A/N: Will you look at that, another story!

Disclamier: Miss Rowling owns Harry Potter. I own an obsession with Minerva.

Subolesco

I cannot understand my friends. I have tried my very best, but the more I try, the less I understand. I see them find someone to love. I see them settle down and I smile at their weddings. I laugh and hug them when they announce that they're expecting a baby.

But me, I cannot fully enjoy my time with them. I am different, and they know it. No one has ever said anything, and it is not something I exactly can put my finger on, but nevertheless; I am different. I guess they think it is because I have not yet found anyone. I suppose they expect me to understand them fully when I do. And in the meantime, they let me play in a corner of their lives. But since we have nothing more in common than our past, they do not allow me to really feel like I matter in their lives.

Instead, I feel more alienated with each passing day. I can understand how they can feel that I am stuck in the past and only want to talk about what once was. But to tell the truth, that is the only thing we do have in common. And if they think I am not aware of that, I suppose they do not wish to understand me.

Come to think of it, part of it is true. In a way I am stuck in the past, but not the way they think. You are supposed to enjoy your life at school, but leave it behind when you graduate. That is what my friends all have done. And it is their opinion that I have not. Yet no one has ever asked me how that is. I suppose they are only waiting for me to grow out of it, and in doing so; leave the past behind me.

But what are you expected to do when you left your heart in the past? When your refusal to leave the past behind is the only way to cling to the memory of the only one you truly have ever loved? Oh I know, my friends would tell me to leave it behind and look forward. That there are plenty of fish in the sea. And, oh do not tell me about how easy a simple teenage crush will fade over the years. It has now been almost ten years since I left my teenage years, but I still have not recovered what I left behind when I left Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Yet, my feelings for her are as strong today as the day I last saw her.

Oh I hear her name being mentioned here and there in conversations. I meet younger people who have left Hogwarts more recently than me, and I have developed an uncanny ability to trick people in to telling me an anecdote or a memory of her. And that is what I live on. I feed of what I hear and try to cling on the hope that she is at least still happily teaching.

"Miss Granger, would you please be so kind as to check if my book has arrived?"

I smile and hand the book out. I do enjoy my work at the London Wizarding Library. I actually do. I suppose it can be interpreted as another way to cling to the past, but when my private life is pretty much non existence, maybe it is karma that my professional life as head librarian actually is a well respected one.

I presume that is one of the reasons my friends only allow me a corner in their lives. I have chosen a career life, a life where family and friends are not commonly known as being able to be fitted in. But my career does allow me time for my friends. But I have come to realize that I am not supposed to have all that time on my hands. What I am supposed to do with that time, no one has yet to tell me. The only thing I do know is that I am not in any way a priority in their lives. Once, a long time ago, I was. And perhaps it was foolish of me to assume that to never change and that my friends felt the same way.

One thing that sometimes scares me is the thought of how much more than that I was wrong about. Some I have come to realize, but I expect there are lots of them that I have yet to discover. I do not fear the truth, I merely wonder when my friends will perceive me as an equal, or will I always be an immature little girl in their eyes, no matter how much I try to grow and learn?

Is it possible for me to grow, and still cling to my secret in the past? I do not wish to learn what my friends would give as an answer to that question. So I keep my thoughts to myself and try to accept the corner in which I am assigned in my friend's lives. Every day I struggle with the bitterness of not being allowed more of their precious time. My only hope is that I will one day accept it and thus finish this endless wishing of reliving the closeness I once had with my friends.

I have already accepted that I will never relive the comfort I enjoyed in her presence. There are no more hopes in me as to one day meeting her again. There are no more hopes of a future in which I have someone by my side. My friends tell me I am too young to be cynical, but it is my way of surviving. I do accept that it will forever be just me. The hoping and expecting "Mr Right" to arrive in my life was too much for me to bear.

Also, there is a refusal within me to accept that you are not perceived as grown-up until you do have someone in your life. The universe is not that badly designed!

And then one day, she is standing at the counter, asking for a book.

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A/N: Want me to continue? Then let me know!