Written in ten minutes, as a little challenge to myself to see what I could come up with.
Essays.
Essays after exam after homework due tomorrow, a week later, a month later, and Hermione Granger didn't know what to do.
She'd tried to make friends - well, only with Harry Potter and Ronald Weasley, briefly, but they, like all the children in her primary school, couldn't see her for what she was.
Brilliant.
Simply, purely, brilliant. And Hermione knew it. It was the only arrogance she would allow herself, under the frazzled brown hair that puffed out when she stressed over her exams and the ink-smeared palms after writing a perfect essay.
Today was not a good day. She was sitting in the library, knees quaking, because she'd nearly forgotten to do her Potions homework and now she was clutching her agenda in one hand, furiously writing on parchment with the other, dipping her ink in the pot as quickly as she could.
It was so impossibly like her that Hermione hid herself away in the corner of the room, knowing she wouldn't be missed in her dormitory. She couldn't let them find out - homework was her only solace, the only consistency in her life at school.
It was twelve at night, and the lights were closed. Pince had swooped around once, and in a moment of utter defiance she'd hid. Hermione had a dim Lumos lit - a spell she'd taught herself, and was sitting at one of the tables, her legs freezing. She wiped away the tears of frustration from her face, and looked down to notice ink marks on her fingers. A strand of hair that had fallen in front of her face flopped down, black and inked.
Hermione tightened her grip on her quill and released it, letting it roll to her feet. She should pick that up. Ink could ruin the carpet.
She slammed her agenda on the table and held her Potions homework in her hand.
No matter how much she tried, he always gave her an Acceptable at best. No. Matter. What.
She'd done the one-time extra credit and received an Acceptable once more, written an entire extra paper that had taken her a week to do, with at least five drafts (not counting the four half-written ones) and she'd gotten it back in a box of ashes, with a note that said It's not pleasant work to read more, Granger. She'd gotten a Troll on it, and it had gone into her grade.
She tightened her hold on the parchment until it began to crinkle, and with a breath, she let go before she could rip it. Her History homework, the one she did but nobody else did, was ten parchment sheets, strewn across the table in an array of desperation. Binns always gave Outstandings. Always. Even to those who didn't even write anything. All they did was write their name on the parchment and handed it in. Outstanding. And here she was, sitting in the library, and nobody knew she was brilliant and nobody knew she'd written a ten-page History analysis on the Dwarf Renaissance with a bibliography that Hogwarts didn't even require and a smudge-free extra page about the importance of the primary sources she'd included.
And nobody knew that out of all the Outstandings she got she'd never gotten one in friendship, and that was one essay she couldn't write, one exam she could never pass no matter how much she studied.
Girls were too catty and they gossipped, so she looked up what boys liked. Quidditch? Ronald Weasley had spit at her when she tried talking about the invention of gravity-resistant trees and Harry Potter had walked away after she tried to show him the book about the material of the Quaffles and how they allowed for maximum friction.
She'd written a five-page analysis about Quidditch history and how they shaped the lives of wizards and witches, with a draft of a survey nobody had filled out. Madam Hooch hadn't taken it. She'd smiled. ("Very nice, dear, why don't you show Oliver Wood?") But Wood hadn't been interested either.
And she, for the life of her, could not pass the one class Hermione wanted to pass the most. She hadn't passed it in primary school, and she couldn't pass it now.
Hermione picked up her quill from the carpet that had a small stain, and finished her essay.