disclaimer: Not mine.
dedication: To my dog.
note: I just want to walk away from it all.
…
This is her only moment to herself — spending time in the shower under the scalding water, wishing that her world would stop falling apart and put itself back together again.
[She felt so alone.]
"She's a Mudblood. A dirty, dirty Mudblood."
The tears slide down her face, mixing with the shower water, and she sniffles, hugging her knees to her chest.
[Was it so wrong to want to feel for once that she was important?]
"She lets them copy off her. Such a pushover, she is."
She doesn't know what she's feeling. But it's something that was always there, something that grew at every snide remark and cruel whispers in the shadows.
It tears her apart, tears her world apart, but she continues to smile like she is happy, like everything in her life is perfect.
[Perfect is a lie.]
"She's so ugly. Large front teeth and bushy brown hair… She looks like a beaver!"
She's tired of everything.
At this point she's too far gone — totally not herself anymore; almost unrecognizable — and she's a stranger in her own body, not the strong, fierce Hermione Granger that everyone knows, envies, almost-loves.
Almost-loves. Because no one really loves her, she's ugly and weak and dirty and everyone expects so much from her; one slip-up and they say those things; one slip-up and she's not perfect anymore.
[Perfection will always be a lie.]
"Crying is a weakness. I never took you for a weakling."
But maybe sometimes, crying was her only outlet. Maybe sometimes, with all the stress and hurt she kept bottled up inside, she couldn't do anything but cry.
Still she felt weak. Still she felt worthless, as if she didn't mean anything to anyone.
But she's just a girl who is hurting inside. She's just a fragile little girl — not a Mudblood, not a witch, not Hermione Granger — who cries herself to sleep every night only to wake up in the morning, afraid to face the world.
Afraid of facing everything alone.
She shudders.
[So this is what fear feels like.]
And she cries, she smiles but it never reaches her eyes, she pretends for the sake of her own sanity.
Her sobbing screams echo off the walls but hey, no one cares, right?
…
footnote: Read and review, please.