1. Waffles and Eggs
Hermione doesn't like breakfast. She doesn't like sitting between Ron and Harry, and pretending to be able to enjoy her tea (it's too bitter anyhow, she hates earl grey) while Lavender whispers in Ron's ear as she perches on his lap. She doesn't like pretending that she can't see Harry's eyes—that she can't see how he is shattering, quietly, as the rest of the world chatters away over bacon and toast. She doesn't like pretending that he isn't achingly lonely, that he isn't horribly afraid. She doesn't like not being able to tell Ron how she hates, hates, his awed, moony, face when he is with Lavender. She doesn't like not being able to tell Harry that he is not alone. She would tell him, but she knows it won't matter; it's Ginny he wants, not her.
Hermione tilts her head. Ginny's there, at the end of the long Gryffindor table. Her pale arms wrapped around Dean, their bodies tied in some sort of unbreakable knot. Red hair against dark skin, her high laughter like a bell against his lower voice. They are a striking pair, but somehow Hermione knows they are strikingly wrong.
She goes back to her tea. She takes a sip. Bitter, like she expected. Still, it makes her frown. Harry looks at her. He smiles, and she does too because it's so lovely. And because Harry's smile will never be hers, but right now, it is for her. He reaches across the table and takes a few (more than she would have put in, but he's Harry, so she doesn't stop him) sugar cubes from the bowl, plopping them into her mug. She stirs the tea, waiting until she's sure the sugar has dissolved. Harry is still watching her.
"Go on, then."
Hermione brings the mug up to her lips, hiding her face behind it (but she's not blushing, she's not) and takes a sip. The tea is lukewarm now; it's been waiting too long. And it's so sweet that it sets her teeth on edge. But isn't that fitting (and doesn't the world need a little more sweetness?), she thinks? Everything is on the edge. They are children, and the world is on the edge, about to crash around them. Harry is grinning beside her, teasing, and she is on the edge of crying because he doesn't love her.
She doesn't cry. She smiles, and pretends it's all O.K. Because she's Hermione. That's what she does.
Neville Longbottom thinks breakfast might just be the best part of the day. Most students are half asleep, mindlessly shoving food in their mouths. Not, of course, that Neville's judging about the shoving of food. He does it too. His jaws work mechanically as he flips pages in his book. Today, it's a book of muggle plants. He reads about the venus flytrap, the purple thistle, the trout lily. He likes the names best. For muggle words, they sound interesting. He continues to eat and read, consuming food and information with the same ease used by a venus flytrap to consume insects.
Luna sits besides him. She's pretty good, too, Neville thinks. She doesn't talk or giggle too much. Not like most girls. He reads about the quaking aspen. Neville thinks that most people spend too much time talking. He just wants everyone to shut up and think, or read, even sleep—as long as they're quiet. Neville likes the quiet. It reminds him of his parents. They're quiet—they hardly ever speak anymore, and quiet reminds him of plants, too. He likes plants, he loves his parents. Luna's pretty nice. But the rest of them are idiots, and that's why Neville likes breakfast—because the idiots are quiet.
He eats a bite of eggs, he munches on some bacon. He reads about milfoil. Breakfast continues, the quiet hum of voices barely reaching Neville's ears.
Merlin, Ron is boring. Lavender's sitting on his lap, and he's feeding her toast, and she's so, so bored. So bored that she might break up with him right now, just for the drama. She grins, liking the idea. But then she stops. That would be mean. And Ron is so, so besotted with her. It's kind of cute. Maybe. But who is Lavender kidding? She doesn't care if boys are cute.
Lavender's a really, really bad person. Nobody knows it, but she is. They all think she's just an empty-headed girl who spends all her time snogging boys. It's true, but Lavender's so, so much worse than that. She feels empty (not just her head—everything). And lonely. And she flits from boy to boy because they never evereverever see the real Lavender, and if she had a heart their blindness would break it. Lavender laughs at herself, because she's being such a drama queen. Ron smiles, because he thinks he made her laugh. This just makes her laugh more. It's all so, so insane.
She bends down and places her lips against Ron's, and they're snogging, and she forgets everything. She'll break up with him—maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow—but for know everything is just like whatever, and she doesn't want to think any more and her lipstick is getting smeared off but that doesn't matter because maybe Lavender is almost as pretty as FakeLavender and whatever, whatever, whatever.
She laughs hysterically, but only she can hear the hysteria.
Draco is above breakfast. The digestive systems of Malfoys is advanced enough not to need such a peasant's meal. Draco sniffs. He smirks. He likes thinking of being advanced. He brings a bite of porridge to his lips. His advanced digestive system has been making these disgusting rumbling sounds all morning. Quite inconvenient. He's decided to placate it with breakfast, just this once.
He looks to his right, at Crabbe. His "friend" (Draco doesn't have friends, he has acquaintances, and enemies) currently resembles a chipmunk. His cheeks are so full of bacon and potatoes that he can barely chew. Disgusting. To the left is Goyle. He is slurping his pumpkin juice so loudly that he doesn't hear when Draco mutters something about him having the manners of a pig.
Draco faces forwards again, ignoring his two companions. He stares at the wall. Actually, he's staring at the Gryffindor table, but he pretends to himself that he's staring at the wall. He likes to watch how the Gryffindors act with each other. They talk more than any other house, and they touch each other more—just a brush of a hand on a friend's shoulder, or a brief bumping of fists, or a holding of hands between couples. He shivers. Disgusting. All those germs.
They kiss each other more, too. Lavender Brown is perched on Ron Weasley's lap, and her hair is falling in curls around them while they snog. It's unreasonably passionate for breakfast. Breakfast! What a disgusting meal. Seamus Finnegan kisses Susan Bones on the cheek. Lightly, and she blushes (what, is this primary school all over again?), and it's so sickeningly sweet that Draco's advanced digestive system feels the need to be emptied. He simply wants to vomit. But then he gets caught up in Gryffindor-watching again, and his stomach is forgotten.
It's not just the kissing, it's also the touching and the looking and the invisible wanting that Draco watches. He's observant, it's just another of the many qualities that make him as brilliant as he is. He watches the gentle companionship between the Luny girl and Neville, and he watches the way Harry's eyes are always darting over to where Ginny sits leaning her head against Dean's shoulder (and he must not think of that, he mustn't) but he leans towards the bookworm beside him as if she's the one keeping him there.
Draco turns back to his own table. It is silent and cold; it is the essence of Slytherin. And just for a second, Draco regrets being all alone at this table of snakes. He wants to speak to the bookworm, and tease Seamus, and touch the soft red silk of Ginny's hair—he shakes his head, clearing the thoughts away. Impossible. His mouth curves cruelly and he laughs at himself silently.
He eats a bite of porridge. The ache in his chest almost disappears. There now. Everything's better. Maybe he should rethink his disgust at this breakfast event after all.
Harry knows he looks tired and sad. He is. He woke up this morning,
and the boy in the mirror before him was too pale, with large black rings around his eyes. He doesn't really care anymore. All he can think for minutes on end sometimes (it feels like his brain is frozen) is Voldemort is back, he's back. He's back. And he can't tell his friends how scared he is. Because he loves them too much to make them more afraid, and if he says something, voices his fear, the world might just crumble that much more quickly.
So Harry pretends. He congratulates Ron on his (incredibly public) relationship with Lavender, and he teases Hermione until she smiles. She's looking tired too. He often wonders how much Hermione understands about him. He lets the thought go. He glances idly around the table. His eye catches a flash of ginger hair and pale skin. It's Ginny.
She's beautiful.
Harry can remember his second year at Hogwarts, in which her obsession with him was embarrassing and annoying, but now he cringes with something akin to jealousy as he watches her with Dean. He bites his lip. It's not really jealousy—it can't be, Harry is sure. Ginny's like his sister. He doesn't like her, he just...likes her.
He wants to crash his forehead against the table. When did his life become so complicated? Oh. That's right. As soon as he was born. Harry knows he's being childish. But it doesn't matter very much if someone is childish in his head, as long as he's not outside of his head. And Harry deserves to be a child now, if he wishes, because when else? When else indeed.
Guilt does not go well with toast. Nor, Ron discovers, does it go well with sausages or eggs, or pancakes, or peppermint humbugs. Despite having the emotional capacity (he's not quite sure what that means) of a teaspoon, Ronald Weasley feels guilty. Bloody guilty.
Lavender's gotten off his lap now (thank Merlin) and she's leaning her head against his shoulder like some kind of dumb fluffy dog. Her hair is in his face. It tickles. He wants to blow it away, but that would offend her. Girls.
Ron's not sure about Lavender. She doesn't talk to him a lot. They just snog. Which isn't supposed to be a bad thing, but it kind of feels like one. There Ron goes again, feeling. What does he know? But sometimes he thinks Lavender doesn't like him at all. Sometimes he thinks she's just playing with him. And then she snogs him, which makes everything hazy and he just feels, and doesn't think.
Hermione would say that was dangerous—not thinking. But she's the reason why he's feeling guilty. Hermione is Ron's second-best friend in the world, aside from Harry, and he sometimes thinks that he might be in love with her. But then he sees how Hermione stands the same way Harry does—as if she's got the weight of the world on her shoulders, and if she falters even a bit, everything will shatter.
Ron knows that Voldemort is back, and he knows that Harry and Hermione will stop him, because they are strong and brilliant. Ron is not brilliant; he's just there to bind their trio together with pointless jokes and a little levity when all becomes too dark. Ron Weasley feels so young, beside his two best friends, and he knows that he will never have to save the world. And he's glad.
He's glad, and Hermione's eyes have dark rings around them and these two things are making him feel so guilty that he wants to stop thinking. So he does. He kisses Lavender, and everything is gone except for Hermione's eyes, which he somehow can't remove from his mind.
Luna can feel sadness. It feels like fog and damp velvet, and it is clinging to so many of her friends, here in the great hall.
She can feel the deep, echoing loneliness within Neville. She doesn't say anything about it, but she scoots a little closer to him and nudges him with her shoulder.
"What's a mariposa lily, Neville?"
She knows that talking about plants will cheer him up. She half-listens as Neville explains about petals, and tubers, and habitats.
Luna can feel other sadnesses, too. She can feel the bitter, mocking loneliness of Lavender, and she can sense how wrong it is when Ron kisses her. She can sense how their spirits clash, tearing each other apart. She can feel the cloying guilt within Ron's mind. She wants to comfort him, but she doesn't know what she would say.
Luna can feel the tears hidden at the corners of Hermione's eyes. Just let them go, she wants to say. But Hermione is too strong to cry.
Luna can feel Harry's biting fear, and his wanting for Ginny, and she can see the way his spirit wavers towards the girl at his side.
She can feel the sharp discordance when Dean kisses Ginny. They don't belong, they don't belong to each other.
It's all so wrong, and Luna can see how it should be, but she doesn't know how to fix it.
Neville's finished talking about the mariposa lily. He smiles at Luna bemusedly. He knows she wasn't really listening. He looks at her plate. A small scoop of scrambled eggs lies on it, untouched. Neville shakes his head and pushes half of his waffle onto her plate.
"You have to eat, Luna."
She smiles softly at him. And lifts her fork to take a bite of waffle. She grins a little, crookedly.
"What?"
"Nothing. It's just...waffles and eggs, they don't really go together, do they?"
Her voice is too sad.
"Just eat, Luna."
She does.
AN: I'm just a little dormouse and I'm very new here. Please be kind and tell me what you think!
Love and Waffles,
The littledormouse