Disclaimer: I own nothing. Blame J.K. Rowling for content and characters; I just supplied the plot.
Title: Faith
Author: verdant quest
Rating: R
Genre: Drama
Warning: mentions of violent rape.
Summary: Hermione reflects on her shadowed past.
Author's Note: I wrote this a couple of months back, and purposely didn't post it. I am still ambivalent about the contents and structure of this story. It is once again an introspective piece, this time written in the first person.
I'll never forget the day that I lost my faith.
Sitting back to contemplate the sentence I've just written, I feel that I should add the disclaimer that I'm not referring to any religious affiliation or any belief in a higher power. You can't lose something you've never had.
I was raised Anglican, but I never bought into the writings of Christ or of eventual salvation. Most wizarding households are agnostic, due to their abilities that make all Biblical tales of the miraculous seem trivial in comparison. Not having been raised as a witch initially, my lack of interest in organized religion may be attributed to being an acolyte to logic. There is nothing logical about the Bible.
No, my faith was in the mission to destroy evil. I still firmly believe that the Dark Lord Voldemort and the majority of his Death Eaters were evil, and deserved to have every pain that they inflicted on their victims turned back upon them three-fold.
I am witch enough to have bought into the 'do what you will and it harm none' speech.
What I lost faith in was that the 'Light' side of the war was really light. I couldn't continue to believe that after what the savior of the light and then his followers did to me. Had it merely been Harry Potter who brought me down, it might not have been enough to condemn the entire population of the Wizarding World in my mind, but as it was…
Harry Potter and I had been close friends throughout our school days at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. I believed in his ability to support me, as well as in our ultimate triumph over the haze of evil that clouded the otherwise remarkable community. To say that he failed me would be inaccurate. He did succeed in killing the monstrous creature that had killed his own family and countless others, not to mention all the other atrocities against mankind that he had committed. He even managed to save most of the people who had fought on the side of the light. Even I was not seriously injured by Death Eaters, or the Dark Lord, thanks in part to Harry's actions. No, Harry didn't fail me in that. He didn't fail me at all. He stabbed me in the back.
One day after the war, Harry came to me. He confessed that he had feelings for me and that he wanted to be with me. My frank reaction was astonishment. For nearly as long as I had known Harry he had been entranced by some girl or other, but none of them had been me. In fact, Harry had always encouraged me to get together with our other best friend, Ron, and to my knowledge Harry had promised to be with Ron's younger sister, Ginny, after the war was over. So naturally I did what any girl who disbelieves a boy's sincerity would do. I nearly laughed in his face.
I was polite of course, but I was very careful to explain that I was confused by his sudden change in affections and that I had not had a similar alteration of interest in his favor.
To say that Harry didn't take it well was the most masterful of understatements. He went into a rage like I hadn't believed even this, normally emotionally unstable, boy to be capable of. He superseded all previous outbursts and finally he became physically violent. I was caught off guard. That is my only excuse for allowing what came next to take place. Harry pushed me face down on the hospital bed, tossed up my flimsy housecoat and proceeded to rape me.
You can't imagine the kind of pain a violent rape can produce, especially when you have cared about your rapist. Even after the physical symptoms of the rape subside, you are left with the emotional ache, the guilt and later the intense anger, even hatred that you experience, all of which emotions affect not only you but everyone you come in contact with. I regret to say that in the coming weeks I struck out at others, people who might have been sympathetic under normal circumstances, but when people are struck at, they tend to strike back. No one believed me. Harry is sometimes too clever for his own welfare, and he was certainly too clever a wizard to be caught.
Without proof and without public sympathy my cry of rape went unheard.
Even worse was that people accused me of jealousy, of being promiscuous, of many horrid things that I have no desire to recall.
I left Wizarding Britain. I even escaped the Continent. I went to Japan.
Japanese culture doesn't require that you tell every aspect of your past to strangers, though it can still be invasive. Under a false name and the minor disguise of dying my already brown hair dark and wearing traditional Japanese-wizarding garb, I escaped much interest. Foreigners are always interesting to the Japanese populace, but as time passed my small country village forgot that there was anything unusual about me, and I lived quietly in peace.
I haven't been back to Europe, let alone Britain since I became an ex-patriot. I have no desire to return. I do not even get the foreign papers, and I avoid reading about international news. My husband, Taka, believes that I am hiding from family scandal and does not force me to confront these avenues to the outside world. Our children are content not to question me about what could have been, and certainly they don't question what was. Most people don't feel the need to dwell on the past, and I have grown to appreciate having my life before Taka and the children disappear into the mist of distant memory.
Writing all of this down was merely a way to exorcise the last of the ghosts that have haunted me for fifteen years.
I may never know why they did what they did, and I no longer care.
I did lose my faith in the people who I trusted to keep me safe, to believe in me, who I helped free from oppression, but I have regained faith through life in my small close-knit community here, with my loving family, in the beauty of the Japanese countryside.