(once upon a time)
five times Hannah Abbot didn't say goodbye
v. to childhood
Once upon a time, Hannah Abbot woke up, and wasn't a little girl anymore.
Those blissful days of not knowing anything other than happiness, and warmth were gone in a haze of fear and doubt.
She didn't sing anymore, where people could hear her. Hannah was never a wonderful singer, but she loved to lift her wobbly alto voice into song. She would sing while walking, sing to herself at night, sing to the plants in the greenhouse, sing, sing, sing, sing. But she stopped. She became afraid of what people would say of her voice, and was terrified of them mocking her song choices. In her head, as tears rolled down her cheeks, angry voices told her that no one listened to classical music, and that she should never sing again. Ever. They (who were they? She never bothered to find out. The threat of the all-knowing they kept her music at bay even without faces) ranted and raged at her until her tears were all but spent.
Hannah didn't skip. Little girls skipped, but big girls didn't. Big girls were refined, and walked with proper posture. Big girls could balance books on their heads and walk without them falling off. Even when she got new shoes, and they clicked as she walked, she didn't skip to see what they sounded like. All her music died with the appearance of them.
Roger didn't sleep with her anymore. Roger was a stuffed mouse, with love-worn black (though it was more of a grey now than the noble ebony it had been in the beginning) ears, and silky grey velvet fur. When she was little, littler, bedtime was not complete without Roger. A search would have to be launched, and when he was located (never by magic, Roger hated the tickly feeling of being Accio-ed), she would take time to croon to him, and lament his disappearance. But now they might mock her if they saw her snuggling Roger to sleep, or whispering to him. The voices hissed at her, and laughed like crows at the thought of talking to a stuffed mouse. Roger slept in her trunk, and she missed him with all her heart.
Hannah cried for her lost childhood, when she realized it was gone.
She wished she'd been able to say goodbye.
iv. to Amy
When Hannah was thirteen, she got into a fight with her best friend.
Amy was beautiful (she could never be as beautiful as Amy, the voices snapped), black hair in a fluffy bob, brown eyes that were warm, and happy all the time. Amy was slim, but curvy, and wore her school robes like a queen. Being Muggleborn, she didn't know much about magic, but loved being magical. Amy was the kind of girl who would say that she loved dragons more than unicorns. Hufflepuff colours adorned Amy's neck when it was cold, and at Quidditch games, no one cheered as loudly as she did. Amy had a temper, once ignited, and she let the coals burn long afterwards until revenge was exacted. She burned with a passionate, vivacious fire that Hannah could only try to imitate. She loved Amy, and Amy loved her, they were inseparable.
People noticed Amy, and asked Hannah where Amy was. Hannah was only "Amy's friend", and would only ever be "Amy's friend". (Amy's friend, the fat one with the braids, narrated the voices)
In Third Year, Hannah fell in love with Amy's boyfriend.
Cameron was also in Hufflepuff, and was tall, handsome, brimming with charisma. His eyes were like the Dark Forest on a windy day- green, dancing, entrancing. His hair was short, but silky and beautiful. Hannah loved Cameron, and dared whisper to Roger about him. When Cameron passed her a note asking if she and Amy were going to Hogsmeade that weekend, Hannah nearly fainted. Yes, we are, she scrawled back, would you like to come with us? He nodded vigorously.
He came with them, and spent every minute of their time together with his arm around Amy's shoulders, kissing her when they paused. When Hannah stopped to look in the window of Zonkos, they disappeared. Late that night in the common room, Amy stumbled in, and was met by a worried, and jealous Hannah.
"Where were you?"
"With Cameron." Was all Amy said.
Hannah wasn't stupid, and she knew how to put two and two together. With all your clothes disarrayed like that, Amy, you could catch a chill! She wanted to snap, but didn't have the courage to do so.
She cried that night.
A month later, Cameron dumped Amy, and Hannah put on a sad face for her sobbing friend, while grinning gleefully inside. She began to be everywhere with Cameron, she walked with him to class, and talked about everything to him. Amy became chilly, and distant, but Hannah knew that they were inseparable. One day, while walking with Cameron, he pushed her into a spare classroom, and kissed her. It wasn't her first kiss, but it was the most amazing one. It was with Cameron.
Hannah didn't go to Charms, but spent the time in the classroom, kissing Cameron.
That night in the common room, Amy shouted, and shouted.
"He was mine! He loved me! You flaunted your breasts, and threw your weight around! You kissed my ex-boyfriend, you horrible horrible girl! I hate you! Don't ever, ever speak to me again! He was mine! I love him, and he still loves me! But now he knows how bad you are, and how awful a girlfriend you'd be! Go away!"
Cameron kissed Hannah again the next day, but the taste was sour in her mouth. She faded from Cameron's shadow, and became alone. Susan Bones became her constant companion, and though they chattered happily, Hannah could never forget the friend she lost for a boy.
Hannah apologized later, ruefully regretting her decision, and they came to an uneasy friendship. But Amy's head was in the clouds, and full of people other than Hannah. They never became as close as they were once before.
The summer before Seventh Year, Amy was killed by Death Eaters.
Hannah cried for the friend she used to have, and spat out the sour taste that lingered still.
The taste was shame.
Hannah wished she could have said "I'm sorry" one last time, and goodbye.
iii. to Cameron
Though she hated herself for what she did to Amy, she still loved Cameron. She just faded from his side, and became another girl he'd kissed. She wished that they had fallen in love the way you were supposed to, and that Amy had given her blessing.
Hannah wished that she had said goodbye to the boy who lost her her best friend.
ii. to her mother
Professor Sprout took her out of class, and gently told Hannah that her mother was dead. Hannah didn't believe her, and ran out of the room as quickly as she could, brain frozen with shock, and disbelief. Susan found her sitting with her back against the tree by the Black lake, staring at the ripples made by pebbles that she threw.
"Oh, Hannah, I'm so sorry."
"Look," Hannah's voice was worn with sobs, and nearly hysterical. "See? Look at the pebble. It goes in, and starts a chain of reactions. Harry was born, he started a chain of reactions. You-Know-Who "died", life was happy for, for…thirteen years. Then He comes back, Cedric is killed… People start dying. People I love die."
"Oh, Hannah." Susan dropped to her knees, and wrapped her arms around the girl now shaking with tears. Denial was a thin shield that broke under reality's sharp blade.
Hannah's father comes to take her home. Home is a hollow place without her mother's rich laugh. Roger sits on her bed, untouched and unloved by a girl who can't bring herself to love anything other than her mother.
She hates how everyone says "lost". She didn't lose her mother, like she had in Diagon Alley when she was six. She didn't accidentally lose her mother like she lost so many things. Her mother died. People winced when she said that, her voice hollow and blunt. Her mother died. She wasn't lost. She wasn't coming back.
Hannah was a ghost and when she stopped thinking of what was going on at school, she thought of her mother. She remembered walking to the ice-cream stand down the road, and ordering a strawberry-vanilla swirl and a pistachio cone. She remembered every step she took, every time that warm hand held hers. Her father was no better, sitting, staring blankly at a picture of the small family years ago. Chubby-fisted Hannah waving happily, Mummy laughing at Daddy.
The funeral is slow, and painful. Hannah feels it like a knife inching through her ribs to her heart. The speech is like the puncture- painful, and shocking. The end, when they bring out food, is the contact of the knife and her heart. You serve food at happy occasions.
Her mother was dead.
Hannah would never, ever be happy again.
Hannah wished so hard that it hurt that she had said goodbye to the woman who brought her into the world.
i. to insecurity
The first week of school shocked Hannah back into life. She knew her mother would have wanted her to live in the present, and not in the past. Hannah lived, if only for her mother.
Life is bloody, and different from how she remembered it. The Carrows brought new punishments for her to mete out as a prefect, and to be exacted upon her as a Mixed Blood. The first time she felt her Galleon burn in her pocket, she was shocked for a moment. She carried it to remember the past. When the shock dissipated, a wave of steely determination hit her. She was going to live.
After she snuck back into the common room late at night after the D.A. meeting, the voices attacked her. They had been unheard for months, their screechy voices bouncing off her grief for her mother. But now they pounced on her, screaming like the Furies. She listened to them for a while, hearing the old insults, remembering the nights of tears. She stared her demons straight in the eye, and they drew back, alarmed. She had never not cried before, these words normally brought her to her knees. The determination forged her a thick armor of self-confidence, and lent her a sword of courage. She fought back at her demons. She laughed at the insecurities that had niggled at her for so long, laughed at the little things that made her sob once.
"That was once," she whispered as the voices fled. "This is the present. Don't tell me anything anymore."
Hannah stalked through into her dormitory, and marched right up to her trunk. She flipped the lid up, and pulled Roger out. The blonde sniffed his head, and remembered that he used to smell like cinnamon. Now he smelt dusty, and unloved, and was cold in her arms. She kicked off her shoes, and slid into her bed. The drapes lingered by the sides of her bed as she drew her knees up to her chest, and began to talk to Roger. She told him about all her regrets, and all the things that had burdened her for so long, weighing her down. Cameron, Amy, her mother, that test she had accidentally cheated on, the snowball she had thrown that had broken a greenhouse window and killed a plant… She told them all to Roger, who listened the way he used to, before the voices attacked.
The next day, when walking with Susan to Greenhouse Two, she remembered a snippet of a song. Susan knew it too, and after Hannah started in her wobbly alto, she added her soprano, and the two voices twisted around each other, making music for the first time. Hannah threw back her head, and sang with all of her might, shouting the words to the uncaring clouds. Other voices joined, one by one, until bass, contralto, countertenor, baritone soprano, alto, and tenor all danced together in the cold, loveless air, making music for people who had no hope. Hannah sang, and didn't care what anyone thought.
Walking to Divination two weeks later, Hannah began to skip. She tapped her heels and toes on the ground as she skipped, making a little drumbeat for the song in her heart. It was a strong beat, solid as rock, and memorable. She skipped, and made her shoes click like they would have so long ago. Padma Patil skipped with her, and they both giggled like the little girls they had been.
In December, she kissed Neville Longbottom, and didn't taste the sour shame.
In May, she fought for her life and came out alive.
Hannah Abbot was happy to say goodbye to the voices.
And she lived happily ever after.
Well, a knee-slapping story this is not, but hopefully the end gave you warm fuzzies all over.
I'd really appreciate it if you left a review telling me if you had a stuffie, or a blanket like Roger. I had a lion named Lion =). Still have him, and he still sleeps with me! I loved his face right off, and his mane is really short now, but still. He's still my Lion, and I love him to bits. Oh, and you can talk about the story too ;).