Disclaimer: Still don't own it. Please don't sue, I don't even have $100 to my name.
RW...HG
She is the brightest witch at Hogwarts. The question she is most often asked, besides whether she will complete someone's homework for them, is why she was not sorted into Ravenclaw. She has a rehearsed answer: the Sorting Hat seriously considered it, but in the end it decided on Gryffindor. While this is true, it is most certainly not the entire reason.
In the words of the wise Albus Dumbledore, it is our choices that determine who we truly are. If you really want something, the hat will put your judgement above its own. Perhaps that is the beauty of the thing. And in this case, the hat knew that Hermione Granger wanted to be in Gryffindor.
Sometimes she would question the reasoning behind this decision, wishing she had just done the logical thing and gone to Ravenclaw. But most times she knew that she had made the right choice. These were the happy times, laughing and joking with Harry and, of course, Ron. Her two best friends. The reason behind her decision.
Truth be told, had Hermione Granger not overheard a certain redhead commenting that all his brothers had been sorted into Gryffindor and he was likely to end up there as well, she would not have made the choice she did. It had been a gamble, of course, for her to choose Gryffindor. She had put all her faith in Ron (and Harry too, she supposed) being sorted into Gryffindor as well. And somehow, it had happened. As if fate were pulling them together. And it all started with the one decision, one choice she made.
She regretted her choice at first, when neither of the boys would even talk to her, unless it were to tell her to shut up and mind her own business. But as the years went by, they grew to accept her. They became her second family, and after awhile she was closer to them than to her own parents. The trio had their rough times over the years, but in the end they loved each other more than life itself. And many, many eventful years after Hermione Granger made her fateful decision, she sat with her husband, his sister, and her husband (Ron, Ginny, and Harry, as it happened), watching their children play in the garden. It was then that she knew it was indeed our choices that define us and our lives, and that she had made the best choice possible.