Hermione lay on her bed gazing up at the canopy. why did she feel like this? She had everything: friends, intelligence, a loving family and she wasn't so hideously ugly, was she? It wasn't enough. She hated everything about her life right down to her stupid name. This wasn't the first time she laid like this until the early hours of the morning. Infact it had become a regular occurrence but at least it was better than her strange dreams inn which she'd run through the hogwarts grounds tears streaming down her face, feeling faint from hunger and weakened by the lose of blood which was now pouring down her arm. She looked down at her and pulled back the sleeve of her night-dress. the cuts were a few days old but they still stinged slightly when she touched them. She liked it.
She got up and went over to her trunk. She got out her dressing gown and a book entitled SPELLS FOR THE SUB CONSCIENCE. She'd been searching through the book for weeks now looking for anything that might help her. She knew there was nothing and she also knew what would help. why didn't she just ask for help? Most of the teachers knew about the problems she was having. Maybe she just didn't want to be helped? Perhaps she enjoyed being like this? Anyway none of the teachers would understand; it wasn't like she had any justifiable reason to feel so low, she just did.
She curled herself up on a chair by the dying fire. She felt her stomach and could only just feel the edge of her hips. It wasn't good enough she would have to try harder. But she knew that it had only been 2 days since she had last eaten and she would probably binge soon like she always did.
The book held no comfort as always and as always Hermione drifted into a restless sleep
She awoke early next morning. Thank god no-one had got up yet. But she thought it may have been a good thing if someone had seen her. They might help or perhaps she just wanted the attention? That was it. All this was about. Ever since she had her first taste of sympathy 3 years ago when she'd made up that stupid story about her unhappy she was about her parents divorce which had happened when she was seven, she couldn't get enough of it. And if self-harming wasn't enough she'd also turned - rather unsuccessfully - to anorexia and in some cases what she could only explain as madness. Perhaps that was why she could never bring herself to properly restrict or even fast? Perhaps it wasn't what she really wanted even though she kept telling herself it was? Ugh, so many questions. She was becoming even more self-obsessed than she had been before. always wallowing in self-pity.
People were beginning to stir in the dormitories. Hermione rushed to the bathroom so that she wouldn't be seen. She threw off her clothes and leapt onto the scales. 8.7 stone. Half a stone less than last year, but at this rate sit would take another 2 years to get to the 7.7 she wanted. Then she could stop. But she did want to go down a little bit more just until she was happy. She'd heard about a girl who was 6 stone and had been hospitalised. ''How I wish that was me?'' She thought, but I'll never get there, I might as well give up''. those were always her words before a binge and she knew what was waiting for her today.
After a shower she got dressed. Thank god these robes hung so loosely on her. No-one could see her stomach. It was only 8.00 and she had already managed to eat 3 bars of chocolate and a packet of crisps and she hadn't even gone down to breakfast yet.
Harry and ron were in the common room adding finishing touches to snapes potion essay. As hermione came up to them they hid another piece of parchment out of sight. She snatched it from them and saw that it was her essay they had been copying.
''Look I know you too are thoroughly incompetent , but in future ask to 'borrow' my essay''
They both just smirked and hermione again felt superior. Perhaps she didn't need to be doing this to herself. She was afterall very clever.
''Come on you two. I'm starving'' and she strode quickly out of the portrait hole.