What is This Feeling?
Disclaimer and A/N: If it's familiar, I don't own it. Written for HPFC One Character Competition. It's 509 words long.
Hermione was trying to figure out what she felt. Ron had just kissed her and asked her to be his girlfriend. She'd accepted the offer on the spot; why, then, did she feel like she was making the stupidest mistake of her eighteen years?
She'd loved Ron ever since he'd saved her from that troll back in first year, and she suspected that he'd known at least for the last couple of years. Then again, it was Ron; he was pretty clueless when it came to girls and just about anything that didn't involve eating or Quidditch. She wouldn't have him any other way, and she was confident he wouldn't change too much from that.
How could she ever describe what was going on in her head right now? She couldn't name it, but she'd felt this way many times before. She'd felt it when Ron had returned to the Horcrux hunt after he'd stormed off in a fit of anger. She'd felt a stronger form of it when she'd made it out of Malfoy Manor alive, and an even stronger form when Harry had come back to life during the Battle of Hogwarts. It frustrated her that she couldn't understand something, but she knew that there would eventually come up with the word.
It wasn't sadness, it wasn't anger, it wasn't fear; all those had been experienced too much in recent months for her liking. Perhaps, she surmised, it was something that could've first been felt back when she was an innocent little kid, who'd lived without a care in the world. She dwelled on those memories, hoping those could help her figure out her current emotions.
She'd felt it when she got her hands on a book she hadn't read before, much like her present-day self. She'd quite surely felt it when she'd talked her parents out of making her take piano or ballet lessons, both of which she knew she'd never be adept at, no matter how hard she tried. She'd known that emotion when the Sorting Hat said there was more to her than just a brain and intelligence, and that if she chose Gryffindor over Ravenclaw she'd be able to get people to see that.
She felt it when she'd been saved from that troll in first year, and a stronger form came when Harry hadn't been killed when Quirrel was cursing his broom during Quidditch matches. She'd felt it every time she was the first to answer correctly in class, and a stronger form when Harry had started Dumbledore's Army as a way to show people how to defend themselves instead of listening to Umbridge blabber on the theories of how defense worked- after all, theories could only take you so far.
But the question remained in the back of her mind, teasing her, taunting her. What was this feeling that she just couldn't name?
Well, she decided as Ron leaned over to give her another kiss, she'd worry about that some other time, even though it was what she felt right now.