Chapter One: Tardiness and the Boy Who Lived
Everyday, getting ready for school for her was a routine. Wake up, take a shower, eat breakfast, and check school stuff. Getting to school was a problem; for some unknown reason, the clock in her house was always late compared to the regular school time. The fact that no one ever bothered to change it was shrouded in mystery. That mystery affected her early in the years.
When she was young, she always fretted about the consequences of being tardy. She knew she was late because she suddenly had this feeling in her stomach; it was growling even though she wasn't hungry. Opening the doors to the classroom and seeing all her peers stop what they were doing and look her way, not uttering a single word, just fired her anxiousness. They all looked so cold and the teacher expressionless. It was like Judgment Day everyday for her when she was in elementary. But after the punishments and disapprovals by her teacher, things seemed to warm up among her classmates. They welcomed her to sit down with them, fill her in on what activities for the day awaited.
Now, of course, she had grown used to the fact that she might always be late for school. She told herself that the anxiousness that built up in her because she knew she was late would fade once she sat down in her desk. Lateness never hurt anybody in school... well, maybe a few tardy slips and the discussion afterwards with parents, which always ended with an agreement not to be late anymore instead of an argument anyway. What was there to fear? If only she had known this earlier then life would have been easier, but of course, there's always a first time to realize something. And it's not like her peers will laugh at her because she was late. Everybody was late in his or her life at least once. Nobody was really perfect.
Well, almost nobody.
At least once in everyone's lives, there always was a person they really disliked because they thought that person was everything they weren't: perfect. Do you remember that person who you thought you hated but you were really jealous of? Yeah, that person.
Harry Potter wasn't exactly on top of her favorite people list. He, in the eyes of others including hers, was perfect in every way. It didn't matter that he wasn't always the best student in class, all there is that mattered was that something, that scar was done to him, nothing he did. But now he was earning a name for himself. It was not that he had ever done anything directly that affected her in any way, but it was what he did indirectly that affected her miserable life in every way. He had to live. He had to survive that forsaken Lord Voldemort's wrath then become the most famous wizard and yet, as she soon found out, he didn't even know it. Well, at least not until he arrived at Hogwarts, she thought. Did he really have to survive?
She grew up knowing not to wish people horribly, but she also grew up to expectations that she must be somehow like Harry Potter, the boy who lived. Even though her parents were muggles, they had friends who had gone off to Hogwarts and every now and then would slip bits and pieces of news from the magical world. They had never paid more attention to any news before like when they did to that infant who made it out alive from the most feared evil of the time. The one thought that went straight into their heads was, as they looked at their own infant giggling at the trinkets hovering above her, if he could do that, then surely our daughter could. And that's how she always was a good student. That's how she grew up trying to be the perfect - but always tardy - daughter... er, witch.
Through all the loathing and with all the cunning she had, something always goes sour with the perfect plan, because here she was, Hermione Granger, one of Harry Potter's best friends and trusted comrades. And now, as she tries to concentrate in Potions, her mind is unrest of questions that she couldn't quite answer. How did she end up here, with Harry Potter? He was the core of all bad things that ever happened to her, so how was she suddenly friends with him?
Her mind groaned as she recalled the day she met her (privately) sworn adversary. Why did she ever walk into that train compartment?
Where did she go wrong?