By the Way
By: Provocative Envy
OOO
CHAPTER TWO
I had quickly, effortlessly, disconcertingly fell into a routine: wake up, eat breakfast, stay quiet, smile big, smile pretty, ignore the whispers, the sidelong glances, the pitying stares, walk fast, eat lunch, walk faster, head down, smile big, smile pretty, pretend it’s all okay, everything’s okay, that no, no I wasn’t the least bit surprised, the least bit upset, eat dinner, walk even faster, blink back tears, break into a run, eyes shut, eyes shut so tight, stumble sightlessly into a room, any room would do, cry, cry, cry, wait for it, wait for it, dash to the library, write mindless, perfect essays, my quill scratching across the parchment with almost blinding efficiency, trudge back to my dormitory, dragging my feet, dragging my heart, smile big, smile pretty, dump my books on the floor, crawl into bed, ignore the whispers, the sidelong glances, the pitying stares, sleep, sleep, sleep, blessed sleep, dreamless sleep.
Every day, it was the same.
And every day, it killed me a little bit more.
I knew that I was falling, headlong, into an abyss of melancholy and regret; I knew that I needed to snap out of my self-pity, to take a deep breath and remember that I was Hermione Granger: bookworm, Gryffindor, connoisseur of bravery and honor and a million other attributes I wasn’t so certain I possessed in abundance.
Not anymore.
The oddest thing, though, was that the roaring, gnawing, pitiful heartbreak I’d felt initially had subsided almost immediately into a dull ache, the kind that does nothing but eat away at your happiness, at your chances at happiness, even. I could look at Ron and not want to fling my arms around his neck, not want to say something witty and funny and clever to catch his attention and make him smile.
But facing the hundreds of unfriendly strangers who knew every last, lurid detail of my fall from grace: that was harder than I could have ever imagined.
I was used to the scrutiny, used to the rumors. I could handle the derision and the scorn and even the malice.
But the pity, the pity was the clincher for my dissatisfaction.
And every time I was forced to avert my startled, stunned gaze after accidentally stumbling upon Ron and Lavender holding hands, or Ron and Lavender kissing, or Ron and Lavender being nauseatingly, superfluously, pretentiously cute; every time I looked away and feigned indifference, the sorry, sorry glances I received from compassionate but relieved-it-wasn’t-them classmates were like paper cuts: irritating and sharp and ridiculously, unreasonably, bafflingly painful.
And I couldn’t take it.
Not anymore.
OOO
He was alone.
Amazingly enough, he was finally alone.
I approached him cautiously, cursing my cowardice but unable to suppress a shiver of fear: There were too many chances that he would turn away, too many chances that he would reject me as soundly as he had just a few weeks earlier.
But somehow I found myself standing in front of him, unflinchingly meeting his eyes, my hands clasped and shaking behind my back. Somehow, he was smiling crookedly at me, warmly greeting me, and making his inquiry about my wellbeing sound genuine. Somehow, I wasn’t bawling, wasn’t hyperventilating, wasn’t saying anything that would foolishly belie my confidence and my serenity and my contentment.
Somehow, it seemed like everything was going to be okay.
Until he suddenly adopted a grimace of contrition, and patted my shoulder in a vaguely fraternal manner, and asked me if everything was really, truly okay.
And before I could stop myself, before I could even think twice about what a suitable answer might pertain, I’d said the one thing, the only thing, that would make the tension and the awkwardness and the unease even worse.
“I miss you,” I blurted out.
A muscle in his jaw started working, then, and he opened and closed his mouth more times than I could bother counting, the sounds of unfinished words escaping, sometimes rough, sometimes soft, sometimes sympathetic.
Then finally, finally, finally he answered:
“Hermione, we weren’t…we didn’t make each other happy,” he said quietly, resolutely.
“We didn’t?” I whispered, confused, so confused, wondering why I was putting myself through this torture a second time, wondering if this was an addiction, wondering if I could really stand it again, wondering if he would really say it again.
“We did for awhile,” he admitted.
“Then what--” my voice broke, caught itself, broke again. “What went wrong?”
He stared at my lips for a long, long moment, his stance rigid, his posture contemplative.
“It wasn’t enough,” he said softly, shrugging.. “It just wasn’t enough.”
It wasn’t enough it wasn’t enough it wasn’t enough it wasn’t enough, but oh, my God this shouldn’t hurt this much, make it stop make it stop, did he really just say that, did he really just shatter me again and again and again, did he mean it, he couldn’t mean it, why does this hurt so much, it shouldn’t be surprising, it shouldn’t hurt, why does it hurt, make it stop, it wasn’t enough it wasn’t enough it wasn’t enough, stop, stop, stop, make it stop, it hurts, it hurts so much, but it wasn’t enough, it wasn’t enough, it wasn’t enough: My eardrums were pounding from the rush of blood to my head at his pronouncement, my head flooded with his voice, my voice, saying the same things over and over, repetition my only escape from the bewilderment and the shock and the irrelevant agitation.
“It never is, is it?” I managed to ask before plowing past him and pushing open the door to the girls’ restroom.
I waited for the tears I was sure were on their way, waited for my thin frame to be wracked by insuppressible sobs, sobs that I could muffle, maybe, if I just turned on the taps at the sink, if I could just take a few more steps in that direction before playing the victim one last time.
I twisted the four-pronged handle at the porcelain basin, watching in disillusioned fascination at the steady stream of crystal-clear water coming out of the spout. Slowly, I reached out and moved my fingers through the fluid, watched the rivulets I created cascade down my wrists, watched the relentlessly perfect barrage of water flow, uninterrupted, down the drain.
I was struck, then, by how resplendently unrelenting water was. It appeared, on the surface, so transparent, so fragile, so easy to tear through, to tear down.
But it never broke.
No matter what happened, it stayed cohesive, it stayed together.
It stayed whole.
And maybe it wasn’t enough.
Maybe it never would be.
But it was a start.
OOO
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