Addicted to You

XVII

Goodbyes,

Cigarettes,

Heartbreaks,

Smoked and smitten.

Said and written.

Obvious but a disgrace, 'let down' hammered on our forehead.

But from the ashes of unstrung lovers, here we are- the living drunks. Stuck with the cliches we inherited from the dying Romeo and the impassioned Heathcliff.

And our fault, is we understand too well. But do we? Always mulling over the emotions we are mired in. If we can't catalogue them or design a map of where and how, should our love drive through? We give up. We turn around. We walk away. And in a room somewhere, or on a broken bench in a lost city or on our comfortable bed, drinking a cheap whiskey, we write and write. About how our heart was ripped off and how brutal was the hurt. The former being an overstatement- the overused figures our drunk self blurts.

We read and read. Bukowski and Keats. And where the narrator strangles a beautiful girl with her own hair. Because to lust is a sin. But see our life does not match with their imagination. Our heartbreaks are cruel- theirs are a metaphorical glorification.

So every night we go back to sleep praying for sweet secret dreams, just to wake up to the 21st century's reality. Where mornings are for trying, and nights are for crying.

***************************

A onerous sigh befell her as she entered the still, silent ward; the bare, leafless trees indicative of the beginnings of winter sinking its teeth into nature's abundance of life, with the intent to stay a while. The late December breeze made the atmosphere quite cold and Hermione shivered through her woolen jumper. She pulled down the cap over her head tighter and crossed her arms to try to ward off the biting nip in the air. The stars were dim and halfway obstructed on this cloudy night, their nebulous diagram matching the ill thoughts taking shape in her overtaxed mind.

Sleep had been evading her but that was of little consequence. How did one lull their self to sleep, after recently unearthing their innermost truth?

Still, it wasn't that everything was crystal clear to her- she was more conflicted than ever, ambiguous feelings addling her brain. She had chosen to apparate a little distance away from her house to walk the rest of the way. It helped her think and she really needed some time alone with herself. Because she didn't know what she was doing.

She remembered the previous day, she had stomped out of her own home in all her rage and gone back to the Weasleys'. There she found the residue of the fun and games of the night before and got right back into it. She drank and ate and relaxed with the others and told herself to forget about everything else. She didn't wanna look back; like a disgruntled little child she decided that she wouldn't even honour her promise to Snape and would not accompany him to the airport. She didn't care anymore.

But as the others succumbed to exhausted sleep at the end of the day, she remained as wide awake as an owl. And she got to thinking. Like an ancient old grandfather clock, her mind oscillated between this and that- good and bad. She wasn't sure about what to do and didn't even understand why she was feeling so fickle-minded. She didn't know and she hated not knowing.

She dissected all of her encounters with Snape, broke down every word he had spoken, every gesture he made, each and every detail of their intercourse and tried to decipher the hidden meaning in them. She was analyzing all the data but alas, the mechanism of her mind was going haywire.

The greatest obstacle in her way of thinking clearly was the nagging doubt within herself that said, what if she was the only one thinking this way? If Snape came to know about this, he would probably sneer at her for ever assuming he had any kind of affection for her. The lengths that she was willing to go, to convince herself that they both had something between them was in itself worthy of mockery.