dursley [h. g.]

••dursley•• || control

tw: mentions of self-harm (text HOME to 741741 if you need a crisis line, and skip this chapter if you think it would trigger you)

Hermione Granger couldn't remember the last time she was so furiously upset. 

"Hermione, you have got  to slow down!" Ron complained as he finally caught up with her. "You're gonna bulldoze a little munchkin, or something."

Hermione didn't reply, totally letting Ron's comment comparing the first years to munchkins slide. It was unlike her. Ron stared at her, slightly worried as they continued their bruising pace to the Gryffindor common rooms.

"Hermione?" he asked, hoping to get her attention some other way. She couldn't hear him over her own thundering heartbeat and racing mind. Her nails had started to dig into the flesh of her palms, the pain comforting to her. She came to a stop suddenly. Ron nearly tripped over her and turned to stare at her as thought she had gone insane. Maybe she had. "Hermione...?"

"I'm so stupid," she groaned, still ignoring Ron and glancing down at her palms to see the eight crescent shaped dents in her palms, her mind slowly making connections.

"Hermione, do you need to lay down or something?" Ron asked, concerned by her behavior. "You seem a bit... well, mental. No offense."

"I'm fine, Ron," she said finally. "Just need to go to-"

"The library," he finished for her. "See you later then." Ron stuck his hands in his pockets awkwardly and continued back to the Gryffindor common room. And for once, Hermione did not go to the library. She simply moved to the side of the corridor, back against the wall, and slid to the ground.

When Hermione had first started showing signs of magic, she had been afraid of herself. She was afraid that something was wrong with her, that she was some sort of freak of nature. And so her life had become a careful balance of control. Because she could not control her outbursts of accidental magic, she put control into other aspects of her life. She could control what she knew, so she learned as much as she could whenever she could. She tried her best to control other people, and she became well known around her town as the bossy little girl down the lane.

When she came to Hogwarts, her fear of being seen as a freak for her magic was diminished greatly. Hermione was not afraid of what she could do, she was proud  of it. She was a witch, she could do magic- it wasn't strange or abnormal. But she was still different, she was a witch with non-magical parents. She was a muggleborn, a mudblood. And because of that, she was lesser than her peers, starting off at a lower point. She was laughed at, teased, flat out bullied.

And so the vice-grip of control that Hermione had come to know as her coping mechanism found it's way around her throat again. 

Hermione worked harder than anyone else in her year. She was top of her class, she was the brightest witch of her age. Time and time again, she found what she could control and seized it firmly by the throat. She tried to control her peers, her professors, her friends, her studies- at one point, she had control over time itself. 

But there was nothing she had control over like her own pain. 

Hermione had tried to stop being so bossy- it had almost cost the witch her friends time and time again. But control was the only way she knew how to cope with something. So she turned to other methods. 

There was a feeling unlike anything else in the world when Hermione had discovered that she had agency over her pain. It was satisfying at first to know exactly what was going to happen when she struck her own flesh, when the wound stung in the air, when the blood pooled, clotted, her skin scabbed over and then scarred. She had control over every step, and it was freeing. Because she knew no one could hurt her like she hurt herself.

And then came the guilt. The guilt of knowing what others would say, the guilt of knowing that what she was doing was bad, and harmful. That her toxic thoughts were bleeding out of her mind, through her skin, and into the world around her. And while her own crimson blood was always contained and healed by the time she was around others, she could no longer tell if the toxic sludge that polluted her mind was oozing onto those around her once more. 

And so, after months and months of habitual urges, Hermione quit cold turkey. 

A few months later, she started tutoring Kendra Dursley.

For a while, it seemed like the best time in her life. She was friends with the girl she had felt a pull towards since their first year, Ron and Harry had stopped fighting, Viktor Krum had asked her to the Yule Ball. She felt no need for control, because everything was already going enough of how she wanted it to that she felt pleased. It was easy to move on from what she had thought was rock bottom because she was sure she had reached her highest point.

That all went downhill very fast.

A monster had formed in Hermione's gut that roared in anger and sickly jealousy every time she saw Kendra sitting next to Theodore Nott at the Yule Ball. In her blind and rotten jealousy, she had kissed Viktor Krum, not really wanting to, in attempt to get revenge on a girl who had done no wrong. She had fought with Ron over a guy that she liked enough as a friend but was using, however unknowingly, to make a girl jealous. It all culminated in a blind attempt of control over the mess she had made, and she had kissed Kendra. 

It was the best mistake of her life.

When they had finally gotten together, Hermione had thought her need for control was all but gone. When she stared at the raised, white lines on her skin, she no longer felt the urge to add to the pattern, only sadness that she had ever felt the need to do such a thing.

It was only now, as her chest heaved and her back pressed up against the castle wall, the piece of her skin where her clothing had scrunched up from her careless decent to the floor cold against the stone, that she realized she had thought wrong. 

And she had lost the best thing that had ever happened to her because she had tried to control Kendra's life.

This time, as Hermione felt the urge to tell Kendra to come back to her, to not just wander around and kiss whoever, she stopped herself. She adjusted her jacket to stare at her arm, and she stared at the pattern of slashes that had healed over. The same overwhelming sense of guilt squeezed her heart, and she felt her throat close up with the salty taste of tears already in her mouth. 

As much as she wanted to punch Pansy Parkinson the same way she had punched Draco Malfoy in her third year, she thought about what Kendra had told her in the hospital wing.

Because I think you need to do some growing up and thinking before I'm ready to forgive you.

Maybe Hermione hadn't grown up, but she had done plenty of thinking. For the first time in a long time, she recognized her shallow breaths and shaking hands, and she let go.

Because control had caused her too much pain this time, and it was time to let it go.

a/n: okay this is a very heavy chapter (like i said at the top of the chapter, if you need a crisis line, you can text HOME to 741741), but i think it's very important. i didn't plan this one out but i just sort of went with it as it come out and i really like this chapter. something more light and fun-hearted next time, promise. 

danger is almost back on the menu guys- how about a meme to show for that 

also yes i have updated three times today no we're not going to talk about i have literally been typing for like six hours straight im gonna go eat dinner now