Hermione Granger and the Sixth Year Makeover

Hermione Granger and the Sixth Year Makeover

***

Once upon a time, in a mythical land called Great Britain, there lived a girl named Hermione Granger.

Hermione was a very clever girl, and since she valued intelligence and integrity and loyalty and practically everything else over beauty, she suffered no lack of self-esteem due to her rather bushy hair and large front teeth. Well, actually she wasn't terribly fond of her teeth, but with dentists for parents, she knew that the fact that they were healthy was the important thing.

On her eleventh birthday, Hermione received a letter from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Previously, at the ripe old age of eleven, Hermione had assumed that she would grow up to be a dentist like her parents. Or possibly (dare she think it?) a periodontist.

The letter changed everything, however, and Hermione knew that from then on, magic would be her life. Weeks before the school year started, she bought and read all the books required for her year, and then some. She committed Hogwarts, a History to memory.

In her reading she learned about the evil Lord Voldermont - Er, I mean Voldemort - and the infant who had defeated him, Harry Potter, The Boy Who Lived.

Harry Potter had been born in the same year as Hermione, so she expected that he would also be starting at Hogwarts the same year, but she didn't expect that he would be one of the first friends she made. From almost the beginning of their first year, Hermione, Harry, and their friend Ron, were nearly inseparable. (Yes, that is how you spell it.)

Hermione and Ron tended to bicker, but it was several years before Hermione understood the significance of the "pigtail-pulling." It wasn't until their fourth year that Hermione realized that Ron liked her in "that way," and it was even longer before Ron noticed it.

At the end of Hermione's fourth year, Lord Voldemort returned. As terrible as that was, Hermione was pleased to be close to, even part of, the action, rather than sitting around waiting to be slaughtered by Voldemort's followers, the Death Eaters. She lived for part of the summer at the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix, a group organized to fight Voldemort, and caught a great deal of their goings-on and provided support where she could.

Fifth year, Hermione was made a prefect for Gryffindor house. That was about the last good thing that happened that year. Harry became irritable and withdrawn, and Ron, although still friendly, completely failed to notice that he and Hermione were flirting with each other. Ron had his own problems, of course; his father was nearly killed in the course of his work with the Order, and his brother Percy, for all intents and purposes, took Voldemort's side. The new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor was a despot who had nearly shut down the school, and refused to let the students practice magic while she was at it. Hermione, Ron, and Harry were worried sick about their absent friend Hagrid, the Groundskeeper, for most of the year, and not at all relieved when he returned with his half-brother, a Giant named Gawp, who nearly killed Hagrid on a daily basis.

At the end of the year, Sirius Black - Harry's godfather, a friend to all of them, and the owner of the house the Order used as their headquarters - was killed in a skirmish against the Death Eaters.

But that summer Hermione's life took a turn that made her fifth year seem idyllic...

***

A/N: Thanks to the Muse of Parody for the inspiration, and "Voposama" for the beta-read.