Life, or something like it.
I walk into the small café as I have done once a month for the past year.
"I'm over here Hermione!" Ginny calls from one of the booths. I cherish the moments I have with her, we are in the midst of a war but she remains innocent as the day I met her. I've changed though, and she knows I have, but she accepts it. 'All wars have their casualties' she says, 'A casualty of war', yes, that's what she'd laughingly labelled me, though I knew she wasn't making light of it, she did not think it was a laughing matter, it reflected in her eyes, the great sadness it caused her to se what had happened to me.
Without even noticing I've ordered my coffee and sat down opposite my friend, we used to be best friends and I can't really pinpoint when we ceased being so but I suppose we grew apart, I've changed and she's the same, that's how life is I suppose.
"How are you Hermione?" I thank the lord every day for people like Ginny, she remains kind and caring through all the hardship, she had been taken out of the training program and away from her family and those closest to her when she'd gotten pregnant with Harry's baby, just before the baby was to be born we were called out to battle and Ginny was left behind.
"Cold." I could never lie to her, never say I was fine, I was cold and empty, but she made me feel that it wasn't all just a waste.
"Yes, that's Ginny Weasley, such a nice young woman, mothered the Potter child, taking care of him all by herself, and so young too, pity for her to get mixed up with such no good hooligans." I almost laughed at the irony of the situation, I was Hermione Granger, Hogwarts resident know-it-all and notorious prude, then I fail to go back for my sixth year because I have to fight evil and save the people here now from an early death and here I am, three years later, being called a no good hooligan by one of the more famous "scarlet women" as Ron would have called them. Ginny looks over her shoulder to the two women I've been staring at.
"Don't let them bother you, they just don't understand." And I know that she doesn't let them bother her, she's truly extraordinary, I've never met anyone that cares so little about others opinions of her, but I know one opinion that matters to her, mine. I remember one time when I'd broken down and she'd comforted me, I told her she was my guardian angel, she shone with pride and happiness at that moment. I don't know why it matters to her so much what I think but I have learned that you should always mind what you say, even if you don't know it someone may value your opinion. With Fred and George I could tell them to go screw themselves and they'd immediately retort with some witty comeback or another, with Ginny it would hurt.
"Neither do you." Had it been a few years ago I would have been careful about how to phrase it, or most likely not have said it at all. But it's all different now, I know that Ginny won't misunderstand me, she takes it as a stating of a fact. She cannot know what it's like to be me anymore then I can understand what it's like to be her, no one can fully understand what it's like to be anyone else. Even though Dean Thomas had been teased for being a muggleborn much in the same way as I had that offered only a slight understanding for how he was feeling because no two minds are the same.
"Well that's because you were right all those years ago when you explained your view on people claiming they understand you, no two minds are the same wasn't it? My mind doesn't function in the same way as theirs."
"No, you're right, it doesn't, your mind is truly exceptional." No one says anything more, it's not an uncomfortable silence, far from it, we don't need words, just being in each others presence is soothing, for me it's because I need the reassurance that there is still good, when I'm not sure where my own loyalties lie at least I can be sure of hers. As for her I think it's that she needs the knowledge that I'm ok, or alive at least, I think it's partly because I'm all she has left of her old life, Her family is all but gone, only the twins survived, one of which is presently in a coma and the other can't remember her. The only reminder of Harry, to whom she'd been engaged, was their son, a boy of about two years that would never know his father. I often wonder how she can manage to stay like this after all she's been through, that's certainly something I couldn't do. She thinks more about the good people they were then the fact that they aren't here anymore, as horribly clichéd as it sounds, she always looks on the bright side of life. I think she's worried about me, she keeps looking at me like I'm going to do something stupid, I can't blame her though, she probably saved my life. After the first few battles almost everyone I knew had died and I'd killed more people then I care to count, then the battles became fewer and far between, but the war was nowhere near over, this was were the cold-blooded murder started, I've always been careful to distinguish between the two, killing in battle makes you guilty and you'll never be the same after you do but going to someone with the intention to kill them is a completely different thing, you can no longer claim it was self defence, you can no longer argue justified action, at the time I would tell myself they deserved it, after I would feel numb, at times I wasn't sure if I was alive or not. I started down a self destructive path, I would sleep with a different man every night, men I'd only just met, I knew the dangers of course, we were in a war and any one of them could be an enemy and several were, I would play Russian roulette, the thrill of the gun to my temple and the risk of death was an amazing feeling. Setting my life on the line was the only way I knew I still had it, I wasn't alone, Seamus Finnegan was with me every step of the way, we weren't exactly friends in the typical sense of the word, we would occasionally speak but anyone who saw us would probably label us as distant acquaintances rather then friends yet we regarded each other as best friends. About a year ago when Ginny found me I finally woke up, and as she dragged me back to the right track, the one I'd left a couple of years previously, I pulled him with me. We still barely speak and we're still best friends, I doubt that will change.
As I think I look at my hands, as I always do, they are clean, almost sterile, but to me they seem to be covered in the blood of the hundreds of people I've killed. Then I think of the change that had been wrought in me by the war, I was always armed, I had my wand up my sleeve, I also had my very own weapon of choice, the seemingly innocent chopsticks in my hair, that when unsheathed were needles covered in a highly effective poison. Yes, I may have been forced back on the right track but it has been forever fused with the one I chose, I am, and forever will be, a cold-blooded killer. But I wonder, I was incapable of steering myself right but Ginny ventured down the same road with people unfamiliar to her and places that had pulled me in deeper, yet not once was she even tempted to let herself fall, she kept going and did what she came to do. If the same thing that pulled me deeper under the water to the point where I surely would have drowned, held no appeal to her, then maybe I haven't changed as much as I originally thought, maybe this was me to begin with.
Funny though, when I was younger I believed that when I was older I would get all the answers, but the older I get the more questions and fewer answers I seem to get. When I was little I was absolutely sure where my heart lay, now I'm not so sure. I used to be convinced that everything was black and white, and I seem now to be caught in a field of grey where neither colour is distinguishable anymore. My convictions have all failed me, nothing is for certain and everything has more then one side.
Ironic don't you think, that the innocent little prude of a schoolgirl that seemed to be attached at the hip to her two best friends, so quickly could turn into the cold murderer who's best friend is a man she's know almost half her life and had probably had less the fifty conversations with that exceeded the normal polite small talk of two students in a class. I know everything and nothing, one minute it all makes sense, the next I'm sure I'm upside-down. But I guess this is life, or something like it.
A/N: Hope someone likes it, i think it turned out ok, if slightly depressing at some points. If anyone has any advice on rating and genre it would be appreciated.