Self Analysis by Lurid
Chapter Notes: Thank you to Kali (murgatriod) and Fly To Dawn for their beta help and lovely critisism. A special thank you to my Abigail for her corrections on the new version! Love to her.
She wandered wordlessly through the corridors until she came to a door marked Library. She silently pushed it open and retreated to a far corner away from prying eyes and concealed couples. She breathed in the heavy scent of pine needles and the raw smell of the exposed wood. She could smell the familiar musty odour of unloved books. Not many ventured into this secluded corner; few knew it was even here.
She knew it was here. She had visited it many times. She sighed heavily and reached into her bag, pulling out a shard of glass and placing it on the table in front of her. She watched her expression waver in the reflective surface and thought boldly how blank, how expressionless, how plain she was.
Outside, she could hear the trees singing their sorrow as the wind whistled through them, and she closed her mind to hear inside her heart. She rubbed her temples irritably and sank into a hazy stupor.
She watched from afar, yet so near. She was analysing her every move, contemplating her every decision, as though she were one with the girl. Yet, she was detached.
*
Hermione ran her fingers through her hair nervously, feeling the greasy strands fall down in front of her eyes as she took in shaky, uneven breaths. She was biting off more than she could chew. She was trying to prove to herself that she could do these things, these things she wanted to do to complete herself. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t manage things. She couldn’t complete things. She couldn’t.
Hermione squeezed her fingers around the random bushy curls that fell from the bunch in her hand. Just the whole strain of it all was coming down on her shoulders “ she was the smart one. She was the one who was supposed to have all the genius ideas. Ever since Harry left, Ron had looked up to her in a way that was eerily reminiscent of the way Hermione had admired Harry’s bravery in their first year. Ron seemed lost without Harry. It was almost as if she and Ron defined themselves based on their famous friend. Without Harry, they were just figments and shadows of the joyous people they had occasionally been between the wars.
She felt like crying; she couldn’t cry. She stared at herself in the mirror, and got no answers. She simply saw herself there, waiting for someone to answer her problems, someone to tell her what she wanted to hear, what she needed to hear. She needed someone above her telling her what to do. She didn’t need Ron looking out for her, but never guiding her. She needed someone who could actually give her a task to complete, rather than just wait for some brilliant idea to formulate in her mind so that together she and Ron might be able to bring Harry back.
She craved an outsiders input, someone who saw the outside her, the ‘her’ that didn’t over-analyse things in her brain. She thought too much about things, things that needn’t be worried about in others’ eyes. And yet, she deemed these things of great importance, and therefore generated stress.
She liked to escape, escape to worlds where normal things froze and the few things that mattered were in her control. She liked deciding what was happening, when it happened. She liked to see peaceful calm in others, and ferociously wished her life were more like “theirs,” whether “they” were fictional or otherwise. Then, she wondered, do they think the same about me? She doubted it, and the flimsy façade she created around herself. She doubted people saw this façade as the REAL her. Perhaps they saw beneath it, into the soul that had borne so many cuts, so many mishaps, so much disappointment.
She glanced around at the books and all the titles that leapt out at her from the older covers, and the unique smell from the musty rotting pages. Hermione raised her head from between her hands and sniffled, looking at the books that had been her friends before she’d had real ones. Now that Ron seemed so foreign to her, familiarity was the thing she craved. She just wanted to sit here, by herself, and figure it all out before someone pushed her to answer.
She liked having a point of how the world looked back at her, rather than what she perceived through her own eyes. She wondered, briefly, and sometimes in great lengthy periods, if the world ever thought about her, the way she thought about other people and their “happiness.”
True, other people’s happiness could never be her own. They too struggled with their own battles; she could see that. She could see that the girls in her common room had problems, problems that seemed trivial when compared to her own problem “ that her best friend Harry Potter was missing “ but still, they were real problems to those girls, and looking back, she felt awful for scorning their sadness. She also wished she could help them, just as she longed for someone to help her. But then, she would not be in control of herself. Someone would be telling her what to do, guiding her, yet restricting her.
Hermione wished she were a fictional character. Someone who’s profile could be printed out, black and white, no complications, no heartache. No wants, no needs. She wished her problems could be predictably challenged and solved, and as easy as those books she so dearly loved to escape into. She reached out and grabbed a book from the small table on which she rested. Faded and wrinkled, almost as if someone had dropped it into a bath, the cover was smooth and tattered, and she caressed it lovingly. How she had once wished she lived in a world ruled by men, so simple “ until she understood what a glass ceiling effect this had on her, and she started standing up for herself and living in the real world.
She wished people could un-complicate things, and yet, she wanted to ramble on, explain everything in minute detail, and still have someone know exactly how she felt. She was impatient, ready for her life to change so that she could find some satisfaction in something.
The simple truth was that she was stretched too thin.
*
She let her curls fall down around her face as she drew in ragged breaths. She could cry now. Her self-analysis was done.