Trapped

Hi guys, this is my first fanfic. It revolves around Hermione/Sirius. Sorry for the short chapter, this is just a basic introduction into Hermione's life. And just to clarify: all characters belong to JK Rowling, I'm just borrowing them!! Thanks go to Miranda for betaing this!

Trapped

I lay in bed and edged the furthest away I could from my husband. My husband. I couldn't believe what I'd done. I'd married him. Married him when I knew that I would never love him. Married him when I knew that I loved another. At this thought tears stung in my eyes. I rubbed them away ferociously. I had to stay strong. I had married Ron. I had committed to him. Thoughts of others, especially deceased others, were ridiculous. Besides, how dare I cry over such trivial matters when there was a war occurring right at that very moment? No, I didn't love Ron, but he was a good man. He was kind, caring, considerate, all the right things but just not…just not Sirius.

At that moment Ron let out a huge snore. I laughed a self-deprecating laugh. In some ways I couldn't believe that I was married to Ron Weasley. Ron Weasley who I'd loved since the age of 12, but just not in the right way. I loved Ron as I loved Harry, as a best friend who I could always rely on. Then why, you ask, had I married him? I married him because it seemed sensible at the time. Logical. I'd always relied on logic and it had always pulled me through. It was logical to marry somebody I didn't love because it seemed to be a plan as to how to forget a certain deceased wizard; I thought that as I loved him as a friend, I was certain to fall in love with him sooner or later; it made Ron happy and I cared for him; everybody seemed to think that the match worked. Even Harry. Even my other best friend seemed oblivious to how much I was hurting every second I spent as Ron's girlfriend and then as his wife.

I let my thoughts flow. They immediately landed on their favourite topic: Sirius Black. My heart ached for him. The image of him gracefully falling through the wall formed in my brain for what felt like the millionth time. Even in death he was mysterious and beautiful. I screamed inwardly at my brain to stop-to stop reminding me of him. I wished that I could forget that he'd ever existed. I loved him.

Love is pain. Love is ridicule. Love is loss of control. Love is terrifying. Love is giving in. Love is a knife slicing across your heart. I belonged to Sirius Black. I belonged to him even then, 10 years after his death. I checked the luminous numbers on the alarm clock-they showed that it was 1 AM. Yes, 10 years. 10 years to the day. I could hardly believe it had been so long. When you relive a moment every day you never feel it happened as long ago as it really did. I think I loved him since the moment that I met him. He understood. He understood the pain of isolation. I was isolated from my peers due to my book smarts- he was isolated because of a crime he never committed. I think he saw through my façade. I never let Harry and Ron see the true feelings of anger and hurt I felt due to the snide comments I received from people at school. It didn't matter whether the remarks were about my parentage or my enthusiasm- they all hurt the same. It all made me feel apart and alone, disjointed and broken. I felt broken, as though there was something wrong with me. As though I didn't function properly as a human being. I was trapped inside my own body. My spirit was trapped; I couldn't show my true self in the hostile environment of school where I had the reputation of class geek to live up to.

I couldn't tell Harry or Ron. There always seemed to be more important things going on. How could my hurt even compare to Harry's anger, fear and desperation? I never even told Sirius. I just felt that he sensed it. We didn't always get on, far from it, but I always thought that he respected me. He treated me like an adult- Sirius never mollycoddled me like a child. I respected him too. I didn't always show it. It was too painful some days when the realisation that I was in love with a man that would never ever love me in return hit me. A man who was so dark; so cunning; so energetic; so talented; and yet so broken, just like me. He was broken by the losses he'd experienced, the family he'd never had. I was broken by the adversity and the pain of carrying on in a world that seemed to hate me. There were some days when I felt like just stopping but I couldn't, ((because)) people needed me. The people who'd grown to know this fake Hermione-they depended on her and I refused to let them down.

Sirius knew the true me. I saw it in his piercing stares and his careful speech. Maybe he saw himself in me, I don't know. All I know is that the day I saw him fall through the veil I lost a part of myself. The part that kept me sane, the part that relied upon the fact that there was someone out there who understood me. But I carried on. I remained trapped in my body. I continued my acting as the fake Hermione. I did what was expected of me- I married Ron. And now I'm trapped with him, too. It's getting harder and harder to keep the act going. Every time I so much as look at Ron I feel a part of the true me die. I betrayed myself by marrying him. I betrayed Ron by marrying him. And although I know it doesn't make any sense, I feel as though I betrayed Sirius by marrying Ron.

It makes no sense. Sirius never loved me. The sense of betrayal connected to Sirius doesn't follow the logic that I've depended upon my whole life. Yes, maybe he understood me, but loved me? I hardly think so. I was just a messed up little girl. He pitied me, but that was all. I was trapped in the position of the girl who never loved or was loved in return by the right man. I was trapped.

Thanks for reading, please take the time to review!!