Hermione Jean Granger laid in bed, watching the early-morning sunrise creep in through her window and fall smoothly across the tangled blankets at the foot of her four-poster bed.
It was a Monday. Hermione usually didn't mind Mondays much, at least not when compared to the typical teenage student. She liked school. And she loved books.
But on this particular Monday, she could hardly bear to think of the long day that stretched in front of her. She shuddered as she contemplated what she would have to do. Sure, a typical Monday at Hogwarts would give her hours of class time and hours more of homework, but Hermione didn't mind gave her a reason to be around all the wonderful books.
No, what Hermione dreaded today was the people. She would be forced to mingle, to make small talk, to answer the questions of professors. And, specifically, she would have to talk to her friends. Ever since Saturday night-
NO! Hermione mentally stopped herself from going down that line of thinking. Today was a new day, she told herself. She refused to dwell on it any more. She had spent all of yesterday lurking in the back corner of the library, reading books full of nasty curses and astoundingly ingenious jinxes she had sneaked out of the Restricted Section, pausing between chapters to weep silently into the collar of her robes. She was over it now. She was not going to waste any more of her time on Ronald Bilius Weasley.
From the bed next to Hermione's, Parvati Patil sat up, rubbing her eyes sleepily. "What timezzit?" she mumbled.
Hermione rolled over and grabbed her wand from the bedside table, clumsily casting the Tempus Charm. "7:30." she told her roommate. Parvati grimaced, and slid off her mattress, shuffling to the bed nearest the door where the final resident of the sixth-year Gryffindor girls dorm still slumbered.
"Lav," Parvati said. "Wake up."
"Mmm?" Lavender Brown sat up, yawning. But Hermione had already leaped out of bed, snatched an only slightly grimy uniform out of her wardrobe, and dashed into the bathroom to avoid catching even a glimpse of a glimpse of Lavender's blonde hair, creamy skin, and cornflower blue eyes that were too perfect to be fair.
Hermione jumped into the shower and sighed in satisfaction at the sensation of the scalding water on her body as she rubbed shampoo into her hair. Clean but dripping, she stepped out of the shower and grabbed a warm and fluffy crimson towel out of the cupboard. Though she knew that specific luxury came at the benefit of slave labor, she had never found it within herself to boycott them. Hermione stepped into her red plaid skirt, slipped into her not-so-crisp white Oxford shirt, and shrugged into her gray wool vest. She brushed her teeth, and scowled at her reflection in the mirror. Usually she would cast a hair-drying charm, but Lavender had taught it to her and, though it was petty and ridiculous, Hermione refused to use any knowledge she had learned from that...that...
Hermione shook her head. "Stay positive!" she ordered her reflection. She grabbed a brush and ran it hastily through her still-sopping locks. Later, she would pay for her negligence with a veritable halo of frizzy brown hair, the likes of which she had not seen since she was twelve. But at the moment, as a disheveled Lavender who was, Hermione thought grimly to herself, more beautiful even in pajamas than Hermione could ever aspire to be, entered the bathroom, hair was the last thing on the young bookworm's mind.
In a foul mood already, Hermione stormed out of the Gryffindor common room and made her way down to the Great Hall for breakfast. Sliding into a seat at the end of the table, she absentmindedly grabbed a piece of toast and buttered it.
She heard two thumps, one on either side of her, and looked up from her plate to see her two best friends, Harry and Ron.
"Hey, Hermione." Harry said, as he snagged a waffle and began eating it sans cutlery. "Having a good morning?"
"'Ay, 'Ermione." Ron mumbled around his mouth full of bacon.
What what he thinking, talking to her? Had he forgotten the birds already? She doubted that: the peck marks on his hands and wrists were nearly, but not quite, healed. Hermione vowed to summon something nastier next time. Like grizzly bears. Hermione opened her mouth to make a sneering remark, when Lavender walked up behind Ron. "Won-Won!" she cried, planting a sloppy kiss on his cheek. She pushed Hermione's chair over a few inches, plopped herself down in Ron's lap, and began feeding him forkfuls of eggs while crooning sickeningly.
Hermione grabbed her toast, stood up, and walked away.
"Wait!" Harry called.
Hermione turned back. "I suppose you're going to defend him?"
"What?" Harry said, affronted. "God, no! That display over there - that is disgusting!" Ron and Lavender had abandoned breakfast and resumed eating each others faces. "Just-" he stood up and walked toward her. "Take an apple too, alright? Vitamin C and all that."
Hermione smiled weakly. "Thanks, Harry."
"It's no problem." her black-haired friend told her. "Look," he lowered his voice. "I know he's being a git. I know how you feel about him, and how you've felt like this for a while, but I'm sure he'll come around soon. If he doesn't, I'll just smack some sense into him until he does."
"Thanks, Harry," Hermione said bitterly, "But I don't think that's what I want anymore."
Harry looked disappointed, but just shrugged. "Can't say I blame you. But he's my best friend too, you know, and though I think he's making a huge mistake, I'm not taking sides here. 'Kay?"
Hermione rolled her eyes. "Oh, please, Harry. I wouldn't expect that of you. Making you choose would be wrong."
Harry just smiled. "Hey. I need about four more waffles before I can tolerate Snape's DADA class. See you there?"
"Guess so." Hermione said in return. She turned on her heel and walked out of the Great Hall, taking a bite of the apple as she did so.
It was delicious.
Harry, on the other hand, returned to his seat empty-handed.
"Well?" Ron demanded, as he and Lavender took a break to actually breathe. "What was that about?" He looked slightly guilty as he remembered the birds Hermione had sent at him just two days ago. "Is she okay?"
"Yes, Ron." Harry replied drily. "Hermione's just dandy."
Lavender pouted. "Why are you talking about her, Won-Won? What about me? Why don't you care about me?"
Ron smiled at his girlfriend. "Of course I care about you, Lav-Lav. You're much hotter than she ever was, anyway."
Harry choked on his third waffle.
Ginny Weasley threw herself into Hermione's vacant seat. "Give it a rest, lovebirds. I'd say 'Get a room', except that I would really prefer you not, Ronald." She grabbed a piece of toast off Hermione's vacated plate. "Hey, Harry. How's Hermione?"
"What? I would've thought she'd have talked to you already. This would qualify as girl-stuff. And I'm no good at girl stuff."
"Well, I would hope not. And no," Ginny said, brow furrowed. "She hasn't said anything. She spent all of yesterday in the library, reading about curses. I really am worried."
"Eh, she's Hermione." Harry waved off the redheaded girl's concerns. "She'll be all right, Ginny. She always is."
"She's not invincible, Harry!"
"Really?" the green-eyed youth raised an eyebrow. "She seems pretty close."
"Nice hair, Granger." Draco Malfoy drawled, leaning back in his chair. Malfoy, Hermione, and Ernie McMillan were the only ones already in the Defense classroom, as class didn't begin for fifteen minutes yet. Hermione's hair was still dripping from her shower well over an hour later, thanks to its extreme thickness. The whole back of her shirt was damp, and her hair lay in bedraggled curls that went halfway to her waist.
"Shush, Malfoy." Hermione didn't even look up from her defense textbook.
"What happened, Granger? Someone shove your head in a loo?" He smirked, and leaned forward over two desks to grab a curl and make it go 'boing'.
"It's called a shower, Malfoy, and I suggest you become familiar with one sometime before you graduate."
Ernie McMillan choked on a laugh. Both Hermione and Malfoy turned to stare at him. He flushed, and immediately stuck his nose in his defense book.
Malfoy just continued tugging on Hermione's curls, watching them bounce. After a good minute of this, she whirled around in her seat, exasperated. "Cut that out!"
"Why?"
"Because it's childish. And I don't want you touching me."
"You think I want to touch you, you filthy Mudblood?"
"Well, you are..." Hermione pointed out reasonably.
"I'm not touching you." Malfoy replied loftily. "I'm touching your hair. There's a difference."
"Really." Hermione said drily, lifting one eyebrow. "That's very deep of you, Malfoy."
"Thank you, Granger. I try." Malfoy ran his hands through his blonde hair. "I heard your Weasel boyfriend dumped you."
"Shut it, Ferret." Hermione said venemously.
Malfoy smirked again. "Ooh. Sounds like I hit a nerve."
"I told you to shut up." Hermione paused, trying to think of a clever insult. She didn't succeed. "Bitch."
Malfoy shockingly took that in stride. "Really, Granger? That was the best you could do? I'm ashamed."
And unfortunately for Hermione Granger, that little argument was the most pleasant human interaction she would have all day.
Harry sat by Ron during DADA, leaving Hermione to suffer through Ernie McMillan's pompous chuckles, and neither of the boys were in her Ancient Runes class. Hermione sat with Susan Bones, a clever but oblivious Hufflepuff. Usually, Hermione enjoyed doing translations with the smiling redhead, but today they were translating the journal of a fourteenth-century noble who had ordered his first wife executed so he could marry her younger cousin. Hermione had no idea why they were reading this piece in class, as it consisted mostly of foul curses directed towards his late wife and vivid, lecherous descriptions of various assets his new bride possessed. And to add insult to injury, the noble burned all the books of the woman he had had killed.
No, Hermione did not enjoy that class one bit.
In Arithmancy, she worked with Daphne Greengrass, a smart and sassy Slytherin who looked down on Hermione for her heritage but revered her for her brains. The two girls had an interesting relationship. Professor Vector had put them together at the beginning of third year, and the intense competition that ensued between the Gryffindor and the Slytherin had pushed them both to be some of the best Arithmancy students the teacher had ever seen. But the fierce competition also caused them to be bitter rivals, and so Hermione spent the next period alternatingly arguing with Daphne over the proper way to complete a particularly tricky calculation and listening to her blonde rival make jabs about her failure of a personal life.
At lunch, she listened to Ron and Lavender coo over each other for a good two and a half minutes before storming off to the library. In Potions, Harry aggravatingly brewed another perfect potion using his graffitied textbook. And the fumes from Ron's disastrous attempt made Hermione's hair, already frizzy from her morning shower, even worse than she had thought possible. In Herbology, she was distracted while in Greenhouse Three and was bitten by the Venemous Tentacula. She had to be rushed to the hospital wing, where she made an immediate recovery once supplied the antidode. Still, the nasty puncture marks on her wrist were just beginning to fill with pus as she strode into an empty classroom, hoping for a few minutes of quiet to regain her composure.
What she found made her heart twist in her chest and her stomach lurch. Lavender was seated on the teachers desk as Ron stood in front of her, kissing the blonde passionately. They both stopped and looked up as they heard Hermione enter the room. She noticed, detachedly, that Lavender's shirt was unbuttoned and she could clearly see her black lacy bra, even from the doorway.
"Sorry." she heard herself say, as she turned around, slammed the door, and walked mindlessly through the halls. All day, she had been fighting the impulse to cry, and now she decided that it just wasn't worth it anymore. She found herself in front of Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, so she pushed open the door and walked in.
She was already locked in the third stall, sobbing into her folded arms, when she realized she wasn't alone.
"Who's there?" she heard a rough male voice say hoarsely, from the next stall over.
"None of your business," Hermione said back. "And why are you in a girls bathroom, anyway?"
"None of your business," the boy shot back aggressively.
"Well, go away!" Hermione choked out, wiping her nose on her sleeve. She grimaced in disgust when she noticed the slimy trail of snot she had left upon the cloth.
"Why should I?" challenged the boy. "What authority do you have to kick me out of the bathroom?"
"I'll have you know that I'm a prefect, and that, combined with the requisite duties of my gender, provides legitimacy for and necessitates your immediate expulsion from this area at my discretion."
"Sweet Merlin, woman, what did you do, swallow the Prefect's Handbook?" Hermione could hear the sneer in his voice. She didn't like it.
"Give me one good reason why I should let you stay." In the back of her mind, Hermione observed that her despair had been, at least partially and temporarily, displaced by irritation and rage.
"My girlfriend just dumped me, my so-called friends will string me up if I show weakness to them, and Moaning Myrtle gives the best sympathy around." His voice sounded much more raw than it had before, and Hermione could sense the truthfulness in his words.
"She does, doesn't she." Hermione stated, hearing and hating the quaver in her voice. "I don't think she's here, though."
"No."
Hermione could feel her throat tightening in the drowning sorrow that was once more washing over her. She let out a half-stifled sob, and heard the boy sigh in exasperation.
"Are you going to cry again? Please don't. I don't like it when girls cry. It's annoying."
"Well, if you're going to complain you can just leave!" she rebutted, sitting up straighter and crossing her arms. "All I wanted was half an hour for some catharsis and solitude, and what do I get? Some upstart, tetchy little boy who wants to whine about his own problems and who won't leave me alone!"
"Hey!" On the other side of the polished wood dividing wall, Hermione could feel the boy sit up too. "Oh, please! Like you're the only one with problems. You have no idea, the kind of stress I'm under."
"Yeah, right. You're clearly just some spoiled, pureblood brat who's-"
"I am NOT spoiled!"
"- upset because he didn't get his way for once in his entire life. I give you twenty more minutes before you go crying to Daddy about your tiny little issues."
"DON'T TALK ABOUT FATHER LIKE THAT!"
The words echoed on the tile walls. There was an awkward pause, and then Hermione's mind made the connection between those words and those all-too-similar words she had heard countless times previously, and she leaped to her feet and slammed open the door and screamed, incredulous, "MALFOY?"
The pale, pointy-featured boy sitting on the ground looked horrified and then repulsed. "Oh dear Lord, Granger, what in the name of God happened to your hair?"
"I really don't think that's the issue, here, Draco." Hermione sneered with more venom than she had previously known she possessed.
"Well then what is the issue?" Malfoy pointed out with uncharacteristic rationality. "I came in here for a bit of a sulk, you came in with the same idea in mind, we argued with each other as per usual, and then you decided to become scandalized, God knows why. I'm the one with the issue - I can't be talking with someone of your pedigree, it could be contagious - but you don't see me sniveling, do you? It's because I, Draconius Lucius Abraxus de Malfoy von Trapp, am a better person than you." He sat there with an unbearably smug expression on his face.
Hermione couldn't decide between slapping away the smugness and laughing hysterically. She opted for both.
"Ow! You psycho-bitch! I know you're a mudblood, but seriously! What the hell is wrong with you?" Hermione just giggled. "Stop that snickering! Stop it right now! What is so funny? Cut it out!"
"You have the most ridiculous name ever! Do you like to skip around with your nursemaid, Maria, wearing dresses made of curtains? Do you have a beautiful singing voice? Hmm...technically, you are sixteen going on seventeen..." Hermione collapsed into giggles once more.
Draco stood up and stared blankly at her. "I don't understand what you're doing. I... think I'll be leaving now."
"Go ahead!" Hermione chortled. "I never would have thought that Draco Malfoy could make my day better... I guess anything's an improvement over Lav-Lav and Won-Won..."
Draco, already half out the door and aiming a rude hand gesture at the brunette Muggleborn, stopped dead in his tracks. "Won-Won?" he said gleefully. "Oh, you have got to be kidding me!"
"Oh, shoot." Hermione sighed, all traces of cheer erased from her face. "I shouldn't have said that."
"Won-Won!" Draco crowed. "Oh, that's good! Who would have thought that Granger the Mudblood could make my day better. Well, considering the task and Blaise and Daphne, that really wouldn't be too hard."
"Blaise and Daphne?" Hermione questioned. "Really? I never would have seen them together on my own, but now that you point it out, I guess they are a bit cute together... Wait. Task?"
Hermione's brain whirred in double time, processing his words, and clicked as it stumbled on the exact answer. She stared at Malfoy with wide open eyes, waiting on tenterhooks for his mind to hear his mouth's mistake. "Harry was right," she breathed.
"Stop gawping, Granger. What do you have to get so excited... about... any... way..."
Malfoy gaped in internal horror. "Oh, shit."