Disclaimer: Gods I am exausted of these things . . . honestly, if I were here, typing this on a friggin fansite would I own the goddamn Harry Potter series?! If you have any sense, I hope you said no. Nor do I own any of Fiona Apple's work.
White Paper Walls
giggleplex
away away i say
so far far away
remain the pain
the fame the pain
dreaming of you
would you say
"i hate you too?"
With a flourish, the ashes tumbled from the disgruntled embers of her cigarette.
She stared at it for a split moment, contemplating the essences of such a meaningless gesture. The finality of her brief philosophical reverie was the simple 'uselessness of reality' inspiration, and a smoke-laced sigh. Quiet, dancing silver smoke drifted up her face and explored her nose before lifting itself up again to the ceiling.
Tapping her nose was interesting enough to keep her from mulling too long on the scent of sickened barroom air. Her smooth silver breath joined the forgotten breaths of countless inhabitants around the room, and turning the world misty. Or it might have been the alcohol, or the sincere tears she dammed behind her eyes.
Such trivial thoughts no longer mattered; she reprimanded herself silently, and took another full breath from her cigarette. Her lips pursed.
Seven years of stress, and look what I have to show for myself. Disgusting.
She blew out the smoke, and the breath she could see in such a stuffy atmosphere comforted her a little, even a little more than it should have.
An unlady-like snort graced her expression.
Gods--what a waste.
The setting she had been in for at least twelve hours of sleepless semi- consciousness was precisely the nondescript place she had been searching for. A ramshackle place without fame; just the ever-present scent of tobacco smoke, strong gin, and desperation. Evermore desperation, catching a hold of her own--the wicked kind that stained your shirt with the precipitation of rolling drops of salt water.
It suited her quite perfectly. People didn't ask questions in places without positive repute. While she was underage for one who could purchase cigarettes and underage for someone to purchase alcohol, no one bothered with her. Crumbled bills faded in her fist bought off their consciences easily.
However, she found it increasingly worrisome in a bizarre sense; no one had come looking for her yet. She wondered if it actually meant anything personal, or if she was just that forgettable.
Vaguely, she heard the music twist to something a bit more lovely. Deeply dark jazz piano keys pounded their way into her mind, accompanied by that constant twinge of regrettable something-or-other, encased like a glass rose (carefully, safely, hidden) within the notes--conquest of the musicians hand.
"once my lover, now my friend . . . "
Her gaze fixed on a point of nothingness, somewhere around the mirror above the bartender's head. The old, creaky door in need of repair swung in once, and bounced back twice. She didn't turn.
Bastard.
Someone sat down next to her with the conspicuous air of one not necessarily in the most comfortable of positions.
"what a cruel thing to pretend
what a cunning way to condescend"
"Mind if I smoke?"
She shut her eyes tightly against the unwanted recollection, inspired immediately by that particular smooth baritone.
The question was meant to have been rhetorical, given that one more cigarette could hardly contaminate the barroom air any further. She turned to the latest customer of the nameless, faceless afternoon crowd of those who found the bottom of a glass a means to an end.
Her ordinarily piercing brown eyes were unfocused as they met fleetingly with slightly astonished blue ones.
Ron Weasley waited for her verbal reaction with a bated breath, holding his unlit pipe with precarious purpose before him. He remained silent in surprise, and as still as her.
"once my lover, now my friend"
She considered for a second, then responded in a slightly hoarse voice . . . deepened with gin.
"Don't."
He looked at her quizzically, focusing most noticeably on her still-lit cigarette.
Humoring her, he finally placed his pipe back in his pocket.
"What are you doing here?" she asked bluntly.
Ron's eyebrows rose to the matching fringe on his forehead, before settling down again in what he wanted to turn into a relaxed position. He laughed nervously, but laughing was always an all-or-nothing thing for him.
"Hermione, do you even need to ask? You're my best friend."
She hadn't the modesty to wince at such a shallow blow.
"oh, you creep up like the clouds
and you set my soul to ease"
"I suppose I don't need to ask." She set down her spent cigarette on the nearby ashtray. "Just what goodwill of regret has your mind sent your body out for?"
He furrowed his brows.
"It's not like that at all." He said seriously. With the dubious, suspecting look he was gaining from her still, he sighed. Some things just never changed.
"Oh?" she intoned disinterestedly.
"Listen Hermione," he began hesitantly. "I guess I just came to apologize."
"then you let your love abound
and bring me to my knees"
"Oh? For what?"
"You know, Lavender and me." He cocked his head to the side in impatience. "Oh come on! Just come back to Hogwarts with me, and everything will be alright."
She chuckled dryly, feeling a sudden urge to cry instead. Nothing is alright, you fool.
"Don't flatter yourself so brutally to suppose that the only reason I'm here--away from there--is because of your foolish affair with a bimbo who is only 18, and already contemplating a wizard's face-lift."
"oh, it's evil, babe, the way you let your grace enrapture me
when, well, you know, I'd be insane--
to ever let that dirty game recapture me"
Ron's face portrayed that he was highly affronted with her choice of words. Still, though his face turned red in anger, he suppressed it admirably. He choked, as if he were about to say something, but thought better of it.
With the inching consistency of a hesitant shadow, the bartender came upon them. The red-head flinched at the unexpected movement, but his shoulders slackened in defeat as he noticed the hair-trigger of his paranoid persona.
"Just some pumk--er, water please."
He pushed some U.S. dollars awkwardly over the polished counter.
"I, uh, guess I deserved that, huh." He winced.
Hermione opted for a sound of disgust.
"What the hell are you talking about? Lavender's the one who deserves it, because it's the plain and simple truth."
"you made me a shadowboxer, baby
I wanna be ready for what you do"
His eyes flashed again.
"Now you listen here, Hermione--"
She felt a monstrous headache with a gaping bite begin to multiply behind her eyes and nose. A deep breath whispered through her front teeth with a fermented scent that made her mind reel slightly in a sickening lurch.
"Cut the crap, Ron." She mumbled tiredly "You sound like Cornelius Fudge in a conversation with Dumbledore."
"I been swinging all around me
'cause I don't know when you're gonna make your move"
"After one of his spluttering moments." She added, feeling a strong urge to be quite unkind. He was the one who followed her without any reasonable purpose . . . when she needed to be alone. Away.
"oh, your gaze is dangerous
and you fill your space so sweet"
Still, as she watched his fuming figure out of the corner of her eye, she had to admit he was simply too handsome for his own good. The flaming red hair coupled with natural freckles had made him appear very young, despite his size in their recent school years. Now, the freckles had faded and the orange mass had been groomed into a dashing, shaggy hairstyle that brushed his eyelashes pleasingly.
Yet Ron Weasley had always been overly concerned with beauty. And beauty was something that Hermione could never give him--and there was nothing she could do to satisfy his eye. She wasn't ugly, per se, but she was plain enough to warrant little attention.
And, she noted to herself with dry, dark humor, she wasn't even that pleasant a person in the first place.
He stared at her with a distinct crossness reminiscent to her early Hogwarts years, any reminder of a good-natured twinkle in his eyes lost to the deadweight of quickly-gained wisdom.
"if I let you get too close
you'll set your spell on me . . . "
"I should have expected you don't really care for me anymore, 'Mione." He sighed sadly. "But, I've come to retrieve you with a more dire purpose in mind."
She coughed, hovering for a moment over her shot-glass. Her eyes fluttered close, gifting her with momentary regret over one of her best friends . . . from 'once upon a time' when everyone was innocent to expect 'happily ever after'.
"Retrieve." She stated, as if unsure of his meaning.
As much as I hate to admit it, you're a fool for believing that you could take my back to that place.
". . . so, darlin', I just wanna say . . . "
A stupid, useless, immature fool.
"I guess I just hope . . . you won't see the rift between us as something big enough to keep us from working together . . . "
"You know what, Ron?" her voice was barely controllable and trembling. Rage echoed her quiet, uncertain question, but he couldn't sense it.
". . . just in case I don't come through"
"What?"
He sounded genuinely curious.
She nearly spat into his face.
"I . . . could never hate you." She whispered.
"I was on to every play
I just wanted you"
"Thanks, Hermione."
Ron smiled, assuming greatness and triumph behind the pleasant smile. She did not allow herself any expression.
The silence lengthened to awkwardness, and still she mentioned nothing further.
He shifted in the stool he occupied, with an adolescent ease to fidget.
"So . . . you ready to go?"
"I'm not going with you."
"but, oh, it's so evil, my love
the way you've no reverence to my concern"
He blinked.
"W-what?!"
"I'm not returning."
He chuckled, but it didn't reach his eyes.
"What are you talking about?"
"I have no intention of ever going back." She said stiffly. Pause. "You shouldn't have come here."
He gaped in disbelief.
What did you expect, Ronald Weasley?
She felt the pangs of unwanted recollection reside among her surfacing memories; fleeting moments in time long since past. Lovely little girls and boys growing and becoming the adults that everyone had expected them to become, and an occasional surprise--not every little girl and boy are ever the same.
"I guess I'd have to just ask, well, why? Are you sure it's not me . . . ?"
"You . . . you IDIOT!" Hermione screamed at him "DON'T ASSUME THAT YOU'RE EVER THE REASON WHY!!! I could not care less about you!"
He backed away in his seat.
"You wanna know why I'm gone, away away away from there?!" she was so close to sobbing "My fucking parents were killed yesterday in a DEATH EATER INITIATION SERVICE."
Shock, startle. And worst of all, it was at her tone, rather than her message.
It hurt.
"Don't . . . just don't assume I would shy away from something so petty." Hermione turned away for the last time.
"so, I'll be sure to stay wary of you, love
to save the pain of once my flame and twice my burn"
"Well," she heard him swallow "I-I'm sure that Dumbledore would let you stay at Hogwarts, or if not the Burrow is always welcome to you, you know-- "
"That's not the point. I'm not going back there, to your world. Just, stop . . . talking . . ."
His temper flared uncontrollably; he was pushed emotionally to punch the wooden counter with enough force to rattle the glasses. Hermione was ready, and bitter.
"You can't just leave Hermione!" he shouted in distress "What about Voldemort! What about the fate of the world?!"
"Oh hush, Ron." She sneered suddenly, glaring at him spitefully. "You're making a spectacle of yourself."
No one understood. Another was something beyond themselves, and no one understood anything other than themselves. And sometimes, even they couldn't understand that.
The world was a flux. She wanted simplicity.
She wanted a world without fear.
A world without the leer . . .
The muggle-world.
Hermione had transfigured an old matchbox into a shiny blue station-wagon when she apparated her trunk full of necessities into an abandoned London alleyway, and it was currently parked but a few blocks away. It was all she needed; without her family and the support of understanding friendships, it was all she could count on.
It was enough.
". . . You're so . . . selfish." He said finally, in complete and utter disbelief.
"you made me a . . . shadowboxer, baby,
I wanna be ready for what you do"
At one point, she debated staying for Harry, but he would be more hindered from her presence than anything--he did not need another burden to slave over his shoulder.
There was nothing for her, in the first place. A bookkeeping position in a wealthy ministry that would always hate her for what she was born of? Unlikely. She just wished to revert away from the hate of herself . . .
A shuffle slithered beside her.
"Just go."
The door slammed, somewhere . . . distantly . . .
"I been swinging all around me
'cause I don't know when you're gonna make your move"
He was gone; forever or so it seemed, for forever. With little bitterness creeping like inertia into her taught-mouth expression, she realized how quickly the conversation had progressed. She knew him well enough to piss him off just so, and cut him off before a mindless tirade could start like a fire in dry leaves.
Such anger she had felt, radiating from him. It was oddly satisfying, and precisely what she intended.
He had run from her.
Just like before.
And for so much more than just a bore of a love, so much more than the guilt of her parents, and so so much more than Hermione's obvious protests of his presence.
. . . But she couldn't dwell on such thoughts.
Hermione turned around after she was sure he had left, and looked around the room, to a wonderful realization that brought sting to her unshed tears.
No one in the barroom batted an eyelash at their fight.
Melencholy drenched deeply with the quiet death of alcohol carried itself in its sickly sweet stench, and all thoughts began suspended--so long, and easily disregarded.
The cigarette burned, otherwise untouched as she stared off to a distant reality.
AN -
Yeah. Probably shouldn't be starting a new fic right now, but it just blossomed out of my fingers. dodges rotten fruitAnother one of my darker escapades. And it will become a bit more disturbing in the later chapters, I guarantee. I have a few gut-wrenching plot-twists lined up already, so I hope, whoever is reading this, sticks with it.
I hope you've liked it so far, well enough to read a bit more, once I get it out oo
Meanwhile, cheers darlings
giggle