DISCLAIMER: I own nothing but this twisted so-called "plot".
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Waking up after being petrified by the basilisk was a very strange experience. She vaguely remembered hurrying out of the library all those years ago… and then there was: Nothing.
A long expanse of blank… and then existence. It had been non-being, and then being. It had been like someone had switched her life off, and then her eyes opened, and things came on again. It had been startlingly abrupt.
This is what Hermione felt when she woke up on Christmas Eve morning: Suddenly extant. She stared up at the canopy above her bed like a newborn taking her first breath – acquainting herself with her surroundings. Her head was throbbing raucously, and she could hear her eardrums pulsing with the rhythm. Her throat was the driest thing in the world. She sat up slowly, groaning in agony. Thankfully, the dorm was empty, and she hurriedly slipped into the bathroom.
She stood under the hot shower for a long time, tipping her head back and closing her eyes. She vehemently scrubbed her orange blossom scented body wash into her skin, desperate to get rid of the pungent distillery smell that had embedded itself into her pores, and then went over her dim memories from the night before while massaging her scalp with shampoo.
Oh dear god.
Fucking hell.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
As she put away her toothbrush after a very thorough cleaning of her teeth, she contemplated her reflection, feeling deeply uncomfortable. Sure, the girl in the mirror looked like she ought to – her skin flushed and dewy, contrasting starkly against her shower-darkened hair that spread around her shoulders and back like seaweed – but Hermione couldn't find herself relating to this image in the least. She took a couple of steps back, dropping the towel wrapped around her body, and glanced down at her torso… small breasts, narrow waist and shoulders…
She reached out, stretching her arm to touch her index finger to the mirror. The girl in the mirror followed her movements, and their digits met on the glass, creating a tangible connection. The Creation of Hermione.
Alas, this was no Genesis, no divine moment, and there would be no glorious, iconic ceilings painted to immortalise this moment. It wasn't a creation, or even a recreation, for that matter. It was a bloody teenage crisis; a cliché. A run-of-the-mill existential dilemma… which she wrapped up in fortitude and stowed away. She was not the kind of woman who'd come and go, talking about Michelangelo.
There will be time for such extravagance later.
"Hermione! There you are!" An anxious looking Ginny rushed towards her, followed closely by Harry.
When Hermione had finally bothered to look at the clock after her shower, she realised that the Hogwarts Express was due to leave in twenty minutes. She got dressed in a frantic hurry, and charged down to the platform to say goodbye to her friends.
"Where the hell did you disappear to last night?" Harry asked.
"I went to the library," Hermione muttered, hoping they would think that her face was flushed due to the cold.
Harry and Ginny rolled their eyes in synchrony and laughed. Like, ha ha, that's just so Hermione; so typical ha ha ha.
Ha ha indeed. Typical, rule-abiding Hermione overdid it at a party, went to the library to get utterly shitfaced on smuggled goods, and then indulged in a bit of harmless sexual experimentation. Except that she couldn't say with certainty that it was harmless, because she wouldn't be seeing Padma until after the holidays, so she had no way of knowing how the other girl had processed the incident.
Hermione shook those thoughts away. There will be time for meditation later.
Harry was speaking to her. "I really needed to talk to you! It's important. Last night I –"
He was jostled forward awkwardly, when that repugnant, flailing multi-limbed beast Rovender crashed into him.
"Oi!" he cried indignantly, and the sound speared through the beast, and Ron and Lavender emerged.
"Sorry!" Lavender giggled, sounding as sorry as Snape did while dishing out detentions.
Hermione was powerless against the determination of her eyes, as they insisted on fixing themselves on Ron. He was looking at her with the ugliest look of contempt she had seen.
"Yeah, sorry mate. Just saying goodbye to my girl," he said to Harry, "I'll see you on the train."
He stalked off, pulling his girl along, and they morphed into Rovender again as they walked.
"You were saying, Harry…?" Hermione asked calmly.
"Er, right. So, last night I followed Snape and Mal –"
This time he was interrupted by the shriek of the train's whistle.
Grumbling impatiently, Harry pulled her into a hug. "Sod it. I'll tell you when I get back. Have a happy Christmas, Hermione."
"You too," she said, and then went to hug Ginny.
"I'm really going to miss you, Herms."
Hermione let it slide, just this once.
The train trundled off, all fat and wobbly like a millipede. Smoke rose in great big tufts, bright against the pastel blue and mauve of the winter morning sky. Haze fractured the sharpness of the surroundings, and everything seemed to be made of irregular flecks and dabs of colour. It was an impressionist painting come to life – like someone had animated Monet's rendition of the Gare St-Lazare station. Hermione pulled her coat tightly around her and turned to walk back to the castle.
There would be time for romanticism later.
Oh how she loved brisk, solitary walks. She breathed out into the clean wintry air, sullying it with tiny puffs of fog. She stomped emphatically down on the carpet of snow below, sullying its pristine perfection. These acts of petty destruction were helping her exorcise her inner demons – it was cathartic. Hermione dared to eat a peach.
Nothing had changed.
Sure, she had woken up feeling like her skin wasn't her own. She had broken rules for ignoble reasons, she had kissed a girl, and she had relinquished control of her faculties. But nothing had changed, because while the kiss had been nice and being intoxicated was liberating, she was still the girl who was hopelessly pining. The clever girl who really should know better: that was her reality.
Was it time for introspection yet? Was she ready to go down the rabbit hole?
Hogwarts castle loomed in front of her, housing hundreds of warm fires, hundreds of comfortable armchairs, thousands upon thousands of books...
Later, she thought. There will be time later.
"There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions
And for a hundred visions and revisions
Before the taking of a toast and tea."