What the Heart Desires
Disclaimer and A/N: Familiar? Do not own. Written for Round Four of the One Character Competition on HPFC. It's 319 words long. Set in Half-Blood Prince just after Ron and Lavender get together. Uses the prompts parchment, pillow, pale, pick, private, playful, and panic.
Hermione ran out of the common room in tears, not caring where her feet took her, so long as it was private. After all, anything was better than the sickening scene she'd just witnessed.
She should've known with Lavender's playful flirting with Ron over the last few weeks, that she'd fancied him. After all, she wasn't the brightest witch of her age for nothing. But she had foolishly thought Ron would pick the girl he'd known for the last six years over a pretty face he barely knew.
She climbed up the steps to her dormitory before collapsing on the bed, drawing the curtains around her, and stuffing her face into the pillows with a scream.
In her moment of panic, her faced had first paled white as a sheet, then flushed scarlet with anger. The last thing she'd expected was to see the boy she loved snogging the most promiscuous girl in their year. And after that girl knew she'd fancied Ron since last year, and she'd still had the nerve to go up and kiss him.
What was worst, though, was that today would've been the day she'd told him how she felt, after spending weeks working up the courage to admit it to herself and to plan how best to explain her feelings.
Sometimes, life just wasn't fair.
Tears still dripping down her face, she pulled out her favorite quill and a nearly-unused roll parchment and began writing down her feelings so fast that she didn't even bother to stop until she'd filled the remainder of the roll. Then, she took a deep breath, relaxed, and took another sheet of parchment out and wrote a note expressing her feelings to Ron.
Late that night, after everyone had gone to bed, she snuck down the stairs and tossed the roll and the letter in the fire, and watched her feelings burn away and leave her feeling numb.