Ahh sorry for the late posting here guys! Had some big things happening IRL that had me tied up this past week but I'm posting this chapter now and the next chapter here in an hour or two to make up for it. This one is linear with what's happening in the story, but mostly is here to set up something that occurs in the next chapter and gives more of an explanation for what's happened with Hermione and these magic little pills she relies on.

Chapter Eight : Almost To The Ground

There was never a moment where she could pinpoint to the beginning of her addiction. There was fluidity in the beginning where she didn't expect to rely on it and didn't feel that she was at that stage. For once in her life it was something that had no real calculated rational motivation behind it. During one of the secret Gryffindor dormitory parties Cormac had given her an unnamed pill and told her she just had to try it. She didn't want to at first, running through a mental itinerary of all the reason that it was a bad idea of course. He started jabbing her with light but backhanded comments though that cut her deeper than she'd ever like to admit. Things like how she needed to let loose a little and stop being such a tight end or how people would find her more entertaining to be around if she could just stop nagging for a moment or two. It was cruel even if it was meant in a constructive manner and she realized how grey a light people had cast her in. When had she become such a high strung bother to others? She simply was always driven by a need to make herself feel worthy of this beautiful and magical world that she never would have dreamed of as a small child. So many people here already belonged since birth; it was a right that was bestowed upon them since infancy. Those people used every effort as well to remind her that she did not have the same right to this world in their eyes. It pained her to the very core with just the thought towards it.

So many of her peers took this world for granted not realizing just how amazing it was to be in a place that muggles couldn't even imagine in their dizziest day dream. All she wanted was to make sure that others knew she deserved to be here too but she never really stopped to think maybe they would never see her like that. She would always be obtuse and ill-fitting of every open space she tried so desperately to fill. She just couldn't understand how a world filled with so much beauty could be burdened by so much hate. Even all these years later she was still amazed that she'd some how managed to fit in with Harry and Ron with all their differences. They took advantage of her at times admittedly; all the homework she'd be shuffled off with to help them pass classes and all the ignorant comments from Ron over the years. It was enough to make any other person bow and break but she remained diligent to cling to this one small even ground she'd found.

What if this was an olive branch Cormac was offering? What if this was another grounding she could steady upon and make others open up to her and offer her a warm hand? Logically she knew it was a massively flawed plan but what was the harm in just one try? If it didn't pan out well this night then she'd just simply never take one again and that would be that. It would be like scientific research really, she'd created the hypothesis and now it was time to conduct the experiment to find out if it was a conclusively good idea or not. She never stopped to take in the extraneous variables though that tampered the experiment. She just never stopped to think that maybe she would really like how they made her feel and not others. It was the first selfish thing she'd done in years and that feeling was just so richly powerful she fell in love with the reprieve it gave her.

It might have been the first time she ever truly experienced love on a deeper level and that's what scared her the most. She'd thought she had loved people before, she thought she loved Ron, but those feelings could not hold a flame to how this felt. It set every fiber of her being on fire and then as the ashes of her bones and tightly knitted skin rained back from from the sky they settled just above the blades of grass like soft fallen clouds looking for a place to rest. No longer were things harsh and increasingly realistic but instead everything had taken on a softer shade of rose that tickled her brain. Movements felt more fluid and slowed down enough to leave trails of their pathway and colors seemed to glimmer in shades she'd only seen in movies. It was like functioning on a higher level and it set her senses a flame to experience this world like an entirely different person. This Hermione didn't have a thousand different worries filtering her thoughts and this Hermione didn't have heavy limbs dragging her down across the earth below her feet. This Hermione was light as a balloon and glided with legs that felt as thought they were made of phoenix feathers. Most importantly, this Hermione felt like she was in a place that she belonged and nothing was terrible or scary. It felt safer than she'd been in her whole life and didn't want to give that up. How could she ever live in this real human emotionally decimating world full time?

There was just no way.