Prompt: Hermione, irrationality

Challenge: Write as much as you can in 15 minutes.

The first time Hermione learns about irrational, she is eight years old (when she still doesn't know how postage works, when she still hugs her mom before getting on the tram, when she has barely learned the word wizard) and her teacher is repeating the word for her to hear.

"Irrational. What does it mean? Irrational."

"That is ridiculous," she says, her tongue stumbling over the word.

The second time Hermione learns about irrational is when she is eleven (when she still licks her fingers after she eats chicken, when she still goes to bed before nine, when she doesn't know what the word horcrux means). She spends the day lying on her bed trying to remember the digits of pi. Nothing can go on forever, right?

She gets to a hundred digits before she falls asleep from exhaustion, and when she wakes up she has forgotten them all but five.

The third time Hermione learns about irrational is when she's too young and angry to remember anything, when she feels as if her toes might fly off and kick a rock for her, when her mind can't think straight. "Be rational, be rational," is her chant.

She learns that irrational - it feels red. She learns that irrational is what makes her insides hot and her mind go. Go. Go anywhere. She can't deal with this right now, and besides, she still has Harry. She almost flings herself into a tree at that thought.

When he returns she wants to kill him. She might have come close if she had her wand.

One night years later, with her ear pressed to his chest as she listens to his heart beat and lungs breathe when he's sleeping, she notes that nothing makes sense right now, but it's okay. Rationality has little place in love.