Chapter 45: The Bullied Sherlock

In this world, there are always people who are naturally inept at certain things.

For instance:

Some people are bad at running.

Others are bad at memorization; no matter how hard they try, words, sentences, and passages simply refuse to stick in their minds.

A small number of people are bad at reading aloud. Even after going through a text several times, they stumble and stutter every single time, unable to read fluently.

An extreme few are bad at comprehension. During class, they clearly feel they have grasped the material, only to discover they understand nothing when exam time arrives.

Worse still, some people are simply bad at studying altogether.

When it came to Hermione, she excelled in every other subject, but in flying lessons, she turned into an entirely different person.

Even some shortcomings that usually remained hidden during flying classes were laid bare before Sherlock without reservation.

This only made Hermione feel even more mortified.

The more she tried to overcome it, the more flustered and clumsy she became.

Seeing this, Sherlock decided to take matters into his own hands.

After teaching Hermione hands-on for several days, he finally achieved barely satisfactory results.

He had initially helped Hermione overcome her fear of heights.

In truth, everyone suffers from acrophobia to some degree.

It is merely a matter of some having a mild case while others suffer from a severe one.

Many people believe they do not have a fear of heights simply because the altitude has not yet reached their personal threshold.

Through Sherlock's analysis and deduction, Hermione's fear of heights was a specific phobia, which could be easily resolved with the right remedy.

He took Hermione up on a broomstick, gradually increasing their altitude until they stopped at a height that triggered her terror, maintaining it for at least half an hour each time.

At first, this level of exposure made Hermione somewhat blush.

Soon, however, terror supplanted all other distractions.

Especially after a certain height was reached, Hermione would tremble all over, her hands and feet turning ice-cold. Even in the dead of winter, she would break out in a cold sweat, and tears would stubbornly stream down her face.

During the first few attempts, everything would go black before her eyes, and she would faint outright.

Had Sherlock not sensed something was amiss and caught her in time, she would have taken a nosedive straight off the broomstick.

Going back and forth like this, even Hermione developed the urge to give up.

*This is too hard for me!*

Yet, seeing that Sherlock cared not a whit—and even wore a subtle expression of "if you quit, it will make things much easier for me"—she gritted her teeth and persevered.

After all, compared to everyone else, Hermione was only willing to have deep exchanges with Sherlock.

Nearly two months into the term, she did not get along well with her roommates, nor indeed with her classmates as a whole.

In truth, Hermione's relationship with her peers was strictly that of a classmate, nothing more.

She was well aware of this herself.

After all, the exact same thing had happened back when she attended school in the Muggle world.

Most of her classmates felt she was arrogant, overly fond of showing off, and constantly prone to lecturing others.

As the saying goes, honest advice is hard to swallow.

In this world, aside from those with peculiar fetishes, no one enjoys being lectured by others at every turn.

Particularly not teenagers of this age group.

Even the words of their parents and elders went in one ear and out the other, let alone those of a mere classmate?

Upon arriving at Hogwarts, this situation did not change.

Her classmates all felt that Hermione placed far too much emphasis on school rules and cared far too much about house points.

One had to remember: this was Gryffindor!

Take the twin brothers as an example; the little lions never abided by convention.

While "reckless troublemakers" might be a stereotype, it did, to some extent, reflect a kernel of truth.

Because of this, Hermione had fallen out very unpleasantly with her classmates on more than one occasion.

Among them were even Harry and Ron.

The catalyst had been Malfoy challenging Harry to a wizard's duel.

Having overheard the news, she had privately offered the two boys some advice.

Her original intentions were good.

Yet something went wrong in the execution.

"You absolutely must not wander around the school at night. Just think, if you get caught, how many points you'll lose for Gryffindor... And you *will* get caught—you're being so selfish!"

Hearing such words was already quite grating.

What left people utterly speechless was that she did something else entirely.

She stood guard outside the Fat Lady's portrait in the middle of the night to see if Harry and Ron would actually go out for a midnight stroll.

Of course, having heeded Sherlock's advice, Harry never went to meet Malfoy.

Thus, Hermione's trip was in vain.

Instead, she merely ran into Neville Longbottom, the round-faced boy who had forgotten the password and could not get inside.

Hermione brought him back to the common room, which, in a twist of irony, counted as doing a good deed.

When Harry and Ron learned of this from Neville the next day, they could hardly believe that anyone in the world could be such a busybody.

Naturally, their attitude toward her grew even worse.

Especially when Ron bragged about Malfoy lacking the nerve to show up, he casually threw in a mention of what Hermione had pulled.

This made the Gryffindor first-years even more overtly ostracize her.

Neville was the only exception.

He remained deeply grateful to Hermione for helping him look for Trevor on the train and for escorting him back from outside the Gryffindor Tower.

Under these circumstances, Hermione naturally felt a sense of loneliness.

Aside from Neville, Sherlock was the only person who did not ostracize her.

He continued to call her by her name as before, and did not stop tutoring her individually.

After all, in Sherlock's eyes, these petty matters were hardly worth mentioning.

Out of curiosity, Hermione asked Sherlock about it.

Yet his reply left her utterly astonished.

"Why don't you just ignore them?"

Sherlock failed to understand Hermione's distress. "Since you believe you are in the right, why should you care about what other people think?"

He himself had been ostracized by his classmates when he went to school in the Muggle world.

This was hardly surprising.

After all, his personality and methods had never been particularly endearing—he always pointed out people's mistakes with brutal precision, entirely heedless of the occasion.

So what?

Other people's opinions had zero impact on Sherlock whatsoever.

Of course, there had actually been people who tried to bully him.

For instance, pouring ink into his homework books, stuffing beetles into his stationery, or tampering with his breakfast.

Yet all these people's retaliatory acts inexplicably bounced back onto themselves.

They would open their schoolbags to find their own books stained with ink, accompanied by a toad, or find their food salted to the point of doubting the meaning of life.

There were also stubborn fools who relied on their physical strength to provoke him on the spot, only to give up after getting two of their front teeth knocked out.

Sherlock's ability to treat others as if they did not exist filled Hermione with envy.

She desperately wanted to be like that, but simply couldn't manage it!

"If you're truly this agonized, I do have a suggestion."

Watching Hermione, who was too distressed to concentrate, Sherlock attempted to view the problem from her perspective.

"You could stop caring so much about house points."

"How is that possible?"

Accustomed to holding herself to the standard of a model student, Hermione instinctively fired back:

"Professor Snape finds fault and deducts points every single day. If we don't abide by the school rules as well..."

"Miss Granger, your brief eleven years—oh wait, your twelve years of life experience are simply insufficient to support a true understanding of reality."

Hermione: (ー`´ー)

"Reality is this: either you continue to go your own way and disregard the opinions of others.

After all, you aren't a five-pound note; you can't possibly expect everyone to like you.

Or else you change your own mindset and try to blend into your environment."

Though it sounded grating to her ears, Hermione knew Sherlock had every right to say such things.

He was the living embodiment of the former.

On more than one occasion, she had witnessed Sherlock's behavior, which could only be described as obnoxious.

For instance, telling Ron and round-faced Neville to their faces, "You lower the overall intelligence of the entire house."

Or telling Dean Thomas that merely standing in his presence "interfered with his thinking."

And not to mention his insistence just now that he was twelve years old...

In Hermione's view, these actions were far more egregious than anything she had ever done.

She was merely upholding school rules, whereas Sherlock was launching direct personal attacks!

Yet Sherlock cared not a fig, turning a blind eye to the pointing and whispering of others, marching to the beat of his own drum from beginning to end.

At this, Hermione could only concede defeat. Easier said than done—she simply couldn't compare.

After turning it over in her mind, she ultimately chose not to follow Sherlock's advice.

She decided to change her predicament using her own methods.