She was fifteen.
She was fifteen years old and already, the world was falling apart around her. It was her fifth year of learning magic in a world that mentally abused her because she hadn't spent the ten years before learning it. It was her fifth year learning magic and her Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher wasn't teaching anyone how to defend themselves, and her Potions teacher was prejudiced against all but a fourth of the students, and a war was being waged behind the scenes, and nobody—pretty much nobody, anyway—would even accept the possibility of it all. It was her fifth year learning magic and her best friend was acting as if she didn't matter, as if she hadn't spent the last five years helping him and listening to him, as if she couldn't be trusted to know anything that actually mattered.
She was only fifteen years old and yet everything was crumbling around her and she didn't feel safe and she didn't feel accepted and she didn't feel loved and she just wished she'd told her parents on that day five years ago that she didn't want to be a part of that world—that magical, beautiful, hateful world.
She was only fifteen.
x.
"Harry, just—just tell me—"
"No, Hermione, it's nothing, and I don't want to burden you, anyway—"
And all she wants to say is that she's been burdened since long before she became your friend, Harry, but you not trusting her burdens her a thousand times more than if you'd just trust her and tell her and make her feel useful, damnit, because right now she feels anything but.
x.
"Hem, hem."
And she wants to strangle that hideous monstrosity of a toad called Umbridge, or maybe lead her to the centaurs, or to Grawp, or the acromantulas, or any other creature likely to hurt her. Because this demon she has to call Professor, this demon with her bloody pens and mewing kittens and stupid Minister—yes, that's right, he's stupid because he's only in denial of Voldemort and he's the reason people don't respect Dumbledore, or listen to Harry, and he's encouraging the Death Eaters, damn him!—but Umbridge is worse with her sugar-coated venom as she draws your blood through words.
Now why would you desecrate the holiness of the written word, madam Undersecretary?
x.
She's only fifteen and she hates this world already.
