Hermione was sitting on her bed in the Gryffindor dormitories, miserably thinking about how she'd never get Ron's attention. They'd known each other for four years and she'd bet he didn't even know she was a girl, let alone a pretty one. Maybe she wasn't pretty at all, she thought. She didn't look quite like the other girls, with her bushy brown hair and her slightly large front teeth. A single thought suddenly overwhelmed her, that while she wasn't fat, she'd always seen herself as bigger than the other girls. She quickly pushed this out of her mind, as she knew it would only make her more unhappy. She then pulled up her covers and begin to read Herbology: Though the ages, until she promptly fell asleep.

These notions about her body began to creep into her mind at any spare moment, and the harder she tried to push them out the more they persisted. After days of this she decided it couldn't go on any longer. She found what she thought was her solution sitting in the great hall just before dinner.

"Harry, Ron?" She asked tentatively.

"Yeah?" They responded, barely looking up from their plates of food, which had just appeared.

"Am I... um... am I chubby?" Hermione waited with baited breath for their answer. Ron stifled a laugh and said,

"Yeah, Hermione, you look like The Fat Lady." She looked horrified and ran to the nearest bathroom, which happened to be Moaning Myrtles. She begin to sob, but her cries blended in with the ghost's so no one outside would be the wiser. Except Harry, who had run after her, and knowing she would come here he entered.

"Hermione," he spoke gently when he saw her, "you know he was just joking."

"But-I-he-can't-"She drew in hiccuping breaths.

"Hermione, I can't understand you, calm down." He came closer and sat her down in a corner of the room. Her breaths became merely shaking, and they no longer disrupted her speech. "Why did Ron's joke bother you so much? Why did you even ask?" He searched her eyes, puzzled.

"I just wondered." Her gaze met the floor.

"This doesn't seem like the reaction of someone who just wondered," Harry pointed out. He then asked, almost in disbelief "Do you actually think that you're chubby?"

"Well... yes, for the last couple days at least," she saw the look on Harry's face, "oh, come on. You've seen me next to Lavender or Pansy. Ron's right, I do look like The Fat Lady." She buried her face in her hands.

"Hermione, you are not chubby, you are prettier than both Lavender and Pansy, and you do NOT look like the fat lady." He said forcefully, "Now, dry your eyes and lets go have some dinner, I'm starving." She nodded and wiped her face on her sleeve. She followed Harry out the door and back into the great hall, but all she did stare at her plate and Ron stared at her, shocked that she looked like she'd been crying. He tried to apologize, but his words barely broke her haze of sadness.