Chapter 2
II
Hermione loved spending her free time at the Dark Side of the Moon. Down there, she was protected by the dome of darkness the bar was plunged into. Nobody looked at her. Nobody sent her what they thought were subtle disgusted glances — many didn't even make the effort of being discreet — they eyed her openly, as if she were a piece of meat exposed on the school at the market.
When she sat in the artificial night that sheltered her fragility, Hermione didn't need to cover her face with the heavy curtain of thick hair she usually drew upon her visage when she was under the abusive light. Hermione had a horrible face, ideously scarred. She couldn't remember herself from the time when she was still 'pure'. There were pictures, but she couldn't stomack looking at them. She wanted to tear them into tiny little pieces and set them on fire. What was the use of dwelling on what no longer was? They just fueled her insecurities and her sense of inadequacy, leading her to think about how she would have looked like, if her face had been free from taints.
Hermione was the girl with the scar, the outcast with the ugly face, the knows it all who was as pretty as a decaying body.
Sometimes, when she felt like trying to defy the murmurs, she walked with her head high and her hair pulled back; but she usually gave in quickly. It was hard to swallow all the stares and the heartless comments without blinking or showing any signs of weakness.
Her best friends were the books: they didn't judge, they didn't whisper, they didn't send spiteful and disgusted glances; they didn't make fun of her, they didn't reject her. They offered her their stories without opposing any resistance. They allowed her to turn their pages with her gentle fingers; they let their words talk to her and welcomed her in their world.
She found gratification from her perfect grades, from the praises she received from her teachers — although they all assumed she'd become like her much respected parents, and the volunteering work she did at the Room of One's Own. There, she had met Harry, a boy who had a curious scar on his forehead — it looked like a lightning bolt and Theo, a shy but intelligent kid who seemed as lonely as she and Harry were. They had bonded on their solitude; they didn't know much of one another — Hermione supposed the two boys knew her story — anyone who didn't reside under a rock knew it; she knew Harry lived with some relatives who didn't care about him and that Theo lived with a father that was never tehre.
Every adults she had met admired her parents. There was a commemorative plaque in their honour at the law faculty at Oxford, where they had studied and graduated; there was a scholarship and an academic award entitled to them for the best students that blessed the university law school.
Hermione, pardon her language, didn't give a slap sounding fuck about all that.
They were heroes her parents, heroes who had died for the greater good. They were lionhearts who had never surrendered to the deadly threats they had received while building up a solid net of evidences to win the Del Gado trial. Mr. Granger was the chief investigator of the organized crime division that had been following the Del Gado family for years, trying to incriminate those who pulled the strings of the puppets. His whife was the public prosecutor, in charge of the accusation. She was known for being relentless in her questioning and thorough in her instructing work.
Of course, the birth of Hermione Jean Granger wasn't worth of notice. Her mother loved her job more than she loved the daughter she had popped out — she had gone back to court just one week after Hermione's birth, dumping her child in the hands of well paid scandinavian nannies — money flowed in abundance chez les Grangers.
Hermione was the weaker element of the Grangers, being a defenceless toddler; she would make the perfect bite to persuade her parents into giving up their war.
But it didn't come to that. The criminals didn't care about a child, for better or for worse; probably it had been for the best, because Hermione was sure, they would haven't backed out if she had been kidnapped. The criminals had just placed a bomb at the right place on the 'highway to hell', the road that was supposed to lead the Granger family to their holiday cottage on the seaside. Hermione had been the only one who had survived. Her parents had been blasted; the assigned agents had been blown up. She didn't know how she had saved herself. She was barely two years old when it had happened.
She just remembered a deafening boom that shook the whole earth down to its core and a man with kind azel eyes and messy dark hair who muttered words she couldn't make out. She recalled his lean silouette and his askew glasses, if she let her brain roam from room to room in her subconscious flat. If he has children, they must be lucky; he truly seemed to care, or so his expression told. But maybe she was wrong. After all, she was just two and her brain wasn't very reliable.
Hermione had been relocated to a father's cousin, a lame dentist who had married another lame dentist. She didn't mind the fact they were dentists, it was something far less dangerous than the life threatening professions her adrenaline junkie parents did, but she wasn't their daughter either — not that she would have been treated better, had her parents lived, she was sure. Their crusade against the organized crime came first. Why hadn't her mother aborted if she wasn't planning to give up on her legal battles? She was smart, she must have known she wouldn't have been the only one in danger. How could she have been such an egoist? It was thanks to her parents' blind zeal Hermione was scarred for life; it was thanks to their noble defence of the law her face seemed a raw beef steak ravaged by the jaws of a loose dog.
The scar ran from under her hair, just above her forehead, down to her trhoat, decorating the left side of her face. She didn't know what had caused it, probably tiny little pieces of blasted glass or some other ironmongery that made up the car they were travelling in.
But it didn't matter, it was what it was and to Hermione, knowing the exact circumstances of her life altering accident didn't make any difference. Her parents were gone and she didn't feel regret for their early departure to the other realm. She wouldn't have liked to live a life where they would've been constantly under attack, choked by their paranoia that the mobs would target them any day, any time. No, she loved her quiet life with her schoolwork, her books, her cataloguing, her music. She loved those songs who sang an hymn against war and violence and that brought her social conscience to life. She imagined herself directing a crowd of people, waving her orchestra director wand, while they all sang 'Working Class Hero'. Hermione was a fervent non violent. She despised weapons and she despised the heroes like her parents, the zealous warriors who trew their life out the window, aware their chance of survival was near zero. It wasn't worth to go to war. Why did you have to die for a cause? If you wanted to sacrifice yourself in the name of the crusade you could do so, but if your battles endangered those around you and if those around you weren't even able to say a word about your choices, because they were too small and they were at your complete mercy, Hermione thought that was an unforgivable sin. Below her smart and competent shell, hid a bitter child who felt lonely and who didn't believe in families. What was the use of having a family that was supposed to protect you and love you unconditionally when you ended up as collateral damage because of your parents' projects and crusades? If Hermione had had a choice, she would have left the Grangers to their mafia hunting and would have moved with a family of literature professors. But, being a toddler, it was impossible.
But Hermione's oddness wasn't limited to her scar. There was more. OF course, nobody had ever noticed, she had been careful — at least she hoped she had, it was impossible to control her oddity. She tried not to stimulate it or give it any reasons to pop out when there were people around.
She had noticed she was weird one day, when she wanted to retrieve a book from a high shelf in the library. All of a sudden, it had started falling toward her. Her hands had caught it on instinct, but her eyes had been glued to the book during its whole descent, following its parabola drawn by gravity.
Strange, she had thought. How had that book just fallen of? She had stashed the occurrence in a cupboard of her brain, where she put all the junk her mind produced and the rubbish that happened in her life.
However, the oddity didn't seem to care, because it had had the guts to occur again, as if it wanted to defy her sanity, as if to impress on her the message that it got offended when she thought about the occurrence as an oddity, it wanted her to believe it was normalcy.
And so Hermione had given up and just hoped nothing would ever happen in front of third party eyes.
If only I could find somewhere I belong, where they wouldn't care how I look like; if only I could be myself, without needing to cover my face and where I could just let books fall in my hands without driving myself to paranoia, that would be a dream. But I am rational: I know dreams are a waste of time and energy. They just exacerbate your deceipt, when it hits you like an iron hammer on your head.