I don't own Harry Potter or any of the characters in this story. I merely play around with them a little. Unbeta'd so any and all errors are entirely mine.
Whiskey Lullaby
Somehow, somewhere during the night Hermione manages to fall asleep. The shaking woke her up again a few hours ago. The shaking and the burning pain shooting through her entire body made the small electric currents running through her body yesterday feel like child's-play.
The fuzzy feeling one would get from receiving a slight shock from touching an open wire is nothing compared to the pain Hermione is in now. Words never failed her in the past, but it would seem that they're failing her now.
Hermione wants to laugh, cry, scream, die. All at once. She thinks back to when she was still a child, when she was still friends with Harry and Ron and Ginny and Luna and Neville and everyone she thought she'd never betray. One Christmas holiday, Ron, Harry and Hermione were at Ron's family home. They were drinking hot chocolate as quickly as Mrs. Weasley could make it. She burned her tongue while gulping down another mug full of chocolaty goodness. The pain was unbearable. Ron had spent the rest of their visit bringing her ice cubes.
Hermione would smile at the memory if she wasn't clenching her jaw as tightly as it would go. It is still dark outside. She threw up over an hour ago, meat and potatoes flushed down the drain along with her dignity. She desperately needs a shower. She wants to curl up in a little ball and only wake up when the torture is over, but that just isn't the way the world works. Hermione knows she's supposed to learn some or other life lesson from this experience, but she simply can't force herself to think past the pain she's feeling right now.
Hermione wants desperately not to focus on the pain, but her brain just won't do what she wants it to do.
She can see the sun slowly creeping under the safe covers of the curtains. Hermione can feel her heart sink. She has to force herself to get up. She has to force herself to get into the shower and was the remaining vomit from her skin and hair. It's going to be another long day. Much longer than yesterday, but when it is over, she can curl back into a ball and pity herself until the need to vomit is stronger than the need to breathe.
In the past, the need for a fix would overrule all of her senses, just like it is now. She needs it like she needs food, the want and pure need is creeping up her veins like a bad itch. An itch she can't scratch anymore. Somehow the need to live became more important than the need to feel untouchable, invincible.
Somewhere between the last fix and the next fix, she began thinking about living and not just existing. Maybe it was her face breaking out into sores and acne; or her hair falling out in clumps. Or the fact that she hasn't has a decent night's sleep in over two years.
Hermione read somewhere that when a person hits rock bottom, they have nothing to live for anymore, nothing makes sense and they've lost the last few things that did. Maybe she hit rock bottom when she lost all of her friends and her parents the moment she started dating Viktor. She hit rock bottom when she was sixteen. That thought alone is frightening. Heart-clenching terrifying.
Hermione runs to the bathroom. She needs to throw up again. Her entire body burns like she's been set fire to from the inside. Throwing up dulls the pain and disgrace, but it doesn't take the pain away for long enough. She knows the nurse will barge into her room in a few minutes. She'll be escorted to the cafeteria where she'll be forced to eat under Ginny' watchful eyes. They won't speak. They have nothing to talk about. She'll be escorted to her shrink for her session, and then taken to her room where she can cry and berate and hate herself for all of the choices and mistakes she has made.
Someone once told her never to do anything she wouldn't want to tell her mother and father about. Wouldn't they be proud of the sad, thin, embarrassing piece of human disgrace she has become…
Wouldn't they just be proud…
:::
"Hermione?" Parker has been talking for the better part of an hour. For the first time in her life, Hermione honestly hasn't been listening to a word being spoken to her. She does the polite thing and turns her head from the window.
"Were you listening to me?" Parker enquires.
"No." There is simply no need to beat around the bush. Hermione's mother always told her that honesty is the key. Parker arches an eyebrow at her reply, but doesn't say anything. Hermione knows it is an invitation to continue, so she takes him up on his unspoken offer.
"I'm thinking about my parents today." She decides to leave it at that. No need to cry over spilt milk, is there?
"When was the last time you saw them?" Hermione knows there is no need to lie about when she last saw her parents. Parker can spot a lie a mile off.
"I last saw them three days after graduation. I went home to pack my things. I was moving in with my boyfriend and they really didn't approve. I guess they knew about him and the drugs. We had a fight. My father told me not to come back until I broke it off with Viktor…so I just never went back. It's been seven years." Hermione can feel tears tease her eyes. She decided somewhere in between sitting in the cafeteria with Ginny that she has no reason to pity herself. She chose the things that lead her down the path to this moment and crying about it and feeling sorry for herself wasn't going to change the past or the present.
"I know my father has gone bald. He'd be much more salt than pepper. The laughing wrinkles around his eyes would have infected the skin surrounding his nose and neck. He probably has a potbelly too. He always did love cake..." Hermione tries to choke back the teary chuckle but fails miserably.
"My mother's hair would have started to go gray too. She's never been one of those women who wear their age on their faces. She'd have decided to grow old gracefully. To show how pretty a lady can grow old in contrast with my father's rapid aging. Her hips would have decided to put out a little more. She's always been skinny, but she never wanted to be a skinny grandmother. She always said a grandchild has to know how delicious his grandmother's cookies are by looking at her hips." Parker gives a slight chuckle.
"But I wouldn't know. I'm in rehab and my family is Lord knows where without me. They could have gotten a pet, or moved abroad, or they could have taken that holiday to Australia like they always wanted to. But I wouldn't know, because I chose my boyfriend and drugs over my own family." Hermione says bitterly, throwing the pillow cradled in her arms down onto the floor.
She wants to jump up and walk to the window. Hide her bitterness at her stupidity. To cry in seclusion. She doesn't. All the energy Hermione seemed to garner in her anger has dissipated when she threw the pillow down.
Instead she pulls her legs up to her chest, buries her head in her knees and cries. She doesn't notice the arm that encircles her shoulders, but she leans into it. Parker reminds her of Ron. He doesn't need to say anything, he's just there. A silent rock that keeps her upright. She misses Ron suddenly with such force that it makes her head hurt and her heart ache even worse.
After crying harder than she has in a few years, her sobs seem to die down. Parker doesn't leave. He doesn't say a word, he's just there.
"Hermione, would you like some cake?" Hermione can't help but laugh. It isn't forced, like so many of her other human encounters have been thus far. Her laugh is teary and snot-laced, but genuine.
"Why do you have cake in your office?" Hermione chuckles as she asks. Parker hands her a box of tissues.
"My daughter. It was her birthday yesterday. Cake is tradition when you celebrate your birthday, isn't it?" Parker teases.
"I just thought you were one of those strange people who brought cake to work." It has been so long since she's made a joke. Parker laughs and winks at her, bending down to dig through a bag hidden by his desk.
"No, I'm more of a candy and white van than cake and white van type of guy." Hermione can't help but laugh at him. It feels good to laugh.
"How old is your daughter?" Hermione asks. Parker stops shuffling things around in the phantom bag, producing a large white plastic container filled with chocolate cake.
"She would have been sixteen." Hermione tightens her arms around her legs and can only stare up at Parker.
"She died three years ago. Suicide." Parker says nonchalantly, handing Hermione a piece of cake on a plate she didn't even notice him pulling out from somewhere. The fork he hands her trembles between her fingers, a combination of shock and need for more than just cake. Her skin starts tingling again. She doesn't know when she stopped noticing the burn or the trembles.
"She was depressed for a long time. She'd tried to commit suicide many times before, but this time she succeeded. She hanged herself the shed in the backyard." Parker says, revealing the details without Hermione having to ask.
Suicide. Hermione doesn't have the words to say anything. Instead she eats the cake Parker hands her.
She's not the only one who has been through misery. Only difference is that her misery is self-induced, Parker's misery was handed to him by his daughter who killed herself.
"Why do you still work here?" Hermione snaps her mouth shut, wishing she could take the words back immediately. "I-I mean, why do you want to work here with people who don't really have anything to live for anymore." Hermione looks down at the cake in her hands. She feels like crying. Parker has only been nice to her and now she's gone and messed it up.
"Because I want to help people who want to help themselves. That's why this clinic works on a system based on self-admission. You want to get help don't you? My daughter didn't, or couldn't. I'm not meant to understand why she did what she did. I'll always wonder, but I know that wherever she is, she feels like she could belong there." Parker pops another piece of cake into his mouth. She acts nonchalant, like it doesn't faze him at all. Appearances don't really show what the inside holds.
"I know what it's like to miss someone and hate yourself for not being able to talk to that person." Parker's voice breaks through Hermione's thoughts.
"It's different." Hermione retorts, eyes staring holes into the icing on the cake.
"Is it really?" Parker asks, putting his plate down on the side table next to his chair. "I can't fix the mistakes I made with my daughter, but I can make sure I don't make the same mistakes with my other two children. You can't fix the choices you made when you were under the influence of drugs, but you can stop yourself from doing it again and to other people." Parker says and leans back.
"You get a second chance Hermione, isn't that what you wanted?" Hermione can't help but stare at Parker.
"I don't know..." She whispers. "I don't know what to do. I don't know if they'll want to see me again. How do you say sorry for seven years worth of worry and agony?" Hermione wipes angrily at her cheeks, traitorous tears having escaped her eyes once again.
"You'll never know until you try, right?" Parker clears his throat. Their session is over. The nurse will be in, in a minute to take her to her room. She'll crawl into a little ball and pray her pain away until she falls asleep, only to wake up and run for the bathroom again.
Something tells Hermione that this is going to be her routine for the time she's going to be here. Routines are nice. She used to like routines. She lived for routines, until she started liking heroine and living for it instead of living for herself.
Parker offers her medication again to take some of the pain away. Again, Hermione refuses. She doesn't know why, but on day two of her sudden turnaround, she has an inkling of what she's going to do when she gets out.
Somehow she'll make it right. She just has to.
:::
AN: I know it has been a bit of a wait for this chapter, but here it is. I really wanted to build more on Hermione's thoughts and her therapy. The next chapter will be a doozie. There are going to be some things that'll happen which I don't want to be hated for. Promise you won't hate me?
Thank you so much for all the belated birthday wishes from you guys.
-Dedicated to:
*Mary Ann
*My two guest reviewers
*gurumaiss
*My lil Burrito
Please don't be a silent reader. Review and let me know what you guys think!
P.S. I'm working over my December vacation, so if I lag a little with the updates, feel free to kick me into gear to update again, okay?
