fathers, be good to your daughters
daughter will love like you do
girls become lovers who turn into mothers
so mothers, be good to your daughters, too
~' Daughters' sung by John Mayer
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Her hair wasn't 'curly.' Curly was a nice word. It was knotty and tangled. It was so tangled it was difficult to run a comb through it, or run your fingers through it in a flirtatious manner. Not like she'd want to do that anyway. But that was hardly the point. Her parents always sighed at her 'silly hair' (as her Father called it) and whined about how unbecoming it was.
But to the girl it was a beautiful mess of tangles and loops and had a color of spilled chocolate milk. Sometimes thrown up with a quill as a clip. Sometimes with a brown leather headband. It flew with the wind, it caught rain, it was behind her ears. The boys in her 'crowd' were so used to the mess of hair that it was really no surprise anymore.
Sometimes the redhead (because he was curious and obnoxious and tactless) would say: "Did you even brush it this morning?"
She'd glare--rather menacing for a girl of just eleven--and wipe her hands, buttery from the toast upon her skirt and then say primly: "Ron, did you finish that charms essay? I didn't think so."
It wasn't a good comeback--even she knew it--and she could've called him ugly or gangly or freckly (and this would've been very true) but she refrained. The boy would go back to talking in hushed whispers to the boy with emerald eyes. You could barely make out words: 'Hermione' and 'gone batty' and 'ugly hair.'
But Viktor...Viktor loved her hair, he twirled it around his finger and admired the color of it--like beans drenched in maple syrup. He told her this sometimes and she sort of nodded--a very unsure nod--"Thanks." Perhaps that was why she liked Viktor, but one can never be so sure.
When she would play in the snow her hair would catch snowflakes and bites of ice, it almost glittered and sparkled. But it was never pretty. Not really anyway. It was tangled, uncontrollable hair. It looked like hot cocoa with marshmallows in it, then.
It wasn't as pretty as Parvati's or Lavender's or Pansy's. They had shiny hair, sometimes golden, sometimes burgundy, sometimes walnut. Combed and sleek and teased. But she never much was a jealous one.
For the Yule Ball her hair was pretty. Well, as pretty as it was going to get. And it was nice--but it wasn't her. She was playing a role. The Princess, the girl with a very nice date, much older than the redhead would've liked for her. Much older. A gorgeous set of dress robes, picked out in Hogsmeade, a splurge-- a very big one (and she debated whether to buy them or simply go with her old ones.) Her hair was arranged in an elegant knot and it was all so predictable and nice, combed and teased. Viktor and the young girl took a walk around the perimeter of Hogwarts after the dance. A slight mist doused them.
The rain did not fell upon her hair, making it soft and crimped and dripping.
He kissed her then, the mist all around them the darkness surrounding. The leaves crunching underneath their feet.
He kissed Hermione Granger. But it wasn't really Hermione Granger. Hermione Granger did not have hair like that.
And just three years later a young boy by the name of Ronald J. Weasley would kiss her--and he would kiss the real Hermione Granger. Hermione Granger with her very own knotty and tangled hair.
And it would be marvelous.
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