Hermione Granger was on a mission. Granted, it wasn't exactly a very important one. It wouldn't defeat a dark lord or save the wizarding world (yet again)... in fact, it was nothing but a Library Orientation. But she was taking it quite seriously all the same.
Hermione had never quite been sure of the point of Library Orientations. Sure, maybe the first years needed a little help in learning their way around - there were certainly people at Hogwarts whom she could believe had never used a library before they came here - but it seemed like a terrible waste of time to repeat it every year after that. It was as if, for some strange reason, Madam Pince had convinced herself that over the summer everybody completely forgot how to find a book.
How anybody could forget something so basic and so useful was utterly beyond Hermione, but here they were doing Library Orientation anyway. It wasn't a complicated operation; there was a short lecture from Madam Pince on the mysteries of the card catalog (which, having been exposed to quite a lot of magic over the last thousand years or so, did tend to do things like re-alphabetize itself backwards and squirt coconut frosting in your face when you opened a drawer), and then each student would be given the name of a spell and told to go find the book that contained it. It was a laughably easy task - Hermione would have finished it in the first five minutes... if it weren't for Harry and Ron.
"What have you got, Harry?" asked Ron, peeking over his friend's shoulder.
Harry frowned at the slip of parchment Madam Pince had given him. "Calandrelli's Cushioning Charm," he said. "I know that one - that's the one we still use on the Quidditch brooms. How about you?"
"A Spell for the Disintegration of Kidney Stones." Ron made a face. "That's the one I got last year."
"It'll be easy to find, then, won't it?" asked Harry. "Let's do yours first."
Ron stared at him. "What, you think I actually remember where it was? Yours first - you must use it all the time."
"Well, yeah," said Harry, "but I've never actually seen it in a book, you know. Oliver Wood taught it to me in first year and I just remembered it since then."
The boys looked at each other, and then both turned their eyes towards Hermione. She bristled - only back at school one day, and here they went again! Deep down inside, she'd been rather hoping that one or other of them might actually realize this year that she was, in fact, a girl, but it looked instead like she was doomed to another year of being their walking, talking, all-purpose textbook.
"Hermione?" said Harry.
"Yes?" she asked.
"Any idea where we can find these?"
The answer was yes, and he knew it... Hermione knew exactly which books the spells could be found in. In fact, in the case of Harry's coushining charm, it was in no less than five books, including the deathly boring Quidditch Through the Ages, which both boys actually owned. Harry and Ron expected her to just spout off shelf numbers like a computer, and then they'd go off and grab the books and not even give her a thank-you. Well, she'd had it... she knew, but she was damned if she was going to tell them when they'd just take her for granted like that.
"Sorry," she said. "I'm afraid you're just going to have to look them up in the card catalog."
The boys' eyes widened. "The card catalog?" Ron echoed, as if he didn't know what it was.
"Yes," Hermione replied sarcastically. "You know, that big wooden box with all the drawers in it? The one Madam Pince just spent ten minutes telling us about? The one you're supposed to use to find things in the library?"
Harry and Ron clearly found this a rather distasteful idea. "Last time I tried to use the card catalog, every time I opened a drawer it spat a goldfish at me," said Harry.
"Big goldfish," Ron nodded. "The kind you get if you put them in a pond outdoors and don't feed them for three years."
Hermione rolled her eyes. "Really," she said, "you two are so helpless, it's pathetic! Someday I won't be here, and then how are you going to find anything? Go and find them on your own."
"Oh, come on, Hermione," said Ron. "Be a pal!"
"I am!" she snapped. "I'm your friend - not your reference book! Find your own spells." And she turned around and stomped off into the shelves, fuming.
How in the world had she ever managed to make friends with such a pair of insufferable asses? She'd dropped hints to both of them for the last three years - I'm female! Notice me! - but still she remained Hermione Granger, walking study aid and One Of The Guys. If they weren't so darned clueless...
She shook her head and wished, for the umpteenth time, that she were pretty.
Hermione had always been vocally of the opinion that it wasn't necessary to be pretty. One could lead a perfectly good life and acieve great things, and still be as ugly as sin. If it had been a choice between being pretty and being smart, she'd have chosen smart every time. But while perhaps it wasn't strictly important to be pretty, the more Hermione grew up, the more she thought it would probably have been nice.
Yes - it would have been very nice to get a little attention for once. To have Ron and Harry remember that they were, after all, in the presence of a lady, and to treat her like one instead of like a spare brain. It would have been nice to have a date for Hogsmeade weekends, instead of 'hanging out' and drinking butterbeer with two boys who didn't realize that she was almost seventeen and still hadn't had her first kiss.
But it wasn't going to happen. Hermione, as every mirror she saw was constantly reminding her, was short, bushy-haired, buck-toothed, and brown. She had about as much chance of getting a date as she did of being the first woman on the moon.
And because she was also a disgustingly nice person, she was going to apologize to Ron and Harry later for that, and probably help them with their homework. Knowing that made her squirm - but it didn't change the fact that she was going to end up doing it. Then she'd go back to being their best buddy, and nothing would have changed.
Somewhere on the other side of a shelf, Parvati Patil shrieked as a book tried to bite her.
Hermione sighed and looked at the slip of parchment she'd been given - her assignement for the orientation was to find A Spell to make Hidden Things Visible. She blinked and looked again, just to make her she hadn't imagined it - yes, there it was, and it was almost enough to bring Hermione out of the funk she'd sunken herself into. She'd seen taht spell before; she'd looked it up for extra credit in Charms class, two years ago! It was on page eighty-four of the Book of Coriakin, which was a blue leather volume about five inches thick, stored in section B, shelf 2, nine volumes from the end. What's more, it was a book she'd always been meaning to look up again; when she'd used it before, OWLs had been coming up, and there'd been no time to go through the many other fascinating spells it contained. This time, she'd have to check it out and see what else was in it.
Feeling considerably brighter, she hurried off to Section B of the library, which could only be found if you went up aisle four of Section A and walked backwards around the corner. This she did, and there was the book, right where it was supposed to be. Hermione pulled it off the shelf, flipped past the loan card in the front (though not before noting that the last person to check this book out had been herself, two years earlier), and found the spell easily. There was library orientation over and done with!
Now she ought to go check the book out and then take pity on Harry and Ron. She stood up, brushed dust off her robes, and took a step towards the signout desk... then stopped and reconsidered. She knew she was going to apologize to the boys eventually, but she was still just angry enough to decide that 'eventually' didn't have to be right now. Since she'd finished early, she now had the rest of the class period - nearly forty-five minutes - in which she could go back to the Gryffindor Common Room and read this book. Maybe that would teach her so-called 'friends' to at least say 'thank you' when she did things for them.
Madam Pince awarded Hermione ten house points for being the first to finish - just as she had the last six years - then allowed her to check out the book. Hermione very pointedly refused to look at Ron and Harry as she stalked out of the library and began climbing the stairs to Gryffindor Tower.
In the common room, she picked a nice, comfy red velvet armchair in front of the fireplace, sat down, and opened the book in her lap. Her mind, however, was still on Harry and Ron, and she found it difficult to concentrate on the spells she was reading. Stupid boys! One of these days, she was going to show them. One day, she'd be married to a rich movie star or something and then they'd be sorry they hadn't appreciated her...
Yeah, and she'd grow wings and fly while she was at it. She heaved another sigh and turned the page...
And there it was.
Hermione almost stopped breathing. There it was, on page forty-five; A Spell to make Beautiful her that Uttereth it Beyond the lot of Mortals. The page was decorated with a series of pictures: a rather plain young girl holding a book, the same girl - who had frizzy brown hair and large teeth - reciting a spell in front of a mirror, and then in the final panel, the same girl (and it was, recognizably, the same girl, despite her subtly altered features) had become the most beautiful woman on earth, and half a dozen men were gathered around, showering her with gifts and flowers.
Hermione's heart pounded in her ears as she read over the Latin words of the spell. All she had to do, the book claimed, was hold her wand in her left hand and recite the spell from memory in front of a mirror with her eyes closed. And beneath the title was a line of fine print: WARNING: this spell should only be attempted by an extremely powerful witch and should never under any circumstances be spoken by a wizard. As the spell is difficult to reverse, the caster should be sure she is prepared to live with the consequences.
Consequences? What the heck was it talking about? No side effects were listed - the 'consequences' of the spell was to make the caster the most beautiful woman in the world! Anybody who couldn't live with that had very high standards indeed.
She read over the spell one more time to make sure she knew it - fortunately, Hermione's Latin was pretty fluent, and she could memorize spells based on their meanings instead of learning the phrases phoenetically - then grabbed her wand and ran for the girls' bathroom.