It's something she's never said out loud. You just don't. Like you just don't say that chocolate is over-rated or that Christmas Day is boring. Like you just don't say that snowball fights leave you cold and you hate Halloween. Hermione has never uttered any of these thoughts out loud, but she'd shout them from the rooftops rather than say what is currently on her mind. Mindful of the present company, she bites her tongue. There's nothing quite like the casual cruelty of youth - and in such large numbers.
"Let's dance, Hermione." Ron's voice slurs slightly as he pulls her to her feet.
She acquiesces because she hasn't the strength to say no. Besides, she's perfected the act over the years and as they've got older, Ron has got braver, if not more perceptive. However often he takes her out dancing or to stand shoulder to shoulder in smoky pubs right next to the band, he's never spotted her problem, and she's never dared tell the truth.
No one knows that Hermione Granger can't hear music.
All around her, sweaty limbs collide then grasp and release. Ron has her in his arms and she lets him swing her around and then pull her firmly against him. There's noise. She can't make out the beat and she has no idea if there's a melody or not. If she strains to make out faces through the dim, pulsating lights, she can see expressions of ecstasy, or just enjoyment, but all she's aware of is the desperate tedium of moving to a hideous cacophony and the ache in her face from fixing her smile. One dance is always enough. Too much.
She doesn't break up with Ron because of this, but it certainly doesn't help that he's almost as mad about clubbing as he is about Quidditch. In the end you have to have something in common. Anyway, the not-quite-acrimonious split didn't need any more explicit examples of their incompatibility (or Hermione's perceived failings as a normal human being. Normal human beings liking music, of course).
*
Hermione kisses Severus Snape for the first time when she is thirty-three years old. The earth doesn't move and she definitely doesn't hear a symphony - not that she would find that pleasant and kissing Severus is definitely pleasant, if not more than that. One kiss leads to more kissing, but much to Hermione's relief, their burgeoning relationship (and his surprisingly quiet acceptance of this relationship of small touches and smaller intimacies) doesn't seem to include dancing or even a suggestion of background music while they read. She thinks she could love him.
She knows she's in love with him one day when they're lying in bed, his hand in her hair and her head on his chest. The sex has been energetic and oddly gentle, and in her post-coital stupor, she breathes deeply and feels, no hears, as if for the first time, the steady beat of his heart. Impulsively, she lays her fingers against the soft skin of his neck, and the vibration of his pulse stirs her with its primitive rhythm.
It's a pattern that she tentatively lets become a habit. She can lie like this for minutes at a time, a finger against his lips should he attempt to move or speak, just listening.
The first time he croons her name as he comes, she can't tell if he's in tune or not and it never lasts more than a few seconds, but she understands what all the fuss is about. This is music that speaks to her in a way that years of exposure and frustration can't. It's a song from his heart.