Angles and Vectors
Hermione peered out over the railing at the boys playing Quidditch across the field. It was late summer and she was at the Burrow with Ron and Ginny. The warm lazy day had been given over to helping Ginny finish her summer homework and doing the final changes to the special project for Professor Vector.
Ginny's room was cramped and overflowing like the entire Burrow, but the posters of Wizard musicians, family photos and knitted afghans made the place especially Ginny's. The brass bedstead, battered and nicked from much use and Fred and George's use of explosives, had a crazy quilt and dozens of pillows. The bookshelf, canted and obviously the veteran of many years of hard service, held schoolbooks and the few reading books that Ginny could claim as truly her own. It also held a battered leather diary.
Hermione would have thought Ginny quite cured of diaries, but Ginny scribbled in it faithfully every evening and Hermione hid her uneasiness as she watched. Ginny and diaries were not thoughts that mixed comfortably in Hermione's mind.
Hermione peered at the equation before her, dragging her mind away from the sound of Ginny's quill scratching as she added another few inches to a History of Magic essay.
Sometimes the temptation to peek into the diary to be certain that it wouldn't write back was overwhelming. Arthur Weasley could surely be trusted though to see to it that no more enchanted volumes came into Ginny's possession. Still, Hermione had visions of Death Eaters slipping something else into the youngest Weasley's cauldron.
The words of the Elvin minstrel had haunted her for many months now. What is a 'complex and interesting destiny' to an elf? Marrying Neville Longbottom seemed neither. She surely wasn't going to following in her mother's footsteps; there was nothing interesting, in Hermione's estimation, about being a housewife.
Hermione pulled her mind back to her homework again. She made sure her equations were neatly written out and balanced correctly. The new notations that Professor Vector had given her were unfamiliar and Hermione had had to re-train herself to use them correctly. She doubted that she was drawing the jaguar head very well, but hopefully Professor Vector was looking not for artistic skill but arithmantical ability.
The Ginny problem still haunted her. Ever since second year, after Ginny had been found in the Chamber of Secrets, Hermione had watched the younger girl. What made a person so lonely and desperate that they would make friends with an inanimate object? Not that Hermione didn't understand the love of books, but the ones she read hardly ever talked back to her.
"Hermione, Ginny, dinner!" Mrs. Weasley called up the stairs to them and Hermione was startled to see the light beginning to fade. They had been working for hours. She looked over and realized that Ginny's writing had shifted from homework to diary sometime while Hermione had been wrestling with Arithmancy.
"What do you write in there?" Hermione asked suddenly, her curiosity getting the better of her.
"It doesn't write back, Hermione." Ginny's voice was patient but tired.
"I didn't ask that."
"No, but I know you wonder. Everyone watches me, wondering, 'what is she thinking', 'what is she writing'?" Ginny closed the diary and proceeded to ward it with powerful spells and enchantments. She looked at Hermione and her eyes were too old and sad for a sixteen-year-old girl.
Hermione shrugged at the younger girl. "I was just asking."
"I write what I did today; I write how I felt about it. I'm the youngest in a family of seven kids and I have to fight to be heard. The diary listens to me; I can always finish a thought."
"Girls! Dinner!" Mrs. Weasley called again, breaking into their conversation.
"I can see that." Hermione nodded and they exited the room together. "You know, I would listen, Ginny."
"Sure." Her voice was non-committal and Hermione heard the undertones of impatience. Ginny didn't believe her, didn't believe anyone would listen. Tom had listened, she couldn't help herself from thinking. Tom was always there for Ginny and he betrayed her. Would Ginny ever trust another soul with her innermost secrets again? Did even her diary know it all?
Hermione watched the red-haired girl settle down into the crowd of her family and vanish into them. How does a sensitive girl with a poet's dreamy nature deal with a loud raucous family? Hermione had space at home; her parents gave her room to grow. Where was Ginny's room? If you stunted such a soul, what would happen?
Tom Riddle had been stunted and look at what happened to him. Hermione decided she needed to watch Ginny more closely this year -- or perhaps that was the trouble. Perhaps the scrutiny was what was cramping her.
Hermione didn't know what to do. She passed the rolls to Ron who thanked her and smiled with that warm expression that made her heart beat just a little faster. She mused over the chicken dinner, trying to figure out how best to help Ginny.
How did you watch over someone and yet still give them room to fly? Where was the equation that would balance out the human soul?