Author's notes: This was originally a one-shot but I decided I'm making it a lot longer. I'll try to post new chapters regularly but I'm not promising anything. I'm sorry.
Disclaimer: I own nothing. It is owned by the very talented J.K. Rowling and I have no intention to steal that from her nor make profit from her writings.
x schmexynerdgirl
Warning: This story contains graphic and gory scenes and very dark content. You've been warned.
Waking up was never any worse than falling asleep, contrary to popular belief. Her sleep was filled with screams and blood and a menacing, haunting cackle and her wake was torture. Every step, every blink, every breath she took ached. The hand that clawed around her heart squeezed with the slightest stimulus, causing waves of pain to roll over her body. Tsunamis of tears left her formerly beautiful face permanently stained with salty rivers that carved individual tracks into her scrawny face. It got to the point where she would not leave the Institution; it was just too much. Instead, she lay in bed, eating very little and slowly deteriorating.
She was once the great Hermione Granger, war heroine, hopeful Minister for Magic, clever, wise and beautiful. Her smile was magical, never failing to bring happiness to others and her eyes sparkled with that mischievous glint she had not lost since Hogwarts. She once had that admirable swagger of confidence, with her head held high and her shoulders back and firmly in place. She had that amusing ability to spew useless information all over everyone, just because she could and she wanted to be heard.
Now, she was just Hermione Granger, the pathetic, mentally unstable woman who bore no resemblance to the girl she once was. Her smile, if she ever smiled, was bland and lifeless and never reached her – wide, slightly mad – eyes. She walked with her shoulders hunched, shying away from everything in embarrassment of her current state. Her brain was still just as incredible at storing useless – and for the most part, boring - facts but she now lacked the determination and bravery her Hogwarts house was renowned for.
Everyone tried to cure her. Correction: tried and failed miserably. She could see they all, particularly the people who came to check on her every day, thought she was crazy; there were never any words exchanged, no eye-contact. When they came there was the quick, "Good morning, Hermione," flat and meaningless. She felt alone and hopeless and no one could see it.
She sighed, anticipating another day of monotonous nothing. Holding her hands limply in her lap, she examined stark contrast of the pasty white of her thin, papery skin against her shapeless orange uniform of the St. Mungo's Institution for the Mentally Unwell. The scarlet scars stood out against her weak bloodless skin like the skyscrapers against the stony London sky outside. Moving sluggishly to the mirror in corner, she studied her once sparkling, cheerful face now a dull white, scarred and sunken, surrounded by once glowing, caramel, bouncy hair, now knotted, bland and limp. She made no move to arrange it however; what was the point?
From something as small as her reluctance to fix her hair, she could vaguely recognise that her life was falling apart. She needed to do something about it but she simply couldn't. It was too hard, too scary out there in the real world. No, she preferred it here, alone with her thoughts.
Her agonising, ever-persistent thoughts.
Every thought, from rainbow unicorns to 'I wonder what they'll get me for breakfast?' turned into that night, in some way or another:
Her friends were all around her yet she had never felt more alone in her entire life. It should've been a happy occasion. Her twenty-first birthday was a momentous occasion and she was ready to have an amazing time.
The cake was out, covered in blood and the food discarded to the floor. Her presents were unceremoniously shredded to ribbons, whatever precious gifts now shattered and unrecognisable. The photos of her friends and family hung lifelessly from the walls, pieces of them floating on the breeze that came through the shattered window, as if tossed around by invisible puppeteers. The pictures still moved, oblivious to the wreckage around them.
She didn't care.
She did care, however, about everyone she loved, who now lay in broken heaps. She cared about their empty eyes, scratched out from their sockets. She cared about their carved smiles, blood still oozing from the corners that now stretched right up to their ears. She cared about the violent slashes on their chests and stomach, their detached limbs that now lay in a pile by the door, and their concaved skulls.
She gasped, her hand flying to her mouth as she felt the pressure of tears behind her eye, and stumbled backwards, in a vain attempt to escape this nightmare. She hit a wall and, unable to flail back any further, slid down it. She began to tremble, tears threatened to spill. She hated what she was seeing and yet could not seem to tear her gaze away. She let out a wail that sounded more like something animalistic, and scrambled, hands and knees, to Harry, who was closest. Though she was repulsed by the gore she could see, she clutched at what remained of his suit jacket and sobbed into his chest.
She cried for Harry, for Ron, for Ginny, for Neville, for everyone around her, making her way to each person to cry individually for them. She felt she owed it to them, though why she couldn't say. Once she had wept for everyone, once she had practically wept all her tears dry, she curled in a ball on the opposite wall, sniffling quietly. Sweeping her eyes over her deformed friends, she noticed something she hadn't in her state of grief.
One top of each and every person lay a single phoenix feather, sharp, black and beautiful.
A single tear escaped her as she recalled that horrifying night. It had been two years and still she mourned her friends' deaths. She couldn't sleep, couldn't eat, sometimes couldn't even talk as the immense weight and agony of mourning crashed down on her every minute of every day.
And guilt too. She blamed herself completely for her friends' brutal deaths. If only she hadn't had a birthday party. If only she hadn't quickly ducked out to get more champagne. If only she hadn't invited everyone she knew and loved to her party. If only they hadn't replied yes. If only, if only, if only.
She was all alone. And yet, she was constantly crowded and haunted by thoughts of her torn friends and phoenix feathers.
The feathers. They confused and frustrated her to no end. Why they had been there was a mystery she'd struggled with ever since. Her thoughts and theories fought and conflicted as her strongest theory was constantly changing. With nothing else, no one else, she simply thought. Over and over, round and round, her thoughts spun around her head, constantly eroding at her grip on sanity and humanity. The thoughts and frustration were painful; she'd never felt so ignorant. It was overwhelming and she just couldn't think or eat or sleep or talk and everything was just so excruciating and nothing made sense and questions of why why why, who who who…
A scream ripped its way out of her throat and hung in the dead air of the ashen room, echoing over and over, coming back around and around to slap Hermione in the face and for just a moment, her thoughts silenced, like a crowd in shock. She looked at her clenched fists in her lap and slowly opened them, looked at the bloody crescents carved into her palms from her sharp, cruel fingernails.
It was all too much. The feathers and her deformed friends haunted her, every day repeating their cruelty in her unstable mind. The drugs, the therapy were doing nothing, nothing, nothing, and no one could see it, no one could help her. She was so alone and she hated it.
She needed to do something.
That night, she found brief sanctuary, a haven from all the pain. The clean breeze tickled her nose as she breathed in. The water rushed quietly beneath her feet, piercing the otherwise silent night. The darkened sky seemed to swallow her whole, an old blanket, worn and loved, with small holes letting in pinpricks of light. There were no cars or people or skyscrapers or anything to ruin the perfect quiet of the night. It was almost peaceful and for a moment, she thought she could fight it.
She stood there, just for a moment, wondering whether she really could fight it. Maybe it wasn't too hard. Maybe it wasn't too scary. Maybe it wasn't as bad as she first thought.
But that moment passed and far too quickly for her liking, it all came back. The agony, the blood, the gore, the screams, the loss. And the feathers. Why, who, what…? She was so flustered and frustrated and it all crushed her like a rock. Nothing made sense, she had no one to turn to, she was so alone, what could've killed them so crudely, why, why her, why would nothing help…
She couldn't do it. She couldn't stay with all this pain. Drips of salty water splattered her spindly hands, blanched white from her grip on the wooden railing. She screwed up her face in a final attempt to physically force away everything and just enter this state of nothingness. Despite her efforts, everything continued to travel, mocking her as they passed by. There was no escape, nothing to even escape to; there was nothing else to do.
She was ready. Ready to leave this world and travel to another. Ready to meet her friends again. Ready to climb up to the bridge railing, lean forward and just let go.
'Falling feels like flying,' she thought and in her last moment, she pretended she was covered in her own shroud of feathers.