Something to Ponder
By Saxifrage
Chapter one: Hey You's Musings
Summery: All she wants is to be noticed and have some friends; instead, she is ignored, unloved, and forgotten by everyone. Even her unknown pen pal has deserted her, and he was the only living thing that ever corresponded with her. But things change, and now she realizes she is not as invisible as she once thought she was, and here is where the nightmare begins.
It was just two words, two words that described her entire existence.
"Hey you!" someone yelled. A small girl with golden blonde hair automatically turned around. She was always the 'Hey you' person; the only one without a face to them.
"Yes?" She asked.
It was Neville Longbottom, a forgetful fat boy. The girl smiled. He had talked to her twenty-three times before (yes, she's counting). It didn't matter to her that it was always the same thing he said.
First he frowned as he looked her over. "Are you new around here?" She shook her head, like she always did. "Then, are you in Gryffindor?" He asked in a hopeful tone, distress clearly written on his face.
"Yes," The girl answered, shifting slightly under his gaze.
"Oh, good, do you think you could tell me the password then? I forgot."
She nodded. She had expected that question. She always did.
"Zygomycota gametangium." The blonde girl said, smile still plastered to her face. It almost doesn't matter that no one knows me, she thought, as long as I'm not invisible.
Neville quickly wrote the complicated scientific term down. "Right," he mumbled. "Thanks. Uh, do you happen to know what a zeye…go-mee…cotah…ga-meh-tan…gee-um… is?" The slow boy asked in confusion.
The girl's body started to tingle in excitement: no one had ever talked to her this long before!
"Yes, zygomycota is a type of phylum and gametangium is a type of sexual reproductive structure that contains a nucleus of a mating type." She said excitedly. The girl paused then, knowing she had spoken too quickly. It was a fatal mistake for the girl because he turned away. "Or so I've heard that Hermione girl say…" she trailed off, her voice soft.
He walked away with a shake of his head.
"Well," She sighed, "At least I know I exist."
Of course it was that precise moment that people decided the girl was invisible again and started bumping into her as they walked through the hall, back to their dormitories. Another sigh escaped her lips. "I guess I missed dinner again." She mumbled to no one and walked back the other way to the Gryffindor Common Room.
She didn't understand why she is the one who's invisible. Why she is the one with no family and home to go to. Or why that even at the orphanage, they barely notice her departure every year. For the girl, it was a wonder to why she even received a Hogwarts letter, seeing that all the professors ignore her, including Professor Dumbledore. She never makes any trouble. Even if she wanted to, no one would notice her, not even if she pulled a prank in front of their faces. But why me? She thought. Did I do something wrong?
It's times like these where she thinks about killing herself. It's times like these where she disregards the morbid thought and instead writes a bunch of morbid poems. It's times like these where she surrenders herself to her quill and pours out all her thoughts and feelings to the only one who cares, Padfoot, her pen pal. Whenever the lonely girl sends a letter to her unknown friend, she feels ashamed that he is the only one she can talk to, the only one who will talk back to her; and yet she feels like a pampered puppy every time he replies. How he comforted her, how he complemented her. How he cared.
But he doesn't care now. She thought bitterly. He hasn't responded to my letters all summer, and now is starting the second week of my sixth year.
It seemed so long ago when she wrote her note of goodbye to no one in her third year and had planned on dying in the next few days. Padfoot had written to her that he had found the note in the hustle and bustle that the convict Sirius Black had created. She had figured that it had fallen out of her pocket. And he wrote to her, telling her that even though he had never met her, and never could meet her for reasons unknown, he cared. He didn't wish her death.
But now he didn't care.
She climbed up the staircase of the girls' dormitory and slipped into her room. Experience told her she could sleep off the hunger. But she didn't fall asleep. She just kept thinking about how she had no reason to live, and no reason to die. With either end, no one will ever care. Carefully, she pulled the hangings around her bed as she heard another girl come into the girl's sixth year dormitory. She didn't want to disturb her.
If only people thought about me like that. The girl mused. Cared about me, thought about how what they did affected me.
For the first time in sixteen years of loneliness, the girl started to cry. She didn't know why she had never cried before; maybe because she knew it wouldn't help, people still wouldn't care. But she cried there and then, trembling with fear of the darkness surrounding her; and the loneliness that consumed her. Oh, how she feared being alone.
And that was when her life changed.
Slowly but surely, the girl started to notice that there was more air around her. Her drapes were open. Carefully, she opened her still tearing eyes and sat up. Her eyes met with the worried gaze of another girl.
"Are you okay?"
A/N: Thanks for reading, please review!
XOXO
Saxifrage