The New and Improved Hermione Granger

Disclaimer: Can you believe this? The IDEA isn't even my own. That's just how pathetic I am. I can't even come up with my own plots . . .

Author's Note: Originally I wrote this for the Kindred Spirits challenge entitled `Makeunder'. For my own nefarious purposes I've changed the title, but I hope you're getting the general drift.

Second Author's Note: Just because I need to reinforce the notion into your brains that I greatly enjoy canon rape, I've reverted Snape back to his lovely, greasy position of Potions professor, and am basically ignoring the fact that HBP was ever written. Because I have this thing where my fluff and J.K. Rowling cannot exist in a perfect world . . .

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The New And Improved Hermione Granger

Part One: Hermione Improved . . . Or Is She?

~

Hermione Granger bit her lip, and turned to the left. Sighing, she twirled to the right, and then stopped to smooth down her skirt. She huffed upwards through her fringe, crossed her eyes, and started the whole process over again.

Hair? Check.

Makeup? Check.

Clothing? Check.

Shoes? Check.

Brain? Nope; sadly, it had been lost in transition.

Hermione wiggled her nose and tilted her head to the left, eyes nervously scanning her reflection; her mirror-self did the same.

Her eyes, already large and brown, were lined with eyeliner instead of her traditional dark circles. According to the numerous teen magazine to which she now subscribed, her custom of studying until six in the morning and then sleeping until one-thirty was wreaking havoc with her beauty regimen; thus it had to be stopped.

Her hair had melted from its frizzy, triangular shape into a chic bob that skimmed her cheekbones, flipped under at the ends, and brushed haphazardly across her face. It was blonder, shorter, and had fringe; the fringe was particularly annoying, but it was in, and thus her hair stylist said she had to have it.

Oh yes; her former ten pound cut and blow-dry was not enough now. Hermione had a stylist. A hair stylist with purple hair that her mother was only too happy to shell seventy pounds out to every three months if it meant her only daughter was finally interested in fashion.

And her school skirt had lost quite a few of its regulated inches, courtesy of a large pair of shears and her mother's sewing box.

All in all, Hermione Granger looked nothing like Hermione Granger had the previous school year. This was, of course, what she had been going for. Poor Hermione suffered from the same affliction that half of the female population of the world suffers from. It's known as In-Love-With-Her-Best-Friend Psychosis, and Hermione was one of its worst cases.

While not only was she in love with her best friend . . . he was completely unaware that she was a member of the female race. Thus, Hermione decided to undergo what her oft-giggling roommates referred to as a `Summer Makeover'.

She'd purposely avoided her best friends during the summer, citing first her parent's trip to France, and then a bad case of the Muggle Flu her parents had supposedly `forbidden her from taking wizard treatment for'. In her letters to her best friends, she'd told them not to visit, her being `highly contagious'.

Harry had attempted to tell her to sod it, and of course he would visit, but she'd managed to waylay him in her usual clever way.

Harry being, of course, Harry Potter. The best friend who Hermione was in love with, but was seemingly unaware that Hermione possessed a pair of breasts.

Hermione's mind returned from the outer reaches of space, and she automatically tugged up the neckline of her sweater, before remembering that it was meant to lay so low on her chest that one could dock a whole fleet of Thestrals in the neckline.

Being beautiful had not made Hermione any less practical, so she had spent most of her `sick days' mending her current clothes, needle and thread clutched between her teeth as she directed the sewing machine with her wand.

The result was a closet full of miniskirts that had previously reached her knees, jeans that were a size tighter than they had been previously, and sweaters that proved that Hermione's chest was not as flat as a crepe. A fact that Harry Potter had been previously ignorant of, and of which would soon be informed.

“Hermione! We leave for Kings Cross in two minutes, and if you aren't in the car we'll send Crookshanks and your trunk on without you!”

Har har.

No doubt her parents thought this bit of wit hilarious. Being dentists meant they didn't get out much.

Hermione bit her lip, unconsciously gnawing off her lip gloss, and gave one final twirl before thrusting back her shoulders, unconsciously lowering her neckline another inch, and grabbing her bag off the neatly made bed.

Harry Potter won't know what hit him, thought Hermione triumphantly as she swept - well, it was more of a dignified hobble - out of her room, still a bit wobbly on her three-inch heels.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“Where the bloody hell is Hermione?” shouted Ron Weasley, shoulders hunched against the biting rain that pounded pedestrians outside Kings Cross Station. His companion, who possessed a pair of startlingly large green eyes, ruffled black hair and extremely unfashionable glasses, shrugged in reply, gazing over the cars that swept up to the curb.

Harry Potter - the bloke in the unfortunate pair of glasses - like his best friend, Hermione Granger, happened to be suffering from a horrible disease, the sort of textbook case that makes medical teachers salivate with the thought of sinking their scalpels into the case file. It was, strangely enough, the sister disease to Hermione's own affliction.

Commonly known as, In-Love-With-His-Best-Friend Psychosis.

Dispassionately raking his gaze over a leggy blonde struggling with a large wicker basket, Harry bent his body into the rain to get a look around her, attempting to see if Hermione's parents' car was anywhere near the front of the station.

Worry glazing his eyes behind his somewhat-fogged glasses, Harry pulled his hand out of the pocket of his jeans and checked the time. “We have ten minutes until the train leaves.” He stuffed his hand, fingers already cramping from the cold, back into his pocket. “You know,” he added, hazarding a sideways glance at Ron, “it isn't like Hermione to be this late.”

“Do you think something's happened to her?”

“Of course nothing's happened to me.”

Harry wheeled around to see the aforementioned leggy blonde, still clutching the large wicket basket, which he now recognized as Crookshank's travel basket.

“Hermione?”

Harry thought that he'd been the one who'd breathed her name, but it was probably Ron, who looked like he'd been whopped over the head with a box of Turkish delights. The redhead's mouth was scrapping the pavement as he oogled the pair of stems on their best friend.

“Who else?”

And then she giggled.

Harry was all but certain now, as he blindly grabbed the handle of the trolley carrying her trunk, that this wasn't actually Hermione. Not His Hermione. The Hermione that he knew like the back of his hand - and loved, although a flock of rampaging Dementors couldn't drag it out of him - never wore eyeliner, or skirts above knee-length, and most of all never giggled.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The ride to Hogwarts was both incredibly awkward and incredibly silent. Hermione was constantly uncrossing and re-crossing her legs, her skirt riding higher and higher up her thighs each time she did so. Ron and Neville oogled each increasing inch of creamy, porcelain skin, but Harry looked staunchly out the window, jaw clenched unhappily.

“How was your summer?” asked Hermione as the train pulled away from Kings Cross. Harry grunted, and Ron did the same, never pulling his eyes from the V of cleavage her sweater revealed. Resisting the urge to yank it upward - and blushing furiously behind the caked-on concealer she'd applied that morning - Hermione abandoned the idea of polite conversation and joined the love of her life in staring out of the window.

This was not how she'd envisioned her triumphant return to Hogwarts.

In her mind (dreams), she'd imagined seeing appreciation and understanding dawn in Harry's emerald eyes, before he locked his arms around her waist and tugged her forward to plant a mind-blowing, death-defying, Buttercup-and-Wesley-be-damned kiss on her. While her more logical side told her testily that this was completely unrealistic, her dreamy side was sighing with happiness at the picture.

Sangfroid, she told herself. Harry is obviously unsettled by this turn of events. In twenty-four hours he should begin to succumb. Just stay calm and collected.

For about twenty miles, she succeeded. Neville and Ron drooled, Harry stared (glared) out the window, Ginny flipped nonchalantly through last month's Witch Weekly, and Luna never looked up from her reading of The Quibbler at a forty-five degree angle.

But as the scarlet Hogwarts Express chugged past the twenty mile mark, in slid the sliding door, and who entered the already cramped and uncomfortably compartment but . . . Draco Malfoy, ever present to add some cliché to the moment.

“Pathetic beings,” he sneered, leaning against the doorframe. “How's the summer gone?” He paused for a millisecond, as Ron tore his eyes from Hermione and Harry jerked around from the window. “Father lost his job yet, Weaslette?” He directed the question to Ginny, whom he assumed to be the weakest wit of the group, next to her brother.

“No,” she drawled, not looking up from her magazine as she flipped the page. “But I hear your father's doing his from the inside of a cell at Azkaban.”

Malfoy darkened, and he raked his stormy gaze over everyone else in the cabin, inevitably settling on Hermione, who checked the sudden urge to pull up her sweater.

“Granger?” Disbelief riddled his voice. “Doth mine eyes deceive me? Potter's finally pulled his head out of his arse and made the Mudblood his personal who—”

Malfoy never got to finish the sentence as Harry, tired, angry, and faintly disgusted already from the incident at the train station, launched over the laps of Ron and Neville and tackled him. There was a faint whooshing sound as the two slammed to the floor, Malfoy's head cracking against the be-spelled linoleum. He attempted to struggle, but despite the fact that he had two inches and about ten pounds on Harry, the smaller was still far more experienced with beating the crap out of people.

The bespeckled boy looked at him for a moment before saying with great relish, “A hundred and fifty points from Slytherin for insulting the Head Girl.” As Malfoy's eyes narrowed and he opened his mouth to argue, Harry smirked. “And twenty more for arguing with the Head Boy.”

He climbed off Malfoy, making a show of dusting off his left sleeve, and then slammed the compartment door shut. He silently returned to his seat, and reverted to his staring out of the window. Ron and Neville returned to their ogling, and Hermione, for the second time that day, gnawed off her lip gloss.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Harry could feel Hermione's hurt eyes on him, but he locked his teeth together and refused to return her gaze. Tackling Malfoy had gotten rid of a fraction of his anger, and admittedly punching him would have gotten rid of more, but Harry was attempting to be at least a little more mature this term.

But this whole situation - this was just plain ridiculous.

Why the hell was she sitting there looking like . . . like . . . well, like Lavender and Parvati?

He fumed.

He didn't have to be looking at her to know when she gave up and pulled out at textbook; it was then he deemed it safe enough to have yet another look at his best friend, whom he was starting to think he didn't even know anymore.

She was all but unrecognizable, in a sleek new haircut, with a skirt no more than fringe across her thighs and a shirt that made it look like she was smuggling Bertie's Beans. Harry supposed that some would consider her more attractive this way - Ron, for once, who was acting like a wanker - but Harry saw no visible improvement.

Ridiculous, he thought furiously as her black-lined eyes flicked across the opening page of Ten Thousand More Magical Herbs and Fungi. She was acting just plain ridiculous. Thank Merlin for small favors, though; at least she wasn't reading Witch Weekly.

But no! As she finished the chapter, she stuck in a bookmark, closed the large volume, deposited it in her bag and pulled out . . . Enchanted, Witch Weekly's biggest competition.

What the hell had happened to Hermione?

As he thought this, she looked up from a fashion ad of some sort or another, and shot Harry a look that he could only mentally describe as sultry. It made him sick to his stomach, and he immediately looked away, even as he felt Ron's eyes open even wider.

Prat.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

. . . . Well, whatdya think?

Please tell me! Pretty please! I'll love you forever and ever, I promise!

Just kidding . . . that's a little creepy . . .

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Disclaimer: Yes. Fine. You've got me. Because this short, single, brunette American is secretly a dirty blonde Brit with a million-dollar book deal and a houseful of kids. *rolls eyes* Right.

Author's Note: Oh my god! I LOVE YOU GUYS!!! Seriously, the last thing I expected was to post two (or is it three? God, no wonder I almost failed freshman Geometry . . .) days ago and suddenly have 57 reviews! For my first chapter! This is un-frickin-believable!!!!

Awwwww. It's almost enough to make this semi-crippled author (fell in the driveway and dinged up my hand, making it excruciatingly painful to type . . . thus why I'm doing so one-handed) cry!

Actually, it doesn't take all that much to make me cry. Just stick me in front of a television as the last twenty minutes of Titantic plays, and I'm a weeping mess.

Right. No longer rambling. Here! Your new chapter! Take it and be glad!

Second Author's Note: Crap. Forgot to mention this: the scene that takes place below, with Hermione in Potions, took place during in Diagon Alley two summers ago. Hermione was just old enough to pass a future seventh-year.

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The New and Improved Hermione Granger

Part Two: A Potions Quiz Faced with Trepidation

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Harry was surprised by how many of the boys of Hogwarts he had previously considered to be his friends quickly became his enemies.

Dean Thomas? Gone within five minutes. His leering face was actually tinted burgundy, due to the red crowding Harry's (admittedly limited) vision.

And don't even mention Seamus Finnegan, the smirking arse . . .

He was actually considering which would be more effective, the Bat-Boogey or the Knee-Reversing Hex, for Justin Finch-Fletchly when he realized how ridiculous he was being. Hexing them because they did double-takes when Hermione walked (more stalked, in fact, like a predator or a large cat of some sort) by?

Never mind that their looks made his stomach harden and his blood boil. If he was going to co-exist with this new Hermione - hopefully it would not be long before Hermione returned to her senses - it would mean that he would have to get used to the attention, long overdue, that she was receiving from the opposite sex.

Harry, of course, promptly forgot this as Ernie Macmillan leered at Hermione from across the Great Hall. His fingers had curled around his wand, and the incantation for the Knee-Reversing Hex was immediately pulled to mind, at least until a manicured hand was laid across his bicep, and a sugary voice enquired, “Harry, can you pass the potato salad?”

Grimacing, Harry broke his eye-contact with a suddenly pale Macmillan, and acquiesced. Subconsciously, he noted that Hermione had used to bite her nails with much frequency when she studied, leaving them stubby and polish-less. Now they were bright pink, which matched the low-cut sweater she'd been wearing that morning on the train, the one that Ron had so admired.

Vaguely, Harry recalled a bulky cable-knit sweater of the same color that Mrs. Granger had given her daughter two Christmases previously. Surely not; in Harry's hazy memory, that sweater had covered her collarbone, and any figure was inscrutable beneath its wooly girth.

“Thank you, Harry.”

Her voice pulled him from foggy memories, and she smiled at him. For a split second, Harry saw the bushy-haired, un-manicured, almost-perfect Hermione Granger shining through beneath an inch-thick layer of eyeliner; then Parvati was asking her who had dyed her hair “so fantastically”, and she was reverted back to the new, hardly-improved Hermione Granger, whom Harry was beginning to dislike very much.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Their first class of the year had to be, of course, Potions. If it was possible, Snape was even nastier to the NEWT level students than he was to the first years. To make matters worse, Hermione had been giggly and distracted all of the previous night; Harry worried for the Pseudo-Hermione's resilience levels.

Ron, having been unable to make it into the NEWT-level class, had abandoned them for his free period. Last the pair had seen of him, he was heading for the pitch with his broom over his shoulder, intent on practicing for the tryouts that Harry was hosting two weeks into September.

Thus, Harry was left with Hermione alone for the first time since he'd been acquainted with her new self, which he'd mentally dubbed Pseudo-Hermione.

Originally, he'd attempted to ignore her like he had on the train. Unfortunately, that morning at breakfast she'd appeared slightly hassled, her new blonde bob in messy curls and her eyeliner smudged at the creases. Her quickly muttered, “Pass the toast,” was devoid of sugary overtones, and Harry found himself happily doing so, relieved that all of this preposterous make-over business was done.

“Ready for Potions?” he'd asked, his voice steeped in the usual despondent tone that one associates with conversations about Potions.

Of course, once he had been drawn out, he'd realized that the curls were purposely messy, and her eyeliner had been expertly smudged with a brush that had been invented for that exact use. By then, she'd tricked him into having a conversation with her, and at that point it would seem juvenile and petty to revert back to the silent treatment.

Also, it was easier to keep track of her new admirers (stalkers) if he was close to her.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Hermione wasn't looking forward to NEWT Potions for one very simple reason, and that reason didn't include the words `Snape' or `Harry'.

No, the reason Hermione was facing Potions with dread was because she hadn't read the textbook yet.

She'd spent all of her summer hemming skirts and spelling her hair, and had spent no time at all revising her notes from the previous years and reading her textbooks. Thus, she walked into her first class of her NEWT year completely unprepared. She had finished scanning the textbooks for Herbology, Transfiguration, Ancient Runes, and History of Magic the night before, but left DADA, Potions and the rest for a later date.

And this, in his typical clairvoyant fashion, was when Snape chose to strike.

He'd appraised her new look with a single, eloquently raised (and semi-greasy) eyebrow, saying nothing remotely Snape-like. This, of course, put Hermione on her guard. She was proven correct in her fears when Snape ordered them to put away their cauldrons and wands.

“Quills and parchment,” he ordered silkily, surveying them from his position at the front of the classroom. “I've decided to see how many of you lucky few that made it into my NEWT class have prepared yourselves.”

The twelve other students, including Harry, looked like they'd swallowed their tongues. Equally nervous, with dread clogging her throat, Hermione put away her cauldron - it was going a touch spotty anyway; all her spare pocket money had gone into her textbooks, magazine subscriptions, and basic supplies like quills and parchment, and frankly she didn't have a Galleon to throw away on new potions things while her cauldron was still functioning - and took out one of her new collection of pink-feathered quills.

Harry must've choked on his tongue at the sight of these, because Hermione heard garbled noises coming from him, seated at her left, and she swallowed a self-satisfied smirk. So far, Operation Aero (named such because Hermione had devised her plan of battle while consuming the Muggle chocolate bar) was progressing along marvelously.

Harry could barely tear his eyes away from her, and when he did it was always to glare in an alarming fashion at male passerby. She'd had to distract him the night before at the feast to keep him from hexing Ernie Macmillan, and she was amazed at all the progress she'd made only twenty-four hours into her little scheme.

“According to your textbook,” began her be-greased professor, once everyone was holding (quite a few, quivering) their quills poised above a scrap of spare parchment, “what are the ingredients necessary to completing a cauldron of veritaserum? List them in the order of how they are added.”

Hermione froze. In her mind, she could see herself in slow motion, tossing her copy of NEWT-Level Potions and How to Brew Them into her trunk haphazardly, then reaching for her new pink quills. The only ingredient rising to mind were jobberknoll feathers - so she wrote that down in the vague center of her parchment - but the rest her stuck in her brain. She'd skimmed a recipe once, in another book in another place; what was the answer?

And then her memory for faces saved her.

“Veritaserum, ei?” The slightly balding man scratched under his chin, obviously feigning ignorance. “Why'd you be wantin' to buy ingredients for a cauldron of veritaserum?”

Hermione reddened (she could hardly tell him it was for research study; Harry and Ron barely believed her, let alone this man who didn't know her as well as they did), and stumbled, “For my NEWT project. I'm studying the effects of veritaserum on—”

“NEWT Potions doesn't cover veritaserum.” He eyeballed her suspiciously, as if expecting the Dark Mark to pop out of her armpits at any moment. “The Ministry reckons that if they put it in textbooks anyone can brew it. Just `bout the only thing the Ministry does right nowadays.”

Eureka.

Scribbling out `jobberknoll feathers', Hermione wrote `Our textbook doesn't list a recipe for veritaserum' and triumphantly dropped her quill, which she'd all but snapped in half while clutching it in her terrified grip. She would read that textbook if it took her all night; she wasn't being caught out like that again.

She rubbed her aching left wrist - held too long at an impossible angle - and turned for a moment to see how Harry was doing. He'd scribbled something unintelligible in unusually messy handwriting, and was gazing off into space at a spot above Hannah Abbot's left ear.

“Harry?” she whispered.

He didn't respond.

“Harry?” she repeated, a little louder, and he jerked almost out of his seat, before realizing it was Hermione who had spoken.

“What?” he demanded harshly, and Hermione knew that there was a hurt look flittering across her left face, but was unable to halt its flight. Wincing, Harry reach forward to grip her left hand, and cupped it in both of his, brushing against the silky skin with roughened palms. He looked apologetic. “I'm sorry. What's wrong?”

“Nothing,” she hissed, stung, and tugged her hand free. She couldn't even remember her reason for whispering his name, which in an of itself spoke volumes of lack of logic, and the bitter look accompanying his harsh `what' had hurt her more than she'd care to admit.

“Dammit, Her—”

“If Mr. Potter and Miss Granger are done with their tête-à-tête, I would like to collect your answers.” Snape smirked as Harry, looking flustered and faintly annoyed, returned his attention to the front of the classroom. The professor began to move up the rows, collecting the scraps of parchment and looking hardly surprised at the answers he was receiving.

As he reached the back table housing Harry and Hermione, he took Harry's slip first, scanned it, and smirked triumphantly. Obviously Harry had gotten it wrong, and reeking of self-satisfaction, Snape added the slip to the small collection in his left hand and picked up Hermione's. He read it once, then again, and with a sour frown that told Hermione she'd put the correct answer that he hadn't been expecting, added it to his pile.

“It seems,” he said, moving swiftly down the aisles like a bat on a mission, “that only one person amongst you all has done the reading. Ten points from Gryffindor, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff.” The students noted that Slytherin was absent, but no one seemed suicidal enough to point out this fact.

That is, until Harry moodily spoke up. “Who got it right, Professor?”

Snape whirled around and looked down his hooked, greasy-slimed nose at the boy in the back. “Ten additional points from Gryffindor for impertinence.” As there was a small murmur of protest, he acquiesced angrily, “And five to Gryffindor for Miss Granger's correct answer. There is no mention of a recipe for veritaserum in your textbook.”

Grinning as triumphantly as she could through a thick layer of cherry lip gloss, Hermione settled back into her seat as Snape, obviously miffed, snapped, “Open your textbooks to page 213. I want a detailed summary of chapter seven on my desk by next class.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Alright. Part two, uploaded and ready.

Now comes you part of the festivities (isn't this exciting?) You go down to that little box, type in what you thought - hate it love it fear it (?) - and click the REVIEW AND JUMP TO NEXT button.

Mission: Accomplished! And we're all happy!!!!

You do want me happy, right?

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Disclaimer: Me = penniless fanfiction author. Harry Potter Owner = not me.

Author's Note: Right, SOO sorry it took me so long to get this out. I mean, I had it written and all . . . don't know why it would take me so long just to re-edit it and post it back up.

Eh. Yet another mystery of the universe.

Second Author's Note: Oh, right: THANK YOU ALL!!!! I mean, I don't think I've ever had this many reviews for two chapters!! It's absolutely amazing . . . I'm gob-smacked and speechless (not that you can tell from my babbling).

Anywho, thanks for all the luuuurv, and please enjoy!

~

The New and Improved Hermione Granger

Part Three: Fainting in Class is Often Disapproved Of

~

The moment the painful Potions class ended, Harry stuffed his things into his bag and took off out of the classroom at something vaguely resembling a brisk jog. A few nervous second-years on their way to Double Potions jumped out of his way as he barreled past them, hardly noticing. He had a free period while Hermione had Ancient Runes, and he was going to join Ron out on the quidditch pitch and burn some extra energy.

“Harry!”

He heard the Pseudo-Hermione's voice echo down the dungeon hallway behind him, and he ignored it, hoping that she would go away before she realized how excruciating it was for him to look at her in her new state of ditzy-ness. Because as much as he hated this new Hermione, he didn't want her to disappear, either . . . she was an extension of the real Hermione, and however masochistic it was, he still wanted that reminder.

“Harry! Wait!”

He kept on (running) walking, taking the stairs to the upper floors three at a time, and when having reached the first floor, swerved to the right at the last moment away from the Head Dorms in the direction of Gryffindor Tower, hoping the increasing crowd of gossip-hungry students would dissuade her. It didn't, of course. No matter how she was packaged, this was Hermione after all.

“Harry!” It took her four floors and fifteen corners, but she finally caught up, and latched onto his forearm to prevent him from storming off. “Harry, what's wrong with you?” She looked at him through sooty lashes, her cheeks flushed from rushing after him, mouth set in a sparkly line of determination.

“Nothing's wrong with me,” he snapped, tugging experimentally on his arm. Something's wrong with you, that's what. She didn't release him, instead digging her long, pink nails into his forearm.

“Something's up, and I want you to tell me what it is.” The almost perverse combination of the old Hermione's stubbornness and the Pseudo-Hermione's painted face and dagger-like nails - bloody hell, those things are going to leave marks - made Harry's stomach churn. He decided that maybe flying wasn't such a good idea; returning to his four-poster and lying there until dinner seemed a much more amiable solution.

First, however, he had to get rid of her.

“Just leave me along, Hermione.” He wrenched his arm free, and darted around the corner; in a juvenile fashion, he hid behind one of the tapestries.

He heard the clatter of her shoes - heels, which didn't exactly agree with the mortar in the stone floors - as she rushed past his hiding place, and then harried clicks as she crossed by it again. If her huff of aggravation was any indication, she was abandoning the chase.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

For the four weeks immediately following the incident after Potions class, Harry and Hermione avoided each other like medieval Europeans attempted to avoid the plague. How they did so, what with having to share not only a dormitory and Head duties, but classes and mealtimes, was a tribute to both their intelligence and their knowledge of Hogwarts' numerous hidey-holes.

Hermione, however, appeared to have no intention of avoiding anyone else. She had gone to the first Hogsmeade weekend latched onto the arm of a drooling Ernie Macmillan, accompanied with a sugary giggle that was sweeter than a candy quill, and Harry had spent his trip glowering at them from across the Three Broomsticks.

Operation Aero was proceeding as planned; their current argument was a minor blip in an altogether smoothly sailing plan. After all . . . if he was ignoring her (and glaring at Ernie as if he was sporting a Dark Mark nailed to his forehead) it meant he was jealous. And if he was jealous, than he was slowly realizing how much he was in love with her. And the moment that Harry knew he was in love with her, Hermione was well aware that he would hex any body in Hogwarts that so much as looked at her funny.

She'd tested her theory with poor Ernie Macmillan, who'd looked like he'd swallowed his tongue when she'd agreed to go to Hogsmeade with him. His mates back in Hufflepuff had looked suitably impressed (which irked her to no end, not that she let it show in her face), and Harry had scowled alarmingly from the Gryffindor table.

Hopefully, at the time Harry realized his undying love for her, she could ditch the concealer, magazines, and pink quills. Normal, hormonal teenage boy Harry might have been, but once he fell in love with her, Hermione was certain that she could grow green tentacles out of her ears and he'd still love her.

Alright . . . so the make-up was a hassle, the giggling was annoying, and the drools of the Hogwarts male population were somewhat degrading, but Hermione knew that this was all for a good cause. After all, the night she'd accepted Ernie's invitation, she'd heard smashing down in the Heads common room, having been up late revising her Transfiguration notes.

She now spent the time she had previously been working with Ginny and other Gryffindor girls, chattering about make-up and hairstyles and other mind-numbing topics that Hermione would be quite happy to abandon once Harry came to his senses.

Being the brightest witch of her age meant that Hermione knew perfectly well that she could keep up her stunning grades and still lose her somewhat unflattering entitlement of “know-it-all”. All that was required was her staying up until all hours of the night, revising her notes, doing her homework, and reading her textbooks without anyone to keep her company.

The bags under her eyes may have been the size of Galleons at this point, and she went through a cauldron of Pepper-Up potion a week (she canceled all her magazine subscriptions other than Witch Weekly, and this left her some pocket money for supplies), but it was a small price to pay. She could keep her grades - thus getting into Membry College, a medical school that had more prestige than a Muggle university like Oxford, having been around for a few hundred centuries longer - and get her Harry at the same time.

Never mind that she only slept an hour or two every night. Hermione Granger was a girl on a mission. She didn't need that much sleep.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The second week of October, Minerva McGonagall's NEWT Transfiguration class opened with a bang - literally.

Three minutes into class, Hermione Granger burst in, the door hitting the back wall with a resounding clang, her hair in disarray, and the contents of her school bag scooped in her cupped arms.

Minerva halted her lecture on the practices of be-spelling inanimate objects to serve as door guardians - she'd been using the gargoyle outside the Headmaster's office as an simplistic example for her less . . . well, gifted students - to survey her favorite student with a critical eye.

She didn't particularly like what she saw.

Hermione Granger was still at the top of the class, and Minerva had no doubt that she would pass her NEWTs with some of the highest scores Hogwarts had seen since Dumbledore himself, if not higher.

But this practice she had adopted, of dressing herself up as some sort of loose woman, had Minerva concerned. Doubtlessly, Hermione thought to attract some member of the male species, and she was most certainly attracting them like Nifflers to the Potter Gringotts vault . . . just not the one she wanted, or else this ridiculous practice would have stopped by now.

Minerva was also well aware that her Head Girl was illegally brewing Pepper-Up potion in large doses in the abandoned prefect bathroom on the fifth floor. If she hadn't known that Hermione was too intelligent to leave evidence just lying around, she might have attempted to call her on it.

“Miss Granger,” she hugged in what she hoped to be a suitably miffed tone, “I wouldn't expect for you to be coming late to my class.” She shot Hermione a withering glare, with the obvious undertone that she would have thought this to be the behavior of Potter or Weasley.

Favorite student or not, high grades notwithstanding, this really had to be stopped. And since Albus was considering it to be highly amusing, it would have to be her.

“I'm sorry professor.” Hermione juggled a few of her books, inkpots, and sickeningly pink quills as she walked farther into the classroom, before dumping the miscellaneous bunch onto the table she shared with Harry. Her best friend stared ahead at the podium, eyes never wavering.

Minerva stowed this away for future reference.

As she did so, Hermione continued with her explanation. “Someone” - here she shot a venomous glare at a primping Draco Malfoy - “put an irreversible Continuous Snapping Jinx on the shoulder strap of my bag. It was causing a ruckus in the halls, so I was forced to return it to my dormitory and carry my things back. I was already late, so I didn't have time to Transfigure anything into a new bag and put it away.”

As if to emphasize her point, she dug a handkerchief out of the pile of supplies, and tapped it once with her wand. A new shoulder bag, pink and vaguely glittery, grew in her hand, and Hermione hurriedly threw in all of her things, not bothering to organize them. “I really am sorry, professor.”

Minerva hazarded a few seconds to debate within herself. Just because she disapproved of Hermione's new look didn't mean she should give her a detention unwarranted - she'd noted when Slytherin had lost seventy points a minute before class began - and at the same time, just because Hermione was her favorite student didn't mean she should get off scotch-free, either.

“Five points from Gryffindor,” she said finally, sighing with herself. “Kindly take out your materials and join us, Miss Granger.”

“Of course, professor.”

For the next twenty minutes Hermione dutifully took notes, and transfigured her small jade statuette of a large cat into a breadbox-sized jade tiger that chattered amicably in a loud, high-pitched voice, about life in the Amazon jungle. After three recitations of the proper way to stalk a monkey, Minerva tightened her lips, muttered a silencing spell, and (walloped) tapped it on the head with her wand.

All throughout, Hermione and Harry avoided eye contact. Minerva noted when their hands brushed once, accidentally, and how it took them a few moments to notice before jerking away hurriedly. She may have been strict, but she wasn't stupid. Minerva had just found the boy Hermione Granger was attempting to impress.

Ten minutes later, after everyone had transformed their statuettes - none managing to spell their creatures to speak, as Hermione had - Minerva assigned their homework and directed them to begin working on it with the person they sat next to. Hermione and Harry reluctantly collected their small wooden box and Hermione's jade statuette, being the obvious superior, and began the abominably boring six-hour task of attaching the statuette as the guardian of the box.

They had yet to speak a word to each other, although they appeared to be struggling with the sullen tiger, which had become uncooperative with the loss of its voice. Minerva left them to it, moving on to see what Draco Malfoy and Pansy Parkinson were doing with their vanished hands - whatever it was, it most definitely was not the homework - when she heard an exhaled gasp.

She whirled around to see Hermione Granger toppled backwards off her chair in a dead faint. The tiger abandoned its pretense of nonchalance, and stone tail swishing merrily, padded over to the edge of the table where it could best see the unconscious girl.

“Hermione!”

Harry sounded hysterical as he leapt over the now-abandoned desk chair. Minerva swooped in slowly; she hadn't sensed any malicious spells, so in all likelihood, Hermione was just plain exhausted from her late-night endeavors in the prefects bathroom.

“Take Miss Granger to the hospital wing, Mr. Potter,” advised Minerva sternly. She softened a mite at the look of blind panic on his face as he hovered, crouched, over his friend. “Madame Pomfrey will take care of her.”

In what Minerva considered to be an overly-dramatic fashion, Harry scooped a limp Hermione up into his arms, her head curled against his collarbone, and charged out of the classroom.

Minerva breathed a silent sigh of relief. Now the love-sick teenagers were Poppy's problem, and Minerva could get back to her lesson plan.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Don't worry, I haven't killed Hermione off or anything. You try going with only an hour of sleep every night.

Better yet, don't. I have, and it isn't pretty. I mean, I'm pretty clumsy normally, but you get half-dead, and then no wall or bump of carpet is safe . . .

Right. What was the purpose of this?

OOOH!

Review: because if you don't, I might just decided to introduce a real plot . . . muuuhahahahaha!

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Disclaimer: Right, I realize this is a news flash and all, but if I owned Harry Potter do you think I'd be writing fanfiction right now, or off in my studio, rewriting HBP?

Author's Note: Well, here it is: the last chapter. I realize the story's a little short (only four chapters . . . definitely short for me), but you have to remember that very little plot exists!

Here it is . . . the end of the road . . . the last stop before Grand Central . . . *weeps for the bitter loss* . . .

Hehe. Just kidding. You know, me, being overdramatic.

This seriously was totally fun: I got to write, you got to review, and we both got a satisfying ending . . . it's all good, right?

Well, just cuz it's the last chapter doesn't mean you shouldn't review! Gimme love!

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The New and Improved Hermione Granger

Part Four: Operation Aero Comes to a Head

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Harry could feel something pounding against his ribcage with an unsteady thrum thrump thrum thrump, and he wasn't sure if it was his heart or his lungs. Adrenaline or not, Hermione was hardly a light load to take in a fireman's carry halfway across the school.

As he huffed down the staircase to the first floor, Harry couldn't help replaying the scene in Transfiguration over again in his mind. He'd tersely opened his mouth to snap at Hermione that dammit, he wasn't stupid, could he try to work the stubborn thing, only to see her eyes roll into the back of her head, and her to flop backwards off her chair in a dead faint.

He hadn't told her that he knew about her staying up until all hours, working on her homework and Merlin knew what else. He would come back from his midnight rounds around the fifth floor corridors to see the light seeping out from under the closed door of her bedroom, and hear her muttering to herself as she paced back and forth, the floorboards protesting with lengthy creaks. It had given him some relief to know that the real Hermione was hiding under the Pseudo-Hermione.

All he had to do was find a crack, some crevice in the make-up-ed exterior of the Pseudo-Hermione, and dig out the real one. Even if it took him an ice pick and the whole rest of the school year, he'd find her.

As he thought this to himself (wheezing pathetically all the while), her purple eyelids fluttered twice, before settling closed again, her mascara-coated eyelashes looking like lace against the skin of her cheek. Her lips, dyed pink and glossy, opened for a moment, before closing in a sigh of contentment. She burrowed against Harry, who had frozen still, the pounding in his chest no longer coming from a lack of air.

“Harry,” she breathed into his chest. And then her entire body tensed and she all but flew out of his arms, scrambling backwards by pulling on thin air. “What are you doing?!” she shrieked shrilly, grabbing the stone wall behind her for purchase.

“What am I doing?” demanded Harry, descending upon her without really realizing what he was doing. Part of his brain was yelling with its dying breath WHAT WAS THAT SHE JUST DID, but the larger part was very, very, very angry.

Hermione began to move backwards down the hall, as he ranted, “What am I doing, she asks. What do you mean, what am I doing? What were you doing? You just fainted in the middle of Transfiguration.” He made a grab for her arm, but his fingers brushed stone as her elbow, by far larger than a snitch, darted out from under him. “I'm taking you to the hospital wing before it happens again!”

“No you aren't!” she replied, still speaking in shrill tones. “The Head dorms are just around the corner. I'll rest for a bit, and then go to lunch. A little nap and some food will do wonders.”

They made the corner and turned, Hermione still backing away furiously, Harry stalking closer with each step they both took. He could see a red haze on the side of his vision, all but clogging his spectacles as he tried to grab her arm again. “What the hell do you think that you're doing? Staying up until three o'clock in the morning? Sleeping for two hours, then trudging yourself off to class? Doing the same thing every night?”

The pair was in front of the portrait of the four founders, all watching, riveted, as their argument echoed up and down the halls. Harry managed to latch onto her arm, and she tossed the password at the portrait. Ravenclaw seriously considered not letting them in so they could be privy to the entire show, but Hufflepuff elbowed her in the stomach and swung it open on her own.

Hermione pulled Harry with her into the Head common room with pure frustration as her only strength. “I've always stayed up!” she snapped, tugging on her arm. Harry had it in a vise-like grip that she wasn't able to break, she so clenched her fists in aggravation. “You know that I'm not a morning person! That's the only thing that you've always been able to nag me on. `Come on Hermione, it's just a little morning sunlight, you're hardly a vampire'.” Her mimicking skills were severely lacking, but she didn't really seem to care.

Neither noticed when the founders moved into the portrait over the fireplace from the one in the hall. Ancient-looking Galleons appeared to be being exchanged amongst the four.

“Nag you?!” hissed Harry through clenched teeth. They had arrived at the plushy couches, Harry pressed against the front of Hermione's body, their arms the only things keeping them from being flush together. He used his spare hand to push her down into the center of the middle couch. “Here I am, nagging away! Not that you listen to me.” He deliberately placed his hands on the back of the couch, one on each side of her head, caging her in. “No! You're too busy shagging Ernie Macmillan in the third floor broom closet!”

With a shriek, she slapped him across the face, the tips of her fingers leaving little red grooves in the skin of his cheek. As he reared back she looked horrified with herself. “Oh, Harry!” She leapt up and tried to reach for him, to see his face, but he spun out of the way. Back hunched against her, he turned to the fireplace, and the figures in the portrait had a nice view of the angry scratches on his cheek.

He laughed a little bitterly. “I asked for that, didn't I?” He gingerly pressed a cold palm to his face, attempting to soothe the sting. “I'm sorry for saying something so heartless. You're just making me so infuriated!” He whirled back around, but in the face of his anger, her eyes had become cool and detached.

“What's going on with you?” he asked, his voice a little lost as his palm dropped from his face. “What happened to the Hermione Granger who ate cinnamon sugar quills when she revises her notes, because she can't stand the regular flavor? Who comes to every one of my quidditch practices and reads in the stands? Who sits up with me until midnight, eating nicked food from the kitchens and staring into the fire? Who didn't care what anyone else thought about her? Who absolutely hated chili peppers, but was addicted to Indian order-out curry?”

Wistfully, he brushed aside a few of her straight blonde locks, and twined some of the soft hair at the nape of her neck around his index and middle finger. “She had the most beautiful brown hair in the world.”

“She didn't get what she wanted,” replied Hermione softly, but Harry didn't hear her and continued on, his voice becoming harsher and harsher with the pain of the past few weeks.

“You giggle now, Hermione. It's the most disgusting sound I've ever heard. Your voice is sticky and sugary and it makes me sick to my stomach just to hear to use it around all those idiots who used to ignore you.”

Hermione, fury bringing her out of her self-imposed iciness, yanked her hair out of his hand hard enough to snap the strands at the roots. It made her eyes smart, but she ignored the sensation.

“I make you sick to your stomach?!” She placed both hands on his chest and pushed him backwards, towards the chair opposite the couch, however unintentionally. “Sick! I did this all for you, you ungrateful prat!” She pushed him again. “So that you'd realize that I, Hermione Granger, am a girl, just like Ginny and Cho-Bloody-Chang, and not your androgynous, bushy-haired, walking-dictionary best friend!” She gave his chest a third, hard push, to enunciate her words. “I did it so you'd realize that I'm in love with you!”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Anger colored her eyes, made her furious and loose with words and emotions. The unfeeling, inhuman prat! After all that she did for him, after all the time and money she spent making herself beautiful and lovely and everything that the past girls he'd dated were, he had the gall to tell her that she made him sick?

SICK?

Well, Hermione Granger was not going to stand for that. Oh no, she wasn't going to let him just categorize her as nicely as he wanted to, put all that effort in a neatly labeled little box of Hermione Granger's Stupid Idea and stow it away and let it gather dust in some lonely recess of his mind.

It was a perfectly logical assumption that he wanted a girl like the ones he'd dated previously - and Hermione was nothing if not logical. Obviously Ginny hadn't made him feel nauseous when his tongue was down her throat. So what was so different about Hermione, then?

She made him sick, eh?

Well, let's just see about that.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Harry could feel something warm spreading across his chest. Did she just - but before that little part of his mind that had been previously yelling WASN'T SHE JUST SNUGGLING UP NEXT TO ME IN THE HALL could laugh triumphantly and claim victory, something smashed into him and knocked him into the squishy chair strategically placed behind him.

All the air whooshed out of his lungs, as he realized that the `something' was actually Hermione, and that she was sitting in his lap, and one of her hands was pressed against his chest, and the other was winding its way around his neck.

He opened his mouth to speak, to ask her to please repeat what she had said earlier, about being in love with him, and to tell her that he felt the same, and to ask why she had tackled him, and a whole jumble of other things, but he didn't have the chance.

For a girl who had been, up until four weeks ago, generally unnoticed by the male species, Hermione certainly knew how to kiss.

For a moment he wondered, a bit angrily, if either Viktor Krum or Ernie Macmillan had ever kissed his Hermione, but then she melted into him, her body falling against his in all the right places, and the taste of melon and orange and peppermint caressed the back of his tongue, and every miniscule hair on his arms and the back of his neck, where her soft fingers curled into his hair, rose with the current rushing through his body, and his nerve endings died a terribly happy death, and he decided not to think at all, especially not about Krum and . . . Krum and . . . Kr . .

When she pulled back, Harry was so stunned by this turn of events that all he could do was stare at her, gob-smacked, as she parted lips that were devoid now of lip gloss, and declared, “I make you sick, eh?”

To which the only proper response would be, in his mind, to rewind his fingers into her hair and try out this whole snogging-his-best-friend thing again. Which he did. Happily.

In the background, Slytherin and Hufflepuff triumphantly collected Galleons from their fellow founders. The pair on the chair didn't notice when all four - half cackling madly, half glowering - returned to the portrait out in the corridor.

When air, once again, became a serious issue, they parted just enough to let oxygen into their mouths unhindered. Laughing a little weakly, Harry rested his forehead against hers. “Care to repeat that bit?”

“What bit?” asked Hermione, breathing heavily. “The `I make you—”

“No,” interrupted Harry. “The bit before that.”

“Oh.” Hermione turned bright pink. “The . . . I'm in love with you, bit?” Harry mentally noted that she looked quite charming devoid of concealer and lip gloss and mascara, and now the only thing that needed to go was the hair (well, and the pink quills, and the Witch Weekly, and the short skirts, because he didn't really want to hex every male person at Hogwarts for ogling at his girlfriend) . . . but first there was something a tad more important that had to be done.

“I love you too.”

Operation Aero: Success

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The End

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Well, there it is. The end.

Oh, and yes, Hermione does ditch all the yecky, non-Hermione stuff. So rest assured that she's all Hermione-ish now.

Now, there's only one thing left to do . . . YOU = REVIEW.

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