Wherein Hermione is Distracted by a Girl in Purple Pants
First fic posting! Just a bit of fluff, university themed. Very much motivated by the study I'm meant to be doing. Hope you enjoy!
Title: Wherein Hermione is Distracted by a Girl in Purple Pants
Summary: Hermione's first day of university.
Pairing: Hermione/OC
Word Count: 763
Rating: G
Disclaimer: All Jo's, not mine.
At Hogwarts, almost all of the girls had worn their hair long, in witchy curls, flicky ponytails and occasionally austere buns. Pansy Parkinson had for a while threatened to cut hers off and dye it black, but the uncontrollable laughter that Draco relished in every time she brought up the idea soon changed her mind.
So Hermione was understandably concerned to find herself under-prepared on her first day at university. Not because of the coursework - she’d read all of her textbooks before the first day, of course. And not the ridiculously complex mix of paperwork, magic and uncoordinated internet networks that was involved in registering for classes - after having locked herself in her room overnight, with her parents doing their best to ignore the loud curses, crashes and incantations that they heard from downstairs, the door burst open with a bang and she emerged triumphant, smoke wafting around her softly sizzling hair, while she grimly held aloft a print-out of her timetable. And after the extensive tours of the campus and facilities to which she’d subjected her long suffering mother and father, she wasn’t even worried about getting lost.
No, all of Hermione’s best laid plans were laid to waste by a girl who she’d never before met in her life, who had the audacity to sit in front of her in her first class, wearing a pair of voluminous purple tie-dyed pants, a tight grey tank top, and long bronze earrings that grazed the side of her long, tanned neck every time she tilted her head to the side. Which was often. Hermione noticed. She couldn’t help but notice, because the entire length of the girl’s neck was bare, from the bone that sharply angled the top of her back, to her nape, smooth and pointed to by soft, light brown hair that was cropped closely to the girl’s head. While Hermione had of course seen girls with their hair up, she’d never before realised how the absence of hair could give such an intense nakedness to a bare neck, and what focus was drawn to a finely-formed head and a sharp, delicate jaw. And focus Hermione did, mentally charting the curls that fell across the girl’s hairline, freckles that ran along her spine, and the shoulders that flared out, browned by the sun and shifting tantalisingly every few moments.
She focused so much that when people around her started packing their things and waiting for her to get up and make way, she was startled out of her reverie for the first time, without ever having taken down a single note, or having heard anything said by the professor - who she just managed to identify as a middle aged, grey haired woman wearing entirely too much red, before being practically pushed out of the auditorium by her considerate classmates. Hermione mentally chided herself for having wasted an hour pretty much ogling some girl’s neck, while at the same time marvelling that she, Hermione Granger, who had thus far been motivated to (brief, unwise) romance only by the entirely unfeminine Ron Weasley, had spent an hour pretty much ogling a girl’s neck.
Hermione had barely had time to process what was surely a Life Altering and Highly Significant Revelation before being interrupted by a soft tap on her back. Spinning around, she found herself face to face with long-lashed sea-green eyes, a freckled nose, and glossy, mulberry lips that were curving into a smile, all capped off by that short hair.
“Hi,” the girl said, holding out a red and gold pencil case. “I think you dropped this?”
Hermione picked her jaw up off the floor and somehow managed to form a coherent sentence. “Oh, yes, thank you!” She tucked a stray curl behind her ear, trying to hide a blush. “I don’t know what came over me, it’s very good of you to bring it up.”
“Oh, that’s alright! My name’s Clem, by the way. What’s yours?”
“I’m Her-Hermione.” Merlin’s blooming, tattered underpants.
Clem grinned. “Well, I’m very glad to meet you, Her-Hermione.” She leaned in, conspiratorially. “I know if I had that curly hair of yours sitting in front of me the entire lecture, I’d be forgetting more than my pencil case.”
She had prepared for gruelling classes, unforgiving lecturers and the musty, exclusive smell of academic success. She hadn’t prepared to be distracted from it all by flirty girls with too-short hair. But as Clem sauntered away with a wink and a smile, leaving Hermione hugging her books to her chest, she found that she didn’t at all mind.