Needfire

Chapter 35 - The Glass House

\"to all the unheard wisdom in the schoolyard
you think you\'re the right ones
you think you\'re the charmed ones I\'m sure
how can you go on with such conviction?
and who do you think you are why do you question me?
because we can\'t not
because we can\'t not
because we can\'t help laugh at underestimations...\"

--Can\'t Not, Alanis Morissette


\"Leaving here doesn\'t mean I am leaving you,\" she glared at Chloe, who gathered her blanket and pillows closer to her chest, refusing to look at Hermione. Jervy, empty-eyed and dedicated as ever, clung closely to his young mistress. His hollow, watery eyes wandered from Hermione – busy packing her sparse belongings – to Chloe, who had been sitting at the end of her bed, shielded behind her bedclothes.

The blue-eyed girl sighed. \"Do you really believe there\'s a difference?\"

\"Yes!\" Hermione put aside the jeans she had intended to fold, turning to glower at her friend. \"I would still be writing you, still be visiting you. Still love you.\"

Chloe shook her head. \"You would go on with your life. I would stay here, locked forever in my glass house. Bound to stagnate. Bound to my eternal youth. My eternal virginity. Now we\'re standing on even ground, we parallel each other. Once you move on, that\'s all over.\"

\"What do you want me to do?\" She crossed her hands over her chest. \"Stay here? Sacrifice myself in order to keep you company?\"

\"Sweet.\" Chloe gave her a sugary smile. \"Sometimes I wonder who taught you to be so cruel. But no. I want you to leave me be. I want you to move on with your life, be happy and leave me be.\"

\"Me? Cruel? And what would that make you, making a friend ashamed of her own fitness?\"

The other girl nodded tiredly. \"You\'re right, I suppose. I\'m bitter and unfit, which makes me cruel toward anyone who isn\'t. I…\" a muscle in her jaw twitched. \"It will only be worse once you\'re out of here, can\'t you realize that? You- writing me beautiful, enthusiastic letters about the full, engaging life you\'re leading, telling me about the interesting people you meet: about the mysteries you had encountered and solved: about the great sex you had, and I- withering a bit more with each letter, knowing you\'re someplace out there, living the life I should, by all means, live, but can\'t, damn it. Can\'t. Then you\'ll visit me, sun tanned and glowing and I\'ll be cruel and angry and bitter since all you have, and all you had have, should have been mine. Because I\'d want that for myself. Can\'t you see? I\'m jealous as it is. Do you want this jealousy to destroy me?\"

\"No.\" She sighed. \"I just… I just don\'t want to lose you.\"

Chloe looked at her, eyes bright with tears. \"I don\'t want to lose you either. But I don\'t want to lose my sanity.\"

\"That\'s… so melodramatic.\" Hermione sighed.

The other girl gave her a crooked smile. \"Life is melodramatic. Or else it\'s boring. Either way, you are promised to hardly ever be satisfied with what you get.\"

\"Very witty.\"

\"And true,\" said Chloe, watching Hermione seal her suitcase. \"Now come here and hug me. No, don\'t tell me you don\'t do hugs-\" tossing her bedclothes aside, she reached for Hermione, pulling the smaller girl close and coiling her arms around her midriff.

\"It feels awkward,\" Hermione noted, her fingers interlacing the vivacious mass of Chloe\'s baby-fine curls.

\"It feels good,\" Chloe murmured, nose and cheek pressing into Hermione\'s abdomen.

Jervy, put aside like a huge rag doll, seemed to be reflecting Chloe\'s longing in his huge, empty eyes.

\"If I\'ll write you,\" she began, \"will you answer me?\"

She could feel Chloe\'s features distorting into a frown against her belly. \"I don\'t know,\" an answer came at last. \"But I promise to read.\"

\"I suppose that\'s something.\"

\"I love you, Granger. I\'ll miss you plenty.\"

Hermione moistened her lips, standing still as Chloe\'s body\'s warmth misted around her – the way the bluish fog of dawn rose over the great lake, very early in the morning. Strangely, as awkward as she might have felt, the physical touch also provided her with a certain sense of complacency. As if Chloe\'s body was flexing to parallel her, to make her fitter, to make her stronger; to fill – if only for a moment – these abysmal gaps in her soul, and make her a whole person. Then they parted, and Hermione knew she would never be whole.

* * *

She was hardly ready to be back at Hogwarts, and yet knew for certain she was as ready as she would ever be. How cliché. How true. It was mid May and the time to tie up all loose ends. Like a girl, she found herself thinking, who is determined to lose her virginity before she dies. The thought seemed to haunt her on the ride back to Hogwarts. So much to do before I die, but then- at least I\'ve already lost my virginity. The thought accompanied the bitter realization that the girl climbing down from the Knight Bus in front of Hogwarts\' gates was not the same girl who fled the castle, and surely not the same girl who entered it, almost seven years ago. The girl who entered it, she thought, would have died a virgin.

Leaving the Knight Bus, she nodded shortly towards the conductor. The pimpled youth had tried to hit on her during the ride. Her former self would have avoided him politely, ignoring his attention or evading it. She also knew, however, that the conductor would not pay attention to her former self. She wondered what was it that made the difference; was it her sudden awareness of her femininity or had she suddenly grown slutty? Did he know who she was, Hogwarts\' former Head Girl, the one who slept with a professor and destroyed both their lives in one fell stroke? She hardly cared. She hardly cared for his tender feelings and let him know she was very busy and would appreciate if he did not disturb her reading. Hermione wished she could muster the same indifference in regard to the reaction of Hogwarts\' inhabitants upon her return.

Yes, of course, she had been to hell and back- their reaction should have been unimportant. And it was unimportant in the artificial sense of things, where it was all a sentence wavering in a copywriter\'s mind, asking why should someone who had been to hell, care for her peers\' reaction to anything? But then it rubbed her own sore spots, made her doubt her own fitness. When she once had been Hermione Granger-- a Head Girl, she now was Hermione Granger -- a lunatic – and they knew it, and would look at her with pity in their eyes. Well, fuck them all. She wasn\'t about to dwell on people\'s disgusting habit of bestowing their pity on those who wanted it and needed it the least.

She had forbidden Healer Morrow to notify her parents when she was discharged from St. Mungo\'s. Likely they would discover it soon enough; Hermione could not imagine them leaving her alone long enough for the scabs to heal and fall away. Likely the Hogwarts staff would keep them informed. But her tuition for the year was paid, and her choices were hers alone nowadays; she didn\'t have to open, ever, another letter from her parents, or ever go home again. She knew that not facing her parents, not addressing completely their role in her illness, meant that certain fractures were filled with jelly and not good, wholesome flesh.

She had only three goals left: pass her NEWTs, do whatever was required of her to bring about Voldemort\'s demise, and somehow find Snape again.

No...what Hogwarts thought about her, and what her parents thought about her, hardly mattered any longer.

Breathing deeply, she shouldered her rucksack, and began climbing towards Hogwarts\' gates. Earlier in the week, she owled Harry, notifying him concerning her upcoming arrival. Hermione had no doubt he would be waiting for her in front of the castle, ready to unburden her from what little luggage she had been carrying, chatting away in order to mask the metastatic silence.