Disclaimer: JK Rowling owns Harry Potter. I definitely do not. *Cries.*

Author's Note: These drabbles are written primarily for the OTP Boot Camp. The title of each chapter will be the prompt that it was based off. There may also be other challenges worked in. By the way, just warning you now, the vast majority of these will be happy, because I CAN'T BEAR TO WRITE ROMIONE IN A NEGATIVE WAY, OK? OK. All right, I've calmed down now. Sorry. Now, without further ado, let's get on with the story! :P


Hermione was bent over a cracked sink in the girls' bathroom, her shoulders shaking with silent sobs as her tears splashed into the basin. She looked up into the mirror, studying her face carefully; pale, drawn and red-eyed from crying. So this was how she looked to other people. A bushy-haired, rabbit-toothed know-it-all... who apparently wasn't worth befriending.

"She's a nightmare, honestly! It's no wonder she hasn't got any friends."

She couldn't deny it; that had stung. Especially coming from Ronald Weasley, out of all the people in Hogwarts. If it had been Draco Malfoy, or even Lavender Brown, she could have coped with it, maybe even laughed it off at a stretch. But if she was totally honest with herself, she had hoped that maybe, possibly, once they'd got to know each other a little better, she and Ron could have been friends. Maybe. He'd seemed nice enough when he was with Harry on the Hogwarts Express, although he hadn't really talked to her. And just after Charms, she'd been trying to work up the courage to talk to the two boys, until she'd overheard their conversation…

So apparently she was a nightmare. A friendless, bossy nightmare.

At least she could pronounce 'Wingardium Leviosa'. That had to be something. Right?

It wasn't even fair – she'd only been trying to help Ron out! How did he expect to learn if he couldn't take her advice without being personally offended? If their positions had been reversed, Hermione would have been delighted to receive his help if it meant she could learn to cast a new spell. She supposed Ron just didn't care as much as she did, seeing as he was from a Pureblood family and had grown up with magic. To him, it didn't have the novelty that so enthralled Hermione.

She just couldn't learn enough about the new life she'd been plunged into! One minute she was a normal girl – at least, normal enough – and the next, she was being told she was a witch. She'd been only too happy to accept this new turn of events, and the new school she'd be attending. In the Muggle world, she'd never really had any friends to speak of. She assumed her Muggle classmates had been scared off, perhaps even repulsed, by the strange things that happened around her. They could recognise her as something out-of-the-ordinary, and it frightened them. Their natural reaction was to back away and keep their distance from the odd, bookish girl, who'd sit in the corner with her nose buried deeply in a novel, trying to escape into a different world.

And then, that escape route she'd been so longing for, for so many years, had opened up. Suddenly, everything seemed to make sense, and Hermione had found somewhere where she would finally fit in. She just couldn't have been happier – she wasn't a freak after all, and now she would find friends of her own kind!

It was just a shame that dreams never seemed to work out as you expected them to.

She supposed she was foolish to have pinned her hopes so firmly on Ron Weasley.