The Lioness of Gryffindor

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A/N I've seen many people who write stories put a disclaimer here. If you are not bright enough to know that I am not J.K. Rowling or work for Warner Bros then you need you head examined.

Anywho I would like to follow custom and thank my Beta, Fawkes393. I promise I won't be as annoying all the time.

If you have anything to say good or bad I want to hear from you. I write this for you. If you don't like it and want something added or taken away, I'll see what I can do.

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After all the celebration was over Hermione walked the grounds of the castle. Never had she felt as though she didn’t belong. How could a little fight like that put so much between Harry, Ron and her. It wasn’t really her fault. Sure she had seen what was coming. Sure she had known how to stop it, but she was frozen in terror. They just didn’t understand. But now that the war was over she guessed it really didn’t matter. Hagrid would be fine, and he knew the truth. She didn’t think she could stand not knowing that someone believed her. Dumbledore would most likely have believed her. He believed in the good of everybody. Look at the trust he had given that bastard Snape. If it wasn’t for the complete trust Dumbledore gave that man, maybe, just maybe, Dumbledore would be here to celebrate with them.

The weather just wasn’t helping her mood any. The cold bitter winds of autumn whipped her curly locks about her face. And dried the tears that still flowed down her cheeks. She looked out over the lake. Even with the wind blowing as it was, the lake still seems clear and calm. She reflected the smoothness of the lake in her features and went back up to her room.

Normally she would have climbed the stairs to the fat lady, but this year she was the school’s Head Girl. She walked toward a painting of the schools coat of arms. Placing her hand on the lion of Gryffindor, part of the shield on the door and muttering the password. She slowly crept into the common room. She looked around to make sure her counter part, the Head Boy, wasn’t around.

As the door clicked closed behind her she could no longer hold back her tears. She ran the rest of the way to her bedroom, where she threw herself on her bed and muffled her sobs in the pillows.

How could they just brush her aside like that? Did she not help them almost every day they where are school, and sometimes out of school?

“I didn’t mean it,” she moaned.

As she was crying she didn’t notice that the door downstairs slowly opened. The Head Boy stuck his head inside to check if Granger was there. A smile came over his face at the sounds of crying coming from her room. The mudblood didn’t belong, and now she knew it. The smile turned to a sneer. He raised his blonde head a little higher knowing that even if the Dark Lord was gone forever; this mudblood would never have peace.

He walked over to the bookshelf and took down one of his schoolbooks. He cursed his mother for making him go back to this school. Near the beginning of the school year she had written a letter to Professor McGonagall and Professor Slughorn explaining that he wasn’t really a Death Eater. The lame excuse she gave them was Voldemort put him under the Imperius Curse and threatened his mother with the death of her husband if she told anybody. Just before they sent her Azkaban they asked her about
Snape and his Unbreakable Vow to her. They cleared that traitor of murder charges after that.

He would have done it, if not for Snape. Dumbledore was a fool. He didn’t even know that a student would be his downfall. And it was so easy.
But then the battle had turned and he was faced with the dim-witted Death Eaters that his father called friends. He tossed the book onto the side table and stalked out of the room to find something more pleasurable to do. Perhaps he could go rub Harry’s nose in the face that Granger had shown her true colours at the final battle.

As the door closed behind him, Hermione heard it. She got up wiped her eyes. Walked down the stairs and she went to the bathroom to clean up a bit. She looked at herself in the mirror.

'What is wrong with you?' she scolded herself. 'They are your friends and will probably forget it in a few days.' But something made her feel that they wouldn't. They had already told her at the beginning of the year that they wouldn't visit her because of her roommate. At first she was so glad to be chosen for the title of Head Girl. But when she found out that Draco Malfoy was the Head Boy, she nearly went to McGonagall to ask her to reconsider. She guessed that if everybody believed his mother about what happened then Malfoy wasn't the cold-blooded killer-in-training that Harry made him out to be. Sure he was a royal pain in the backside. And had his nose as high in the air as anybody she had met, but could he even be as normal as anybody else?

"Get a grip Herm, he's the same Malfoy as you have always known." Her chest constricted at the thought of the handsome Slytherin. He had been, not really nice, but maybe almost civil.

Just then McGonagall came in. Hermione didn’t pay much attention to what she wanted but followed her out of the room anyway. Her thoughts ran to the past few weeks. The end of the war, school starting, and now this fight. Her life was now most thoroughly turned upside down.

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