Disclaimer: Harry Potter and Co belongs to J.K. Rowling, and, I suppose, to whatever company it is that is filming the Harry Potter books. The song Hermione sings is entitled "You're So Vain" and was originally sung by Carly Simon. Neither the song nor the characters are mine, I simply borrowed them.
Hermione stood on stage, the music flowing over her, just as it had so many times before. So much had happened to the girl who had endured teasing and shunning from her peers during her school days – so much had happened to the woman who had fought alongside Ron and Harry during the Final Battle – that unless you knew that it was Hermione Granger, former Head Girl of Hogwarts, standing on the stage you never would have believed it. Immediately after the final battle she had turned her back on the world that she had fought so desperately to save, hurt beyond repair by the war wounds she carried inside her. She carried no scars on her pale skin, oh no, not Hermione. Instead, the wounds were buried so deep inside her that you could only see their reflection in her eyes – eyes that no longer sparkled with the innocence that had once graced them, but carried a world of regret inside them. Indeed, her eyes made her look much older than her twenty-five years.
However, Hermione was not on the stage so that people could compare the woman she had become to the girl she had been. She was on the stage, with the music filling her soul, for an entirely different reason. She closed her eyes, letting the music carry her far away from the stage as she opened her mouth to sing:
"You walked into the party like you were walking onto a yacht
Your hat strategically dipped below one eye,
Your scarf it was apricot
You had one on the mirror as
You watched yourself gavotte
And all those girls dream that
They'd be your partner, they'd be your partner and
You're so vain; you probably think this song is about you.
You're so vain; I bet you think this song is about you, don't you, don't you?"
Oh yes, she could still see those steel gray eyes stare at her from across the Great Hall – even if it had been seven years since she had last seen him in person. She could still picture him as he was their seventh year, the year that they made Head Boy and Head Girl, and had to share living quarters. That year for Halloween, he had come dressed as a captain of a yacht, with that hat tilted just right – he was by far the most debonair fellow in the room. He could have had his choice of any girl in the room easily, and she was sure many of them cried themselves to sleep that night as he danced only with her.
Yes only with her. That night, she had considered that maybe – just maybe – the fellow with the stormy gray eyes might be the one for her.
He was not.
"You had me several years ago, when I was still quite naïve.
Well, you said that we made such a pretty pair
And that you would never leave.
But you gave away the things you loved -
And one of them was me.
I had some dreams, they were
Clouds in my coffee, clouds in my coffee and
You're so vain; you probably think this song is about you.
You're so vain; I bet you think this song is about you, don't you, don't you?"
Her thoughts turned to clear blue eyes and the way they danced while he laughed. She thought of the comfort she had felt when she was in his arms, and his endearing habit of biting his lip right before he kissed her. They had been through so much together, and everyone had assumed that it would be a happily-ever-after ending for them when they got together late in their seventh year. He had whispered that he loved her as they made love for the first time, and she had been sure that he was the one for her.
It was a mistake for her to believe in his lies.
'I had some dreams, they were
Clouds in my coffee, clouds in my coffee and
You're so vain; you probably think this song is about you.
You're so vain; I bet you think this song is about you, don't you, don't you?"
She was enthralled in her own song now, the song that seemed to touch every girl's heart as if it had happened to them. But it had not, it had happened to her, and she sang it as no one else could – with a little bit of sadness, a little bit of anger and a little bit of irony reflected in her voice.
"Well, I hear you went up to Saratoga
And your horse naturally won.
Then you flew your lear jet up to Nova Scotia
To see the total eclipse of the sun.
Well, you're where you should be all the time
And when you're not, you're with some underworld spy
Or the wife of a close friend, wife of a close friend and
You're so vain; you probably think this song is about you.
You're so vain; I bet you think this song is about you, don't you, don't you?"
And then her thoughts turned to that of a man with eyes of emerald. The luckiest man she'd ever known – probably would ever know. She thought of how she had loved him throughout everything – through all his girlfriends and fights with his other friends. She thought of how the world considered him a hero, a saint, while she saw past all that to see the egotistical bastard that he had become. It was he who had brought her to her breaking point at the final battle, when he said he felt nothing for her. She could rationalize it – it was to protect her, to save her from being hurt, not because he really meant it – but it had the ring of truth in it, and the ring of truth – whether an act or reality – was too much for her to take. She had believed that he was merely a man, yes, but she had also believed that he might be her knight on a white horse.
She had been wrong in believing that.
"You're so vain; you probably think this song is about you.
You're so vain; I bet you think this song is about you, don't you, don't you?"
She was entangled in a world of her own making – and she was so far gone that she didn't notice the three pairs of eyes staring at her from the back table in the room – a pair of stormy grey eyes, a pair of sky blue eyes and a pair of emerald green eyes. She would notice, when she came back from the world where men did not hurt those who they love, that they were there. She would see that they were staring at her, staring in a way that they hadn't stared at her in seven years, and she would smile a bitter smile as she made her exit. For she would leave them there, wondering if maybe the song had been about them, and she would never answer the silent question in their eyes.
"You're so vain; you probably think this song is about you.
You're so vain; I bet you think this song is about you."
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