Had Enough.
((A/N – Set during HP and the POA. Set from Hermione's point of view. I reckon it makes Hermione sound kind of evil, but she's just desperate. I have deliberately not put Hermione's name when not needed, referring to Hermione as 'her' or 'she', most of the time. I'm sorry if this annoys you. Please R&R!))
Everyone hated her. No exaggeration. Her best friends, her dorm mates, even her books! ((Remember the monster book of monsters)). She had to do something. But what?
She had thought of everything, even love potions. But it would be too much to distribute a flask of love potion to everyone who disliked her.
She only had one option left. She had been struggling whether or not to do it for months now. She didn't want to do it, really didn't want to, but she couldn't go on like this for the rest of the year, even with the time turner. She had found one way to get out of this.
The Imperius Curse
She wouldn't tell anyone about it. Not even Ron and Harry, since it was they who she intended to use it on. Even so, she had to be careful, especially around teachers. Just to be sure she had already made up 3 different cauldrons of love potion in Moaning Myrtles bathroom, all at different stages, to make it look, even to Harry or Ron, that she had just spiked her 'victims' drinks'. It was a fake trail, just to satisfy anyone if suspicion and/or curiosity got the best of them.
She decided it was time to test it. So in the dead of one frosty night, making sure everyone else was very much out to it, she picked up Cookshranks off the end of her bed, grabbed her wand off her bedside table, and tiptoed down to the Gryffindor common room.
'Muffilo!' She whispered, waving her wand to make sure, even if anybody was awake, they could not hear her cast one of the three unforgivable curses. The fire crackled dimly in the fireplace. Warmth flooded her as she sat down in a cushy chair exactly opposite the fire.
Do I really want this?
Cookshranks was jerking on her lap, hissing and spitting as if he knew what she was about to do. Willing her cat to go back upstairs and sleep so that she could concentrate, she flicked her wand directly at Cookshranks.
'Imperio!' She said in her quietest voice. The cat instantly stopped trying to wriggle out of her hold, pompously jumped down from her lap, and strode away, jumping up the stairs, without looking back. His tail was the last thing he could see before he disappeared.
She settled back down in the chair, smiling. It was not a happy smile, just grimly satisfied. The future didn't look so bleak after all.