Out of Bounds (Harry Potter fan-fiction featuring Hermione)

Out of Bounds

A whisper of sleet in the icy air stung against her hot cheeks, and Hermione walked even faster, ignoring the drag of the Arithmancy and Transfiguration books in the bag slung over her shoulder. She ducked through one of Hogwarts’ many archways into an inner courtyard where a gaggle of Slytherin first-years were shrieking with excitement over some kind of ball game, and made blindly for the staircase entrance that would take her up to her Arithmancy class and the safe, sane world of numerological intersections and matrix transmogrification. The world of textbook solutions and set predictions, where hard work brought answers and things made sense...

She didn’t know what she’d done wrong. She didn’t know how Ron could be so stupid as to take up with feather-headed Lavender Brown, Trelawney’s pet — she didn’t understand why he’d want to slurp all over her face like the loose-lipped Seccitops that had dribbled on their fingers in Care of Magical Creatures — but she didn’t care, she told herself, she didn’t care if he wanted to let the silly giggler wind herself around him, any more than she’d cared when his jaw hung loose every time he saw Fleur, any more than she’d cared when Harry had been holding hands with Cho Chang.

But they’d been friends. And now for no reason at all he’d shut her out and sneered at her, torn up the warm, bickering fellowship she’d relied on since the misery of her first term, when she’d tried so hard to do everything right and been mocked and cold-shouldered by the whole House — and she didn’t understand why. It wasn’t Lavender. It wasn’t, because it had been going on for weeks now, since long before that Quidditch match, since long before simpering Lavender Brown had wound her fingers through Ron’s red hair and closed her eyes and pressed up against him as their mouths moved blindly on each other...

Hermione caught her breath in something like a startled sob as a green, fuzzy blur shot suddenly across in front of her, followed closely by a jostling skein of Slytherins. The girls scattered briefly at the glimpse of her Prefect badge, then regrouped beyond her path, voices squealing to the thrill of the chase. Hermione followed in their wake with a pang for their easy, elbowing companionship: tossing pigtails, bobbing plaits, bruised knees, screams of mirth.

Maybe Gryffindor had been like that for the other girls; but not for her. She forgot, for the moment, the tedium of girlish giggles, balls that flew too fast and hit too hard, pointless dormitory gossip whose whispering kept her awake and fuming into the night. Remembered only the pain of exclusion, as the tight-knit circle formed and shut her out.

“She must’ve noticed she’s got no friends... she’s a nightmare, honestly...”

Ron had thrown those words back up at her this morning, in Charms, and the betrayal of it still burned on her face. She’d only been trying to help Parvati Patil get the wand flick right for the non-verbal Cropping Charm they’d been working on. She hadn’t been bossing Parvati, who had been slicing her holly leaves in half instead of trimming off their prickles, and she hadn’t even noticed Lavender coming back from asking Professor Flitwick. She’d been trying to stop Parvati’s sniffles, not show up Lavender in front of the whole class, and if Ron had taken two minutes to think about it — if he’d cared to take even a moment to think about it — he must have seen that for himself. Instead he’d put an ostentatiously comforting arm around Parvati and glared, and the murmurs cut Hermione off. “Nightmare... no friends...”

Her bag was slipping. Half-automatically, she hitched it up as she came to the end of the courtyard. Ahead of her the first-years’ game seemed to have come to a disconsolate halt, with a subdued cluster of small Slytherins hanging back as one of their number edged, with wary glances, towards an archway on the left.

A small, preoccupied part of Hermione’s mind diagnosed a lost ball; the rule-abiding instincts deep-rooted despite years of Weasley protest brought her Prefect’s duty to the fore. That passage was out of bounds to students and had been for as long as she could remember.