Lana shut the door behind her, and heard muffled voices coming from the other side of the wall.

"They're talking about you, you know." Said a portrait of an old man behind her.

"I know. I don't care." Lana replied, not really surprised too much at the talking photo of the man.

"You know, teenagers really bug me with their passive aggressiveness."

Lana shrugged the man's slightly offensive comments off.

"Weren't you originally in the other's room?"

The man shrugged and said, "Yes, but over the summer the Minister had a heart-attack right there in the headmaster's office, and Dumbledore sent me to alert them here. The red headed one didn't seem to like the Minister or me and decided not to go and get anyone. The Minister could have died, if Remus hadn't have heard me."

"I'm sure you were just begging the boy to get someone to help your beloved Minister."

The man looked disgruntled, but Lana didn't take amusement in it. She collapsed on the bed.

"You don't seem to have much respect for your elders."

"Who are you?"

"Why, I am Phineas Nigellus. I was one of prestigious headmasters of Hogwarts. Surely you know where Hogwarts is, or are you too caught up in the new American boy band to know."

"You didn't have many friends when you were younger, did you?"

Phineas looked extremely annoyed, and left to whatever painting that wasn't in that room, and Lana tried to shut out the voices in the next room, which had somehow found their way into her head. She didn't want to but for some reason, she could hear each voice as sharp as it would be if she were right in the room…

"So where is she? What's she like?" Lana could hear a girl's voice say.

"Well, she's from America. Strangest accent. And her house was sort of small. But it was really strange. She seemed…afraid of waking up the people in her house. And she had bruises on her arms. And legs…and everywhere."

Lana was almost angry to hear Harry spill about her bruises. How dare he spread it around like it was the weather, or time of day? And the Brits said Americans were gossips.

But even though, she quickly got over it, to listen to the rest of the conversation.

"Bruises? Oh gosh, did they beat her?"

"That seemed to be the general consensus by the other two."

"Oh Gosh, that's awful."

There are three ways people usually respond to that type of news, Lana had learned. You know, the kind of news when a teenager dies from alcohol poisoning, or when someone stabs the department store Santa Claus. The first way is for someone to sigh and shake their head and think or say, "The world these days." The second way would be fake pity. Not real pity, but the kind you feel for someone you might not know very well, like your friend's grandmother. You feel like your obligated to say you feel sorry for them, so you say you are.

The last way is the way the girl was reacting. Extremely similar to the second one, except you just haven't heard of things like that enough. You say you don't believe it or that it's awful, because it is, and you can't believe it but you really haven't processed it.

Lana had come to the conclusion that people couldn't really react the correct way unless they could understand through their own experiences. Sympathy is one thing, empathy is another. Lana tried to be understanding, since she figured since they didn't understand her, why would she understand them, but sometimes it was hard for her.

She refocused and listened again.

"What really struck me, was her eyes. Like you know how Voldemort's eyes are evil looking? Well her's…they were empty. I mean, like emotionless. And when we were outside, I had a sweater on and I was cold, but it was like she didn't even feel it. She had a pair of short pajamas on, and she didn't even shiver. It was almost scary. And she wouldn't talk or anything. And when I sat down next to her, she was like, afraid to have me touch her."

"I wonder…" The girls voice sounded full of curiosity.

"Maybe she wasn't just beaten…if she was maybe…" Lana froze. No. She couldn't know about that...

"You mean she was raped Hermione?" And yet she knew about it somehow. That girl Hermione must have been really smart…it was something Lana wanted to forget. Lana had long since stopped caring when Mr. Benivan got drunk, she even eventually stopped fighting him. She had stopped feeling anything emotional. She barely showed pain anymore. In a sense, Lana was almost proud of herself. She didn't burden anyone with her problems, and since she stopped caring, she didn't burden herself.

She wasn't anybody. She was just an existence, filling empty space that wasn't crucial to fill. Even her godfather forgot about her.

She could be invisible.