entry twenty-one
Hermione Granger. Who am I? An existential crisis, so it seems. An inevitable occurrence. I once read that it was one of the requirements of development. Society says, "Young one, you are indeed but young." So kindly, and considerately, it grants a moratorium.
It says: Hermione Granger, you are but young. You have years yet.
Then why does it not feel like it? Why does it feel like I'm old? I'm so clever – or so they tell me – but I can't answer this simple question. Time is slipping past. I'm losing it.
It's more precious than water, and I feel as if I'm losing it. As I write this, I'm tired. I can't quite think straight. My neck hurts because I've sat too long at a desk.
I'm wracking my mind. Really.
Voldemort is dead. Harry defeated him, and then he and Ron joined the Aurors, at a mere nineteen years, after some intensive training. Who would've thought – it 'only' took the defeat of a Dark Lord to get them to focus on their studies. In hindsight, maybe they were so desperate to live that any exertion of effort not deemed impossibly important was tossed to the wayside. This is, of course, a sort of exaggeration. Doubtless laziness is simply that, even for Weasley Kings and Boy-Who-Liveds.
And I? I feel as if I'm that unimportant exertion of effort, thrown to the wayside. My parents are still on another continent, thinking they have no daughter, because I can't face them, not with all the magic in the world at my disposal.
Imagine that.
I'm scared.
I want … I want to go back to the past, to when I had large front teeth and overly frizzy hair.
The first lines of this passage were "Hermione Granger". That's me. But it doesn't feel like it, not with my hair so sleek and my teeth so pretty. Not with mudblood carved into my arm.
Words have power, yes? It's why I worshipped books for so long. And I've read this word more than any other word I've ever read, until I can picture it down to the exact contours of the scar, to the way the surrounding skin is so pale in comparison. I know it so well that I could draw a replica impressive enough to make the best con artist smile. I keep picturing Hermione Granger. Hermione Granger is ten years old, and she has no scars. Her hair is a horrid mess, and her teeth an affair in which dentists giggle hysterically at over champagne flutes. Hermione Granger never met Harry Potter, or Ronald Weasley, or Dumbledore. She never punched a boy named Draco Malfoy. She never kissed a famous wizard, or mocked a girl for her beliefs, or rode on the back of a dragon.
Hermione Granger … is a girl. She likes green, because green is the color of nature. She would never do crazy things like hunting down slivers of a soul so warped by madness that its name isn't whispered by even the angriest people.
And yet – I am Hermione Granger, and I can't compute that this is me, writing in a journal, crying, because my friends are hunting Dark wizards and I'm hunting myself. They call it 'cognitive dissonance'. One thought clashing with another. One Hermione battling the other in a war of wills.
I'm studying Wizarding Law, because I want to help house-elves like Dobby, who died too soon and whose lives are incomparably unfair. I've learned that what's moral, what's legal, and what's just are apparently enemies. I can't fight for a cause. I can't say this is wrong. No-one listens to that.
So I say as a remedy, "restitutio in integrum" for the unassisted minor. I use these laws, and restore status quo ante, and that's all it is. The letter of the law. And Dark wizards roam free and Ministry officials bribe each other and my parents go on thinking they've never had a child.
Alright. So I tell myself: let's fix this. Let's use this remedy. Let's go overseas, and raise a wand against my parents, and force myself back into their lives. Let them rail against me; let them cry; let them slap me for my protective cruelty. But the truth is that they won't do that.
My mother will sink to her knees, and raise a trembling hand to her mouth. "How could I forget you?" she'll mouth. And my dad will stare at me in awe. I used magic against them, and warped their minds, and placed them thousands of yards away. I did this. Their daughter.
I just want to know who I am. Am I the scar on my arm – mudblood – or the one in my mind?
I can't keep my eyes open. Maybe when I wake up I'll know. I doubt it.
