This Story Has No Title
Hermione lay, fast asleep under her warm covers in her Head Girl room as the moon shone its bright light in through her window. She was dreaming happy dreams about her times at Hogwarts with Harry and Ron, and about the future and how amazing it would be once they were all out in the real world together. She shifted in her sleep, waking with a start. As she opened her eyes, Hermione glanced around the room to see what had stirred her from her dreams.
Must have just been the hooting of an owl…she thought to herself, letting her head fall back onto her pillow as she tried to fall back asleep. Just as consciousness began to slip away, Hermione heard a tapping on her window. She raised her head and saw the dull flapping of wings and a small owl treading air outside her room.
Or a real one…she figured, throwing her comforter off as she stood to open the window.
The small barn owl flew through, and Hermione could see the official Ministry stamp seared into its foot. She wondered what the Ministry could need to tell her this late at night, but took the parchment from the owl all the same. Its message delivered, the owl turned and swooped back out the window, which Hermione shut behind it.
The note was sealed with wax which bore the Ministry crest and an ominous title of 'URGENT' seemed to burn a hole through the thin paper. Hermione's forehead wrinkled as she broke the seal and opened the letter.
Her jaw dropped as she scanned the few, quickly scrawled lines of the parchment and let it fall to the floor, where it lay in clear view, taunting her with its message. The tears came to her eyes instantly and were already streaming down her cheeks when she allowed herself to fall down onto the end of her bed, her head cradled in her hands. She shook and sobbed in the quiet of her empty room and wondered what she had done to deserve this.
Dear Miss Granger,
The Ministry of Magic regrets to inform you of the sad loss of both of your parents tonight in a raid sent out by the Dark Lord. We are available anytime, day or night if you wish the seek guidance in one of our many skilled counselors. Otherwise, good luck in the future, and we are very sorry.
Sincerely,
Hermione read through the long list of names below the note as if searching for something in them, some clue to the truth, to her real life, because this sure as hell wasn't it. Things like this didn't happen to good girls like her. But as she sat there, dry-heaving from the pain and re-reading the words until they were branded into her brain, the wave of understanding flooded through her. It was all real, and her life was changed forever.
- - - -
Hermione didn't bother to grab anything, not a coat or a pair of slippers as she ran from her room and exited out into the hall. She was glad that everyone else had already gone to bed; she didn't feel like answering the endless questions right now.
She sprinted down the halls, past numerous paintings which were still awake. They stopped and watched her flee by, and they muttered to each other behind her blurred outline as she raced by. But Hermione didn't notice any of this. By the time she reached the long staircase, taking the steps three and four at a time, she had lost touch with all of reality and the entire outside world. She was completely concentrated on where she was running to; she didn't know where exactly that place was or how she would get there, but she knew in her heart that her safety and her sanity –what was left of it- depended entirely upon her reaching that place, and as soon as possible.
Hermione flung herself out the oak front doors and into the frigid October night. She didn't feel the goose bumps that were forming all over her body, or the fact that her limbs were stiffening under her sheer nightgown as the cold wind hit them. She stared straight ahead, streaking along through the night, unaware of her breath, ragged and tired from the severe lack of oxygen to her lungs and brain. If she had any clue to these feelings, her body would have been telling her to stop all of this craziness, to turn back and cry into someone's –anyone's- robes and just let it out. Instead, her heart pushed her on, harder and faster than before, as she flew past the lake and closer towards the Forbidden Forrest.
The tears fell onto her cheeks and turned quickly to ice from the cold as she whipped past tree after tree. Sticks and small rocks cut jaggedly into her bare feet, but nothing could stop her now, nothing short of passing out. As she ran further and further into the dark woods, her heart pounded loudly in her chest. It spoke to her, telling her to keep going, telling her that she was almost there…fly, angel…fly.
- - - -
Hermione emerged into an empty hollow in the woods. She ran to the center of the opening and stopped, finally feeling her breath in her lungs as she gasped in the cold night air. The pain was so great that she forced herself to push it away, to push herself back to the place of no feeling where she could be content again. Hermione closed her eyes and lifted her head up to the bright, shining moon and let its rays caress her face with warm, tender love. She held her arms out and bathed in its glow, a smile creeping across her face as she opened her eyes to the white radiance.
She stood there for a long while, how long, she didn't know. By now, her sense of time had slipped far from her grasp just as her senses of feeling and sound had before she had escaped the cruel boundaries of the castle.
Hermione slowly let her arms down and gazed around her, taking in the grove she had been brought to. It's beautiful…she thought to herself as she drank in the glittering, hazy light and the eeriness of the silent trees, their sparse leaves blowing in the light breeze that surrounded her and lifted her up and down through the night.
She heard a bubbling brook call to her from the other side of the clearing and she walked slowly towards it, the paleness of her skin glowing against her dark surroundings to match the moons deep twinkle. As she reached the water's edge, she kneeled and ran her slim hands through the water, which caressed her skin as it had never been caressed before. She closed her eyes again and felt its fiery touch against her quivering fingertips and smiled a deep, whole smile. Then she suddenly leaned her cupped hands deeper down into the stream and drew them back up, splashing her face with the pure, cleansing water. She felt a perfect exhilaration as it hit her skin and she fell back, giggling madly, her chest heaving with a laughter she had never felt in her life. As she opened her mouth wide to laugh, several drops of water fell onto her tongue and sent a burst of light through her body; bursts that, while highly enjoyable, seemed to suck all of the energy from her body. She fell back onto the dewy grass and laughed and cried, her tears melting away into the soft earth, her howls of pleasure echoing out through the air.
- - - -
Hermione opened her eyes as she heard the whispering of familiar voices nearby. She reached out for them but her hands came back empty. She used all of her remaining strength to pull herself back to the middle of the clearing, where she pushed herself onto her knees and clasped her hands together in tight prayer. She listened to the voice as they talked to her, and somewhere in the recesses of her mind she recognized them as the voices of her mother and her father. She couldn't remember what had become of them, but she knew that they were gone as they whispered their goodbyes to her on the wind current circling around her open ears.
She sat back on her crossed heels, her back completely straight as she listened and whispered back, and then they were gone. She opened her eyes and stared at the light for a while, begging for them to return, but she knew that they could not.
Hermione began to shiver violently, an involuntary reaction to the sadness that had so suddenly engulfed her body and mind. As she shook, she began to feel a stabbing pain in her back, a pain that she could not send away to the far reaches of her being, but which pierced her very soul as she convulsed in the brilliant light from the moon. She screamed out in agony, her eyes squeezed shut to try and block out the pain as her cry ripped through the night.
And as soon as it had started, the pain ceased and her eyes fluttered open once again. Her hands still in prayer, Hermione turned to look at what had become of her back and gasped at what she saw.
She had sprouted wings; glorious, dazzling white wings that lifted her up off the ground as she gasped in pleasure, all memory of pain dashing from her mind. She flung her arms out to her sides and threw her head back as she was raised away from the solid earth. As she drifted up higher from the ground, Hermione unfolded her legs and let them dangle, limp from her frame. The stunning white light shone around her and for a moment or two, she felt like a goddess of the purest kind. Se felt untouchable and free as she hung, suspended above the ground like an angel, her wings beating noiselessly behind her.
And then she was free-falling, through lifetimes of blackness, through the sorrows and emptiness of mankind and she floated back down to earth. She heard the cries and whispers of every human being and she spun helplessly towards the dirt. It seemed like forever as she waited to feel the cold ground under her body, and as he gently rejoined her surroundings, Hermione saw her vision blur, and suddenly, everything went black.
- - - -
When Hermione awoke, she was standing on the very edge of the lake; if she moved too quickly, she would surely fall to the icy waters below. She breathed in the freezing air, and realized for the first time that it stung her lungs. She reveled in the pain now, as she remembered her god-like expedition into the woods. She grinned as she raised her head and opened her eyes to her new surroundings.
As she surveyed the lake, she noticed that she was not alone. Harry was there, and so was Ron. Their heads were bent in prayer and they stood motionless along with the dozens of other people who waited by the lake. Her mother and father were standing on either side of her, and as she looked, she saw hard tears frozen to her mother's cheeks. She felt a warmth run through her body as she looked past the ring of people around the lake and saw that thousands, maybe millions more stretched far beyond her sight.
So this is happiness…the words bounded around her head at the thought.
Nobody looked up from their prayer as she opened her mouth and began to sing, a deep, throaty bedtime lullaby from her childhood. The sweet sound of her voices ricocheted across the lake and hit each and every person standing there with her. She felt it course across the masses as she brought her song to a close, and then she smiled a shut her eyes.
When she opened them again, everyone was gone, and she grinned at the morning sun as it crested the faraway horizon. Turning her back on the daylight, Hermione walked slowly back towards the castle and cried tears of perfect happiness.
"I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration…"
Ralph Waldo Emerson