"Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward." -Kurt Vonnegut
You wake up in the morning and wonder why you even bother.
You wonder if anyone would notice if you stopped coming to your classes, or if you stopped coming to meals. You wonder if anyone notices you at all.
When you were eleven, you were so excited to come to Hogwarts and when you arrived, it all seemed like a dream come true. The magic and the labyrinth of a castle were everything you had imagined they would be. There were the hundreds of moving staircases, and in the winter, the snow-dusted grounds that looked like something from a storybook.
Now, you can’t help but realize that your life has become a cliché “ your dream has become a nightmare.
You are falling, falling, falling, but no one cares, and you can’t quite seem to throw out your arms to brace yourself in time for the landing. You know that eventually you will hit the ground and you will shatter into a million pieces “ pieces so small, that even if you could put yourself back together, the lines where you did would be visible to everyone; scars serving as reminders of your loneliness.
You pull yourself out of bed, tired of thinking about what you imagined your life would be like. It’s funny how things never quite turn out like you want them to. You pull on your robes with the emblazoned eagle sitting on your chest and head downstairs, not bothering to look at yourself in the mirror.
The other girls in your dormitory are still sleeping, and you like it better that way. When they’re asleep, you can pretend they know you exist. When they’re awake, their indifference makes it impossible to pretend.
You reach the common room, and only two people are there. Anthony Goldstein and Terry Boot are talking animatedly to each other and don’t bother to look up when you walk past, even though it’s your sixth year and you’ve been in their classes since the first year.
You push through the portrait hole and make your way to the Great Hall. You sit alone at your house table, eyeing the few other people who are already eating. Hermione Granger, Harry Potter, and Ron Weasley are laughing at the Gryffindor table. You wonder vaguely why they’re up so early, but stop thinking about it to bite into your toast. You chew, swallow, and take another bite methodically, not thinking about anything in particular. You simply watch the other students mill about the Hall, slowly trickling in to eat.
When you’re done, you go to the library, because you have nothing better to do, and there’s still another hour before your first class “ Advanced Transfiguration.
Madam Pince knows your name by now, as it’s not the first time you’ve come here so early. Today when you arrive, she is repairing the broken bindings on old books that have been carelessly handled by students.
“Good morning, Ms. Turpin,” she says as you walk past. You smile and nod as you go by, wondering what she thinks of you “ a gangly, friendless sixth year, with scraggly blonde hair and freckles spattered across the bridge of a crooked nose.
You pass your time perusing through the shelves, pulling out a few books that capture your eye. There is one about useful charms you think will give you something to do during your free period, and another by your favorite wizarding novelist that you haven’t had the chance to read yet. You are still thumbing through the aisles when you begin to hear students bustling outside of the library. Sighing, you haul the books you want over to Madam Pince and ask to check them out.
“That would be fine, Lisa,” she says, not bothering to call you by your last name.
At least she knows my name, you think bitterly, and debate whether you can call a woman more than four times your age a friend.
You leave the library with your two books tucked under your arm and head towards the Transfiguration classroom, but pause when you walk past the Hospital Wing. You can’t remember the last time you missed a day of classes, but think you haven’t since your second year when you had a mild case of the wizarding flu.
You hate to miss class, because learning new spells and charms is the only thing that makes Hogwarts worthwhile, but you are so sick of being here, that you decide, to hell with it all, and you push open the door to the infirmary.
Madam Pomfrey understands as best she can and lets you sleep for a while on the bed. It’s a safe haven for you, you find, being away from the commotion of the school. Later, to your dismay, she wakes you up at lunch to see if you feel well enough to go eat with your friends and you have to bite back a sardonic laugh.
What friends? you think bitterly, your mind drawing up pictures of Morag McDougal, Padma Patil, Mandy Brocklehurst, and Su Li, your dorm mates who have ignored you for the past six years. You’ve never been sure why they don’t care about you, but it’s always been that way. They have each other, and never saw a reason to include you.
But all you say to the nurse is that you still feel awful, awful, awful, and you’d like to keep sleeping. She tells you that’s fine and gives you a Pepper-Up potion to help you feel better. She says she’ll wake you up after dinner so you can return to your dormitory. There’s no real reason to keep you here overnight.
Later she wakes you as she told you she would, and says she hopes you’ll feel better in your own bed, and although you doubt you’d feel better anywhere, you oblige and go to the Ravenclaw girls’ dormitory.
You fall asleep in your four-poster, and don’t wake up until Su and Mandy come rushing in late into the night, exclaiming loudly about how cute Michael Corner is, and that they’re glad he’s broken up with that fifth-year, Ginny Weasley. You know that Ginny is the one who actually broke up with Michael, but you don’t bother correcting them. Instead, you think about how many secrets you know, and how many things people say when they think no one’s there. It almost pays to be invisible.
Almost.
You don’t bother going down to see if you can eat dinner. It’s been maybe two hours since Madam Pomfrey let you leave, so you don’t even know if the kitchens have stopped serving food. Besides, you aren’t hungry, and your body screams in protest every time you try to move, so you doubt you could make it to the Great Hall without falling. And since you are already so precariously close to breaking, you don’t feel like risking it. Not tonight.
So you go back to sleep, because what else can you do?
The next morning, you don’t wake up early like usual, and are surprised to find you are the only girl still in your dormitory. You go down to the common room, and pass the people who still don’t give you even a cursory glance, and head to the Great Hall to eat breakfast. You hope it isn’t too late to eat, because, you realize with a start, that you haven’t had a proper meal since this time yesterday.
You are pleased enough when you spy food still laden on the tables, and settle yourself next to Luna Lovegood, a Ravenclaw in the year below you. She smiles at you serenely as you pile bacon onto your plate, and you tentatively return the smile, unsure of how long it has been since someone has acknowledged you. You think of asking her a question “ she seems like she wouldn’t mind talking to you “ but she is called over by Ginny Weasley, who looks like she has something important to say to Luna, and you wonder despondently why you even thought to bother.
You finish eating quickly and head to Transfiguration. You pass by the Hospital Wing, and loiter for a moment by the doorway, considering your options. Although part of you is tempted to miss class again today, you forge ahead to Professor McGonagall’s class.
You take your seat in the very back row, in the very right corner. You have Transfiguration with the Slytherins, and Morag sits in front of you, and a Slytherin boy named Theodore Nott sits beside you.
Theodore is the only student close to you; Morag won’t arrive until five minutes after Professor McGonagall has begun teaching and the other students will trickle in slowly until then.
You pull out some parchment and look around the room for your teacher who is inconspicuously absent. Normally she is here already, but you assume she is in Dumbledore’s office or somewhere else important.
Without her, you can obviously not speak about your missed assignment, so you stay in you seat and doodle absently on your parchment.
You almost gasp when you hear someone talking close to you.
“Were you sick yesterday, Lisa?” It is Theodore Nott, the stringy, pale Slytherin who has only spoken to you once all year - and that was to ask to borrow a quill.
“Yes,” you reply, wondering why he cares, “I felt pretty awful.”
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I hate being sick.”
You nod, and respond, “Yeah, it’s not too much fun.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re back.” He offers up a grin as the bell rings, and you notice that he has a nice smile.
Then when Professor McGonagall speaks, you wonder when she entered the room, and why you didn’t notice.
The lesson is fairly simple, borderline boring, and you’ve mastered the incantation quickly. The essay she assigned will be easy enough to write, and you know you’ll be able to finish it during dinner.
The rest of your day is routine and mundane, nothing even remotely exciting happens. You eat by yourself like always, finish your analysis of Switching Spells, practice the charms Professor Flitwick assigned, and go to bed early.
As you lie in your four-poster, your mind flashes to Theodore Nott, and his talk with you during Transfiguration. Suddenly, you realize how pathetic you are “ excited over a conversation that most people have everyday. You are pitiful, you decide, and not for the first time.
Abruptly, you have the urge to cry or laugh. You aren’t quite sure which it is. Laugh, because you are ridiculously happy over someone saying they’re glad you’re back in class, or cry, because you are ridiculously happy over someone saying they’re glad you’re back in class.
You never imagined things would turn out like this, where something so small could make you so ecstatic, and you think things weren’t supposed to be this way.
But this is the way they are.
And in that moment, you decide you are sick of crying, because sometimes it seems that’s all you do, and a person has to run out of tears after so long. So instead, you begin to laugh.
Softly at first, and then louder, louder, louder, until finally you are shaking in peals of laughter.
When you finally calm down, you first appreciate the fact that you’re the only girl in the dormitory, and then you’re glad that you chose not to cry. You don’t even have to bother with the charm that you’ve perfected to reduce the puffiness that always surrounds your eyes after something upsets you.
You just smile, and think that maybe, just maybe, you can make a friend in Theodore Nott, and that the rest of Hogwarts might not be so bad. Content with your day, more content than you remember being in a long time, you close your eyes and turn onto your side.
It is not until later, when you are about to drift to sleep, that you realize you no longer feel as if you are falling, or threatening to break.
The Invisible Girl by solemnlyswear_x
Chapter Notes: A huge thanks to phily for being an awesome beta! -hugs-