If only her professors could see her now, Hermione thought bitterly, perched as she was on the edge of the antique bridge. The air was frozen, stealing through her coat and mittens and leeching what little warmth she possessed away. She barely noticed.
The golden girl of Hogwarts, the little know-it-all, the bookworm, the Gryffindor swot...She'd heard all those terms and more in reference to herself. Crueler words. Mudblood, Muggleborn slut, bushy-haired weasel. More than one epithet had slipped past her defenses, cracked open the tear ducts until her eyes stung rawly and her cheeks were puffy and red.
If only they knew the truth, she thought and slightly adjusted her position. In the dead of winter, no one came past this little foot-bridge. It spanned an ice-shrouded river, more than thirty feet below her dangling boots. If she slipped, she would be dead as soon as she smashed through the ice.
Her parents didn't know where she was. Didn't know and didn't care. Her father had been lost in a drunken haze when she'd tiptoed out the back door, and her mum was too busy flaunting herself with her new lover (in the house, no less) to do anything more than give a slightly tipsy wave. At least no one had hit her this time. She still had a bruise flowering across her cheekbone from the last time her dad got angry.
"I don't want to deal with this anymore," the fourteen-year-old whispered to herself, feeling almost tranquil with this decision. It felt right. Like nothing ever had before.
Harry and Ron might be upset for a bit, but they'd get over it. They liked her more for the quality of homework she could provide than for any true fondness for her character. She knew that. She wasn't dim. And she had no other friends. She thought Professor McGonagall was mildly warmer toward her than the other students, but that could likely be chalked up to the simple fact McGonagall knew she'd always have her homework turned in on time (or early).
Professor Snape hated her. He thought she was an insufferable know-it-all, a trumped-up so-called "intellectual" who could only spout off memorised passages, drawing no new conclusions, expecting no breakthroughs. He wasn't exactly wrong. Hermione had always had a difficult time putting things in her own words. It wasn't that she was stupid, it's just that the books put things so much better...
But of course, she couldn't have explained that to him without sounding like the worst sort of dunderhead. He would have looked at her with those unfathomable black eyes and sneered, coming up with some biting retort that made her face burn and her eyes sting with tears, as always.
For a moment, her grip slipped on the coldly slick metal support pole, and she tilted forward. In a crazy lurch of thoughts, she wondered if she would fall, if she would know what was happening as the weight of her slack body cracked through the uneven slab of ice that coated the freezing water...
But then she regained her balance again and sat once more, properly balanced on the thin railing. Disappointment choked her. It would have been so much easier to let go in an accident. Deliberately forcing herself past the point of no return, watching her arms pinwheel and grasp vainly for a purchase they could not find, her feet knocking against the bottom of the bridge...the thought was suddenly terrifying.
It figured, she thought with a weary sort of anger. Come all the way out here and she couldn't even plan her own suicide right. Wouldn't that just figure. At least she hadn't done anything as overly dramatic and victorian as leaving her parents a suicide note. She hadn't left them a note at all. Served them right to wonder where she'd gone. If they even wondered at all. If they even cared. What guarantee did Hermione have of even that slight bit of parental concern?
She kicked her heels angrily against the side of the bridge, relishing the harsh clang of her boot heels against the metal that rang out, echoing in the chilled silence. No one would find her body for weeks or months, she realized. It would be like Hermione had vanished off the face of the earth. Harry and Ron would be certain it was tied back to Voldemort in some way. Perhaps Dumbledore would assume that, as well. Her "best friend" after all was the Boy Who Lived, Hermione was bound to be a target.
Did she care what they thought? Hermione carefully turned over this question in her mind, examining it closely as she rested her head against the support frame, her thick hair clinging to her cold-reddened cheeks.
No. Not really. Not anymore. The constant bickering wore on her nerves, fraying them until they were as raw and open as so many suppurating wounds. She'd had more than enough of being torn apart in the middle of the Golden Trio, trying to appease Ron's quicksilver temper on the one hand and Harry's slower-burning fuse on the other. It had been exhausting and gut-wrenching and she was sick of it.
Suicide, though...she looked down at the oddly beguiling surface of the ice beneath the bridge. So many other ways had appealed to her, but one by one, she'd discarded them. Too messy, too painful, too high a chance of being rescued or not doing it properly. Hermione would hate to botch her suicide, after all.
This one had kept returning to the forefront of her thoughts, slyly insinuating itself into her mind, caressing the broken edges of her psyche with slippery ice fingers. Jump, the delicate contours of the bridge had whispered to her, over and over. Nothing will go wrong. Nothing can go wrong. Just...jump.
And now she was here, sat atop the railing, and she found herself unable to actually go through with it. She'd thought it would be simple. A quick forward movement, like rocking off a bench, and she'd be in free fall, unable to stop herself and unable to care.
But it wasn't like that at all. Her wet, mittoned hand seemed unable to pry free of the support, her legs clung to the ice-slicked metal no matter what her thoughts told them. The thought of actually doing it, of actually letting the slight winter wind take her...terrified her.
Do you have to die to be free of it all? A very calm, rational sort of voice spoke in her mind. Hermione stopped, trying to consider. She'd never thought of anything like what the voice was suggesting at all. How could she? Her life was planned out so tightly the moment she'd stepped through Hogwarts' doors and been Sorted. She had no choices.
Or did she?
She could transfer, if she really wished to. There were other magical schools in Europe. The Triwizard Tournament proved that. Beauxbatons had been quite appealing, although her grasp of French was quite rusty. Or other schools. There were sure to be more.
Or she could vanish into the Muggle world, if she wished. She was only fourteen, but she looked mature enough to be an adult. She couldn't use proper magic, not with the Trace on her wand, but she'd lived as a common Muggle most of her life. It was what she knew best.
If she wanted, she could simply...disappear. Oh, this time, she'd leave a note. She'd tell her parents. Tell Harry and Ron. The Death Eaters hadn't found her, a stray dementor hadn't decided to suck out her soul.
It was worth a try, anyway, and it was certainly better than sludging through the rest of her time at Hogwarts. And maybe even better than her current, hastily constructed plan.
Hermione swung her legs back over, stepping down onto the surface of the bridge with a light thump that belied the intensity of her actions. Far below her, the ice glimmered innocuously, silver and blue in the harsh light. A sudden smile crossed her face as she peeled her mittens off and stuffed them in her pockets, pulling the sleeves of her coat up over the chilled skin. She had a long walk home, and a lot of packing to do.
And if it didn't work out, well...A shrug rippled across her shoulders as she walked.
There was always the ice.