Corrupting The Innocents
Title: Corrupting the Innocents
Author name: Romulus Lupin
Author email: galigad@yahoo.com
Category: Romance
Sub Category: Angst
Keywords: H/Hr
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: None.
Summary: A sequel of sorts to Dream Chasing. Why
did Erin say that Harry and Hermione are 'corrupting the innocents'? Who are the
'innocents'? And why are they being corrupted?
And … are all the 'innocents' really innocent?
DISCLAIMER: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Chapter 3. Fairy Tales Are For Idiots
She's staring at him again.
I couldn't help but smile as I watch her, knowing full well what she was doing, remembering all the times before when I sat in my own little corner, staring at him in the same way that she does …
Feeling the same things she feels.
I shake my head.
Been there, done that - and I could feel my heart going out to her as she tried to act nonchalant and unaffected, knowing that she wanted to bolt and run as far away as she could-
Been there.
I feel myself flushing as I remembered the summer before I went to Hogwarts - running down the stairs and barreling into the kitchen, only to stop and gape at seeing the person I'd been talking about all summer sitting at our table, thinner than I had imagined, hair standing out all over the place, a piece of toast in his mouth and looking back at me with those emerald eyes that I really saw for the first time up close and personal …
Done that.
Sitting beside him at our table, silently watching as he read his Hogwarts letter and frowning ever so slightly as my brothers and Mum discussed finances … putting my elbow in the butter dish when he turned to me and asked if I was also going to Hogwarts that year … blushing every time he came within 10 feet of me-
How can she stand it?
Sitting there so close to him, spending all that time with him as he tutored her, racing around the Quidditch pitch on the Firebolt that he had never allowed anyone else to touch, much even use-
I shake my head at that. Be honest with yourself - he's let Ron have a go with it; he's allowed me to practice chasing the Snitch on it while he contented himself with sitting on the ground watching me fly around …
Happy to be grounded and sitting beside her as she read.
He would never do the same with me.
He would share everything else he had with me and my family - I almost fainted that first summer at Diagon Alley when he simply shoved Lockhart's books into my cauldron without a thought. He'd seen me watching enviously as he raced around our makeshift Quidditch pitch on his Firebolt and simply flew down and handed it to me without a word - and I had gone into my mouth-open, clueless and totally stupefied routine at what he had done …
And he had gone into the Chamber of Secrets to look for me.
I closed my eyes and fought down the shiver that those memories brought - the hours of darkness and waking up with blood and feathers all over my robes, crying and whimpering as the person I thought was my best friend in the world turned on me and laughed as I tried to fight back, the mortification -- the sheer humiliation - of Tom's laughter as he thanked me for telling him the key to getting Harry to go after him.
Hermione.
My fingers, my hands - my arms -- were hurting and I forced myself to calm down, to loosen my tight hold on the quill in my hand, forced my mind away from the words I had written in that thrice-be-dammed diary:
"I don't know what he sees in her, Tom! All bushy hair and brains - Ron told me that she spends all her time outside of classes in the library. Maybe that's why she's so pale? She hardly ever steps out of school except to go to the greenhouses for Herbology or to watch Harry practice…
"I hate her, Tom. He doesn't see anyone else but her. I was going to visit him in the hospital wing but he suddenly burst into the Common Room - he simply nodded at me as he passed, and went out again. I knew where he was going … he was going to look for her. "
I force my teeth to unclench - no need to go to Madam Pomfrey and try to explain how I broke my teeth from biting down too hard, or even how to explain how I cut off my own tongue…
Even now, the shame of it all haunts me and I feel myself shaking in horror: do I still feel the same way now, after all these years? Seeing him stare at her in wonder, watching her as she acts as if nothing in the world mattered except her books and the parchment she was working on - waiting for the moment when she will look up and see him watching her, and she will smile at him in that secret way that she thinks no one else can see…
A glimmer of something catches my eye and I recognize the pumpkin shaped badge that the Cindy and Carolyn had made, with the willing assistance of Fred and George -- what does Cindy stand for?
Cinderella?
I stopped the snicker in my throat -- who was I to cast stones? Almost everyone in Hogwarts assumed that my name was Virginia; good thing that the story of Harry and Ron arriving in a flying car distracted everyone from McGonagall when she called out "Weasley, Ginevra" during my sorting or I would never have heard the end of it …
Cindy.
Cinderella.
How appropriate: Cindy for Cinderella.
Cinderella and pumpkins.
I glance at her, sitting there all composed and natural, seemingly taking a break from studying, leaning back in her chair with her eyes closed but the slightest of frowns on her forehead….
Poor girl. You may really feel like Cinderella with her Prince Charming, don't you -- but at least Cinderella had until midnight before her carriage turned into a pumpkin; at least she had until midnight to dance and talk and have fun with her prince - it isn't even midnight and Prince Charming has never even spared you a glance.
Or if he does, he looks at you with undisguised affection, friendship and … yes, love.
But it isn't the kind of love that you want from him, is it?
You want him to see you as something more … not as an ickle firstie whom he met in Diagon Alley and befriended … not as a wide-eyed little girl who couldn't believe that she is studying in the same school, sharing the same House and the same Common Room as The-Boy-Who-Lived … you don't want him to look at you as a younger sister to whom he brings home treats and sweets from Hogsmeade-
You want him to look at you in the same way that the handsome Prince looked at Cinderella in all her finery, to see you as the young woman you are and can become, to look beyond the ashes and dirt on your face and see the inner beauty that only your mother knows-
I lean back in my chair, closing my eyes and cursing myself at the same time, suddenly ashamed.
Who was I to talk?
You want him to look at you in the same way that I had wanted him to look at me - and it had taken me all of four years to realize that he will never do so.
Been there, done that …
At least, Cindy-rella has the chance to be close to Prince Charming.
No matter if he looks at her as a younger sister, no matter if she has to share the time with Carolyn or with Hermione.
At least they had some thing.
I never did.
I never will.
And all because of my big mouth and stupid brain. Thinking all the while of becoming noticed as more than his best friend's sister … of prattling on and on and on about him during the weeks before Ron and the Twins finally rescued him from his muggle guardians … of becoming so absorbed in his heroic role as 'The-Boy-Who-Lived' that I had totally forgotten about 'The-Boy-He-Is.'
Losing myself in the fanciful tales of my childhood … fantasizing how famous, good, great Harry Potter would see me as being more than just Ron's sister, more than just another younger Gryffindor, more than just another of his fan club …
Cindy-rella had it better, I thought.
She'd accepted him for what he is, not for what the world thought of him. She'd accepted his friendship without expectations, learned to keep her feelings hidden from his clueless face, accepted her position as his youngest sister-
She blinked and looked around as Hermione looked up from the parchment she was working on and I hear the sighs escaping everyone else as Harry and Hermione went into their routine of talking through their eyes.
I watched as he turned to Cindy and she shook her head at him, smiling before turning back to her book and I have to wonder … is he really as clueless as he looks? Does he know the younger girl's feelings for him, know that the way he smiles can make her melt into a babbling idiot but dealing with her in the same way he tried to deal with me before - with considerate understanding and quiet sympathy, something I never realized and didn't want to accept because I wanted something he was unable to give me then or even now?
Who was the insensitive git, then?
I lower my face and pretend to knead my aching head, using this as an excuse to wipe at my suddenly brimming eyes, cursing myself for believing in the tales of my childhood … of having a handsome Prince sweep me off my feet and carry me away into the sunrise of a new day-
Fairy tales were for idiots.
I look up and could not help but smile wistfully as I watched Cindy watching him intently as he demonstrated a wand movement to her, Hermione smiling as she watched them fondly, Carolyn beside her also focused on Harry's wand …
The Terrible Spawn.
That could have been me if I had my wits about me - maybe that's why I'm in Gryffindor and not in Ravenclaw. All courage and no brains - like Ron.
I turned that way and blinked.
Had he been staring at me? He turned away just as I looked at him, focusing on the chessboard where it seems Nic had made an unexpected move but he had been looking at me, I was sure of it. Unless-
I looked around the Common Room but no one was looking at me, and I shake my head.
Fairy tales were for idiots and clueless children. It was time for me to stop thinking I was living in one and move on.