Team: Wigtown Wanderers
Position: Seeker
Round: One
Prompt: The Innocent- Goal: happiness OR Fear: punishment
Word Count: 1013
Warnings (if any): none
I don't own Harry Potter, I just like to entertain myself a bit with its wonderful characters. I am not a native English speaker, Any grammar mistakes were made unintentionally so I apologize in advance. I have dyslexia and I am still learning English.
Special thanks to my Wigtown Wanderers team for betaing this chapter.
HAPPINESS AND MEMORIES
Hermione walked slowly along the same path that she had travelled many times while she was a student; the grass was green, the wind caressed her face, the aroma of fresh earth and the trees surrounded her. Thoughts of simpler and happier times filled her mind. Returning here after so long was like going back in time—the castle in its towering glory, a witness to centuries of history and tradition, never failed to awe her.
She could recall the boys walking excitedly across these same grounds in the direction of the Quidditch pitch, only worried about game strategies and which team would come out on top. She could almost hear Colin Creevey's excited little footsteps and the frantic clicking of his camera as he tried to get the perfect photos to capture these moments.
She entered slowly through the imposing doors. The stone walls were unique in their scarred beauty. War had hit this sanctuary hard, but everyone who was gathered here loved Hogwarts and considered it their home. No one spoke more than necessary; everyone was focused on the work or repair that needed doing in front of them. Although this place had witnessed so much tragedy, it was still the place of knowledge, childhood, growth and simple life.
The Weasley twins had been the kings of these corridors. Hermione smiled wistfully, remembering how she had to be careful not to fall into any of the traps that the pair enjoyed creating. She even had to push down the small bubble of giggles that threatened to come out at the thought of the trap that had spilled a greenish goo-like substance onto Lavender's hair once and completely ruined the work she had put into it that morning.
She sighed, wiping away a tear running down her cheek. Lavender had been furious. Her hair had always been her top priority over any homework or school duty. She even often skipped the first class of the day just so she could spend enough time on it. Combing her long curls, she had once said, was far more important than learning how to turn a needle into a matchstick. Lavender had thrown a tantrum causing Fred and George to apologize to her and blame each other. Hermione had never met another person who could get the Weasley twins to apologize for a prank.
With a lump in her throat, she walked the corridors with firm steps. The castle was a special place for her, but her safest and most favorite place within the castle would always be the library. It was the place where she could take refuge when she needed to rest from the stress of being a teenager, where many of her hardest intellectual battles had been fought, where the pressures of the life she had lived disappeared in a sea of pages and ink.
Stroking the hard oak of the door she contemplated the room—same floor, same walls, same books. Even the distribution of the tables had not changed in all the years that she was here. The real mess was on some of the overturned shelves, the splintered wood and the books strewn around. With slow, deliberate wand movements she managed to straighten all the overturned shelves and proceeded to manually arrange the books one by one. After so many struggles, the familiarity of being around books and doing such a mundane task as organizing them gave her a warm feeling in her stomach.
When she had started at Hogwarts and still had no friends, she had spent hours simply reading the titles of the books here, discovering a new and unique world. The thrill of simply reading things she had always thought of as wonderful fantasies and finding out they were real had been wonderful. Innocently, she had thought that this great world was perfect, free of all the bad that she had known until then. Naivety is a beautiful, delicate thing. She did not live between two worlds as she had thought back then, it was the same world full of duality.
The sun shone bright and clear through the windows and predicted a clear, warm day. She could feel a bit of the incoming sun rays on her neck. Hours passed with Hermione just feeling the sun on her back and the texture of the leather of the books that she was returning to their rightful places. From time to time she would open one of the books she was holding and simply breathe a little of that old parchment aroma all the books of Hogwarts seemed to have.
It was funny how one can take for granted so many simple things in life—going out to buy something, a party with friends, daily classes, rigid schedules, three daily meals, water to quench your thirst. Then something changes and life becomes a game of survival where nothing is guaranteed, not even the certainty of a new day.
Her months on the run had taught her many hard lessons about the harshness and fragility of life. Those same lessons also helped her understand that although life is complicated, monotonous, and repetitive, happiness lives among those simple little moments: the smell of a book, the sun warming your skin, the familiarity of the place where you grew up, the faces of the people you saw every day.
Happiness lived at Hogwarts among its halls, its people, its history. The essence of all those who had once walked these corridors with a smile on their faces at some point in their life would remain here, even though they were no longer physically present. The castle itself seemed to radiate happiness and contentment, as though she remembered every student who had ever walked through her halls with fondness and love.
You could always go back to those places where you loved life and you were happy. And although her heart felt empty and ravaged now, she would always have this magical place where everything was possible. Even a war could not erase the happiness that was woven through the very heart of Hogwarts.