Hermione snorted, covered her mouth with her hand and had difficulty suppressing a crazy giggle that would have made her sound like a teenage schoolgirl again.
She shook her head in disbelief, stood up from the chair that had just given her support because she urgently needed it, turned her back on the headmistress and went to the fireplace to support herself there, take a deep breath and get her laughter under control.
She stared, mesmerized, into the flames, the warmth of which she could feel on her face. She had to shake her head again. She just couldn't believe it. Still smiling in disbelief, she turned back to the headmistress, who was still sitting exactly as before and didn't seem to have moved an inch since Hermione's outburst.
Only her forehead was furrowed in a frown and she was fixing Hermione with a look that the younger woman couldn't interpret. But she didn't care either. The audacity that this woman allowed herself to be.
Hermione put her hands on her hips, stood in front of Minerva McGonagall and had to search for the right words to express her indignation. "You brought me here in all seriousness, without telling me what it was about, making it seem as if something terribly bad had happened, so that I began to imagine that my daughter had gone over to the dark side and the war would begin again for all of us. Only to discover that Rose has a crush on some boy and writes about it in her diary?!" Hermione's voice had become more and more shrill with every word.
"Are you completely insane?! Has it been so long since your last relationship that you're dramatizing such a triviality as if my daughter was a stalker with serious mental health issues and the poor boy was someone who needed to be protected from her? God, Professor, that's a new low of...of...remote from life, even by your standards."
Minerva McGonagall sat frozen like a statue behind her desk, not moving a muscle as she endured Hermione's tirade of abuse. Her gaze was still fixed on the brunette witch in front of her, who had so obviously lost all patience. Once again there was something hidden in those piercing green eyes that Hermione couldn't interpret.
"She's not writing about a boy…"
Hermione hesitated only briefly to process what the implication implied before she shot back, "Oh, great, so now my daughter is a problem case because she's attracted to girls?! I wouldn't have considered you homophobic at all." Her voice was full of mockery and she looked at Minerva challengingly, her arms crossed over her chest.
But the headmistress easily held her gaze and didn't flinch. If Hermione didn't know better, she would think that Minerva was completely calm and unaffected by her provocations. But she could see it in her eyes. Like a storm gathering over an ocean, her green eyes flashed menacingly and Hermione braced herself for the floods that were about to break upon her.
"She's not writing about just any girl." Although Minerva spoke quietly, her voice cut through the room, clear and icy, making Hermione shiver. She felt the fine hairs on her arms stand up and had to suppress the urge to protectively rub the cold out of her limbs with her arms. She didn't want to appear vulnerable or intimidated - and went on the offensive again.
"Oh, a special girl then – one she doesn't deserve, in your opinion? A Gryffindor girl unworthy of a Slytherin? Hm?" Hermione raised her eyebrows, snorted contemptuously and walked past Minerva's desk to the window front that took up the back of the office. She just couldn't stay still, this whole discussion filled her with a restlessness that she couldn't seem to shake.
The view was breathtaking and had Hermione been in the mood, she would have taken the time to enjoy the lights that illuminated the many windows of Hogwarts, providing a warm contrast to the darkness that had fallen over the castle.
The world outside lay peacefully, a stark contrast to Hermione's inner life, the unrest she felt in the presence of the black-haired witch, the dissatisfaction and bitterness in the face of her failed life, and the unbridled anger and indignation she felt when she thought about why the headmistress had ordered her to school.
"Not quite..." Minerva replied almost sheepishly and with a bitterness in her voice that Hermione had only heard from herself in their conversation so far.
"How do you know it's hers? It could belong to any student," Hermione argued, still looking outside and wondering why they were even talking about this topic anymore. The whole conversation seemed so vain and obsolete.
In the distance she could see Hagrid's hut at the edge of the Dark Forest. It looked very small and tiny from up here and there was a light burning in the windows. A sudden sentimentality gripped Hermione at the sight, as countless memories of past times, better times, flooded her mind.
The headmistress's voice pulled her out of her thoughts and she sounded annoyed, as if she had to explain everything to a slow-witted student several times, even though the answer was so obvious: "It was on her desk, right after Transfiguration class. Nobody else could have positioned it there at that time. But that's not the point now."
"Oh yes, the ominous girl my daughter has a crush on. Do you want to tell me who it is or are we going to continue beating around the bush? I really have better things to do than to worry about my daughter's literary outpourings, which, mind you, are absolutely none of our business." She gave Minerva a withering look that spoke volumes about what she thought of the fact that Minerva simply had read her daughter's diary. It was a lie that she had something more important to do, she didn't have anything important to do right now, not today or any other day in her inconsequential life, but she would never admit that to Minerva.
She looked expectantly at the headmistress as she leaned against the window and crossed her arms over her chest to convey a calm impression, even though she was becoming increasingly annoyed at having to drag every single detail out of Minerva. "So?"
The headmistress slowly rose from her place behind the desk and stepped out from behind it to face Hermione, but stood near the desk and rested her hand on it as if she needed to hold on to something before revealing the truth to her guest.
She let out a long sigh, pulled her shoulders back and stood up to her full imposing height, green eyes glowing guiltily, before she whispered just one word, so quiet that Hermione could barely hear it: "Me."
Hermione thought she had misheard and took a step towards the headmistress. "What?"
Minerva took another deep breath and let it out, frustrated about having to repeat herself. "It's me. She's writing about me." She could hardly hide the despair and guilt she felt about it from her voice, while Hermione just stared at her in shock, her mouth open, trying to understand what she had just heard.
"Her stories, her fantasies, all these details, what she imagines, what I do to her and she to me - it's all about me. I..." Her voice broke and with each word she took a step closer to Hermione, as if trying to make her realize with the closeness she was drawing to the mother of the girl who fantasized about her headmistress that all of this was just that and only that: a fantasy.
Hermione reacted instinctively and raised an outstretched hand, which she held in front of her like a shield to stop Minerva from coming any closer. But the hand with which she tried to shield herself from the headmistress was shaking slightly and she felt bitter bile rise in her at all the images that had implanted themselves in her head with the older woman's last words like a diseased parasite reveling in the suffering she felt at the idea of the woman in front of her together with her daughter.
She clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle the sob that tried to force its way out of her throat and slowly backed away, far away from the woman who she suddenly saw in a completely different light.
"Mrs. Weasley, I swear to you on all that is sacred to me that I have never touched your daughter or given her any hope that our relationship would be anything other than that between a student and her headmistress. But these things she wrote about me really shocked me. You need to take a look at this."
Hermione didn't want to see anything. She couldn't believe what was happening. She couldn't and didn't want to feel the feeling that spread through her and took possession of her. She had worked on it for so long, hadn't thought about it for so many years, had assumed she had overcome it.
"That can't be. I don't believe you," she whispered, desperately clinging to the last thread of hope that this couldn't be true, this was all just a huge misunderstanding, she was dreaming and imagining it all and would just wake up from this nightmare, which suddenly became her life.
"See for yourself." Minerva turned back to her desk while Hermione buried her face in her hands and massaged her temples, hoping that it would dispel the looming headache that was slowly creeping up her neck as a result of this conversation.
Hermione heard a drawer being opened, something being pulled out, and the drawer being closed again before something fell onto the headmistress's desk with a loud thud.
Sighing, she raised her head, walked to the desk and reached out to grab the notebook that was supposed to contain all of her daughter's dirty fantasies, and froze in mid-motion. Her heart stopped for a moment, only to start beating faster again, as if it wanted to jump out of her chest. Naked fear took possession of her, cold sweat formed on her skin and she wished that a black hole would open up beneath her and swallow her completely. Away, just away from here and from this moment that simply couldn't be.
"That's not Rose's notebook..." she whispered quietly, barely audible to the headmistress, who had been watching her former student's reaction in confusion.
"Mrs Weasley, I just explained to you…" Minerva repeated.
"You don't understand," Hermione interrupted, still staring at the notebook as tears welled up in her eyes at the overwhelming shame that was coursing through her entire body and closing in her throat.
It was only with the utmost effort that she forced the words that would spell her doom to the surface, but any control or desire to cover up her reaction was completely lost in the shock of what lay before her. There was no turning back now, no place to hide, she couldn't escape, she couldn't leave, it was too late. Everything lay open like a corpse on the dissecting table, right in front of her eyes, and even worse, in front of the woman who was never supposed to see this notebook and its contents. She couldn't look her in the eyes, didn't want to see anything anymore and squeezed her eyes shut, the tears were now streaming down her face as she whispered: "It's mine..."