As soon as her parents parked their silver Mercedes sedan in the driveway,
Hermione tumbled out of the car, ran into the house and upstairs into her
room, where she tossed her black bag onto the floor and flung herself onto
her bed, near tears. She couldn't believe that Harry felt that way about
Ginny. It must have been purely sexual, it had to be. He couldn't possibly
be interested in another girl when Hermione had been there for him
throughout the past five years of his life. After turning the entire
situation over in her muddled mind, she lifted her head off of her wet
pillow and reached for her bag- there was an entire pack of mint gum in
there, and her mouth still tasted bitterly of Mr. Weasley's burned meat.
However, when she opened the bag there was no gum- on the contrary, the
first things she saw when she unzipped the top flap were a pair of yellow
boxer shorts and a half-empty bottle of aftershave. 'Oh no,' she thought
with a disappointed sigh, 'I must have taken Harry's bag instead. Well, I
ought to close it immediately and write Harry an owl about what happened'.
She was just about to zip the bag shut when a small image of herself
dressed in a devil costume appeared on her left shoulder with a puff of
black smoke.
"Hermione," said her miniature alter-ego, "Look through his bag. Who knows what juicy stuff you might find!"
Startled by the devil-girl, Hermione was just about to brush her off of her left shoulder when a second creature appeared on her right shoulder. Conversely, this was also a tiny clone of herself, but it was dressed in a white gown with wings and a halo. "No, my love, do not search through the boy's bag. You would be impeding on his sacred privacy."
"What?" cried Hermione, standing up and trying to shake off the two little women, "What the hell are you? Ew, get off of me!" Devil-Hermione and Angel- Hermione would not budge, but stood defiantly on either shoulder, shaking their heads at their host's rash and ignorant reaction.
"Sorry, chick," said Devil-Hermione, "You can't knock us off. You gotta listen to us first, kapeesh?"
Hermione complacently sat on the edge of her bed and waited expectantly for the two beings to explain their opinions.
"My dear," began Angel-Hermione, "If he ever discovered that you rummaged through his personal belongings, he would never be able to trust you again. Please heed my warning." Devil-Hermione snorted rudely at this and pinched Hermione's neck ("Ouch! What do you want?") to get her attention.
"Listen, girlie, he never has to find out. And what harm could it do? You're just a curious teenager, blame it on hormones if you want. And hey, what if you didn't actually look through the bag...what if it fell over, and you couldn't help but see everything that spilled out?"
Hermione considered this for a moment. "Well...I guess you're right, it wouldn't be my fault if I just happened to knock it over and accidentally saw everything."
"No!" screamed Angel-Hermione, losing her once prim and proper composure, "Don't do it! Don't listen to that bitch!" The two other Hermiones gasped at Angel-Hermione's sudden change of temperament, and Devil-Hermione, who was now enraged, leapt on top of Hermione's head with a growl.
"You wanna come up here and say that?" Angel-Hermione agreed, and climbed up Hermione's thick hair until she stood next to Devil-Hermione. Then the two began to scream and claw at each other, trying to knock their opponent off of Hermione's head.
"Get off!" cried Hermione, trying in vain to knock the two fighting girls onto the floor, "Auggh, you're pulling my hair!" Suddenly, one of them got tangled in Hermione's bushy locks, and started wailing desperately for help, clutching onto a nearby ear for safety.
Footsteps echoed in the hallway outside of Hermione's closed door, and her mother walked into the room to see her daughter reeling back and forth like a drunken person and batting the empty air above her head. "What are you doing?" she demanded, hoping against all odds that her child wasn't insane.
"I'm so glad you're here!" exclaimed Hermione, her expression brightening, "You can help me get these two tiny ladies off of my head!" Mrs. Granger stared at her blankly, then rushed into the hallway and called for her husband. Seconds later, Mr. Granger's head appeared in the doorway.
"She looks fine to me, Harriet." Husband and wife whispered together for a moment, then decided that whatever wizard-food their daughter had eaten at her friend's house was the cause of this nonsense, and left the room muttering with distrust of the Weasley family.
Once the two adults were gone, Angel-Hermione and Devil-Hermione disappeared as well, leaving Hermione completely alone with the black bag. Tiptoeing towards it, she kicked it lightly, knocking it onto its side and consequently spilling everything out. 'Oops,' she thought to herself with a pleased grin, 'Didn't mean to do that'. Kneeling down to replace the bag's contents into their original carrier, she inspected each object before dropping it inside the black satchel. "Toothbrush...oops, he'll need that...Razor...yep, he'll need that too...Strange purple bottle...," At these words she opened up the bottle and looked inside. A small pile of brown powder sat quietly at the bottom. "...filled with weird brown stuff...," she continued, "...I don't know if he'll need that or not, I sure hope he doesn't...Umm, let's see...blue jacket...jean shorts...grey sweater...four- no, five pairs of tartan boxers...red book," she stopped once again and held the book in her hands, deciding whether or not to look inside. Her curiosity won her over, and she timidly opened the front cover.
"This is NOT a diary! It is a JOURNAL!" read the title page in messy, scrawled lettering. She chuckled to herself; that was definitely something that she could imagine coming out of Harry's mouth. Daring herself to read an entry, she flipped a through the book until she came to a page covered in tiny black letters.
"Saturday...I think...maybe it's Friday.
Sometimes I wonder what I'm still doing living here. I'd be much better off homeless, at least then I wouldn't get beat so often. I'd probably eat more, too. But I'd probably have to eat weird things, like cardboard and dead cats. Maybe once in a while I'd snag a half-eaten cheeseburger from the dumpster. Mm, that would be sweet. I'd be the luckiest homeless guy in the world! Check me out, I got half a cheeseburger! I'd show off to all my homeless friends, and pretend that I was gonna give them some, but then take it back at the last second! Eek, the Uncle's coming, gotta hide this befor "
Drops of blood stained the bottom of that page, and Hermione paled a little as she continued reading.
"I think my wrist is broken. Not the one I'm writing with, of course, the other one...it's all blue and swollen, and it hurts really EXTREMELY bad. I think I'm going to throw up. Be right back. Okay, I'm back. Yeah, I just threw up twice...I'm in serious pain right now, but I can't think of anything else to take my mind off of my wrist so I'm just going to keep writing until I fall asleep. I didn't do anything to make him hurt me. He says that I broke the vase, but I didn't, Dudley did. As if Vernon would ever believe that his precious son could do anything wrong. This time was the second-to-worse beating so far (that time when I was 9 being the worst). He punched me a few times, but I'm used to that so it was no big deal, but then he grabbed my wrist and kept twisting it and twisting it, and I begged him to stop but he didn't, he just kept twisting it until something snapped and I started screaming. He's hurt me really bad before, but he's never acted crazy like that. I mean...there was no soul in his eyes while he was hurting me, just emptiness and anger and.I don't know, I'm not a good writer, it was just weird. It's just a fucking vase! It cost twenty pounds, I could buy you a new one! I can't stand this anymore.
Let's pursue a new topic. I got a letter from Hermione today! She went to Ireland last week, I hope it was fun. I'm glad I have friends...I probably would have killed myself by now if I didn't have Ron and Hermione. They're like my brother and sister, and...and I want to tell them that I love them, but I've never told anybody that before, and nobody's ever said it to me so I don't know exactly how I'd go about it."
Suddenly the entry stopped, and Hermione figured he must have fallen asleep by that time. She wiped a tear from her cheek as she re-read the part where Harry described how his Uncle hurt him that evening, and shut the book, regretting ever having opened it in the first place. She couldn't believe that Harry had been living like that his entire life; he certainly didn't act like it. Perhaps it was all a charade he put on to mask what a horror his home life was. She knew that his Uncle had broken his ribs several days ago, but she didn't know how it had happened, and she concluded that it was a one-time-only thing, not an ongoing process of abuse and hate. A spark of curiosity shuddered through her body as the wheels of her mind turned out the question: how exactly did his Uncle hurt Harry earlier that week? 'It must be written in this diary somewhere,' thought Hermione. She gazed downward at the ominous red book, which seemed noticeably heavier than it had been before. 'To read, or not to read,' she thought, brow furrowed and face intent, 'That is the question'. After bringing to her mind the image of her beloved Harry being beaten, she decided, 'Read'. She quickly leafed through the book until she found a recent entry, which...sickly enough, was deeply stained with blood.
"Wednesday, I'm sure of it.
Okay...I'm bringing myself to write, because I know I should...if I'm dead, and somebody finds this, they'll know why, and that man can be arrested and sentenced to the full extent of the law.
My entire body hurts. There are cuts everywhere, and they're all bleeding and they won't stop. I just took a shower, too, and I was clean for about three seconds, but now I'm covered in blood again...there's blood everywhere, all over my room, all over my clothes, all over my skin. I can't breathe. My chest hurts so bad, and I want to cry, but I'm a man and men don't cry. Whenever I breathe in it feels like the air doesn't go through, it just sits there doing nothing until I breathe it back out. I feel seasick. I'm laying on my bed completely flat and nearly motionless save for the hand that's writing, but my head is swimming and I just threw up everything I ate for the past week. He punched me so hard in the chest, I think my ribs are broken...the skin is all blue and squishy and swollen. And then he slammed my head against the window and it broke, and glass went everywhere, and cut me all over, its just this constant pain coursing through my body and I can't take it anymore, I just can't. It's just as bad as the Cruciatus Curse, believe me, but at least Voldemort took that spell off of me after a few minutes...this pain goes on forever and it won't stop, and I can't fall asleep because it hurts so bad, so I'm just writing and writing until I run out of things to say. All his insults and all his curses make me feel like I'm nothing, like I'm not even a person. I've grown to ignore them over the years, but...it's just every day this constant negative energy directed towards me, and I'm always "stupid" or a "freak" and I'm always locked in the closet. I don't understand, what exactly do they have against me? What makes me so horrible? The worst was when I was nine, like I mentioned before...I'm not even going to go over the details because I've tried so hard to repress that memory, but let's just say...gun...head...pain...closet. No, I wasn't shot in the head, that's crazy. It was held to my head after a VERY severe beating because Vernon got laid off from his job and apparently it was my fault. I was so scared, I was only nine, and I honestly believed that he would shoot me. I guess he didn't because I was barely conscious anyway, so I wasn't much to kill...he just threw me in the closet all bloody and broken. It was horrible...I don't want to think about it anymore; I'm sorry, but I can't keep writing, it hurts like hell to raise my shoulder like I'm doing. I guess...maybe I'll write later. Bye."
Hermione stared blankly at the page for several seconds before shivering and falling into tears. She buried her face in the carpet and sobbed for the sake of her best friend.
"Hermione," said her miniature alter-ego, "Look through his bag. Who knows what juicy stuff you might find!"
Startled by the devil-girl, Hermione was just about to brush her off of her left shoulder when a second creature appeared on her right shoulder. Conversely, this was also a tiny clone of herself, but it was dressed in a white gown with wings and a halo. "No, my love, do not search through the boy's bag. You would be impeding on his sacred privacy."
"What?" cried Hermione, standing up and trying to shake off the two little women, "What the hell are you? Ew, get off of me!" Devil-Hermione and Angel- Hermione would not budge, but stood defiantly on either shoulder, shaking their heads at their host's rash and ignorant reaction.
"Sorry, chick," said Devil-Hermione, "You can't knock us off. You gotta listen to us first, kapeesh?"
Hermione complacently sat on the edge of her bed and waited expectantly for the two beings to explain their opinions.
"My dear," began Angel-Hermione, "If he ever discovered that you rummaged through his personal belongings, he would never be able to trust you again. Please heed my warning." Devil-Hermione snorted rudely at this and pinched Hermione's neck ("Ouch! What do you want?") to get her attention.
"Listen, girlie, he never has to find out. And what harm could it do? You're just a curious teenager, blame it on hormones if you want. And hey, what if you didn't actually look through the bag...what if it fell over, and you couldn't help but see everything that spilled out?"
Hermione considered this for a moment. "Well...I guess you're right, it wouldn't be my fault if I just happened to knock it over and accidentally saw everything."
"No!" screamed Angel-Hermione, losing her once prim and proper composure, "Don't do it! Don't listen to that bitch!" The two other Hermiones gasped at Angel-Hermione's sudden change of temperament, and Devil-Hermione, who was now enraged, leapt on top of Hermione's head with a growl.
"You wanna come up here and say that?" Angel-Hermione agreed, and climbed up Hermione's thick hair until she stood next to Devil-Hermione. Then the two began to scream and claw at each other, trying to knock their opponent off of Hermione's head.
"Get off!" cried Hermione, trying in vain to knock the two fighting girls onto the floor, "Auggh, you're pulling my hair!" Suddenly, one of them got tangled in Hermione's bushy locks, and started wailing desperately for help, clutching onto a nearby ear for safety.
Footsteps echoed in the hallway outside of Hermione's closed door, and her mother walked into the room to see her daughter reeling back and forth like a drunken person and batting the empty air above her head. "What are you doing?" she demanded, hoping against all odds that her child wasn't insane.
"I'm so glad you're here!" exclaimed Hermione, her expression brightening, "You can help me get these two tiny ladies off of my head!" Mrs. Granger stared at her blankly, then rushed into the hallway and called for her husband. Seconds later, Mr. Granger's head appeared in the doorway.
"She looks fine to me, Harriet." Husband and wife whispered together for a moment, then decided that whatever wizard-food their daughter had eaten at her friend's house was the cause of this nonsense, and left the room muttering with distrust of the Weasley family.
Once the two adults were gone, Angel-Hermione and Devil-Hermione disappeared as well, leaving Hermione completely alone with the black bag. Tiptoeing towards it, she kicked it lightly, knocking it onto its side and consequently spilling everything out. 'Oops,' she thought to herself with a pleased grin, 'Didn't mean to do that'. Kneeling down to replace the bag's contents into their original carrier, she inspected each object before dropping it inside the black satchel. "Toothbrush...oops, he'll need that...Razor...yep, he'll need that too...Strange purple bottle...," At these words she opened up the bottle and looked inside. A small pile of brown powder sat quietly at the bottom. "...filled with weird brown stuff...," she continued, "...I don't know if he'll need that or not, I sure hope he doesn't...Umm, let's see...blue jacket...jean shorts...grey sweater...four- no, five pairs of tartan boxers...red book," she stopped once again and held the book in her hands, deciding whether or not to look inside. Her curiosity won her over, and she timidly opened the front cover.
"This is NOT a diary! It is a JOURNAL!" read the title page in messy, scrawled lettering. She chuckled to herself; that was definitely something that she could imagine coming out of Harry's mouth. Daring herself to read an entry, she flipped a through the book until she came to a page covered in tiny black letters.
"Saturday...I think...maybe it's Friday.
Sometimes I wonder what I'm still doing living here. I'd be much better off homeless, at least then I wouldn't get beat so often. I'd probably eat more, too. But I'd probably have to eat weird things, like cardboard and dead cats. Maybe once in a while I'd snag a half-eaten cheeseburger from the dumpster. Mm, that would be sweet. I'd be the luckiest homeless guy in the world! Check me out, I got half a cheeseburger! I'd show off to all my homeless friends, and pretend that I was gonna give them some, but then take it back at the last second! Eek, the Uncle's coming, gotta hide this befor "
Drops of blood stained the bottom of that page, and Hermione paled a little as she continued reading.
"I think my wrist is broken. Not the one I'm writing with, of course, the other one...it's all blue and swollen, and it hurts really EXTREMELY bad. I think I'm going to throw up. Be right back. Okay, I'm back. Yeah, I just threw up twice...I'm in serious pain right now, but I can't think of anything else to take my mind off of my wrist so I'm just going to keep writing until I fall asleep. I didn't do anything to make him hurt me. He says that I broke the vase, but I didn't, Dudley did. As if Vernon would ever believe that his precious son could do anything wrong. This time was the second-to-worse beating so far (that time when I was 9 being the worst). He punched me a few times, but I'm used to that so it was no big deal, but then he grabbed my wrist and kept twisting it and twisting it, and I begged him to stop but he didn't, he just kept twisting it until something snapped and I started screaming. He's hurt me really bad before, but he's never acted crazy like that. I mean...there was no soul in his eyes while he was hurting me, just emptiness and anger and.I don't know, I'm not a good writer, it was just weird. It's just a fucking vase! It cost twenty pounds, I could buy you a new one! I can't stand this anymore.
Let's pursue a new topic. I got a letter from Hermione today! She went to Ireland last week, I hope it was fun. I'm glad I have friends...I probably would have killed myself by now if I didn't have Ron and Hermione. They're like my brother and sister, and...and I want to tell them that I love them, but I've never told anybody that before, and nobody's ever said it to me so I don't know exactly how I'd go about it."
Suddenly the entry stopped, and Hermione figured he must have fallen asleep by that time. She wiped a tear from her cheek as she re-read the part where Harry described how his Uncle hurt him that evening, and shut the book, regretting ever having opened it in the first place. She couldn't believe that Harry had been living like that his entire life; he certainly didn't act like it. Perhaps it was all a charade he put on to mask what a horror his home life was. She knew that his Uncle had broken his ribs several days ago, but she didn't know how it had happened, and she concluded that it was a one-time-only thing, not an ongoing process of abuse and hate. A spark of curiosity shuddered through her body as the wheels of her mind turned out the question: how exactly did his Uncle hurt Harry earlier that week? 'It must be written in this diary somewhere,' thought Hermione. She gazed downward at the ominous red book, which seemed noticeably heavier than it had been before. 'To read, or not to read,' she thought, brow furrowed and face intent, 'That is the question'. After bringing to her mind the image of her beloved Harry being beaten, she decided, 'Read'. She quickly leafed through the book until she found a recent entry, which...sickly enough, was deeply stained with blood.
"Wednesday, I'm sure of it.
Okay...I'm bringing myself to write, because I know I should...if I'm dead, and somebody finds this, they'll know why, and that man can be arrested and sentenced to the full extent of the law.
My entire body hurts. There are cuts everywhere, and they're all bleeding and they won't stop. I just took a shower, too, and I was clean for about three seconds, but now I'm covered in blood again...there's blood everywhere, all over my room, all over my clothes, all over my skin. I can't breathe. My chest hurts so bad, and I want to cry, but I'm a man and men don't cry. Whenever I breathe in it feels like the air doesn't go through, it just sits there doing nothing until I breathe it back out. I feel seasick. I'm laying on my bed completely flat and nearly motionless save for the hand that's writing, but my head is swimming and I just threw up everything I ate for the past week. He punched me so hard in the chest, I think my ribs are broken...the skin is all blue and squishy and swollen. And then he slammed my head against the window and it broke, and glass went everywhere, and cut me all over, its just this constant pain coursing through my body and I can't take it anymore, I just can't. It's just as bad as the Cruciatus Curse, believe me, but at least Voldemort took that spell off of me after a few minutes...this pain goes on forever and it won't stop, and I can't fall asleep because it hurts so bad, so I'm just writing and writing until I run out of things to say. All his insults and all his curses make me feel like I'm nothing, like I'm not even a person. I've grown to ignore them over the years, but...it's just every day this constant negative energy directed towards me, and I'm always "stupid" or a "freak" and I'm always locked in the closet. I don't understand, what exactly do they have against me? What makes me so horrible? The worst was when I was nine, like I mentioned before...I'm not even going to go over the details because I've tried so hard to repress that memory, but let's just say...gun...head...pain...closet. No, I wasn't shot in the head, that's crazy. It was held to my head after a VERY severe beating because Vernon got laid off from his job and apparently it was my fault. I was so scared, I was only nine, and I honestly believed that he would shoot me. I guess he didn't because I was barely conscious anyway, so I wasn't much to kill...he just threw me in the closet all bloody and broken. It was horrible...I don't want to think about it anymore; I'm sorry, but I can't keep writing, it hurts like hell to raise my shoulder like I'm doing. I guess...maybe I'll write later. Bye."
Hermione stared blankly at the page for several seconds before shivering and falling into tears. She buried her face in the carpet and sobbed for the sake of her best friend.