Children, and the book responded with a patient sigh.The librarian sighed as well. "Of course, dear child," she said, and the modifier startled Hermione as much as anything else. "No library has everything, of course. But a well-stocked one should at least give the researcher a start on any conceivable topic." Hermione could only stare. "Now mind you get them back on time," Mrs. Fields added. "Overdues on Special Collections are triple."