Disclaimer: If I owned Harry Potter, I'd be both richer than I am now and be a much better writer. Does that answer your question?
AN: Sigh, I'm forever writing challenge responses these days. Here's another challenge response, this time for The Start and Stop challenge by XxXRegretXxX.
How much misery can one person take before they can take no more?
That is the question that is unasked by Hannah Abbot and the one that has haunted her every thought since the return of You-Know-Who.
She thought she knew misery when she was a little second year student, when Draco Malfoy humiliated her in front of his Slytherin friends. She'd had a foolish little crush on him and he had broken her heart for his own amusement. Susan had found her crying and the two of them had eaten a lot of comfort food to help her get over Draco.
She thought she knew misery when she saw Cedric Diggory walking into the Great Hall with Cho Chang and her heart shattered again. How could she compete with a beautiful and glamorous young witch like Cho Chang? Who would notice plain little Hannah next to her?
And when Harry returned to Hogwarts with Cedric's body and she heard Cho's scream, she regretted every bad thing she had said about her. How could she compare her own misery to Cho Chang's? True, Hannah cried over Cedric, but during the following year, Cho's suffering was clearly far worse.
And then there was the case of her friend Susan, who's family had suffered more than most at the hands of You-Know-Who and his followers. Susan had nightmare after nightmare and frequently woke up sobbing and although nobody outside of their little group of friends knew about Susan's suffering, Hannah's misery seemed so petty and small by comparison. And when Susan lost her Auntie, she was practically inconsolable.
And then came that horrible. Horrible fateful day when she was told that her mother had been found murdered. Hannah didn't even remember the rest of the day after that, it merely passed in a blur of sadness.
How much misery could one person take? As Hannah sat crying at her mothers funeral, she was pretty sure that she couldn't take much more misery like this.