Chapter 1 - A Shadow of a Girl
"She is going to lose it, believe me, she is literally going to pieces. We have to do something, we have to tell McGonagall and Dumbledore and get help!" moaned the redheaded youngster, and strode to and fro in the room, wringing his hands and contorting his face.
"Do you think she really has it that bad? Maybe we should just wait for a few more days…" said his friend with black, unruly hair and round eyeglasses. Still, he couldn't quite hide the uncertainty in his voice, and it weakened the well-meaning effect of the words.
"Harry!" the fiery redhead yelped. "We have no time to wait, not anymore. Didn't you just see how she is, like a shadow? Our final exams are only a few months away, and you do know that she'll choose death over losing her grades? I'm off now. Tell Madam Sprout that I'll try to get to the greenhouses before the end of the lesson. Tell her I had an urgent matter of life and death to take care of." Ron's theatrical voice echoed in the corridor long after he had vanished running around the corner.
Harry shook his head and started stuffing his bag with all the equipment needed in Herbology class at the greenhouses. He was not blind. Of course he was aware of the change in Hermione, and it worried him as much as it worried his impulsive and hot-tempered friend. After knowing Ron for so many years he had learned not to show certain emotions openly. As good and loyal a friend as Ron was, he was much too prone to provoking panic in himself and becoming distressed without any need for outward incentives.
*
Three hours later Hermione Granger was lying on the narrow bed at Hogwarts hospital wing. She stared at the crisscrossing cracks in the high ceiling, but saw nothing with her glassy eyes. She heard muffled voices talking behind the partition, but did not understand a word. Every sound seemed meaningless to her; distant squeals from the Quidditch field, springy warble from the eaves, occasional thumps and clatters, the castle full of life echoed from dawn to dusk. Once she tried to turn her head slowly towards the discussion next to her, but it was too difficult to understand what the words meant.
"…it has been going on for weeks now. I managed to get her to swallow the whole measure, but thus far it has had no impact at all," whispered the voice of the matron nurse, Poppy Pomfrey. Hermione recognised the other voice too. It belonged to her Head of the House, Professor McGonagall, but the words got thick in her mind and that sonic porridge swelled inside her head like an incomprehensible mumble. She closed her eyes and tried to think something, but it only made her head ache.
The next time Hermione opened her eyes, the room was empty, and the light filtering through an old window seemed to be fragile and bland. She lifted herself cautiously to a sitting position and reached for a large cup of soup that had appeared on the bedside table. She pressed her fingers against the cup to feel its temperature. It was still slightly warm, so with hesitating hands, she lifted it to her lips . The thin soup was delicious, like all food at Hogwarts. She took a few sips of the soup and then put it abruptly back onto the table. The weight of the cup seemed to be too much for her hands to hold up. As if pulled by some invisible hooks, she sunk back under the blankets and fell deep inside that lethargic, sleepless state in which she had unwittingly lost herself.
*
"Thank you for participating in this faculty meeting. I called up this gathering because of the common concern for Gryffindor Head Girl, Miss Granger's condition," said the Headmaster of Hogwarts, nodding his head to greet everyone seated around the large, oval shaped, mahogany table. "As we all know, Miss Granger is one of the most talented students in the entire history of Hogwarts. Her outstanding commitment and dedication to studying is undoubtedly familiar to us all. About a week ago she was taken in to our infirmary because of long-term insomnia and neural disorders. Poppy has taken care of her day and night and treated her with the Draught of Living Death and the Sleeping Potion. However, the results have not been what we have wished for." Professor Dumbledore rested his forehead on his fingertips and continued with an audible hint of distress and anxiety in his voice. "All we can say is that Miss Granger is very ill. And because we have been unable to diagnose the reason for her condition, we are unable to heal her."
"Oh, so this was it, this was the horrible future that I had foreseen…" Sibyll Trelawney moaned and managed to be both extremely melodramatic and ethereal at the same time. "She'll die. There's no question about it, her material life will meet an inevitable end, a terrifying end. Oh dear, as mundane as her little soul is, she has not deserved this dreadful, abysmal destiny…"
McGonagall hawked loudly and glared at Professor Trelawney with so much resentment that the widened and uncontrollably quivering eyes of that tragedienne glazed angrily for a second before she hid them behind her fingers that were decorated with vast numbers of false jewellery rings. Professor Snape seemed to have difficulties in keeping the twitching corners of his mouth steady.
"What are the symptoms of her condition?" asked the genuinely upset Madame Sprout interrupting Trelawney's show. She was wearing a hat decorated with stalks of hay and blades of grass and she was nervously fingering the numerous locks of hair that refused to stay neatly under it. Professor Dumbledore leaned slightly ahead and spoke after having waited for everyone to concentrate fully on what he was about to say.
"According to her friends, everything started a few weeks after the beginning of the spring term with occasional sleeping disorders, tension and absentmindedness. Then her state suddenly got worse and she sank in some sort of an apathy or lethargy, and it has been almost impossible to get her out of that state excluding some brief moments, because it seems that she is totally out of reach. She hasn't even been able to talk, except for some random and very short sentences every now and then."
"Sounds good," coughed Professor Snape sardonically, and immediately drew everyone's disapproving scowl towards himself. Professor Dumbledore frowned and continued like he had never heard the rude comment. "I have been considering all the possible curses that could cause symptoms like this, but have not reached any conclusions. We cannot overlook the incident in early December, when Miss Granger and her friends had the unfortunate displeasure of meeting Voldemort. It may have had unpredictable consequences." Dumbledore seemed to be completely unaware of the reaction his casual mentioning of that name evoked in most of the participants.
"And we must not forget the fact that Miss Granger is an exceptionally devoted and scrupulous student and her Nastily Exhausting Wizarding Tests (N.E.W.T.s) are near. It could be that her perfectionism and standards are just wearing her out." Everybody turned to face Professor McGonagall and most of the party muttered their approval. "It is possible that she is just overly exhausted and paralysed before the heavy challenges and the demanding situation."
"Rubbish!" hissed Professor Snape. "That girl has never been exhausted nor paralysed when it comes to studying. Her capacity for mental work is totally in a class by itself."
"Well then, Severus, as you seem to be such a skilled analytic and so well aware of Miss Granger's psyche, perhaps you could enlighten us all what is going on here?" Minerva McGonagall said with a high pitched voice, little offended by the fact that the Head of Slytherin had just intercepted her own interpretation about her favourite pupil's and protégé's situation.
Severus Snape twisted his pale and slender fingers amongst each other and leaned backwards in his chair, snorting in an equivocal way. After a long pause he finally opened his mouth and said as a matter of factly as he could have made a statement about the weather: "Miss Granger is seriously depressed."