Breaking Hermione

Ordinary Girl

I'm just an ordinary
Same old, nothing new
I can tell you ordinary
Same old, nothing things

Ordinary Girl
Bic Runga

Hermione

I felt slower, weaker than usual. What was happening to me? I placed the goblet down, feeling momentarily dizzy, yet my hand slipped and blood red wine spilt across the table. The dreamlike ambience of my mind was a nightmare unfurling. Everything looked bright, the candles high above us, even the darkness of the room seemed softer, deceptively so. Across the table, Tom was a pale angel, detached and painfully beautiful. His cold demeanour, those dark eyes that were somehow always staring deep into me and knowing everything at once. How could he truly be human? My snow diamond necklace was flashing, flaring like a warning that no one would see. I felt like I was dying, yet Tom only stared in silence. He poisoned me. I stood, and Tom mirrored me like a shadow. He could kill me before I could so much as think, and we were both aware of that.

"I would tell you to escape." He said calmly, "However we both know you won't be able to." I knew he was right. I looked around, light and darkness dancing in an array of colours in my mind. No one was in the entire Great Hall. He had planned this out meticulously, and that only drove the blade in deeper. It was hard to imagine we were having a peaceful supper just moments before.

"Why are you doing this?" The horror was dawning on me, the premediation of his ensnarement. He was insane, unbridled, deathly. And he was after me.

Tom smiled, becoming the horrifying and beautiful angel of death that I both loved and feared. "Maybe I enjoy playing with you. You are not quite broken in as I would prefer. After all, you have stolen something from me. Do you know what it is?"

His diary? So he knew the whole time, the scheming traitor, and now he was going to punish me. Improvising, I realised quickly that I had to adapt to the situation. So what if I couldn't run? I wasn't going to give in that easily. I got down on my hands and knees on the cold stone, head reeling, and I could hear Tom's cold laughter from above me as I began to drag myself away from him. Where was he? All around me? What drug was this?

"Did you think that taking my diary would give you a glimpse into my mind?" I could hear him approaching, his footsteps only growing closer. "I knew you would try to steal it, that is why I was so careless to leave it there for you. Nothing is ever enough for you, is it? Did you desire to know me at a deeper level? Yet you don't have enough power to evade me." He mocked me. "Why do you resist me? Do you like these games? Or did you lose your mind again?"

"No." I heard myself say. It took all of my strength but I choked the words out. "I remembered my humanity."

There it was. The reason I decided to forsake him every time. The truth of why I was in this mind breaking torment, my desire to fight for my own truth and life. Deep within my heart it was resurfacing again like a persistent warrior determined to remain in the ring. It was interesting how painful it was to have a heart. To feel. Yet it was noble to bleed for certain reasons, and sacrifice and vulnerability always came at a cost. It was powerful. Every time I lost myself, he would always be there to remind me why I willingly decided to suffer. Why I had decided to forfeit my own image, why I had sacrificed myself in the first place. It was all my choice to have my truth, to find it down in the mires or high above me on the highest summit. To fight for myself. To dare for truth in the midst of horror. Out of energy, I closed my eyes laying face down on the stone. My pride was gone but truth was hidden within me with its own burning light like a snow diamond. I wanted to have dark power and to have my life away from his lies and instead was raw and exposed, my only identity the depths of horror I had fallen into. I was like him yet still wanting my humanity in tact. I couldn't have both. It was all or nothing.