Chapter Thirteen: The World According to Hermione Granger

Star Wars + Harry Potter Crossover

A/N: Chap 12 review responses are in my forums like normal. Thanks for reading.

Chapter Thirteen: The World According to Hermione Granger

Kyle Katarn is the monster Krayt Dragons

tell scary bedtime stories to their kids about.

When Hermione Granger was ten years old, her parents bought her the movie ET: The Extra Terrestrial.

Hermione was a lonely girl at that age, with untamable brown hair and very large front teeth that her classmates constantly made fun of. They laughed at the fact that she wore braces; that she was always first to raise her hands; that she was already reading grown-up books.

Books and movies were her escape. And she tended to lean toward the more escapist movies and books at that age. Naturally, her parents fed that hunger with one of the most popular child escape fantasies ever put on film.

Hermione remembered openly bawling when the squishy little alien died, and then hopping with a squeal of joy when he came back to life. She commiserated with the little boy, Elliot, and in her dreams she was actually there with him. She never dreamed she was the one the alien came to. She dreamed that she was the one helping the one the alien came to; that Elliot and ET were her friends, that she helped them, and that they loved her.

~~Katarn~~

"What a know it all," Ron said. "No wonder she doesn't have any friends!"

The words hit twelve-year-old Hermione like a hammer to her heart. Twelve years of jibes, snide comments and hurtful words came down to that one, hateful statement by a boy that she very much wanted to be her friend.

That one fact made it all the worse. She liked Ron. When she walked in on him in the Hogwart's Express and saw him talking to Seamus about the silly little spell that would supposedly turn his pet rat a different color, she honestly thought he was kind of cute. In her mind, she was starting over. No one in the wizarding world knew who she was. No one knew about her reputation from her old school and how the teachers all loved her but the other kids hated her. So, she was starting all over again, and here was her chance to start over by befriending a cute, silly little boy.

It didn't work. "Mind your own business," was Ron's suggestion to her after his spell backfired and singed the poor rat's fur.

From then on, the boy she thought could be her first friend in the wizarding world became her worst tormentor. When she was sorted into Gryffindor, the other students cheered while Ron just snorted. "Great," he said.

When they shared their first classes and she already knew the answers because she actually read the textbooks, he rolled his eyes at Seamus. It continued for the entire first two months, until Hermione walked around in a constant state of worry. The tension made her stomach hurt—she stopped eating and sleep was one long nightmare. She constantly walked with her head down and her ears straining for the cruel jokes she knew would come. She heard her housemates complaining about the Slytherins, but it was her fellow Gryffindors that made her life miserable. She seriously considered writing to her parents and withdrawing from school to return to the muggle world.

On their first Halloween feast, she sat alone at the otherwise crowded Gryffindor table moving food from one side of her plate to the other. Nearby Ron, Dean, Seamus and the rest of his little circle of first-year friends spoke, she heard him say, "What a know it all. No wonder she doesn't have any friends."

She dropped her fork and stared at her plate in silence as Seamus and the others laughed. She knew a couple of others added their own observations and comments, all speaking loud enough for her to hear. She sat with her uncontrollable hair hanging down around her face, until the ache of their words became too much. Silently wiping away her tears, she stood abruptly and left the table.

"Probably heading toward the library, bossy little bird," Ron said to her back.

Hermione fought the panic in her legs and the burning in her eyes. She would not run. She WOULD NOT run away like a little girl. She would not give those gits the satisfaction of knowing how much their words hurt her. But fight as she might, she could not keep the impulse to flee under control and ran from the great hall and the cruel laughter in it. She never saw the turban-headed Professor Quirrel run by on his mission to inform the school of a troll on the premises. She did not hear the alarm from the Great Hall. She ran as fast as her legs would take her to the girl's bathroom, where she ran into the first stall she reached, sat down on the loo, and cried her heart out.

"I'm not bossy," she said to herself as she cried. "I'm not any of those things. I'm not, I'm not." She let her head fall to her hands and wept. "Then why doesn't anyone like me?"

And that was the question. Hermione was a very intelligent young witch, even when that questing intellect dealt with harsh truths. And that terrible intellect was telling her that there had to be a reason that no one seemed to want to be her friend. Maybe there was something wrong with her. Maybe she was too bossy.

Her self-reflection was shattered when she heard a rhythmic thudding approaching. She looked up, tears dripping from her chin, wondering what the sound was. The thudding stopped, and in the silence she became aware of a strange grunting sound. Then she saw the grotesque, balding green head rising a full meter or more above the top of the stall. The huge head turned and two beady eyes looked down at her.

Hermione tried to scream. The scream died in a sub vocal whimper.

The troll leaned forward and stared directly down on her. "Arrrggghh," it growled.

It raised a club larger than Hermione herself and swung it.

The act of diving for cover freed Hermione's voice and she screamed as loud as she could. The club blew through her stall and sent shards of wood shooting against her calves. She screamed again and scrambled fast underneath the stall walls. The walls over her exploded again as the club swung through again.

She came against the bricks of the far wall and found herself with no place else to run. The last stall over her head fell to the same fate as its fellows and shattered before the massive club. She looked through the strands of her hair at the monster. It looked right back down at her. She could smell the stench of its breath, like a thousand rotting bodies, envelope her. The creature snorted and opened its great fanged mouth. It roared at her and raised its club.

Hermione scrambled underneath the sinks, only to have one shatter under the club. She desperately wanted someone to come help her. She needed a hero to save her, but there were no heroes at Hogwarts.

Run!

For the rest of her life, she never knew if the voice urging her to run was her own or not, but she ran. She wasn't fast enough. The hero she desperately needed never came. The club brushed against her shoulder and the only sound louder than the shattering of the porcelain sink was the audible crack of her collar bone.

She cried in agony, but the merciless troll didn't pause. Desperate, without any place else to hide, Hermione did the only thing she could. She crawled to her feet and ran as fast as she could while cradling her broken shoulder. The troll, faster than it looked, brought his club around and struck her full in the back.

She was conscious of a terrible crushing force against her back and head and flying through the air. She caught the most fleeting glimpse of Professors Dumbledore and McGonagal's horrified face before she slammed into the far wall of the bathroom and everything faded to black.

She woke up three days later in the hospital wing. Madame Pomfrey was always very kind to her, and made sure she wasn't in too much pain.

The troll's club broke her back in four places, shattered every limb, and broke most of her ribs when she hit the wall. If not for liberal doses of skelegrow and some specialized care from St. Mungos, she would have died on three separate occasions, or at the least be permanently paralyzed. She overheard Pomfrey several times ask Professor Dumbledore to transfer her to the hospital, and every time it was refused. Dumbledore did not want the extent of her injuries made public knowledge. Instead, master healers from the magical hospital came to Hogwarts to ensure her spinal cord was not permanently damaged.

No students came to visit her. Day after day, she lay in bed aching from the skelegrow or the lingering headache, hoping someone would notice she was not in class. McGonagall came, almost daily. Even Professor Dumbledore came by every other day to check on her, but none of her classmates. Not even the girls she roomed with came to check on her.

The loneliness was worse than the pain. She realized with a terrible ache in her heart that there really was not a single student in the school who cared about her.

Then, one day, a first year boy walked cautiously into the room. He looked dumpy in his robes and had a bumbling expression, but he walked right up to her bed. "'Allo, Hermione," Neville Longbottom said.

She stared up at him in disbelief. "Are you okay?" she asked. "Why are you in the hospital wing?"

Neville snorted and almost smiled. "To check on you," he said. "I…missed you in Transfigurations class. I…I…" He stopped and swallowed. "I know what it's like. The other kids make fun of me too. So, well, if you want, I'll be your friend." He pulled a beautiful red orchid from his robe pocket, and put it in the empty vase by her bed. "It's no good to be alone."

Hermione's eyes watered despite her best efforts. "It really isn't good," she agreed wholeheartedly. And on that day, Neville became her first and only friend.

~~Katarn~~

"My brothers are all prats," Ginny said.

Two days before her thirteenth birthday, Hermione looked at the cute, red-headed First Year in surprise as she sat down across from her. "I'm sorry?" Hermione said, absolutely certain the youngest Weasley spawn was setting her up for something drastic.

Ginny started putting food on her plate while glaring with genuine anger at her older brothers. "They used to prank me all the time too. Until I started getting 'em back. That's what you have to do. Get them back, and hard. Ron's scared of spiders, so one time I filled his sock drawer with hundreds of them. Last time he tried pranking me, I can tell you that!"

It was difficult not to laugh. After a year of constant abuse from Ginny Weasley's older brothers, it was difficult to accept any help from that anyone in that family. She did notice, however, that Ginny seemed to have a hard time making friends too. She walked around the halls all the time muttering and writing in her diary.

But then something remarkable happened. Neville came and sat down next to Hermione and said, "Hey, Ginny."

"Hey, Nev," Ginny said with a genuine smile.

"You know each other?" Hermione asked.

Nev had a mouth full of food already, so Ginny answered. "There aren't that many light purebloods left. I used to play over at Longbottom Marsh all the time."

Neville nodded and swallowed. "She, Bill and Charlie are the only nice Weasleys. The rest are…"

"Prats," Ginny finished.

Hermione nodded in agreement. "They really are. Hermione Granger, pleasure to meet you."

"Ginny Weasley, Neville's told me all about you. All good, I promise."

Two weeks later, when Ron started making fun of her hair as she walked by, Hermione turned and flicked her wand at him. "What was that?" he demanded, wide-eyed.

Hermione, without smiling, said: "I was just noticing the large spider on your shoulder. Are you going to name him?"

He flicked his eyes down to the significantly sized giant huntsman spider she learned how to conjure silently after three weeks of research and hard effort. He screamed so loudly people rushed down the stairs into the common room to see what the matter was. He tried brushing it off frantically, but the spider clung to him tenaciously. "Get 'em off, get 'em off!" Ron was now crying as he screamed.

"I'm not touching that thing!" Seamus said helpfully.

Finally the conjuration ended. Hermione, fighting back her smiles, said into the intervening silence: "So, Ron, do you have anything else to say about my hair? Or my teeth, perchance? Do you feel the need to comment on my revision habits? It's amazing what you can find in the library. I understand that spider is the largest by leg span, but there are larger by mass. Perhaps I could even conjure an Acromantula for you."

No one could believe what they were seeing, much less Ron. But Hermione was not done. "You are a bully and a prat, Ron Weasley. And I've had enough. Every time I hear you make any remark about me will result in spiders on you. They'll come in all sorts of sizes and shapes, and you'll never know where they are. Remember that, Weasley."

She turned to leave. Only when she was in the portrait frame on her way out and heard the sounds of cheers did she allow herself to smile. Not only had she finally confronted her personally bully, she'd made a new friend in Ginny.

The bullying stopped after that. She couldn't say everyone was suddenly her friend, but her classmates knew beyond a doubt that Hermione was a Gryffindor through-and-through. With Neville and Ginny, she thought, that was enough.

~~Katarn~~

Neville was sitting beside her bed when Pomfrey administered the mandrake potion. The first words out of her mouth were, "Neville, it's a basilisk!"

She then saw his swollen eyes and red nose, and looked around at the other students just now being treated. "How…how long was I petrified?"

"It's May 15th," Neville said.

Hermione felt her eyes widen in alarm. "Two months?"

"It was Ginny." Neville sniffed and wiped his nose with an ill-used kerchief. "That diary of hers was a dark artifact. It possessed her, made her let out the basilisk, and a week ago it killed her."

Hermione couldn't believe it. She continued to deny it until he showed her the Daily Prophet headline. She had to stop several times to wipe tears from her eyes. "Why…why would anyone do that to her? Why, Neville?"

Neville's face darkened. "Because some people are just evil."

~~Katarn~~

Hermione woke up before sunrise on the day of the first task and showered quickly before pulling her clothes on. She wanted very much to get out of the school before the chaos over the First Challenge erupted.

She wasn't surprised to find Neville in the Great Hall. He was reading his copy of the Daily Prophet while sipping black tea, and for a moment Hermione thought he rather looked like an old man. The image made her smile. He glanced up, blinking. "Morning."

"Good morning, Neville. How are you?"

"Good. Here, look at this."

He handed her the front of the paper, which had a slightly blurred picture of Harry Potter. Oddly, his figure stayed absolutely still and unmoving despite the motion of all those behind him, staring at the camera as if about to strike it down. The headline, though, was atrocious.

HARRY POTTER: SLAVE?

By Rita Skeeter

Scandalous information has recently come to this reporter's attention regarding the mysterious disappearance and reappearance of Harry Potter.

The Boy Who Lived disappeared on November 1st, 1981, the day after his parents' fateful deaths and the destruction of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. For many years, reporters such as myself speculated that he must have been oversees, since Gringotts assured us the Potter Heir still lived.

But now, in a shocking turn of events, this reporter has learned that Harry Potter was abducted from the home of his aunt and uncle, as a mere babe, by the mysterious Kyle Katarn.

This man has no history anywhere in any magical school this reporter could contact, nor does he have any Muggle records other than the records showing him as Harry Potter's guardian, which anonymous sources say were clearly forged. Anonymous sources have heard Katarn refer to himself as Harry Potter's master. Most shocking of all, Harry Potter himself as also described Katarn as his master.

This reporter cannot help but wonder how the Minister of Magic has allowed a most cherished treasure of Magical England to be stolen into slavery like a House Elf?

The sound of increasing muttering around the hall made her look up from the damning article to see other students now reading it as well. "This isn't good," Neville said.

"No, it isn't," Hermione said. "Come on, let's get to the tournament stands before it gets too crowded."

"Right."

Outside, the skies were a uniform shade of dark gray. If there was a sun trying to rise, it was doing so well out of sight behind the clouds and at such a distance to do nothing for the cold bite of the air. The grass just outside the front courtyard of the castle crackled as her trainers broke through a thick layer of frost. Her breath billowed before her eyes and her nose tickled. She loved the cold, as odd as that sounded, but she did wish for the first snows to come. There was something beyond the mere magical when Hogwarts became blanketed in pristine white snow.

"Do you think the paper was right?"

Hermione shrugged. "I don't know, but I have no doubt there's more to it. I've only spoken to Harry a few times, and while Mister Katarn strikes me as a very hard man, he doesn't seem to be unnecessarily cruel. Well, except for kicking Snape."

"And that's arguably not cruel," Neville said. "Snape's actually been a lot better in the class since then."

"I just don't know what to think," Hermione said. "Harry's always so polite and restrained, it's not normal. I wonder…I just don't know."

Despite the early start, they were not the first ones to the stands. But most of the early spectators gravitated toward the first line of seats that looked out over a rocky area roughly the size of a football field. The Minister's Box sat in the middle, elevated out from the rest of the stadium seating.

The two of them sat just to the side of the box, where both could get a good look at the people inside. In just minutes, the stands began to fill in earnest. Ten minutes before the task was to begin, several people appeared in the box itself. She recognized the Minister for Magic from his many, many appearances in the paper. Dumbledore, Karkaroff and Madam Maxine were all there as well. Katarn, however, was absent.

They were all speaking rapidly to each other, but with the increasing noise of the crowds, Hermione could not hear a thing.

"The first Task is upon us!" Ludo Bagman's booming voice suddenly announced. "Each champion must retrieve a golden egg from among a dragon's clutch. This egg is essential for the champion to be able to compete in the second task. The first champion to compete will be Cedric Diggory, representing Hogwarts!"

Cedric's cadre of adoring Hufflepuff fans and in fact much of the school cheered like mad. Cedric was one of those all-around nice boys that never really noticed Hermione, but likewise was never cruel to her. He was a sixth year, though, so they rarely interacted.

With the announcement, the cage vanished with a pop, as did the wizards, revealing a monstrous, fire-breathing, winged beast at least thirty feet long. "Oh Merlin!" Hermione said.

Cedric emerged from the tent wearing a dragon-hide vest and suit. He had his wand at the ready. Almost immediately the dragon he faced—a Swedish Short-Snout, according to Bagman—roared a challenge followed by a burst of flame. Cedric quickly rolled out of the way and with a flourish of his wand performed a text-book perfect piece of transfiguration on a nearby rock.

Where once a rock stood, a large brown Labrador now stood barking angrily at the huge dragon.

The dragon's head drifted for a moment to the dog, but then decided Cedric was the more inviting target.

The dog charged forward with a flurry of angry barks, running almost to the dragon's claws. With such an incessant irritant, the dragon turned and snapped at the transfigured animal. With a frightened yelp, the dog jumped away. Cedric chose exactly that moment to rush forward over the rocks. He stopped and ducked behind a boulder as a wash of dragon's fire poured over his path, but once again the dog attacked, barking like mad.

So it went as Cedric made his way to the nest. All the while Bagman continued to make idiotic, if not overly cheerful, commentary. Finally Cedric made it to the nest and grabbed the golden egg just as the dragon bit the transfigured Lab in half. Shattered shards of rock sprayed over the stadium as the entity reverted to its old form. Instantly the dragon turned back to Cedric and roared in anger as it saw him running away.

The roar was accompanied by a huge burst of fire that propelled Cedric completely off the rocky hill that formed the center of the stadium. Hermione and the rest of the audience sucked in their collective breaths while Bagman said, "Clever move—pity it didn't work."

Then the fire and smoke cleared. A burned but still very much alive and standing Cedric Diggory held up the golden egg to the wild cheers of his fellow students. It was such an impressive sight even Hermione had to cheer. "Very good indeed!" Bagman announced. "And now the marks from the judges!"

The dragon handlers appeared and with a flurry of specialized spells calmed the Swedish short-snout and carried her away. Just minutes later another dragon was led in by a host of handlers, this one slightly smaller than the first with a shiny green gloss to its scales.

Next came the French champion. Hermione couldn't help but notice how Neville seemed to sigh and sink into himself. The French champion came close to removing any possible doubt of her heritage when she began possibly the most erotic dance Hermione had ever seen. She, like the rest of the crowd, leaned forward in amazement and allure as the lithe figure moved enticingly across the rocky slope.

It was only through sheer force of will that Hermione was able to pull her attention away from the dancer to the dragon. Then she understood. The Welsh Green was following the dance as closely as the spectators. It was more than a mere dance, it was a charm, and it was working. The dragon's eyelids started to droop, until it gently laid its head on the ground and began to snore loudly.

The rest didn't seem to understand what had happened until, with the grace of a ballerina, Fleur skirted past the dragon, lifted the egg, and started back. If it weren't for the fact that the dragon snorted a ball of fire in its sleep, she would have made it clean away.

The handlers took the green away and next came the Chinese fireball, a fierce, red-scaled brute of a dragon that roared its rage with billows of fire.

Hermione's breath caught in her throat as Viktor Krum strode resolutely out into the rocky ground, raised his wand, and shouted a Romanian hex without a moment's delay. A splash of yellow light flared from his wand and hit the dragon square between the eyes. The resulting pandemonium filled the stadium as the angry reptile raised both fore claws to its face to try and alleviate the pain of the hex.

Viktor ran dangerously close to the flailing tail but managed to avoid both wild swings to grab his egg. It was just in time, too. The dragon in its rage and pain swung the spiked tail down where it thought it heard its assailant, and several actual eggs from its clutch were broken.

Although Hermione noticed Karkaroff gave him an insanely high score, all the other judges did not. He wasn't supposed to harm the dragon or the eggs.

The angry Chinese fireball was removed, and in its place was the largest of the four. The Hungarian Horntail, according to Neville, was the meanest breed of dragon known. It was recorded throughout history as attacking and destroying anything that even came close to its territory, and was even known to toy with its victims before devouring them.

Harry Potter moved out of the stand dressed in a strange brown cloak over a tan tunic and white undershirt. He wore tan slacks and calf-high boots and moved with an odd grace for a boy his age. Hermione glanced at the box, but Kyle still was not there.

The dragon roared, charged forward, and broke its chain so easily the effort did not even slow its progress.

The whole stadium went absolutely still for one long, heart-wrenching moment. And then terrified screams filled the air as the dragon rushed toward Harry without a chain to restrain it. Harry, though, did not flinch away. Instead, he pirouetted on one foot, swinging both hands over his head like a dancer, and then swung both arms down hard.

Something struck the dragon's head and shoved it into the rocky ground like a giant hammer. The dragon stumbled and fell over itself in a tumble of scales and wings. Instantly, Harry exploded into motion, running over the uneven ground and somersaulting over boulders as if they were nothing. He reached the egg just as the angry dragon regained its footing and roared. It spun around to its nest and Harry. With a great flap of its wings it lurched into the sky before descending on him.

Once again Harry spun and made the downward thrust, only with one hand this time as the other held the egg. Once again some unseen magic struck the dragon in the head, forcing it down in an uncontrolled crash. As it tumbled, Harry darted forward again almost faster than Hermione could follow. The dragon recovered faster this time; with a roar it lashed out with its' tail.

There was no way he should have been able to even see it, much less dodge it. Yet somehow Harry flung himself to the side in time to miss the lashing tail, somersaulted over a boulder the size of a Bentley, and ran into the tent just as the dragon handlers came rushing out in a desperate bid to contain the dragon.

"What kind of magic are they teaching at Potter's school?" Neville asked aloud.

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