Guess what? I did one about Hermione!

Yeah, I'm thinking about changing it from centered around Theodore, because everyone's a tad bit Slytherin... and I can do it, too, because this is my story! So there!

Also, I didn't mean for this to come out as Ron-bashing. It just... did. I set it around a few weeks after the whole troll thing, because Ron was awful to Hermione, and these are actual flaws of Ron's... just emphasized in a very cynical way. My head cannon for this is that as they spend more time around each other, they find more redeeming qualities, and Harry can finally stop worrying about his two best friends killing each other.

Well, until third year. (Poor Harry.)

So, I'd like to state that I am feeling the whole Theo/Luna thing, but Hermione/Theo angst just speaks to me.

Like Colin/Astoria.

...I have problems.

It wasn't that Hermione hated Ron.

Because she didn't.

No, really. She didn't hate him. Not even a little bit.

They were friends! Just, well, extremely dysfunctional friends…

She just really, really, very strongly disliked him… with a passion.

It's just that, well, they were so different! He was so lazy and so brash and so stubborn, and it was so incredibly hard to compromise for someone who wouldn't do the same for you. For Merlin's sake, he didn't even try! Here she was, doing everything she could to keep things pleasant, and he just sat there like it was such a boon, to be allowed in his glorious presence.

Not even to mention how selfish he was. It's like he just expected her to do all his schoolwork for him (never mind the fact that teachers could tell when peoples essays were the exact same thing!), and if she happened to resent that, then oh, she was just being a silly little bookworm.

She could already tell this was going to be such a healthy relationship.

Hermione tried to tolerate Ron, though; both for the sake of having a friend, and for Harry's continued sanity. Despite his (oh so many) flaws, Ron had some redeeming qualities.

Somewhere.

Of course, she preferred Harry. She only dealt with Ron for Harry. She and Harry had naturally gravitated together, probably due to the fact that they were both Muggle-raised children struggling to get in pace with a new, utterly contradictory world. She was the only one that he could relate to, who'd never known him as some great hero, who got how crazy it was for him. On the flip side, he understood (though didn't share) her mania for learning, for finding a solid ground in this ridiculous society.

Not that Harry really needed books; his observation skills were of such a caliber that he managed to pick it up as he went along. Harry was actually much more intelligent than anyone, including himself, had been lead to believe. He was just afraid of trying.

Hermione could understand that (though she didn't share it). Didn't stop her from pushing him, though.

She'd often heard Ron moan about her, when he thought her out of earshot. He'd pester Harry about why they even bothered with her, that she was such a bore, and the only thing she was actually good for was schoolwork…

(Really, it would have stung more if she hadn't already heard it all before.)

Then Harry would shrug, fake a smile at Ron, and distract him with something else. That had hurt a bit, Harry not standing up for her, but she could get why. She would want to cling to every friend that came her way, too. (In fact, she did.)

Hermione got the feeling that Harry had the same social troubles she'd had growing up. Of course, she didn't understand why (he was smart, kind, and incredibly humble while still so noble), but she could see the signs. There were just certain things that only being bullied can teach you; for example, it seemed that Harry had learnt the same way she had when it was best to save your own skin and just let it go.

(Pride and honor flew out the door when you were your only ally.)

But sweet little Ron had never known anything beyond his mother's coddling and his brothers' squabbling and never having to work for anything (she could already tell that Wizarding "badly off" and Muggle "badly off" were two wildly different things, so, no sympathy there), and he had no such filter between his mouth and his brain (assuming he had one… the jury was still out on that). He never considered the impact of a simple taunt, of the casual derision he adopted so often (half the time directed at her).

Any insult directed at Ron, real or imagined, he took with poor grace; this usually meant exploding, sulking, then snapping at all passer-by for the next day or two. After that, it usually blew over, with little thought spared to anything beyond his own self-pity.

(Ron wasn't exactly the thinking sort. How he was so good at chess, she'd never know.)

It was funny, how Ron was so like those he so despised. He may have a hairpin trigger, but the Slytherins generally weren't all that passive, either. Ron was a master of strategy (not that he used it beyond chess), a trait that Slytherins valued highly. Both held extreme prejudice for the other, and both leapt at any chance to do injury to the other.

Now that she thought about it, the majority of the Slytherins were just like Ron. However, there were two distinct differences between Ron's bullying and the Slytherins' bullying.

The first was that the Slytherins knew exactly how much their words hurt.

The second was that the Slytherins used the pain they inflicted as a defense mechanism.

It was a simple (if flawed) philosophy: by driving them away, they can't get close enough to hurt you. Despite Hermione's… strained interactions with the Slytherin house, she had derived some things from observation and conjecture.

Slytherins, both by nature and by upbringing, were extremely paranoid creatures. Most were also emotionally fractured, due to neglectful upbringing and little chance for developing actual friendships. The paranoia and lack of real, unfettered interaction with contemporaries culminated in a social awkwardness in situations beyond those that they understood.

Basically, they couldn't deal with being out of their depth.

This problem only got worse as one emotionally-stunted generation raised the next, with mistake upon mistake stacking up on each other, and eventually being viciously protected as "tradition".

For perspective, one such tradition was the shunning of Muggleborns.

It wasn't all due to superiority complexes, really. Muggleborns were something new, something foreign. The Muggleborns carried the ideas and principles of a whole different world, and the pureblood class had no idea how to deal with that. They were the weak ones, the lost ones, and that just couldn't happen.

So they attacked the change, viciously and desperately.

It's not that she was explaining away their cruelties; they were still functioning human beings (if slightly challenged when it came to deep thinking… or thinking at all), and she held them fully accountable for their wrongs. It's just that it was extremely hard for them to break the mold, especially since they saw no reason to.

The psyche of a bully was extremely interesting, and really quite pitiable. She had witnessed the same motivators in her old playground tormentors, with their terrified censure after she had done something freakish (which she now knew to instead be magical). They were overwhelmed by something they failed to understand, which made them feel weak and exposed. To fix this, they attempted to restore their sense of control, which meant removing the anomaly. The attacker didn't realize that they were being motivated by fear; generally, they never did. The one thing Hermione had yet to discern, however, if it was flat-out pride that created their denial, or a mixture of things a little bit deeper.

It didn't matter, though. Realizing the rest had been enough to restore Hermione's sense of self-worth; it had been a tad worrying, though, the rush of vicious pleasure she'd felt from cutting away all her old bullies' pretenses and airs and exposing them for what they were.

Even though they weren't there, she'd beaten them. After that revelation, bullies rarely managed to get to her (the last one to do so was Ron, and that was because she hadn't seen it coming, though she really should have).

Of course, she wasn't saying that all Slytherins were emotionally-unstable bullies. There were a few Slytherins (usually the ones a little less pure-blooded) that tolerated or even embraced innovation; they were the small percent that also circumvented conflict and just avoided Muggleborns altogether.

There had been one boy like that, at the very beginning of the year…. Theodore Nott, that was his name. He had been promising: kind, bookish and refreshingly quiet. Soon enough, a promising friendship had been blossoming in the nurturing warmth of naïveté.

But then Ron bloody Weasley had brought that all crashing down, storming in and declaring that he was a Slytherin (as if she didn't know that), and "what was she doing, talking to him?!", even though Theodore had been more pleasant to her than any Gryffindor so far (save Neville).

After that, Ron had kept a close watch on her to make sure she "avoided any more of those slimy Slytherins' traps", and she got the feeling Theodore was receiving the same. Thus ended any hope of having a friend that was also her intellectual equal (not all the Ravenclaws were smart, contrary to belief, and the others were too pretentious to bother).

So, yeah, maybe she was a little bitter.

And maybe she resented Ron for driving off the one person she'd found so far that she could actually talk with, without having to avoid long words or tiptoe around inferiority complexes. And perhaps she still blamed him, just a little bit, for still feeling alone. And sometimes, she might just catch sight of Theodore in the library, reading an obscure book she knew was on Magical Theory (a topic she found fascinating), because she had been looking for the exact same book for ages only to find out the library didn't stock it, and she'd feel something distinctly ugly stir in a corner of her mind.

But she didn't hate him.

Well, not yet. (Although, if he didn't stop trying to make her like Quidditch…)