Everything Becomes Nothing; Nothing Is Only Everything
For a very, very long time, she simply chose to forget. She had her methods, her techniques, her own special ways of making things disappear, and for a long time (longer than she had expected) they were enough. In the beginning, there had been nothing but pain, and nobody seemed to understand that.
"Look into yourself, Hermione, and find some inner peace of mind." Her psychiatrist had said, and Hermione had wanted to laugh in the face of the obnoxious old woman.
Inner peace. What a joke. Hermione didn't think she'd ever, ever felt peaceful, not even before. She liked to think that she had been content, but that had been snatched away from her, along with any sort of purpose that she had ever known.
Eventually-
(fuck that word, and all its connotations. Whoever needed eventually when there was enough happening NOW to satisfy everyone, ever? Why is there always – always – an eventually, when no-one sees it coming? The way it is, it sounds like one day, we'll all get on a bus and just arrive at 'eventually', and it'll be one of those old-fashioned buses where the conductors ring a bell and say "any more fares please" after every stop. But it never happens. Eventually. It stays in sight, but on the very edge of everything. Fuck to eventually.)
-it got too much. The pain sometimes faded, but all that was left was an endless nothingness, and that was worse than the pain, in a way. Wouldn't it be too much for anyone? Even for you, it would be. She had contemplated ending it all many times, but she was so utterly terrified of death that she preferred to stick with what she knew, even if it felt like she was dying sometimes. But of course-
(Maybe dying would be easier, but it might be harder. You don't know. I certainly don't fucking know, that's for sure, and I can do this. Live. I can live, because it takes so little effort just to be alive, and it would, I should imagine, take a lot more to die. All I have to do is eat, sleep and breathe and I can stay alive, though it does, every now and then, seem like a bit of a waste. To simply exist without function... if anyone asked me, I would gladly give them my life, assuming they were going to put it to good use. I'd like to be used again. Just once.)
-she wasn't. She refused to die, because that would be giving up. That was why she got a psychiatrist, and her
ways of forgetting, and she started to talk again.
Forgetting, she liked to think, was rather a speciality of hers, but their faces when she spoke... no. There was no chance of her ever forgetting that. A compliment on the drastic improvements to Ronald's culinary skills since the last time she had enjoyed the pleasure of experiencing them, and suddenly there were seven people staring in her direction, mouths open, eyes wide. It wasn't even that nice of a comment, really, but there they all were, staring-
(Everything, when it comes down to it, is irrelevant. All that matters is nothing, and the amount of it in your life. There is a lot in mine, you see, but I'm not sure if that's good or bad. On the one hand, nothing means everything, so I know that everything is nothing. On the other, albeit slightly more alarming, hand, the nothing is suffocating. Crushing, huge in its ability to engulf me, there really is no way to stop it. Which is a fucking shame, really, if you think about it. Anyway. Due to the rather large amount of nothing in my life, do you think I need anything else? No shitting way. I'm fine with my nothing.)
-at her like she'd sprouted an extra head. Seventeen words and she was an enigma. That was what it felt like, then, to be an enigma, to be something wondrous. She thought it was a little overrated.
"But you stopped, Hermione. For ages and ages, it was just like you didn't work anymore." Ginny had said to her following the aforementioned meal.
She thought this was a perfectly adequate description of what had happened to her, not that she ever told Ginny that. She stopped, and everything and everyone around her carried on as though nothing was wrong, as though she was the only one who could see the horrifying difference in the world. Sympathy-
(And who invented sympathy? Of all the ways God could have chosen to fuck people over, he chose sympathy. We can't even react badly to it because people think they're being nice, so we have to sit there and take it – just fucking take it – like we're completely okay with people telling us that "it'll be alright". NO IT WON'T. They don't get it; none of them do. It – the world, life, nothing – can never be alright again, and I can't put that into words people will understand. I'll open my mouth and a string of obscenities, sobs and hysterical cackles will be all that I have to say. Well screw them. Screw them and their sympathetic faces that come and leer at us all fucking day long. We don't need sympathy; in fact, sympathy is the very last thing we need. We need distraction in the form of pure, unadulterated anger. Give it to us. Give it to us now.)
-rained down from all sides and she found it humiliating to have to smile and thank the strangers for the flowers, the cakes, the home-baked lasagnes they came and shoved into the already overfull freezer. The awkward minutes dragged by each time someone paid her yet another (what she can only assume they felt to be obligatory) visit, and all she could hear was the ticking of the alarm clock and the incessant bark of next door's dog.
Very often, she is scared that one day she won't remember what happiness feels like. It is not something that she ever wants to feel again, but it is nice to have it, locked in a memory somewhere. Sometimes, when she is sitting in her garden with a book and a glass of lemonade with a strawberry garnish, she is overcome with a kind of weightlessness, and it is quite unlike anything she can ever remember feeling before. She doesn't think it is happiness, that is still a long way off, but it's closer than she's come in a while.
There are even certain things that make her smile. It hurts to smile – and she rather thinks she ought to practice more often so her smile muscles don't get rusty – so she knows when she's doing it. It isn't so bad, but the guilt that comes with it is what really gets her down. Generally, it isn't worth it, and she prefers to keep her face neutral. It works, neutrality. Her expressionless face-
(Sometimes it kills me. Before, emotions, they were just a thing that I had and could show any which way I chose, but now… Sometimes I would give anything – anything – to just shed a tear and have people see it, or laugh at something funny or bite my lip and have someone ask what the matter is. Other times, I really couldn't give a flying monkey's shit. What are emotions compared with everything I never wanted? I am a blank canvas, a totally unreadable book. And it's the easiest thing I've ever had the misfortune to have to do. Nobody ever knows what I'm thinking, and because people are so fucking predictable, nobody ever bothers to ask. So well done me, for so successfully hiding everything that is – or used to be – me. I think I've done a fucking good job, don't you?)
-confused people no end. She assumed that some people thought she was cold and bitter, and though it was partly that, mostly her detachment was to prevent the pity, and the tears, and the shame that came with all those memories she kept buried.
At one point, a few individuals had become concerned at her lack of reaction to anything, and they had tried to do something about it. And so, for a while, she found herself locked in a room tied up to machines that buzzed and whirred and ticked. It made her want to laugh, that wizards, in all their 'Magic Is Might' glory still relied on machines. Doctors pressed buttons and tubes stole her blood, but she just sat there, blinking up at them from the depths of her bed.
"Is this it?" She had once asked a male doctor who was taking a sample of her stomach fluids.
The doctor started before looking at her in disbelief. "Is what it?" He replied.
"You're so desperate to find out what's wrong with me that you're looking at the stuff I eat. And you never even asked me. You never asked me, not once, what the problem was. Isn't that funny?" Of course, no-one laughed, but no-one ever laughs when something is actually funny.
"Okay, Miss Granger, I apologise. Would you like to tell me what's wrong with you?" The doctor had put down his syringe and had the kind of smile on his face that she imagined he used with children or mentally handicapped adults.
"Absolutely-
(fuck all. Absolutely fuck all, that's what's wrong with me. I don't know why everyone insists that I have a problem, but they do, so six times a day I force three pills down my throat, and pretend that they're making me better. Which is ridiculous, because they're not, because there is nothing wrong with me. How hard is that to believe? That someone can go through what I went through and come away with nothing more than a few unwanted memories. Oh no. Fuck that. I have to be diagnosed with some disorder, and put on suicide watch, and go and lie on an uncomfortable shitting sofa four times a week, all so yet more doctors can sit there and scratch their bloated heads about what my problem is. My problem?! What about theirs? They have an insatiable need for drama that cannot be quenched by their own miserable lives, so they resort to modern medicine, and pretend to care about total strangers who only want some fucking sleep. Well news flash. There's absolutely fuck all wrong with me, so you're worrying for nothing. Go find some other poor fuck to concern your pretentious little minds over.)
-I would. I lost everything I ever cared about. Can you imagine what that feels like? No, I should imagine not, because the closest you've ever come to real regret is… well, have you ever regretted anything?"
And so she had walked away from the bed and the tubes and the beeps, away from the people who wore the white coats for seemingly no good reason other than to look different from those they imprisoned.
They told her, months and months afterwards, that it had all been for her own sake. They only wanted the best for her, they said, and the bed and the tubes and the beeps had been the best in the country. Occasionally they told her to go back. "Give it another try" they said, over and over again. She walked away from them, then, and didn't come back for a very long time. Good riddance she liked to think, but she did miss them, even if only a little bit.
The not eating didn't actually help in the end. She had thought it would improve everybody else's chances of redemption, if she tried to say sorry for what she did. It had been-
(bloody brilliant. Hunger is the best feeling in the entire world, and I can be hungry without wanting to rip out my own heart and give it to you, bloody and beating. It is a guilt free emotion, and so liberating. To feel your stomach writhing and screaming out for sustenance: there is nothing like it. I can feel pain, real pain, without anyone getting all hot and bothered about scars on my arms or bruises on my face. I can just sit and be, waiting for the next wall of agony to hit me. And isn't it ironic? Being hungry feels just like a punch in the stomach, except it never stops. Punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch. So you see? I can remember the pain without having to remember anything. Punch after fucking punch.)
-one of her less intelligent ideas, and again she had found herself in a hospital with the bed and the tubes and the beeps, and that was when the pills and the suicide watch and psychiatrist had come along.
"This is not the right way to deal with things, Hermione. You need to embrace your past so you can face the future with a smile."
But this woman was wrong. This woman, the one who sat for an hour four times a week with a notebook open on her knees and a face that was nearly as blank as her own, she had it wrong. Hermione had no desire to embrace anything, much less to smile at what was coming.
"You are obviously very sad-
(NO FUCKING SHIT, SHERLOCK. What a deliciously derisory way to describe how I am feeling. I am sad, you are sad, he/she/it is sad, we are sad, you are sad, they are sad. But who would believe that I am actually paying this bitch to sit there and tell me that I am sad? I think a rat's left buttock could tell me that I am sad, but no, I have to give someone nearly a hundred pounds an hour to do the job for me. Well, isn't that just the icing on the fucking cake. Not only am I considered so much of a liability to every single person I know and have known, as if that isn't enough to keep me nice and humiliated for the rest of my pathetic, delightfully insignificant existence, the world is slowly draining me of all my worldly possessions because it "only wants what's best for me".)
-about what happened, but I think we now need to start addressing the events that followed-"
She had stopped the stranger right there. This woman had no right – no right – to make her think about things that she had spent the better part of eight years trying to forget. Alright, force her come and act like a fool by making her drink apple juice and talking to her as though she knows what she's feeling, but she couldn't make her remember. No-one, bar no-one could do that.
"Remember, Hermione, we only want what's best for you, and right now, the best thing is for you to try and accept that your famil-"
"NO. Don't say it, don't say that word!"
"Hermione," the woman had continued, her voice firm and controlling. "You need to say it out loud. It's been seven years and you can't even say the word! You can't even come out and say that-"
"…please don't say it." She whimpered, but the doctor's voice cut across her.
"YOUR FAMILY IS DEAD."
(Silence. Blessed silence. Ringing round and round in my head, I can so easily lose myself in it. This is a loud silence.)
She couldn't cope. She knew she couldn't, and maybe all she'd been doing this whole time was pretending to herself that she could, but now there was no denying the sorry state of affairs: she couldn't cope. Instead, she let the sea of memories that she'd been hiding from drown her.
O
There was a girl walking slowly across the courtyard. She appeared to have no particular place to be. The truth was: she didn't. Harry and Ron had Quidditch practice and detention respectively, and without them, she usually retired either to bed or to the library. Today, she decided, was going to be different. She was more than up to date in every single subject she was taking, and it was four o'clock on a Sunday afternoon. She refused to admit that she would even contemplate going to bed. So here she was, attempting to behave like she felt she ought to, and being outside.
It was less exciting than she'd hoped, and she was quickly running out of things she thought she could do. Swimming was out, there was no way she was going to deign to wear the school costume that her mother had issued her with, complete with peeling school logo and moving Gryffindor lion. She wouldn't revert to stereotype and read a book, she could do that in the library and she'd come out here to escape that. She could sunbathe, she supposed, but to be honest, the idea of lying in the full sun for hours just to discolour her own skin didn't really appeal.
In a show sudden intention, she laid her robe out under a tree and sat down on it.
'This is fun.' She thought. 'This is fun.'
Absentmindedly she began playing with the daisies that littered the grass around her, and she found herself making a daisy-chain.
"How touching. The brain has a heart after all. Granger, this is remarkably humane of you."
She didn't reply, but froze when Malfoy bent and plucked the chain from her hands, letting fall onto his own wrist.
"I think it suits me, don't you? Or rather, suits me better than it would a fat piece of shit like yourself."
And this was how it went. He would begin, lull her into a false sense of security by, for a few minutes, acting like a normal person. Then… BAM. He destroyed her.
"Seriously, Granger, your two fuck-buddies might've kept their mouths shut, but frankly, you need to start shedding a few. Maybe Muggle filth don't care what you look like, but if I have to look at you, I would prefer to be able to see the person standing behind you."
She hated – more than she hated what he was saying – that his words felt like pins in her eyes that made her bleed.
Satisfied with the effect he'd had, Malfoy turned to leave. "Oh, and Granger? You've got an ink smudge." He rubbed a spot on his own cheek. "Right there."
O
She regarded the egg in front of her. It was fried. She wondered how many calories were in this one egg. It was a depressing thought: she wouldn't be full from this tiny egg, but it would take her the better part of two hours to burn off the fat it contained. Was it worth it? Hermione thought not.
She pushed the egg away from her and reached for an apple. She cut it into half, then again, and again, until she had eight pieces of apple. One was half way to her mouth when a thought hit her full in the face. Was she going to get any enjoyment from this apple? It wouldn't fill her up, and though there were fewer calories in it than there were in the egg, she might as well just not eat it, and save herself the bother. There was always lunch.
O
"Granger, what the fuck. Now I'll have to get this cleaned. What was that for?" He sounded indignant.
"You want me, don't you?" She stood up and walked towards him, swaying her hips slightly and pushing her chest out. "Don't tell me you don't, I can see it in your eyes."
"What if I did?" He taunted, a smirk playing on his lips. "What would you do, you frigid cow?"
She knelt in front of him and began to unzip his trousers. "No, not a cow. Tonight, Malfoy, I am yours, but you must not call me a cow. Am I not graceful and elegant? A cow is not graceful and elegant, therefore I am not a cow."
"Granger, what are you doing?"
"I'm doing what you've wanted me to do for the past ten months. Everyone sees it. More importantly, I see it. Now be quiet, and let me do what I will."
O
"I know what you're doing to yourself." He said quietly, but to her it sounded loud and catastrophic. No-one was supposed to know. It was her little secret. "You've got to stop."
"I don't know what you're talking about, Malfoy. Now unless you've come for a good, hard shag, can you leave me the fuck alone?"
"Hermione, please, just listen. You can cover it up as much as you like, but I can see, Hermione. Christ, we can all use our eyes, can't we?"
"Are you just going to stand there and talk complete shit until I blow you? Because I'll just do it, right now."
"Don't insult my intelligence! I know what you're doing to yourself and I want you to stop! I'll help you, we'll all help you, but please!"
"Please what, Malfoy? Please suck my cock? Please let me come all over your face? Please WHAT?" He winced and she laughed. "You've gone soft, Malfoy. War's turned you soft."
He looked at her, pain etched into every line on his face. "Don't talk like that, it's not you."
"Like you know me."
There was a beat of silence. Such loud, loud silence. "Your favourite colour is green because grass is green and grass reminds you of freedom. Your earliest memory is of you holding your brother in the hospital where he was born, and you think you saw him smile, but now you just think it was wind. You hate it when people over exaggerate, or when they complain about problems that have nothing to do with you. You think I smell like wood smoke, even though I've never been near a bonfire in my entire life. You prefer mornings to evenings and rainy days to sunny ones. You miss little things about life before all this that you never even noticed, like the taste of cake, and the sound of rain hitting the roof of a tent. Nothing-"
"Stop." She whispered, and she was looking at him as though he had uttered a particularly disgusting swearword. "Why are you saying all of this?"
"I know you, Hermione, and I know what this whole disastrous situation has done to you, but there's no need to starve yourself-"
"You said I was fat." She interrupted, not looking at him.
"What?"
"You told me I needed to shed a few pounds so you could see the person behind you, so I did."
"You're joking. Hermione, I was a sadistic twat in school, and I enjoyed making you miserable."
"It worked. Well done."
"Hermione," he said in a low voice. "You are, and always have been, completely perfect. Don't bother trying to believe otherwise."
O
She looked… peaceful. Entirely peaceful, and beautiful and new. Hermione couldn't understand how she had ever felt happy before, because now she had her. A daughter. A part of her was outside, facing the world and only she could protect her from it.
"Look what we made." He said from her other side.
"I love her so much."
"Me too."
"I love you so much."
"Me too."
O
She didn't understand what was happening. Something wasn't right. Something was very, very wrong. The lights were all off, but the TV was on in the living room. A late night game show was playing to itself, and the host was grinning out of the screen as the contestants jumped up and down on a big red trampoline. The house smelled of peppermint and of the roses Hermione had bought yesterday. But something was very, very wrong.
In fact, she was right. Upstairs, her husband and two daughters would be waiting for her. They were all, unfortunately, dead. She will walk into her bedroom and find, written in blood across the far wall, "we told you". She will run, screaming, into her daughters' room, where she will see the bodies of her husband and her children hanging like dolls from the light fixture. Her youngest child's eyes will still be moving, and in the process of trying to get her down she will simply pull tighter on the rope and speed up her death. She will then hear the sounds of someone laughing, and walk dazedly into the en suite bathroom, where her father-in-law will be sat on the edge of the sink.
"How touching." He will say, before getting up, walking passed her and out of the room. Hermione will hear the door slam before she moves.
O
Drowning in the memories. They consumed her, and she welcomed them. Welcomed them after eight years of trying to forget. Wasted time. So much time wasted pretending she was alright. Nothing was alright, and yet nothing was everything, so maybe everything was alright after all. Who knew whether it was anything, really.
And again with the bed and the tubes and the beeps, the pills and the suicide watch and the psychiatrist. It started all over again, and this time she didn't bother. It was enough to be alive-
(No, it isn't. I know that now, that just to exist isn't enough, and I think I can do it, I really do. So give me another chance. Please, I'll do anything. I'll take the sympathy, the lasagnes, the wasted time and the regrets. I'll go to church, pray for my forgiveness and sing about God and Jesus and the prophets. I'll talk to the woman with the notebook and the glasses about how I feel, I'll embrace my fucking past if I can face the future with a smile. I'll eat proper meals and not think about calories or fat or any of it. I'll love them, and be peaceful. I swear, give me the chance and I'll be happy again. Because I have nothing to lose and everything to gain, but if nothing is everything and everything is nothing, what difference does it make? I AM SAD. That is what's wrong with me: I'm sad, but maybe one day, maybe EVENTUALLY I won't be. Isn't that enough?)
-but Hermione didn't even want that. She wanted to sink into blissful oblivion, just her and her remembering.