"Who am I?" The answers, like stale echoes, bounce back to me. I am human, tethered by the instinct for touch, yet afraid to cross the chasm of intimacy.
I am alone, chased by whispers in the air, "Who could love Hermione Granger? The world is not enough for her causes."
I had never tried to accept who I was. I had only slowly learned who I was not. I was a human who craved contact, who needed it just like everyone else. But I couldn't go that extra step that's required for a partner, so I went without.
But it didn't matter. No one questioned my spouselessness. Everyone thought I was too ambitious for men. My standing next to no one on podiums and at galas suited their idea of me: overbearing, demanding, and driven. "Hermione Granger has no room for love," they whispered. "Who could possibly love Hermione Granger?"
Once, I was brilliant at intimacy - at shagging - perfect in performance. Every show was well received. But inside me was emptiness; caresses left me sobbing.
Doing "it" - well, initially, it was fine. I mastered every act - but it wasn't real, and I wasn't quite there. Performance would be a good word to describe it. I did the thing you do, but there was nothing there. I felt nothing; my mind was flat. And then it also started to hurt, physically hurt, almost every time.
How do you confess such a deficiency to your lover? You don't; you leave and let no man within reach.
How do you explain that? "Hey, I don't want to do this thing that's the very definition of 'we' because it hurts, and also, I feel nothing when you touch me, and I'd really rather you didn't."
Sometimes having a body on top of me, moving inside me, made me cry. It felt like being violated even though I had agreed to be there. How do you explain these things?
You can't. It's too much. It's hard. So instead, I said, "It's over, " and chose to be on my own.
But there have been hopefuls, and because of them, I mastered yet another realm. It was easy to reject without seeming to reject. I just didn't acknowledge the signs and continued talking as if the moment wasn't tense with awkwardness. It was ignoring their lingering eyes and implied invitations which earned me the ice queen title.
But it stopped working, didn't it? Somehow, I let one of my would-be suitors join me at my table.
It was Monday when he emerged, seated himself in a whirlwind of robes next to unapproachable Hermione Granger in the Ministry cafeteria, cracking jokes and leaving me breathless with laughter.
He sat there next to me and made witty remarks about the members of the Wizengamot and lured giggles from a frozen core. At the end of the day, I found him waiting outside my office, and he joined me in the atrium and walked me to the floo.
It became a routine. He'd find my table every lunch. I was looking forward to seeing him by the third day despite myself.
Five days later, he declared, "They, them," and pointed to himself.
"Who are you?" I thought, finding understanding slippery like soap, and decided, "Who you say you are."
I acquiesced. I reasoned it cost me nothing to say the words I'd been asked to speak, and it seemed important to them. Important enough to petition to have their identification documents changed. It was all over the Prophet.
They asked me to dinner the next day, and I shook my head no. They spoke of our rare connection.
But I said no to any hint we'd take our meetings outside the Ministry, and after so many nos, they wanted answers.
"Why?" Their eyes were bright.
They said, "Are you afraid?"
Yes, I didn't say, imagining feeling nothing when they touched me, and worse, I imagined myself hiding in the locked loo, bawling.
No matter how I stonewalled, they refused to leave it alone. When we met, they'd say that the way we laughed together, the ease we felt, meant something. "This is a once-in-a-lifetime thing. You can trust me."
Ultimatums hung over me, unspoken, heavy. Frightened as a child, I blurted my secret, "I don't want to be touched."
I said, "I can't. I don't like to be touched."
"What do you mean," they replied, "when you say 'I can't,' 'I don't like to be touched'?"
I told them.
"Oh," they said.
The shadow of our impossibility cast the room into darkness. Silence dragged. Panicked, sure they'd never make me laugh again. So I did what any sensible person would do. I invited them to my home. I said brusquely, "Let's skip the dates because we are adults. We have been through this before and know what we want."
I thought they might say no, expected them to, but they didn't hesitate. An unexpected, baffling "thank you" exploded from a broad smile "You can trust me."
When they arrived, they arrived in style, by the front door.
I swept my arm across the room and said, "Welcome to my home."
It was a dreary two-room flat. One bedroom, one living room, and one tiny little kitchen. A place to sleep between days at the Ministry, that was all. As if blind to the stains in the ceiling, they say, "It's beautiful. It's all you."
Plan B, an ancient TV, sat in the corner. It was what I hoped would keep them entertained if we ran out of things to say. I pointed at it and started explaining what it was and how it worked. "Like wizard photographs," I babbled.
They interrupted me gently, and I felt stupid because, of course, this person who had brought androgyny and new-fangled demands to the Wizengamot had spent time with muggles.
"I brought you something," they said while they rummaged in their bag. I stared at their hair, falling like a blond curtain over a humongous leather purse.
"He," I thought, trying it on to see if it still fit this person in front of me and found to my surprise, that it didn't. The things I thought I said to humour were the only words that defined them.
They finally pulled a shimmering rainbow-coloured flag. They looked expectantly at me.
"I know what it is," I said. "I know what it means, but it has nothing to do with me personally."
They raised an eyebrow., but they let it go and pulled out another flag, also made of shimmering silk, changing hue as the fabric moved. Purples, greys, dark, light. A hand held it out, but I refused to take it. "What is it?"
They filled in the gaps in my knowledge created by long hours, embroiled in other rights, and I took a step back when they proffered it again.
"I don't need a flag," I said. "I don't want to make myself into a cause."
They nodded slowly, "I understand."
"It's not me, you see," I said. "I'm just something, someone with quirks, not a label.
The two flags became neatly folded rectangles in their hands and then cubes with a flick of a wand. Finally, the cubes were placed in the bookcase. "For when you need them," they smiled.
We had dinner seated at my tiny kitchen table, and it was lovely. We laughed and told each other secrets, and it was beautiful and increasingly uncomfortable. I could see they could tell and wanted to put a hand on mine for comfort, but I hid them in my lap.
We browsed the TV programme and found a show we enjoyed and an episode neither of us minded seeing again. It was like it was meant to be. We sat down together and watched the crack in the world open up.
When the old man ate fish sticks with custard, they asked if they could put their arm around me, and I agreed automatically like I always have.
I stiffened when the arm slid around me, and they said, "I will stop whenever you want."
"No, no, no. Don't. It's what I want."
I tried to lean into their warmth, and slowly, as the conspiracy unravelled on the screen and the world was saved, I relaxed, and I found my space there.