The End Of The Beginning

CHAPTER-3

A/N: I'm going to be nervous about every chapter now. Before, they had been sitting for a little while on my hard drive and the time had a way of giving me some perspective when I did my edits before posting. Now I'm only getting my edits before posting since I don't want to keep you guys waiting! If you notice a dip in quality please let me know! Anyways, now that I've aired out my insecurities enjoy the update! Cheers!

P.S. I reposted this today because I made some changes based on an excellent idea from Bexis. Just couldn't resist!

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Hermione loved reading in the woods.

There was something whimsical about sitting beneath a tree in the middle of the forest and getting lost in another world. It was like something out of the fairy tales that her mother had read to her when she was a little girl.

The problem was that today she wasn't able to focus on the book sitting in her lap. She had read the same paragraph four times now and was getting nowhere. There were too many other things rattling around in her brain.

"Oh, am I interrupting?" a dreamy voice spoke from behind her.

"No Luna, I actually am having a hard time focusing. What brings you out here?"

"I like walking through the woods." She replied, not looking at Hermione but letting her gaze wander the tree canopy. "There's something freeing about it, just letting your feet take you somewhere." Hermione noticed that she was barefoot.

Luna had always struck her as odd and she was a foil in many ways to Hermione's hard logic, but the girl had really grown on her in the past several years. She was incredibly perceptive and Hermione found she was a useful sounding board when she couldn't detangle her thoughts. Like right now for instance.

"Care to join me?" Hermione patted the ground next to her.

"I would love to. What is distracting your focus from your book?" Luna turned her large blue eyes to Hermione. It had always made her feel like Luna was seeing into her somehow.

"There's....well..." Hermione took a deep breath, "I'm really excited about being Head Girl, but I'm also nervous about the responsibility. I'm also worried that I haven't studied enough this summer to be caught up where I am supposed to be and I don't want to start the year behind schedule because our N.E.W.T.'s are this year and they are really important for our futures and I don't want to mess them up. I'm also a little hurt that Ginny doesn't talk to me anymore and keep giving me the cold shoulder and I'malittlejealousthatsheandHarryarestilltogether."

She blurted out the last little bit so fast it amazed her she was able to form intelligible words. She hadn't meant to talk about that at all, but the inertia of getting everything off her chest had built up momentum to the point where she couldn't stop herself.

Luna didn't look surprised, at least, no more surprised than she normally looked. "I really don't think you should be concerned about being Head Girl or your exams, I think you know that you're going to work hard and excel like you always have and I'm not that surprised you would be jealous of Ginny and Harry."

"You're not?" Hermione's curiosity got the best of her.

"No." Luna replied serenely, "He's your best friend. You're used to having him around all the time and being able to talk to him or spend time whenever you want. Now there's another girl that's higher on his priority list than you, a girl who happens to be your friend too. It's natural that you would feel some jealousy."

Luna said this like it was the simplest thing in the world. It was that particular quality about her, being able to make some of life's more complicated feelings sound like very simple truths, which endeared her to Hermione.