AN: It's two thirty in the morning and instead of sleeping I wrote a Romione thing. Uhm, I didn't edit it, but I rarely proofread anyway, so nothing new there.
None of the characters belong to me, or else I would have a much better computer. Credit to J.K. Rowling.
Hermione's mother was going to kill her. She hadn't even been gone two hours, and already she had found a very good looking boy. While she had been at home, she had done all that studying on her new school and her new talents. Now that she had left home, she was already acting like any normal girl. A normal, Muggle, girl, she reminded herself.
She had been sitting against the wall and rereading a few chapters from Hogwarts, a History when a large family burst through the barrier one by one. The first of a group of gingers was several years older than her and walked with a very straight back, he obviously thought highly of himself. He wasn't the one who had made her look up from her book.
After him came a set of very loud twins. They looked like they were having the time of their lives just by existing. Their loud laughter was what had initially distracted Hermione from her book. But it was the next boy that held her gaze. She even put her book back in her bag to watch him.
He looked like he was her age, even though he was almost as tall as the twins. Like the rest of the family, he had very bright red hair. It almost looked unnatural, but Hermione doubted wizards used hair dye. He had a splattering of freckles over his long nose. He was sort of awkward looking, but that somehow made him more cute instead of less.
The boy didn't see her, but instead was being nagged by his mother, and teased by an older brother.
Hermione thought about going over to talk to him, but decided to get on the train instead. An older student, a Ravenclaw prefect named Penelope, helped her with her trunk. While looking for a mostly-empty compartment, Hermione lost track of the ginger boy.
It didn't take too long to find him, though. She was helping another first year student, Neville Longbottom, find his pet toad when she stumbled across both a dark haired boy and the redhead.
Without looking, she stepped into a compartment near the back of the train and asked if anybody had seen Trevor the toad. Then she noticed the boy, who was holding a wand. She figured if he had older brothers who went to school here then he must know some pretty good magic already.
"Oh, are you doing magic? Let's see it then," she said enthusiastically before sitting down next to him.
"Er - all right," the ginger muttered, not sure what to think about the strange girl who had just sat next to him.
He cleared his throat and pointed his wand at big rat sitting on his lap. Then he waved his wand and said something that sounded like a nonsense nursery rhyme.
"Sunshine, daisies, butter mellow,
Turn this stupid, fat rat yellow."
Hermione watched the rat intently for a couple seconds before looking back up at the boy. His spell hadn't worked. She wasn't all too surprised; it didn't sound anything like the spells she had read about. But what did she know? She was still new, maybe the more advanced charms had to be longer.
"Are you sure that's a real spell? Well, it's not very good, is it? I've tried a few simple spells just for practice and it's all worked for me. Nobody in my family's magic at all, it was ever such a surprise when I got my letter, but I was ever so pleased, of course, I mean, it's the very best school of witchcraft there is, I've heard - I've learned all our course books by heart, of course, I just hope it will be enough - I'm Hermione Granger, by the way, who are you?" Hermione said without taking a breath.
Her cheeks got very red very fast and she felt very stupid. She wasn't sure what had made her say all that. All she had wanted to do was introduce herself, or ask about his spell, but not both of them at the same time. She certainly hadn't meant to give a whole speech.
"I'm Ron Weasley," the boy with red hair muttered.
"Harry Potter," said the kid with dark hair, the one she had barely glanced at.
She felt her blush deepen, if that was even possible.
"Are you really? I know all about you, of course - I got a few extra books for background reading, and you're in Modern Magical History and The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts and Great Wizarding Events of the Twentieth Century," Hermione heard herself babble.
She wished she could stop that. She was making a fool of herself in front of both the most famous wizard her age, and the cutest wizard her age.
"Am I?" Harry asked, looking a bit overwhelmed.
"Goodness, didn't you know, I'd have found out everything I could if it was me," Hermione decided to try to change the topic, "Do either of you know what House you'll be in? I've been asking around, and I hope I'm in Gryffindor, it sounds by far the best; I hear Dumbledore himself was in it, but I suppose Ravenclaw wouldn't bee too bad…"
Hermione's voice trailed off. It seemed she couldn't keep herself from rambling. Nerves, she guessed. She decided to leave instead of letting herself embarrass herself anymore.
"Anyway," she said, "We'd better go and look for Neville's toad. You two had better change, you know, I expect we'll be there soon." She turned around, left the compartment, and shut the door behind her with one hand clamped firmly over her mouth. She could not believe that she couldn't believe she couldn't even say "bye" without her motor mouth running off without her brain.
Hermione wanted to scream at herself, but instead just hurried off to bury her face in a book. She kept reading until the other students got too distracting. She was going to tell them off for running in the corridors, but nobody would listen.
Instead, she decided to go back to Ron's compartment. He was the only person he knew, even if they weren't exactly close. This visit went even worse than their previous encounter. Not only did Hermione get flustered, but she ended up leaving when Ron told her to shoo with a glare.
After that, she was so ashamed of her big mouth that she kept quiet for the rest of the ride to Hogwarts. Even after being Sorted into Gryffindor, she couldn't muster up the courage to talk to Ron Weasley again for nearly a week.
But their rough start didn't mean anything in the long run. It took several years, but eventually the two of them got together. Hermione Granger used to think that love at first sight was a thing of fairy tales, but now she knows otherwise.