MAGNOLIAS
Wilt thou go with me, sweet maid,
Say maiden, wilt thou go with me
Through the valley depths of shade,
Of night and dark obscurity,
Where the path hath lost its way,
Where the sun forgets the day,
Where there's nor life nor light to see,
Sweet maiden, wilt thou go with me?
An Invite to Eternity, John Clare
CHAPTER TWO: I Call the Phantoms of a Thousand Hours
Hermione had been staring at a blank page in her journal for like an eternity. Ginny had long gone to bed and now was sleeping restlessly in her space in the corner. The younger girl had just gone to bed. Her attempt of trying to engage Hermione in conversation had failed miserably, allowing an eerie silence to settle in their room.
Grimmauld Place refused to lose the aura of misery that wanted to surround it indefinitely. The ear-shattering wails of Mrs. Black's portrait no longer blasted through the hallways. Kreacher had disappeared; his snarling and muttering were a brief memory. Mrs. Weasley had mentioned that a sock went missing from the laundry that she had been doing earlier.
Despite the disappearance of the house-elf and portrait, Grimmauld Place was empty and all its inhabitants confined themselves to their respective rooms. The silence was maddening with Sirius' presence still haunting the hallways. On her way to her room with Ginny, they encountered Remus sitting on the stairs with his head buried in his hands. The desolation in Remus' eyes was heart wrenching, she thought sadly. The man had lost not only a friend but also a brother and their moments together had been brief. Remus had been busy with Order business and Sirius had been far too lost after his time in Azkaban.
There was something about this house, something that was eternally miserable. It was as if the house itself took pride in manipulating the grief of those who lived within it with a sickening glee. The words too late seemed to hover above everyone who lived within the house. Perhaps, dear old Mrs. Black had cursed the house before she died in case its ownership came under Muggles. She wouldn't put it past the wretched woman.
Maybe she should have stayed home.
She knew if she were home, her sanctuary would be right in front of the abandoned Steinway, situated against the far window of the family room as it had always been, a worn copy of Mrs. Dalloway in hand. The Steinway was a wedding present from her grandmother to her mother; something that she knew her mother was hoping to pass down to her despite her separation from the Muggle World.
She also knew if she were home, she would be locked in a vicious verbal battle with her mother or moments of awkward silence with her father. She sighed, breaking her stare away from her journal and to roll onto her back. She watched as the shadows of the wind-caressed trees danced against the ceiling. She knew the inevitable separation between her and her parents had been a long time coming. The expectations that her parents carried about her going to medical school dwindled when they had finally realized that her entry to the magical world was not just a passing fancy but had quickly become her life.
Life at home was filled with arguments of what Hogwarts and the wizarding world would actually provide for her and had gotten worse with the letters notifying her parents about the impending danger that Voldemort posed. It had been unacceptable to her parents when she had informed them of her decision to stay at Hogwarts and continue her magical education.
A part of her understood her parents' disappointment stemmed from worrying. They were intelligent enough to recognize the position of their daughter. It made her sad that their support faded into almost nothing, too clouded by their disappointment in her to offer any.
So she had packed her bags and sent off a letter to Tonks at the Ministry to let Mrs. Weasley know that she would be arriving earlier than planned. Without so much as a good-bye to her parents, she met Tonks at a designated location.
Hermione rubbed her eyes tiredly. She wasn't home. She wasn't faced with the constant irritation of arguing with her parents. She had meant what she had said earlier to Harry. She was tired of an empty house. For when her parents weren't trying to engage in verbal battles with her, the house was completely silent. She was tired of being home alone with nothing but her thoughts to keep her company.
And yet she had come to Grimmauld Place and a different kind of silence. The maddening, numbing silence that kept even Crookshanks confined to the corner of her bed. This could be home. But it wasn't. Instead she was quietly struggling to make sense of her life on top of her bed, still clad in her torn jeans and button-down oxford from her arrival earlier in the evening.
She yawned and shifted. Her page was still blank. Her eyes darted around nervously. Her quill had switched from hand to hand, dangling from her fingertips off the side of her bed. Her eyes watched the fading candlelight, the agonizing frustration from her conversation with Harry still eating away at her.
"Are you afraid of the dark?"
There was something in the way he had asked her the question. She had immediately recognized the desperation in his voice, but the desperation itself merely served as a layer to the dark and complex emotions underneath it. This notion alone unnerved her completely. She recognized his desperation, knew that he fought to control his emotions. It frightened her that they were quickly nearing the bursting point. But what terrified her more was that Harry felt he had to fight alone.
Her answer-
Her fear of the dark, of confessions was a poor reason for selfishly protecting herself from him. The complete and utter opposite of what she wanted to do.
"Just go, Hermione."
He may not have said it out loud, but instinctively she knew he was looking for someone to listen to him. She wanted desperately to be that person, but she missed an opportunity because of her own selfish fear.
"Hermione?" Ginny's sleepy voice broke through her thoughts. "I don't mean to sound terribly rude, but could you please blow the bloody candle out?"
"Sorry, Gin," she murmured, glancing distantly at her blank page once more. "Got caught up in my… my writing… I'm just going to go get water from the kitchen, do you want something?"
She heard a moan of irritation. "For the love of God, go to bed."
Hermione ignored her friend and blew out the candle between their beds. She dropped her journal and quill to the floor with a soft thump. Rising to her feet, she carefully maneuvered throughthe darkness of their room into the hallway. A bleak chill embraced her as she walked quietly down the stairs and into the small kitchen air. Despite Molly Weasley's attempt to bring a bit of warmth into the kitchen with a glass vase of wildflowers, the kitchen still retained the same coldness of the rest of the house. She shook her head. Surrounding herself with these thoughts would only serve to feed the misery, it would only be best if she got her water and went back to her room to try to sleep.
She began to quietly search for glass in the cupboards, cringing each time an obnoxious squeak permeated the sullen silence of the household.
"Dad said that your parents didn't see you off this time around."
She jumped, nearly dropping a glass she had found onto the floor. Of course… Ron. He only ever appeared when she just wanted to be left alone. She bit her lip, trying to slip on a mask of composure before she turned around. It seemed as if she couldn't avoid him forever.
"Ron," she greeted him quietly with air of indifference, hoping that she could avoid a confrontation at all costs. She kept her head low, so that her eyes did not meet his gaze. It was best to be completely passive. Things between them had been especially strange in the last two years. She knew that he held some feelings for her and she'd realized too late that things between them had begun to whirl out of control. There were too many moments where she found Ron had cornered her into an awkward silence. It was almost as if he were trying to force her to confess something. But these continuous rows of his were getting to the point where she was growing too weary to fight.
"Scared you?"
"More like startled me," she snapped, filling her glass with water. "Don't do that. It's bad enough that this house is utterly creepy."
"I haven't seen you all day," he responded, ignoring her comment. She could recognize some of the hidden implications in his voice.
She sighed. She was in no mood to fight him, especially in the middle of the night. For a friendship that seemed to be based on nothing but their fighting, these moments were signs. She needed to pay attention, especially now when she recognizing that he did have a hidden agenda when it came to her. "Ron, I only arrived in the early evening. And it's late. I'm tired. I just came down to get a drink of water."
"Ginny said that you talked to Harry."
Her eyes narrowed. Was he deliberately trying to trap her? Or better yet, was he trying to manipulate her concern for Harry into something he could use against her? She set her glass down and whirled around, now curious as what exactly he was trying to get at.
"And?" She hadn't meant for her reply to come out in an indignant manner. It seemed her attempts to keep this conversation neutral and short were blatantly going to fail.
"And here I always thought you were supposed to be the smart one," he mocked, inching closer into her space and blocking hopes for any future escape.
She could feel her anger rising. "What exactly do you want from me, Ron? All I came to do was to get a bloody glass of water. Do I need to give a reason for every damn thing I-?"
"I'm just saying," he cut her off. "You spent way too much time trying to involve yourself in his life when he obviously doesn't want you to get involved."
"Just go, Hermione."
Her fists clenched angrily at her side. What was it about Ron and his ability to draw out every insecurity that she had carefully hidden?
"Do you enjoy being malicious, Ron? Because if you must know, I was only trying to show him that I do care and that I'm not going to hide from him like you're obviously doing. Besides, did it ever occur to you that he needs someone to talk to? Or are you still convinced that the world revolves around you?"
Hermione pushed passed Ron with a vicious shove, too angry to realize that she had left the kitchen in the complete opposite direction than she had intended too. She made her way past the spot where Mrs. Black's portrait had hung and where Kreacher had spent time muttering. Suddenly she found herself at the end of a hallway and cursed her own stupidity as she finally realized she had cornered herself on a side of Grimmauld Place that she was nowhere near familiar with.
"Stupid Ron." She let out a shaky sigh. Her eyes darted around for a bit of light that could possibly help her find her way back to the kitchen and then to her room. "Stupid me."
A hand fell upon her should and she jumped.
"Ron," she hissed. "I don't want to talk to you anymore. Not about my parents. Not about Harry-"
She whirled around with every intention of pushing him away again, but was frozen in her place when she found herself meeting Harry's fierce.
"Harry…" she whispered, his name stumbling out of her lips.
His grip tightened on her shoulder and she wondered how much he'd heard of her conversation with Ron. She swallowed nervously as he drew her closer, his mouth inches away from her own.
"I'm beginning think that we were meant to have these conversations in the dark, Hermione."
TBC
Wow guys. Thanks for all those lovely reviews. You really know how to make a girl feel. I'm just glad that you enjoyed the first chapter.
The second chapter is more of an introspective chapter, and the last I swear, but some issues need to get out of the way first.
Just a quick note this time around. The title for this chapter is a line from Percy Shelley's "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty". Although Shelley isn't my favorite romantic poet, the line really seemed appropriate for this chapter for some reason. "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" is a beautifully sad poem and I do recommend everyone to read it.
And finally, Ron. Ron, Ron, Ron, Ron, Ron. I love the guy to death. Honestly. But a warning for future chapters to come… Ron's going to be a jerk. Plain and simple. If you want to see what my version of Jerk!Ron is like, go read my story Undercurrents. I'm not saying he'll turn out to be a complete jerk… You'll just have to wait and see.
Until the next chapter!