The moon was shining gloriously bright above of the Great Hall. He walked in and smiled at me.
"Hullo, Nessa," he greeted me.
"Hullo, Ron," I replied.
"Everything alright?" I suppose he must have noticed the look on my face to ask such a question.
"Certainly." I hated lying to him, but I'd been lying to everyone for years.
"Are you sure?" He was suspicious. He'd always been able to read me like a book.
"Miss Silver, might I have a word?" Professor Snape asked, having arrived at the table I was seated at unexpectedly.
Ron gave me a pitying look. I stood up. "Certainly, Professor," I said. I never particularly liked Professor Snape, but he had few reasons to bother with me. I was an excellent potions student, and try as he might, he had been unable to find a legitimate reason to hate me. As I was a Gryffindor, and not a Slytherin, Professor Snape wasn't particularly fond of me, but he could not fail me.
"Miss Silver, it has come to my attention that you may have cheated on your most recent exam," Professor Snape said.
I was stunned. I could not have heard him correctly. I had never cheated on anything in my life. "P-Professor, t-that's n-not t-t-true-" I began
"Stop your stuttering, you foolish girl!" Professor Snape thundered. "I am well aware that you have no need to cheat."
This time, I was stunned for quite a different reason. Professor Snape always searched for reasons to take points from any house except Slytherin, and he had never been able to take points from me.
"I thought that you should be informed that someone is spreading lies about you," he said.
"You don't believe them?" I asked.
"Of course not. Next to that dreadful Granger girl, you're the top student in the seventh year class."
"Thank you, Professor. B-but, if I may ask… Who accused me of cheating?"
"Malfoy."
"I might have guessed." I sighed. Draco Malfoy hated me. I was, however, quite surprised to hear that Professor Snape had chosen to believe that I had not cheated, against Malfoy's word. He had always liked Malfoy.
"You may go now, Miss Silver." I walked back toward the Great Hall. I stopped when I heard two sixth-year Slytherins mention my name.
"Nessa Silver's going to be expelled for sure when Snape tells Dumbledore that she cheated," The first girl said.
"Not a chance," the second said. "Dumbledore's too thick to realize it's true. He'd never kick her out."
"But it is true, isn't it?"
"Of course. How else could she get those grades?"
It upset me to hear the girls discussing me in such a manner, but what they said next was the final trigger.
"I bet she's shagging some of the professors," the first girl said.
"She's such a prude, though," the second said.
"That's so no one knows she's really a slut."
I ran to my dormitory before I could hear anything else. Tears rose in my eyes but did not fall. When I reached my room, it was empty. I picked up a paperclip and transfigured it into a knife.
Do it, Nessa, I told myself. Make the pain stop. I ran the blade slowly across my flesh, just barely breaking the skin. A thin red line appeared on my leg. That's it, Nessa. Get numb. I made a second cut, and then a third. The third was deeper than I'd expected it to be.
"Bugger!" I shouted. I needed to stop the bleeding. I grabbed a towel and put pressure to my leg. When it had slowed down to nothing more than a trickle, I pulled my robe down over my legs and walked out of the room. I needed to wash the cuts out to keep the last one from getting infected. I hurried toward Moaning Myrtle's laboratory. No one ever went in there, and I'd been able to use it several times with no one but Myrtle to witness my secret.
"Back again, are you?" Moaning Myrtle asked, not bothering to keep the disgust out of her voice. "I don't know why you go and do that to yourself. It's rather unattractive."
"I don't care about being attractive," I said. I had never found myself particularly attractive. I had light brown hair that hung limply around my shoulders and brown eyes hidden behind black glasses with rather thick lenses. I was a little overweight and I had dreadful acne. I found anyone more attractive than myself, including Myrtle.
Myrtle looked away when I lifted my robes up and began cleaning the blood. "Dreadful," she mumbled to herself.
I had not expected the door to swing open. I had not expected to see this person, of all the people, standing on the other side. After all, not only was it a basically unused laboratory, but it was a girls' unused laboratory, and he was a boy.
"Oh, sorry…" Ron mumbled, his ears turning pink. "I'll come- Wait a second, what's that from?" He was looking at my legs.
"Nothing," I mumbled quickly, pulling my robe down.
"Nessa, you're all cut up!"
"Ron, keep your voice down."
He entered the laboratory and closed the door. "She did it to herself," Myrtle said with a satisfied expression on her face. "Nice to see you again, Ron. You and Harry don't visit me often enough these days."
"It's a girls' laboratory, Myrtle," Ron said. "We have to be careful. I was looking for Hermione… What do you mean that she did this to herself? Nessa?" He stared at me.
"I slipped," I lied.
"You don't get cut up like that from slipping," Ron said stubbornly.
"Ron, forget about it. It's not important."
"You can't get rid of me that easily, Nessa. Come on, we're mates, right? Tell me what happened."
I sighed. "It makes me feel better."
"Huh? How's that supposed to make you feel better?"
"I don't know, Ron, but it does."
Ron shook his head, and I knew he thought that I'd gone mad.
"What did you need to feel better about? Did Snape make you do this?" He asked.
"No, it wasn't Professor Snape's fault," I said. "I was upset, but not about him. Malfoy spread a dreadful rumor about me, and some Slytherin girls expanded on it."
"Malfoy! I'll hunt him down and-"
"Ron, that's not necessary, but thank you. I'm fine."
"You are not! Nessa, you've cut your leg up. Why would you go and do that if you were fine?"
"I just can't handle things at times."
"If you tell me what's bothering you, maybe I can help."
"No, Ron. No one can help me."
"Nessa, come on. You're my mate, and you're upset. I want to help."
I sighed once again. I'd kept everything a secret for so many years. I couldn't just open up and tell him everything, could I?
To my own shock, I began to speak. "It started when I was nine," I said. "My father came into my bedroom one night to 'tuck me in.' He got under the covers and started touching me." I took a deep breath. Ron looked startled. I forced myself to look away and continue. It was too late. There was no turning back now.
"I didn't know that it was wrong," I went on. "I mean, I was just a kid, and my father was a very respected wizard. Surely he'd never do something that wasn't perfectly acceptable to all the other wizards… After a few nights of touching me, my father decided he'd go farther. I'm older now. I know that what he did was illegal. At the time, I thought it must be perfectly normal. I thought that, because it hurt me, I must have done something terrible to deserve it. My father must be punishing me. That, or I was simply abnormal, and no one else had ever found the experience painful."
Ron looked more serious than I had ever seen him in our seven years together at Hogwarts. "Nessa, are you saying what I think you're saying?"
I couldn't bring myself to answer him, so I just kept speaking. "As I got older, it continued. One day, when I was thirteen, I remember being particularly upset about what had happened the previous night. To ease some of the tension I was experiencing, I had started playing with my father's sword, and it nicked me. It was just a small cut, but I found that it released my pain quite excellently. From that day on, it was my escape."
Ron was silent. I went on. "While at Hogwarts, hiding my secret became more difficult. I was forced to transfigure various items into knives, and I had to cut in places where no one would discover the wounds. I was quite successful at that until today. For five years, I cut myself whenever I was upset, and no one had any idea. Now, you have discovered my secret. I don't know what to do about that. I suppose I could perform a memory charm to make you forget, but I don't want to do that to you. You're my friend, Ron."
"I'll kill 'im for you, Nessa," Ron said matter-of-factly.
"No, you won't. He's my father."
"So what? It's not right, what he's done. You ought to tell Dumbledore. He'd know what to do!"
"Ron, you mustn't tell anyone! I can't allow that."
"But he's hurting you."
"That doesn't matter. I'm fine, Ron. At the end of the year, I'll be seventeen. I won't have to live with him anymore. It won't matter then. None of this will matter."
"Nessa, you've got to stay here for Christmas. You can't go home to him."
"He's forbidden that. My father wants to see me."
"I don't care what he wants!"
"Ron, please, forget what I've told you. I don't want to do a memory charm on you, but if I must, I will."
Ron looked as though he wanted to argue, but he gave in. "Alright, I won't tell anyone, if you promise not to cut yourself up again."
"I can't promise that. Sometimes I do it before I can stop myself… But I can try."
"That's all I can ask, then… Listen, Nessa, next time you think you're going to go and do that to yourself, come to me instead."
"I'll try, Ron. I really will."
"I still say it's disgusting," Myrtle said.
"Bugger off, Myrtle. No one cares what you think," Ron said. He put his arm protectively around my shoulder and led me out of the laboratory.