Very short fic: Hermione comes to a realisation, and it's not entirely the one you think.
From the Unofficial Portkey Archive: https://portkey-archive.org/story/1623/
The Girl
The girl stepped onto Platform 9 3/4 and flipped her hair over her shoulder before surveying the scene before her. Students were milling around, most of them bidding farewell to parents before the train pulled away. A few stopped to look at her and she smiled at them.
She was beautiful, there was no doubt about that. Her chestnut hair fell down her back in long, shiny waves. Her brown eyes sparkled in a flawless porcelain face. Her full rosy lips curled up into a sweet smile as she caught sight of her friends. She walked further down the platform, her heeled sandals clicking delicately against the concrete of the platform. If this was a film, the camera would pan up from the sandals to her thin ankles, up her tanned calves past her knees to her toned thighs covered by a short black skirt. Then up over her waist to the red blouse that shows off her most obvious womanly assets. Over her breasts, up her neck and finally to her face. She would then smile and wave at someone behind the camera.
She waves and calls to her friends. The two boys, both tall, both handsome, turn to look at her. Two mouths drop open, but only one of them seems actually dumbstruck. His green eyes are absolutely fixed upon her. The outside world has become a dull blur around her. He cannot believe how absolutely beautiful she is. She is Helen, she is Aphrodite and Venus. She is Ava Gardner, she is Marilyn Monroe. She is beauty herself. He finally manages to pull himself together before she reaches them. She smiles, flashing beautiful white teeth at him.
“Hello Harry!” she says, her voice like sweet birdsong. He blushes and manages to stammer a greeting.
“Hel... Hello Hermione,” he manages to say before he is enveloped in a tight hug. When she pulls away from him to hug Ron, he can still smell her perfume. She is intoxicating.
***
“Hermione! Wake up, we’re here!” Her father’s voice breaks into her dream and she sits bolt upright in the back of the car. He has sneaked into the taxi rank in order to get her closer to the station.
“Thank you Daddy!” she says, giving him a brief peck on the kiss. She rushes to get her trunk out of the car before anyone notices the private car stopped in the taxi rank. She’s close to the suburban section of the station, where she needs to get to find her platform.
“See you soon, Dad,” she shouts as he blows her a kiss and drives away.
She tries to carry the trunk, but to no avail. It’s far too heavy for her to lift, and Crookshanks placing himself on top and pretending to snooze is not helping. She sees a porter with a trolley and calls to him, but it’s no use. Instead he is headed towards a pretty blonde with long legs. Hermione decides to risk leaving her trunk for a moment in order to find a trolley of her own. She curses her lack of good looks and thinks that if she was beautiful, she’d use her beauty for better things than to get silly porters to bring trolleys to her. She rather self-consciously runs a hand through her bushy brown hair and wishes life were a little more like the dream she’d just had.
She finally manages to heave her trunk onto the trolley and, huffing and puffing, she pushes it towards platforms 9 and 10. When she hopes no one is looking, she runs at the barrier between them and finds herself on a completely new platform. A beautiful red steam train is standing at the platform, a steady stream of steam billowing from the chimney. Students of all ages are milling around on the platform, saying farewells to parents and guardians.
She waves at two boys, both tall, both handsome. They smile and wave back. Harry runs over to her and takes her trunk, ruffling Crookshanks’ fur as he leaps off the trunk and walks regally onto the train.
“Hello Hermione!” Harry grins charmingly at her as he lifts her trunk off the trolley and onto the train. She smiles back at him and pretends not to see the strain in his face as he lifts her trunk.
“Have a good summer, Hermione?” Ron chimes in, offering her a sugar quill. She takes it but is still watching Harry.
“Yes. Well, it was all right,” she admits. She follows them onto the train and into their usual compartment at the end. Crookshanks, clever cat that he is, is already waiting there for her. As she sits down by the window, he leaps onto her lap and purrs softly.
“Crookshanks seems eager to be back at school,” Harry says as he sits down beside her. Hermione strokes the cat’s fur and nods.
“I think he’s missing Mrs Norris... Ow!” she squeals as Crookshanks digs a claw into her hand. “Fine, I take it back. Horrid cat.”
Crookshanks looks hurt, or as hurt as a cat can appear to be. He goes off in a huff and curls up in the opposite corner of the compartment.
“Is your hand hurt?” Harry asks, his face full of concern. He takes her hand into his own and examines it. He lifts it up to his lips and kisses the claw mark gently. Then his face flushes deep red.
“Is that, um... better?” he asks. She looks up into the green eyes she loves so much.
“Yes,” she squeaks. “Much better.”
She’s dimly aware of Ron making some kind of comment before leaving, but she doesn’t pay him any attention. Harry looks rather nervous as he leans over and plants a soft, very gentle kiss on her cheek.
It very suddenly occurs to her that she didn’t need that silly dream. She didn’t need to make some fantastic transformation over the summer into a beautiful vixen. She didn’t need to be that silly woman batting her eyelashes at the porter. She is Hermione Granger. She can get her own damn trolley and she can push the damn thing to the train without needing the help of some silly man. More than that, she realises with a huge, ear splitting grin, Harry didn’t need her to transform into some great beauty to want to kiss her.
Life is sometimes better than dreams.
The End