It was just a cigarette.
It was just a cigarette, and yet it represented to her all that she had worked against, all that she was different from, all that she was too good to take in, and so skilled and self-assured as to be able to reject without hesitation. She was good; good and pure. She was different from all those Muggles. She didn't need to cling to brands and gangs and resort to peer pressure as a method in which to feel whole. She was a witch, a good witch, a witch entangled in the war, fighting for what was right and good and proper.
It was just a cigarette but it was from a world so far from what was expected of her that she shouldn't even speak the word. It was strange, on her lips. What would she be saying about it? She shouldn't even know its meaning.
She drew her lips around it now and inhaled slowly. She shouldn't be doing this, yet she was able to. It was her first time and yet it was as if a primal force had taken hold of her. She was able to do this. She was able to inhale the fumes.
Nothing changed at that moment. The world still spun and she was still Hermione Granger.
And yet…she felt different. Perhaps it was because, through all the fighting and the trouble and the tension, smoking made her feel real again. Made her feel human.
This was something that didn't concern Harry or Ron. This had nothing to do with them. It was just one selfish greedy moment in which the experience was solely focused on her.
She exhaled it slowly, coughing a little but not a lot. She had imagined that her throat would burn and her eyes would sting. She was disappointed. The effect was purely in her mind.
She closed her eyes and leaned against the wall, and thought of the smoke smouldering through her, cindering her, damaging her softly from the inside, caressing her and holding her in one blessed imitation of peace.
She wasn't like those people, those who struggled to find themselves just so they could change that self into the person beside them. She told herself that she wasn't a clone. She was a witch and a human being and she studied and she worked hard for her grades and she was different…
Did she really want to be different though? It was hard, sometimes, being who she'd created for herself. Sometimes all she wanted to do was forget about all the pain in Harry's green eyes and all the shouting Ron threw in her direction. Sometimes she just wanted to get away from those expectations and those scrutinising eyes and that reputation that she was a good girl, there was nothing exciting about her, except she was one of Harry Potter's best friends…
Sometimes she just wanted to shock them, rebel against her parents and her teachers. Surprise them with the fact that she did care for more than books, that she did want to experience new things, other than next year's textbook, that she did want to be like every body else, once and a while…
And yet she wasn't that girl. She was Hermione Granger. She wouldn't rebel, she couldn't. There was more important stuff going on than her own inner dilemmas and she would have to dwell on them another day, a safer day, a day in which there was nothing else to dwell upon.
And it was just a cigarette. It wouldn't change anything. It couldn't change her, no matter how hard she wished. It wouldn't change her life, and it wouldn't change the war, her war, everybody's war.
She looked at the cigarette one more time and then put it out, and returned to Hogwarts castle.
Closely related with my life. I haven't been able to read the sixth book yet – my dad ordered it but it still hasn't come – but it's been killing me, not writing, so this is my result. Hopefully it could fit in somewhere in the sixth book; if not let's say just after the fifth. Writing eases my temper, and I really needed it tonight.
Why is it that life, when it decides to be nice, suddenly turns everything crap again? And, before and after them dynamics, it's just Blah...?