Authors note:

Hey guy's! Thanks sooooooo much to all of you who read my other story already! That many views in 5 hours are awesome! And because there were over 150 viewers already, I'm making this early (and out of my own time, mind you). This is a one-shot about Hermione's life after the war. It's going to be a little more down trodden and depressed, just because I like stories like this. I hope you all enjoy reading this as much as I loved writing it! Just remember to grab a box of tissues, 'cause it's really sad.

Songs:

Everybody's fool by Evanescence

Disclaimer: I DO NOT own Harry Potter (though I wish I did)

Winter. A time of endings, and new beginnings. The forest was covered in a thin blanket of fresh snow. The forest was quiet, except for the occasional rustling of bushes and trees, as winter animals jumped to and fro, collecting winter rations and making new nests for the spring.

Hermione Granger was walking through the forest, wearing her jeans and brown boots, a blue jacket hugging her torso, and a red and gold hat on her mane of hair. She rubbed her mitten-covered hands together, looking up at the cloud-covered sky, watching as the snowflakes slowly drifted down. She reached a clearing

Hermione laughed, spinning around in the fresh snow. She tripped on a tree root, and fell down gracelessly, surprised. Then she let out a squeal of laughter and flopped down on her back, moving her arms up and down to make a snow angle.

After a few minutes she lay there and sighed, closing her eyes and stilling. Only moments latter, she heard a rustle in the bush. Startled she looked up to see a fox cub, small, and snowy white. It jumped out and sniffed her cautiously. Hermione giggled.

The cub jumped back in surprise. It obviously wasn't expecting her to be moving, much less making noise. She leaned over to the fox cub, which tried to scamper away, but she picked him up. He squirmed about in her arms, until she started petting him. When she scratched him behind the ears, his foot started to thump up and down, not unlike a dog.

After a bit, she set him down, allowing him to roam free. She watched as he scampered off into the forest. Sighing, she got to her knees and stared at the sky, willing herself not to cry.

Today was New Years Eve, also the night Ron proposed to her. She was quite surprised, to say the least. But after the shock had worn off, she had told him yes, as she knew with her heart that she loved him. The Weasley household had erupted in cheers, but doubts had formed in her mind. Were they going into this too soon? After all, they had only been dating less than a year.

But as usual, she had been wearing her mask, her cover to hide her true feelings, holding Ron's hand and laughing, thanking everyone for the congratulations. Then she asked Ron if she could have some time alone, to process what had just happened, which he readily agreed to. The facade had slowly started to dissipate as she had walked into the forest.

She called it the Hermione special, a mask that was truly indestructible. No one had been able to break it, except for the one time Ron had left Harry and her at the camp. She had been depressed, but had tried to pick up all the pieces to her mask and reassemble it for Harry's sake. When Ron had returned, she had been furious. He expected them to just accept him again, pretend that nothing had happened, that no one was hurt! And Harry, siding with Ron behind the shield, as she had once sided with him. It made her anger burst beyond the boundaries, and for a few minutes, her true personality had emerged. But she quickly calmed down, and held her fraud feelings up, still angry, but hiding how happy she was Ron was back. Almost unconsciously, her shield had started to reassemble itself.

It was nearly shattered again at the final battle. She was so close to losing it, and the only thing that kept it there was her need to help Ron through the death of Fred. When she saw Malfoy after the final battle, she almost thanked him. It was he, after all that caused to have the shield completed in the first place.

Hermione had learned at a young age that the world, the fates would not be kind to her. With IQ levels off the scales, she tended to have higher level conversations. The kids at school laughed at her, calling her a freak, a nerd, telling her she was worthless. She let them see what they wanted to see, let them believe she was an abnormality, refusing to associate with people who put others down for their low self-esteem levels.

She had once been an amazing swimmer, but others called her out , yelling at her and getting angry at her for "being the best at everything" and asking her "why she felt the need to make everyone feel inferior.' She had given up on the idea that anyone would ever want to be her friend, choosing to bury herself in her studies instead.

Hogwarts had been a miracle. It made sense to her now, all those bad things that had happened to people who put her down. She had hoped that she would finally be able to get friends, and be liked instead of viewed as an insufferable know-it-all. The hat had told her she would do spectacularly in Ravenclaw, putting all others to shame with her intelligence. She had told the hat to put her in Gryffindor. After all, she reasoned, being a Ravenclaw would only identify her as a all-smart-one. From what she had read, Gryffindor's were caring and brave. Surely she would make friends there. The hat had sighed and told her she would have a long and hard path ahead, but she was too excited to care.

The first month had been horrible on her. The Gryffindor girls were all into make-up, and cloths, the opposite of Hermione. The boys were still immature to consider being friends with a girl. The other houses had friends within their own houses. On top of all that, she had regained her status as a know-it-all. Old habits were hard to break, the saying went, so she had answered all the questions the teachers asked. She had pushed herself so she would be the first in every class to complete the tasks. She had hoped the others would look at her with awe, and ask for help with homework, become her friend. Again, she was proven wrong.

The Ravenclaw house had a dislike at her answering and getting better scores then them, hence ruining their reputation as the smartest house in the school. The Slytherins always jeered at her, calling her foul names like 'mud-blood' and 'kiss-up'. The Gryffindor's only liked her for her smarts and getting them points. But she could hear them snicker behind her back. The Hufflepuff's followed their motto of 'being loyal' and followed the rest of the school's opinion.

There was one boy, though, Harry Potter, the one she had read so much about. He was not at all like she thought he would be. With his handed down cloths, broken glasses, and malnourished look, he looked like the perfect picture of those kids in the sorrow commercials. His whole demeanor screamed 'neglected', 'beaten', 'horribly-treated', and he was terribly afraid of adults. When any Professor talked to him, he flinched away, ducking his head slightly, shoulders hunched. Hermione had even seen a few scars that he had been quick to cover up. He seemed a lot like her.

Ronald Weasley hated her for no apparent reason, and somehow, he was Harry's only and best friend. Whenever Hermione attempted to go and talk to Harry, Ron would push her away or find some way to trip her.

When she had tried to help Ron and charms, like a friend would do, she found herself, once again, bad-talked. She had attempted to talk to Harry again, after charms, when she heard Ronald Weasley say "She's a nightmare, honestly. It's no wonder she hasn't got any friends!"

She gasped and felt her eyes tear up, she pushed her way through the crowd in front of her, running to the nearest bathroom. She heard Harry distantly behind her say to Ron, "I think she heard you." This only made it worse.

She dumped her bag at the entrance of the bathroom, running into the nearest stall to cry. As she slid down the wall, she thought to herself, 'Of course nobody wants to be my friend. What good are you to anyone but for grades and bonuses. Why did you bother to get your hopes up?"

She brought her hands up to her face and sobbed.

Over the next few hours, several people from her house tried to coax her out of the stall, but she ignored them; it was only on guilty conscience they were doing it. She missed all of her classes, but for once, she didn't care. When she finally came out, it was dinner time. She rubbed her eyes, shuffling her feet forward. She stopped as weird, scaly green sausages came into view. She slowly looked up to see a fully-grown mountain troll. She screamed and ran back into the stall. She shrieked again as the troll destroyed all the stalls with a swing of its club. She heard yelling and shrank against the wall. Someone was screaming at her to get out, but her vision was fuzzy, and everything seemed to come in and out of focus. Her shoulder pounded, and she looked at it to see it was bleeding heavily. Woozily, she waved her wand over it, magically wrapping bandaids around it and repairing her sleeve. Her vision slowly cleared.

She slowly looked up and picked herself up off the ground. Harry and Ron were both standing there, covered in blood and dust, Ron holding his wand out, frozen, while Harry cleaned his wand off on the trolls trousers. The troll had somehow been knocked out. Quick calculations told her Ron had probably looked at her to see her heal her shoulder with the same swish and flick concept as the levitating charm, and copied it to knock out the troll.

The teachers came in and started to accuse Harry and Ron, but she stepped in and told them it was her fault, despite the lie. After that, the three walked up to the common room together and chatted over dinner, Hermione trying not to wince at the sharp pain in her shoulder and wooziness in her head. Shortly after dinner was done, she ran up to hr dorm and locked the curtains closed. She assessed the damage on her shoulder and slowly started to heal it. She also took several muggle pills to help with the pain in her head.

After that day, everyone liked Hermione because she was friends with Harry Potter and Ron Weasley. It seemed no one really liked her for her. She slowly began to fake a false personality around strangers, only feeling slightly comfortable to act natural around Harry and, sometimes, Ron. No one noticed her dilemma, choosing to focus on their own lives, and ignoring her after she helped others. She had friends, and now she was invisible.

Sighing she got up, and looked at the snowflakes, yet again. One landed on her nose.

"At least you are your own person," she whispered, watching it slowly melt on her nose.

The Crystal tears started forming, glowing in the setting sun. The forest lost its playful composition, turning into its alternate form of death. The snow fell harder, creating miniature tornados, while gusts of wind whipped Hermione's hair in her face.

Whishing she could do anything but go back, Hermione constructed her mask of happiness onto her face, and set back to the Burrow in the darkening night sky.

A/N

Oh my gosh! Poor Hermione. She's always alone, no matter how many people she surrounds herself with. Although, at the same time, she doesn't realize Harry and Ro have very, VERY similar dilemmas. I think Ron's going to be able to help her get through it all, and help her to trust. I'm thinking of writing a prequel to this, what do you all think?

Also, I'm still going to upload the next chapter to I'm a Rebel tomorrow.

Oh, and by the way, to the person who reviewed this, I fixed that minor word miss. Thanks for informing me of it, and actually reviewing!

Love from

Alyss