A/N: This was originally posted in 2016 and has been edited as of 2023.

Hermione Granger, muggleborn witch, had been so excited to go to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Finally, a place where she could fit in and be herself, learn amongst peers who were like here - other witches and wizards - and finally make real friendships. She had counted down all the days over summer until September 1st, when she would start her new life. She'd neatly packed everything in her school trunk multiple times, just to make sure she had everything. And, she thought she might know everything about the school. After all, she'd read Hogwarts: A History cover to cover three times.

She sat next to a quiet boy named Neville on the train, but spent the better part of the journey helping him look for his lost toad familiar. She couldn't complain too much, because that was how she met the Harry Potter. She even got to show off a new spell that she'd learned, though Potter's red-haired companion didn't seem too impressed by her skill.

She hadn't had time to feel nervous while she was on the train, but once she was in the boats that took them across the massive lake in front of the school she started worrying about the Sorting Ceremony. There wasn't much written about the Sorting, except that students were placed where they best belonged. Hermione didn't think she'd make a good Gryffindor. Daring and bravery? She didn't have either of those. Hufflepuff seemed out, too. She was notoriously impatient and she'd never had friends to be loyal to in the first place.

No, Hermione thought she'd end up in Ravenclaw. Wit and learning, she had those in spades.

But, if she was really honest, where she actually wanted to go was Slytherin. Cunning and ambition. Hermione had big plans for herself. She knew where she was going in life and she knew that Slytherin house would propel her to the top.

When she learned that the Sorting was done by a ragged looking old hat, she was disappointed. How was that old thing meant to tell her where she was best suited? But, no one else seemed bothered by it, though, and she watched as her classmates cycled through their turn sitting on the stool in front of the whole school to have their destiny decided until her name was called.

The hat sat on her head for nearly five minutes, hemming and hawing and she just knew that this Hat was bunk, until it finally decided on her house. "SLYTHERIN!" it shouted out proudly.

Hermione couldn't help but notice that she didn't get the same thunderous applause as other students sorted in their respective houses and she briefly wondered why. Hermione walked to the table and sat down next to the girl who'd gone before her - Tracey Davis. "Hi, I'm Hermione," she said, giving her new companion a toothy grin.

"Tracey," the girl responded, with a pinched look on her face.

A blonde girl quickly joined them. "I'm Daphne Greengrass," she said, haughtily. "Are you related to the Dagworth-Granger family?" she asked.

Hermione shrugged her shoulders, not knowing any better and responded with a wide smile, glad to be making friends. "No, my parents are muggles," she responded.

The two girls let out horrified gasps to learn that she was a mudblood as they called it. Hermione didn't know what it meant, but they did move away down the table from her, ignoring her for the rest of the feast. And Hermione Granger was left all alone. Again.

Hogwarts was horrible. It had been weeks, but Hermione still hadn't been able to catch a break with her new housemates. The girls were horrible, but none of the other Slytherins would be caught dead speaking to a mudblood. They played horrible pranks on her, charming her bed curtains shut or destroying her uniforms.

The brunette cried herself to sleep most nights, her face shoved into a pillow, though she was certain they could still hear. They probably laughed about it to themselves later when she was gone.

Despite excelling in all of her classes and winning so many house points for Slytherin, her own housemates called her a know-it-all and sniggered with the Gryffindors when Ronald Weasley made fun of her flawless pronunciation of Wingardium Leviosa. Nevermind that she got the charm right on her first try.

To her vast disappointment, magic didn't make it any easier to relate to her peers.

The worst thing about Hogwarts, though, was flying. Hermione had read all the books before coming to school and she'd been so excited that she would actually get to try flying on a broomstick. She'd be just like a real witch, in the cartoons! But, the books could not prepare you for the real thing. No matter how hard she tried, the broom just did not respond to her.

Draco Malfoy, another Slytherin, had laughed in her face. "The stupid mudblood can't even call a broom. Are you sure you're even a real witch?" he teased her, elbowing his two big gorilla-like friends, Crabbe and Goyle, and they started to laugh, too.

Hermione looked up what mudblood meant. It was not a nice word; it was a horrendous word. She wanted so badly to wipe that smirk off of Malfoy's face, but that would mean earning a detention and she did not want to get detention so early in the semester.

So, she'd begged Madame Hooch to release her from lessons - to let her drop the class - but to her dismay, she learned that Flying was a required course for First Years. She was forced to face her own failure week after week.

Hermione knew that the one place in this giant castle that she could be alone without worry about being tormented was by hiding away in the library. She loved to study and get ahead on her assignments, while it seemed like the rest of her classmates procrastinated until the last minute to get their work done. Draco Malfoy wouldn't be caught dead in the library, so she knew she was safe things got to be too tough, she would head over to the library, pull out her books and maybe, if no one else was around, have a good cry.

Things had been particularly horrible for her that day. Her own Head of House, Professor Snape, chastised her for incessant hand-waving during potions and then Pansy Parkinson had "spilled" a glass of pumpkin juice down the front of Hermione's crisp, white shirt. And, to top it all off, she'd failed her flying lesson. Again.

She was weeks behind her classmates. Even Neville Longbottom was doing better than she was!

Hermione found her favorite table and barely managed one deep breath before the sniffles started. She wished she could just go home, forget that Hogwarts or magic even existed. A voice startled her from her distress.

"Oi! Stop your sniffling!"

Hermione looked up, shocked to see the scary looking Fifth Year Slytherin, Marcus Flint. He was hulking and tall and an absolute menace on the Quidditch pitch. Hermione knew that he was a frequent breaker of the rules - the exact kind of wizard she wanted nothing to do with.

But, today she was too annoyed to take orders from a brutish boy a few years older than her. "What's it to you?" she demanded, jutting her chin in the air and furiously wiping hot tears from her cheeks.

"Some of us are trying to study and we don't need weepy little First Years making all kinds of noise," he snapped back at her, pushing back from his desk and stomping his way towards her, looming over her.

"Oh, just...leave me alone, you brute!" she hissed, picking up the nearest object she had, which was, unfortunately, a book. She wound her arm back and hurled it at him, hitting him square in the face before he could stop it.

When the book feel, he didn't even look mad, just surprised. "Do that again," he insisted, looking at her with his head cocked to one side, like he was a confused dog.

It had felt good to get a bit of her anger out so Hermione summoned the book and hurled it at him again. This time, when the book made contact, his nose was bleeding, but he didn't seem to mind one bit.

"Well, Merlin's staff!" he said, pulling out the chair across the table from her. "What's your name?"

"Hermione Granger," she replied, tersely, wondering just what had put him in such a good mood all of sudden. Maybe he had a concussion?

"You're the mud- muggleborn. Sorry," he said, noticing her level glare. "That's a Chaser's arm you've got there," he complimented.

"Chaser?" she asked, feeling confused.

"Yeah, Chaser. Like Quidditch? Have you played before?" he asked, figuring that she probably hadn't, being a muggleborn and all. "How did you get so good at throwing things?"

Hermione darted out her tongue to wet her lips. This was the first time that anyone at this school had shown any interest in her and she wasn't about to pass it up. "My father was a champion cricket bowler. He's always made me practice. But girls aren't allowed on my neighborhood team," she said with a frown.

"Cricket?" Marcus asked, his turn to be confused.

"It's a Muggle sport," Hermione explained, sure that he would leave her alone once she brought up her Muggle heritage. That always seemed to freak out her Slytherin classmates.

But, he surprised her. "How would you like to play Quidditch?" he asked. Marcus might have been a brute, but he was a brute who loved winning and this girl could throw.

"I guess I would like to, but I can't fly," she told him with a frown. It was her one failure as a witch and it hurt to admit it to him.

That did not deter him. "Then, let me teach you," he demanded. He wasn't about to let her slip between her fingers just because she couldn't figure out a broom. Marcus was one of the best flyers Hogwarts had seen. He'd be damned if she couldn't be taught.

Hermione scoffed at the suggestion.

"Come on, it will be fun," he said. "Alright. How come you were crying in the library anyway?"

She rolled her quill between her fingers, trying to decide if Flint was trustworthy enough to unload on. Finally, she decided it might be nice to tell the truth to someone. "None of the Slytherins are nice to me because I'm a mudblood. None of the other houses are nice to me because I'm a Slytherin," she said, the truth pouring out of her. "Malfoy teases me constantly."

"Okay. What if I said I can make that stop, if you let me teach you to fly and to play Quidditch," he offered. It was a long shot, but he figured he could make it happen. Malfoy was a little shit, but Marcus was much bigger than him.

Hermione longed to have friends and ultimately decided that it was too good of an offer to pass up. "They'll leave me alone?" she asked, timidly. Being in Slytherin had taught her not to trust anyone at face value, but Marcus seemed like he might just really want her to play Quidditch. She didn't sense any ulterior motives with him.

"Hell, I can ever make them be friends with you, if that's what you want," he offered.

Hermione highly doubted that. Besides, she wanted real friends, not those who only talked to her under duress. She crossed her arms over her chest while she considered the offer. "Okay, I will try. But, I am not making any promises. And if I don't like flying-"

"You will like flying. Trust me," Marcus said, cutting her off. "Meet me down at the pitch after dinner tomorrow. Do not be late."

Hermione felt a bit silly going down to meet Marcus after dinner. She hadn't told him that she couldn't even get a broom to come to her hand when called. Still, she went anyway.

Flint was waiting for her in what looked like a practice uniform for Slytherin and she hoped that she'd be alright in her school uniform. That's what she'd always worn during lessons with Madam Hooch.

"I should tell you that I can't even get a broom to so much as hover when I call it," she said, bypassing greetings, with a light blush on her cheeks. Oh, she couldn't stand it if Flint thought she was a failure of a witch, too!

"That's because the school brooms are shite," he said. "Holdovers from the seventies. You'll use my broom." He guided her towards where his broom was waiting on the pitch. Hermione could immediately tell it was much nicer and better cared for than the one the school had provided her for lessons. Still, it felt odd to use someone else's broom - almost like someone else's wand.

"Now," Marcus started, his voice taking on an almost professorial quality. "You need to think of the broom actually in your hand when you call for it. Basically, you are willing it to happen. Go on then, give it a shot." He bounced on his heels, obviously wanting to get through the easy part of their lesson.

Hermione felt herself brace for yet another failure, before she squared herself, imagining the broom coming to her hand. "Up," she said firmly. Almost immediately, the broom shot to her outstretched hand to her absolute astonishment. "I did it!" she practically squealed.

Marcus gave her a hint of a smile, seeing her exuberance. "Told you the school brooms were shite. Now, that was the easy part. You've got hold of the broom, go ahead and mount it," he said.

Hermione had never gotten this far in all of her lessons and she was eager to get started. Following Marcus's careful instructions, she was quickly able to push off the ground and before she knew it she was hovering in a little circle over his head.

"Excellent," he congratulated her. "Now, shall I take you up to look at the rings so you can see what you'll be working with?"

She nodded and waited for him to touch down, before mounting the broom behind her. She let Flint take control of the broom, her stomach doing somersaults as the ground got further and further away. Being roped between his arms made her feel safe. By the time that they were flying laps around the pitch, Hermione couldn't keep the smile off of her face.

Maybe this wouldn't be so bad after all.

It hadn't taken Marcus long to make good on his side of the promise either. She wasn't sure how he'd done it with the girls, but before long, Millie Bullstrode and Tracey Davis were including her in their conversations at lunch and dinner. She would later learn that Millie and Marcus were cousins and he'd blackmailed her with something he'd tell her parents; he'd reminded Tracey that she was just a half-blood anyway, so she shouldn't be such an uppity bitch if she ever wanted a pureblood husband.

The girls soon learned that Hermione wasn't all that bad, albeit a bit socially awkward. It would never be a true or easy friendship, but it still suited them.

She knew how he got Draco to leave her alone, though. Hermione had been minding her own business after Potions one day, when Draco had purposefully sent a splitting hex at her overstuffed bag, only to laugh at her while she scrambled to collect her she even knew it, Marcus was stomping down the corridor with his shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows, grabbing Malfoy by the ear. He torn into him about leaving Hermione alone. "I don't give a shit if she's a mudblood! She's a Slytherin and you'll leave her alone or you'll have me to answer to," he barked out.

After Malfoy ran away, tears in his eyes, Marcus bent down and tried to repair her book bag. To her dismay, he wasn't half as good with Charms as he was with flying, but it was nice to have someone at least make an effort on her behalf.

By the end of her First Year, Hermione was a fair flier. She was sure she'd never have the pure talent that Harry Potter had, but she could stay on the broom and score with a Quaffle while on it. Marcus made her meet him twice a week on the pitch to explain the rules of Quidditch, run drills, teach her proper technique, and of course practice flying.

She was sure that if Flint hadn't stepped in when he did, Hermione would have been petrified of flying for the rest of her life, absolutely paralyzed by her fear of failure. But she was good at it. She could duck and weave and she could catch and pass. She loved the feeling of the wind through her hair.

Marcus was proud of her achievements, perhaps the first person in this blasted school who was. He took time to tell her how well she was doing and gave her notes on how to improve. Really, Hermione though, he should be teaching the whole damn school how to fly. Why everyone was so afraid of him, she really couldn't say.

He made a point to find her before they returned to their respective homes for the summer. "So, you'll make sure you practice your drills over the summer?" he asked, on their last evening together before summer break. It was warm and sunny and the days seemed endless.

"Yes,I promise," she agreed, trying to hide her grin as he nagged her for the fiftieth time.

"Because I don't want to come back in September and learn that you've forgotten everything I taught you this year," he continued, his grey eyes steely and sharp.

She couldn't help but grin. Before she knew it, she was launching herself at him and wrapping him up in a tight embrace. "I promise, Marcus," she said with a bright grin. "Have a good summer."

He looked a bit confused to have a tiny little First Year (well, soon to be Second Year) with her arms wrapped around his middle. But, Marcus had developed a soft spot for young Hermione over the school year, with her tenacity and inability to accept anything less than perfection. She was gonna make a great Quidditch player.

He hugged her back. "You too, Hermione."