A/N: YAY! New chapter, kk? Adios!
-CatJetRat
Chapter 2
Kicked Out
Hermione's POV
I rushed home after school the next day, tired and relieved that all was over. Madam Parkinson had made her usual cruel remark about my clothing, and I was getting pretty sick of it. A summer to recuperate was all I needed, and then I could endure another year of taunting, no problem. After that it was off to Harvard, Yale, or Stanford, unless I could get a scholarship. Then, hopefully I could get into one of the liberal arts and sciences colleges I wanted to go to and become a physicist against the wishes of my parents, who wanted me to go to an Ivy League school only so I could meet a smart guy, get married, and become a good, Republican mother. Hah. Fat chance of that ever happening. If I got the scholarship I wanted, I'd stay with them until the end of summer, and then, off to college for me!
I unlocked the door to my house and strode in, opened my mouth to shout to my mother that I was here, and stopped dead. My parents were both sitting at the kitchen table, their faces clenched, knuckles white, an object between them. It was a magazine. My magazine. It was my Playboy. I froze with my hand still on the knob of the door, and was tempted to simply run out. But they had seen me.
"Shut the door, Hermione." My father's voice was flat and distant.
I complied, it seemed that my body was no longer mine.
"Come over here."
I floated over, dropping my backpack along the way. All I could hear was his voice, all I could feel was my thumping heart, all I could see was the table they were sitting at, with my magazine, and all I could taste was the blood from my bitten tongue, my nose smelling the lemon of our kitchen. I sat down at a chair between them.
"What is this?" My father's voice was calm, but I could see his hands shaking with anger.
I couldn't speak, I wouldn't. My limbs felt heavy and slow, my tongue thick. I was nothing, just a blob. Perhaps if I didn't speak they wouldn't notice me. I closed my eyes, and then opened them again quickly. I shrugged, life returned to a small part of my body.
"Dunno."
"WHAT DO YOU MEAN, YOU DON'T KNOW?!" My father had risen up, the magazine clutched in his hand. "Do you know your poor mother had to find this—this filth underneath your mattress when she was changing your sheets this morning? Do you have any idea what that did to her? You better fucking know!" He threw the magazine at my head. I ducked, but then stood up. I was seventeen, and I didn't have to take this crap anymore. I felt unreal, out of my body.
"I'm a lesbian," I said flatly.
"You're a what?!" My father looked horrified.
"I'm a lesbian," I said defiantly, his horror somehow making this easier. "I like women. I'm attracted to them. I like to have sex with women. Any part of that you didn't understand?"
He slapped me, brutally. I heard a crunching sound, but didn't seem to feel the slap. It was almost as if my mother wasn't there. She watched the whole thing with a hard, cruel look on her face. She stood up.
"Hermione, you're sick is all. We're doing this because we loved you. Now, I know a brilliant church leader who can help you with your sickness. You just wait. You'll be cured in no time." Her face, usually so kind and benevolent, had grown lifeless, like a mannequin. And then, a miraculous thing happened. I laughed.
"I don't want to be cured, you fool. I like who I am. You want to help me? Join PFLAG, and find me a girlfriend." I smirked at them. My father looked like he wanted to slap me again, but my mother hadn't batted an eye.
"If you wish to continue this devious lifestyle of yours, then you must leave. You can come back when you have a boyfriend, and have recovered from this abhorrent preference," she said impassively.
"It's not a preference, " I said hurriedly; I hadn't expected her to kick me out. "It's an orientation. I'm gay, mom, and nothing you say or do its going to change that."
"Then you're disowned." My mother's voice went from aloof to furious. "Get out of this house and never come back, you goddamn freak! You and others like you should all be thrown away in camps where you can't affect the world.. Homosexuality should be condemned as in the Bible. So is the word of God."
"You sound like Hitler." My voice had grown soft. Though I did not love her, I had always been under the impression that she loved me. "You would really have me killed?"
"I would do it in a heartbeat to save your immortal soul."
I was surprised, but I would not let it show, and I would not let them destroy me. "All right. Just let me get some of my—"
"No. I will not have you corrupting my household any longer. Get the hell out, and never, never come back, unless you see the light." My father had listened to my mother with the air of someone being vindicated, and he put his own two cents into it by punching me and shoving me backwards. I fell next to my backpack and scooped it up, relieved I hadn't broken my laptop. I stood up and staggered out the door, shell-shocked. I wandered into the street, and walked down the sidewalk, leaving my old life behind.
Pansy's POV
I drove out of the school parking lot, my temper worse than usual. I had said some more cruel things to Hermione today, and it had just made me more full of self-loathing and anger. Why, why, why could I not seem to say anything nice to her? What the hell was wrong with me? It was like I had Turret's. I drove around the school a couple of times, and then went driving to help clear my head. On an impulse, I decided to drive by Hermione's house.
I parked the car across the street and watched the house for a few moments, imagining her up in her room, perhaps doing homework, or something. But then something unexpected happened. A few minutes after I had parked, Hermione came stumbling out of her house, a confused, scared look on her face, as well as a couple of newly forming bruises. Before I could stop myself I opened the door to my car and strode out, my heart hammering as I struggled to speak.
"Granger!" I called out, and she looked around at me, blinking.
"What?"
"Are you—" I paused and cursed my inability to ever string two kind words together when around her. "Are you okay?"
She nodded, then shook her head quickly. I had continued to walk towards her, and stopped a few paces away from her. "What happened?" I asked, my voice softer than usual, for the two bruises on her face, faint a moment before, were turning purple.
"I…um…." She lowered her head, her hair falling in front of her soft brown eyes. I knew I had only moments before she remembered who she was talking to, so I rushed.
"Did your parents do that to you?"
She looked up sharply, and my heart sank as I saw common sense had caught up with her. "It's none of your business, Parkinson," she snapped, and she pushed her way past me. I stood there for a few moments, torn between fear and love. I chose love.
"Wait, Granger!" I ran towards her and caught up with her. "Seriously, I won't tell anyone. What happened?"
She snorted. "Give me one, just one, good reason why I should trust anything you have to say."
"Because I hate myself every day for the way I treat you." My breath caught; I hadn't meant to say that, but it had slipped out, nonetheless.
She paused, and when she looked back up at me, hurt was shining in her eyes. "Why do you treat me the way you do? I just don't understand. What was it I ever did to you?"
You made me see who I really am. Though I didn't say this, it was true. From the day I met her in ninth grade, I had hated her. The way she looked, the way she dressed, the way she acted. Everything about her just bothered me, and it did so for months, until That Day. That Day was the day I realized I was gay. She had worn a short skirt to school, and it was all over for me. I kept catching myself staring at her long, waxed legs, and far too low-cut top, and I realized that the reason I couldn't stand her was because I was in love with her, and I hated that. The funny thing was, my parents were liberal, and wholeheartedly supported gay marriage. No, the reason I didn't want to be gay was very simple. It was my sister.
My sister and I had always hated each other. Not the loving, sisterly, stupid hatred. Actual hatred. I hated everything about the way she looked, the way she dressed, the way she acted, because for as long as I could remember, she made my life hell, ratting me out to our parents when I did something wrong, criticizing my grades, music, way of dress, and it got to a point that everything she like, I despised. Including women. My sister was majorly butch, every lesbian stereotype stuffed into one person. She wore flannel, she worked in construction, she had short hair…every stereotype about lesbians. And it pissed me off. My first view of gay women was through a woman I couldn't stand, so the thought of being one disgusted me, and I did everything I could to be prissy and girly, the ultra-fem. But it never made me happy. So Hermione, to me, was the embodiment of that about myself I hated, that about myself which resembled my sister.
That Day, was approximately nine months ago, at the beginning of the school year, when Hermione wanted to show off her new tan and in-shape legs. That Day, I was extra-mean to her, because I finally couldn't deny to myself what I had known all along: I was a lesbian, and nothing, nothing I did would change that.
But as I stared down into her pretty face, a face I had tried so hard to forget, I couldn't bring myself to say all that. Not right then.
"I don't know," I said softly. "I made a huge mistake. I don't know why I say cruel things, I just do. And I try so hard not too, but it's like, now that I've started, I don't even know how to begin to stop." That last part was true, and I hoped she'd swallow it, because I really wasn't in the mood for a full confession. To my relief, she nodded.
"Makes sense, I guess," she mumbled, and looked around. She crossed her arms over her chest and glanced around again. "Can we go someplace else?" she asked finally.
"Sure," I spoke quickly, terrified that this would all fade if I went too slow. "I have a car. Where to?"
"Anywhere," she muttered. "Anywhere but here."
"How about the Starbucks a couple of blocks away?"
She shook her head. "Farther."
"Um…there's a Marble Slab Creamery about two miles from here."
She paused, thinking it over. "That works," she said at length.
"Then let's go."
Hermione's POV
I followed her to her car, wondering when the world had gone topsy-turvy. My parents hated me, and my worst enemy was being kind to me. But there was a chance that this could go all "Carrie" and I would have pig's blood all over my now single outfit.
I got in the car and we drove in silence, her glancing at me every few seconds. I couldn't quite explain why, but for some reason I believed that she really just wanted to know how I was. It didn't make sense, and it didn't fit in with what I knew about her, but for some reason, I believed her.
We arrived at the ice cream parlor ten minutes later. We walked inside, as silent as we had been during the car ride. "Do you want anything?" she asked. "My treat."
I shook my head, then nodded, suddenly starving. "Yeah, okay."
Fifteen minutes later we were sitting at a table in a corner, her with a chocolate ice cream with rainbow morsels and strawberry mixings, me with white chocolate ice cream and Twix mixings. I watched her dig into her large waffle cone with vague fascination; I had only gotten a medium cup for myself, and wondered how she kept her shape.
"Do you want to try some?" She brandished a spoon at me, and I took it, trying a small bite of the ice cream. "No, no, no," she said impatiently, getting another spoon. "You have to try it with all the mixin's." She dug out a huge chunk of ice cream with strawberries and rainbow morsels in it and held it out for me to eat. As I opened my mouth, I was suddenly struck with a thought, much as I had been in class the day before. This is like a date. But no, that made no sense. Maybe Pansy had just gone to church and was trying to do her good deed for the day. I wasn't sure, but I did know that I didn't want her doing me any favors.
Her ice cream was quite good, and I offered her some of mine, which she cheerfully accepted. However, when it hit her tongue, she grimaced. "That doesn't taste like real chocolate," she muttered grumpily, and I suddenly grinned.
"I didn't know you were such a chocolate freak," I said.
She shrugged, and smiled at me. I was surprised that I found the chocolate she had in her teeth was adorable. "There's a lot of stuff you don't know about me."
"Like the fact that you've got chocolate in your teeth?" I smirked as she made a face at me and closed her mouth, before abandoning all pretense and licking at her cone, spoon forgotten.
"So," she said sternly a couple of minutes later, cone disappeared. "Are you going to tell me what happened, or am I going to have to guess?"
I squirmed in my seat, picking at my still-frozen ice cream, appetite forgotten. I could think of no way of telling her what had happened without also telling her I was gay, unless I outright lied, and I doubted she wouldn't see through it anyway. With a suppressed sigh, I looked back up into her warm blue eyes, hardly able to believe that a few hours before she had been calling my jeans "Granny Pants". I rubbed my eyes, hoping to stall while I figured out how exactly I had gotten here, but unfortunately I had rubbed my now-bruised eye. A little gasp of pain escaped me, and Pansy quickly pulled my hands away from my eyes and grasped them in hers.
"What happened?" she asked softly. "Come on, you can tell me."
My heart began to hammer its way through my chest as I frantically searched through my mind for an answer. Finally, I knew that before I answered, first I had to know something.
"How do you feel about gay people?"
Her brow furrowed. "What do you mean?"
"I mean…." I trailed off lamely as I tried to figure out what I did mean. "Do you support gay rights?"
"Well, yeah." She was looking at me like I was an idiot, and I didn't understand why, until she reminded me, "Do you know who my best friend is?"
"Oh yeah," I muttered, embarrassed. I had forgotten about Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter, both of who were mutual friends of ours, and both of who were gay.
"So of course I support gay rights. I don't even understand why anyone wouldn't."
I shrugged. "It's just…that's why I'm here."
"You're gay?" She said it with such ease, such understanding. I nodded nervously, and, before I lost my nerve, I launched into the entire story, starting with coming home.
Pansy's POV
By the time she was finished, I felt so torn between fury on her behalf and pride that she could stand up to them like that that I felt almost dizzy.
"You're very brave," I said softly.
She looked back up at me, startled. "No, I'm not," she whispered.
"I think you are," I said frankly. I reached out and touched her hand again uncertainly. "Now, what are we going to do about your living situation?"
Hermione sighed deeply. "I have some money, and a job. I suppose I could go stay at the shelter until I can afford a place of my own."
"That grimy place? No, you're—"
"Well, well, well, what do we have here?"
A/N: Okay, so I've received some not-so nice reviews. But I'll be okay! And I know some people don't like angst, but neither of them will die, so don't worry about that. Hermione's just going through a tough time. Sorry if the people reading this don't like cutting, but it's a part of my story, and I'm not going to change it. I appreciate your opinions, but that's one thing which won't change. Adios!
-CatJetRat
