DISCLAIMER: The Harry Potter series belong to J.K. Rowling. All credits should go to her.
WARNING: DH SPOILERS…well, basically all the HP books are spoiled here.
It's Just A Tale
By reiAlethea
Prologue: Ottery St. Catchpole, 18 Years Later
"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."
Lao Tzu
It was dawn, and a calm silence enveloped Ottery St. Catchpole. The sun hid behind the hills, and the tall grass glistened with fresh dew, making it seem as though a million diamonds were studded in every blade of leaf. Fog blanketed the nearby hill, blurring the graceful curves of the hillside with soft, lazy wisps; and every windowpane was frosted with condensed morning air.
No one seemed to stir that cool morning. That was, until a faint blue light flickered to life at the outskirts of the village.
Deep brown orbs fluttered open. Hermione Weasley awoke from a shallow slumber for the umpteenth time that dawn, just as she did for the past nights. A particular thought troubled her, made her restless. She knew she had to do something.
Write it down.
Her brows knitted. 'Write it down? How? When?' she thought.
Now.
She quietly shifted to the side and grasped the wand on top of the desk. After murmuring lumos, a bluish light erupted from its tip. Her eyes narrowed as she put the faint wand light near the face of the clock resting on the desk. It read 4 am.
A twitch and a shift in the mattress jerked her up. Ron Weasley, who was sleeping beside her, groaned softly and flailed a long arm at her side. She quickly put the wand light out and pretended to be asleep.
A couple more minutes passed before Ron was snoring steadily again. She hesitated, but after catching a last glimpse of the sleeping redhead, she slipped off the bed and tiptoed towards the study two rooms down.
Despite her efforts to pad as noiselessly as possible, the wooden floorboards creaked beneath her feet. Her heart rapidly beat against her chest as the sharp crack softly echoed across the hall. Turning her head to check any presence, she arrived at the doorstep.
With relief, she silently closed the door behind her. She flicked the lamp on and retrieved a black leather notebook in one of the desk drawers. As she hastily flipped the pages she dipped the feather quill in the bottle of ink. She smoothed out a clean page to start, but her hand stopped midway as her quill was about to set down.
"How should I start?"
Blotches of black ink marred the once clean paper. Noticing the mess, Hermione placed the quill down and tore the page off. 'Why can't I start?' she asked begrudgingly. She crumpled the paper with frustration and threw it in the wastebasket standing in the corner. But it missed, and instead fell near the window.
Her heavy sigh resonated in the cold room. She stood and walked towards the crumpled paper when she noticed the droplets clinging on the other side of the window. She paced towards the window instead and looked out, the piece of paper momentarily forgotten.
The outline of the hilltop barely registered through the fogged-up glass. She was disgruntled of her incapacity; she thought her mind was just as good as the window she has been staring at – hazy and indecipherable. She could see words drifting at the forefront of her mind, could almost grasp the idea of what she has to write. However, she was having difficulty at stringing these words together.
'I have to organize my thoughts first,' she said to herself.
She decided to wipe the condensation off the windowpane. The lush garden sprawled below, glistening with dew. 'Yes, that's what I should do,' she sighed. 'If I want to write it well, I might as well remember every detail.'
The willow tree's graceful branches arched against the soft breeze, its yellow-orange leaves swishing at the disturbance. Images flickered past her mind's eye – images of a certain dark-haired wizard and his pale-skinned partner. That particular, rather distant memory triggered an emotion so strong that before she could fully notice, strings of words and a deluge of ideas were unraveling in her mind's eye, beckoning her to note them down.
Noticing again the piece of paper, she picked it up. 'About time. This is going to be a long day.'
She tossed the crumpled paper in the basket and went back to the desk. With a calm flick of the quill and a steady grasp of the page, she started with a short sentence.
Once there were two people who despise each other…
TBC