Lesson Plans

Hermione checked her watch yet again, though she already knew what it would tell her: that it was fifteen minutes after eight and Gregory Goyle was nowhere in sight. She didn't know what to make of his absence. He'd seemed genuinely pleased when she'd found him alone in the corridor as she was heading for Herbology and told him that Professors McGonagall and Snape had agreed to permit her to continue tutoring him. And at supper, he hadn't given her any indication he wouldn't be coming to the library at the agreed-upon time. Yet she'd been waiting for him for the past forty-five minutes.

Sighing, she gathered up her things and stuffed them into her bag. Ron and Harry had asked for her help with their Charms homework, and she reckoned she might as well return to the Gryffindor common room if Goyle couldn't be bothered to show up. He must have changed his mind, she thought with a stab of disappointment; although she wasn't exactly eager to spend time alone with him, she'd allowed herself to get excited about the idea of helping him with his dyslexia. Clearly she'd overestimated his enthusiasm. It wouldn't be the first time she'd made that mistake about someone.

She'd just tightened the stopper on her ink bottle and dropped it inside her bag when the sound of heavy footsteps hurrying toward her--someone had a loose sole, it sounded like--caused her to look up. Goyle came lumbering around a large bookcase, his robes in disarray, his face red with exertion, and his chest heaving as though he'd just run a marathon.

"You're late," Hermione said, threading the strap through the buckle to close her bag.

"Er, yeah," Goyle wheezed. He bent forward and clutched a hand to his side.

"You were supposed to be here at 7:30."

"Sorry," rumbled his disembodied voice from somewhere near his knees.

"I waited for you for forty-five minutes."

That caught his attention. He straightened stiffly and gave her a puzzled look. "You-You did?" He sounded as though the possibility someone might willingly wait for *him* was the last thing he'd considered.

"Yes, I did," she said, slipping her arm through the strap and hoisting the bag on her back. "I agreed to help you, remember?" He nodded mutely. "It wouldn't be very fair of me to agree to something and then back out at the last moment, would it?"

"S'pose not," he mumbled. When she turned to go, however, he yelped, "Hey! Where d'you think you're going?"

Hermione turned and glared at him, reveling secretly when he recoiled. "After you show up nearly an hour late for our first session, what makes you think I'd want to help you anymore?"

His mouth open as he considered this, Goyle raised a massive hand and scratched the back of his head, making Hermione think of a rather pale and hairless ape. "Er," he said, "but...but you just said 'twouldn't be right to agree to something, then back out."

She raised her chin. "No, I said it wouldn't be right to agree, then not show up. I was here on time. I kept my part of the agreement."

The look of disappointment that fell over his face almost broke her resolve. She wasn't completely heartless. "So...So you're not going to help me then?" he asked in a small voice.

Crossing her arms over her chest, she said, "I went out on a limb for you today, Gregory. And you repay me by showing up late. It was rude, inconsiderate and hurtful. Why should I help you, if you can't show me the simple courtesy of arriving on time?" With that, she walked away.

She hadn't got far when a heavy hand on her shoulder stopped her. "Granger, wait." She glanced at the hand still on her shoulder, thinking that it could knock her flat with a single well-aimed blow, then up at Goyle with a raised eyebrow. If he got the hint, he chose to ignore it. "Don't go. I-I'm sorry I was late. Something came up at the last minute."

Hermione gingerly removed the hand from her shoulder and took a step back. "What could possibly have been so important it would keep you from your studies?"

His face darkened. "Can't say," he mumbled. "You wouldn't understand."

"Try me."

"I can't tell you. It doesn't concern you anyway."

"If it interferes with your studies, then it does concern me."

The muscles in his cheek jumped as he gritted his teeth. "Just let it go, Granger."

Hermione exhaled slowly through her nose, willing away her irritation. "All right," she said, "I'll give you a second chance, but don't be late again." Goyle grinned stupidly in relief. "But from now on, you're not to call me Granger. My name is Hermione. I'd appreciate it if you used it. Understood?"

"Yeah, sure," he said, "er...Hermione."

She smiled at him. "Well, it's a start. C'mon then," she said.

The sole of his shoe slapped noisily against the floor as he hurried after her. "Where are we going?"

"Someplace where we won't disturb people trying to study," she said, leading him out of the library. "A classroom should do. Ah! Here we are!" She stopped before the door to the Arithmancy classroom and pulled out her wand. "Professor Vector shouldn't mind if we use his room. Alohomora!"

The door clicked open and Hermione pushed her way inside, lighting the lamps with another wave of her wand before she dropped her bag on a nearby desk. She then turned to Goyle, who stood expectantly on the threshold, unsure how to proceed.

"You can come in," she said. "I'm a prefect, so I can use the classrooms after supper. Now, about your shoe...." She flicked her wand in the direction of Goyle's foot and reattached the sole. "Better?"

"Yeah, thanks," he said, lifting his foot and shaking it, as though to test her skills as a seamstress. "That's been bothering me for ages."

"Just a simple Reparo spell," Hermione said.

"Simple for you." He dropped his bag next to hers and came into the classroom. "We're not all quite so clever."

"Cleverness has nothing to do with it, Gregory," she insisted. "You just got off to a bad start." She poked a finger into his chest. "There's a good wizard in there somewhere, I know it."

He stared down at her finger, still poking into his chest, until she pulled it away. "If you say so."

She frowned at him, but he only shrugged. With a quiet "tuh" of exasperation, she turned and waved her wand at the blackboard. The following appeared in large, neatly printed letters:

     b d

     p q

"What's that for?" Goyle asked, his brow furrowing as he studied the board.

"Your trouble seems to be a matter of basic perception," Hermione said, "so we're going to start with the basics." She put her wand down next to her bag, then reached in and took out a small white ball. "Do you know the difference between left and right?"

"Yes!" he snapped, his ego apparently bruised by her insinuation.

She smiled. "Excellent. I want you to catch this ball in your right hand." She tossed the ball gently to him, and wasn't at all surprised when he caught it with his left hand. "Good catch," she said, smiling again, "but you used the wrong hand." His grin faded.

She approached him and retrieved the ball, slipping it inside her pocket. "Hold you hands before you, like this," she said, demonstrating, holding her forefingers and thumbs at right angles, like an artist mentally framing a picture. Once Goyle's hands were positioned correctly, she ran her finger along the bend created by the finger and thumb of his left hand. "Do you see how they form an L here?" He nodded. "That's how you can tell which hand is your left."

Goyle pursed his lips as he considered this. She could almost see the lightbulb flash over his head the moment he understood her meaning. "Oh! L for left, right?"

She smiled. "Very good."

"Blimey. I've never thought of it that way before."

"You'll use the same technique when identifying these letters," Hermione explained, pointing at the board. "For example, for 'b,' think, 'upper left'."

"Why?"

"I was just getting to that."

"Oh. Sorry."

She crossed to the board and held her hand before the 'b' in the L-shaped formation she'd just shown Goyle. "Do you see how my finger points upward, like the stem on the 'b'?"

"Er, yeah, I think so," he said, squinting at the board.

"Good. Now, look at the direction the bubble is pointing."

"Bubble?"

"The rounded area on the letter 'b'." She waited for his nod of recognition. "Can you see that it's pointing in the same direction as my thumb?"

He approached the board with his finger and thumb held just as she'd shown him, until he was standing right next to her. She slowly lowered her hand and watched, breath held in anticipation, as he placed his hand over the letter just as she had done. "Upper left," he murmured, "'b'."

Hermione grinned. "Well done!"

Her smiled faded, however, when he turned to her with a frown. "How'm supposed to know when to think 'upper left' when I'm reading?" He gestured at the blackboard. "All these letters look the same to me."

"Unfortunately, Gregory, you will always be a slow reader," she admitted sadly. "Because you have dyslexia, you'll need to take extra time to study each word carefully to make sure you're seeing it properly. What I can do is teach you certain exercises of repetition so that, when you're reading, you'll be able to call on that knowledge and apply it to certain troublesome letters."

"I'm not sure I understand."

She removed the ball from her pocket. "Take this, for example," she said. "For the next few weeks, we'll practice tossing this ball to each other. Each time I toss it to you, I'm going to tell you where I'm throwing it--upper left, upper right, lower left or lower right. Like so: lower right!" She smiled when he deftly caught the ball with his right hand down near his hip. "Perfect!"

He tossed it back to her. "And what's the purpose behind this?" he asked.

"I want you to be able to anticipate where the ball is coming without having to think about the difference between left and right. I want you to *know* which is which instinctively, without having to hold your hands in front of your face." She tossed the ball again. "Upper left!"

Goyle caught the ball with his right hand.

Hermione sighed, but smiled at him anyway. "Good try," she said. "But you caught it with the wrong hand." An expression of delight flitted across his face briefly before it was replaced by one of disappointment. "Don't be discouraged," Hermione hastened to add. "I didn't expect you to get this right at first."

"Oh," he said as he threw the ball back to her, but she could tell how hard this was for him. He had grown so used to using his sheer size to his advantage to get what he wanted, and to having always followed Malfoy's lead, that he wasn't accustomed to answering for his own mistakes. Part of her wondered if this was how Ron felt, always being in the shadow of his brothers or, more recently, Harry. Perhaps she should ease up on him a bit, not always criticize him for not living up to *her* expectations.

"Tell you what," she said, rolling the ball between her palms. "Why don't we spend the next fifteen minutes working just on upper left and upper right. At this point, the most important thing you need to learn is how to distinguish between left and right without having to think about it. Does that sound suitable to you?"

Goyle shrugged. "Sure, okay."

She smiled at him. "Excellent," she said. Then, raising her arm, she said, "Upper...left!"