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HaPPy NeW YeaR, dear PortkeyMates!! ^_^
I'm a bit late, I know, I know. But I'm a little girl suffering her New Year's tradicional Faringitis-Tonsiilitis Set, and therefore isolated for the rest of the world, so to me it's still New Year, lol.
This little two/three…-shots happens after what happens in The Girl Sitting On The Grass. You can read this without having read the former, but you'll see the whole picture better if you do it .
***STePHaNie, my dearest and hard-working beta, deserves all the honours relating to support me, beside technicals and grammar and syntax and.... In summary, you should've seen this before her touch…^_^ You're the best STePH!!!
And you, the one reading this, THANKS A BUNCH! I do hope you like it ;)
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THE BENCH BY THE FENCE
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The Girl Who Looked Pretty.
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You think you look pretty.
Every toe on your feet is aching for freedom. The shoes aren't high heeled, but they aren't the type of shoes you're used to wearing either.
However, they are beautiful, so you picked them up.
"Your dress matches your beautiful-but-uncomfortable pair of shoes. Your mum says that midnight blue is definitely your colour. You think the same. Your dress is not only wonderful, it also happens to make your figure look remarkably…better. Not that you could be taken for a veela. But you didn't know that just one particular -and a tad expensive for your liking- dress could do that to your body… and your soul, because you're feeling ten times prettier than you know you are.
"Even your hair looks different today. Instead of bushy and rebellious, you've managed to change it into something more than tolerable. Since your arrival, you've been told -more than twice- that you look very beautiful with the highlights and curly locks you chose for this day. So it must be true."
"You must look pretty today."
"But that's just not the way you feel. Because you're feeling like an old pair of shoes.
"
At Harrods. "
It's not that you truly wish you were a veela, as most of Fleur's relatives are. They are… stunningly pretty, though you're not sure if the word stunningly -or any other, truth be told- does justice to the way they look today. You've even caught yourself staring at Fleur's little sister Gabrielle -without blinking- a couple of times. But you couldn't bear being a half-veela, with almost everyone staring at you. Stares have always made you feel nervous and uncomfortable, because people don't stare at you often; not in that way."
But she is not a veela, you remind yourself, in a sort of self-torturing mantra.
And then, sitting alone out there on the bench near the fence, you have found out that it's possible to feel even worse.""
You can clearly hear the music and the laughing and the cheering. It's a wedding, after all.
And you were there just a few minutes ago, chatting animatedly with an ecstatic and happily-in-love Tonks. Though it rather was like Tonks doing all the chatting and you doing all the listening about how your former professor had finally agreed to give them a chance. But suddenly your gaze, little traitor that it was, went upon him, and you started to feel sick. So you gave Tonks some random excuse, and ran off.
You needed air.
And so here you are, still needing the air, because the stupid tears in your eyes are slipping down your face. You know they are a threat to the titanic efforts you've made in an attempt to have your face match your shoes, dress and hair. But who cares?
An old shoe, you chuckle sadly.
And you suddenly feel angry with yourself. This is not the first time it has happened to you. You should have learned to deal with it by now." But, as it may seem, there're still a few things that Hermione Granger, brightest witch of her age, just won't ever learn.
And you're even angrier because you've never been concerned about something so trivial like your looks before. Better said: you've never been concerned about your looks in comparison to other girls. Not even with -you still feel the nausea- Lav Lav.
But then you know that you're angry for a very different reason than your looks.
Little eight-year-old Mione comes to mind. You remember, as if it were that very morning, the first day you started to listen to the girls at school, spreading horrible lies and rumours about Father Christmas. You were so sure about magic, even then, several years before you discovered you were right, that you just couldn't believe them. You could feel that magic was out there, so you, always a thoughtful girl, decided that you had to help those poor girls to see they were wrong."
The only thing you wanted was to help. And you were only eight. Therefore, you could have never seen that one coming. You could have never seen that your help would bring back such misery." Maybe Trelawney was right after all. No trace of the Inner Eye, indeed.
"
It was an awful Christmas that year.
"
And right now, almost ten years later, at the Burrow, you're feeling that very same ache in your heart.
I didn't see this coming either.
You could have never imagined, in a million years, that helping her would lead you to this wall, this night, with this pain in your soul.
Wiping your tears away, you slowly become aware of the music and the laughing and the cheering again.
Maybe Ron is looking for you at this moment. Maybe you should be looking for him too, instead of wallowing in your misery out here. But, in all honesty, you know that going back there is not really at the top of your wish list right now.
Maybe he's dancing with her, you think sadly, as you hear the music playing slow.
You were staring at him. Even when you had specifically forbidden yourself to do it… Not that you didn't know it was a lost match long before it started.
Tonks was saying something about Lupin, but you were barely listening to her anymore. Or breathing, or feeling. At all. You could only watch. Watch how he was there at the opposite corner, oblivious to whatever Ron, Fred and George were laughing at. His gaze was on her dress, her elegant bridesmaid's emerald-green dress, which not only matched his wonderful eyes, but also made her figure look even more perfect. His gaze was also on her beautiful mane of red hair, today half tied and adorned with glittering green little jewels, matching her dress. She was beautiful without make up, for Merlin's sake. And still you helped her look even better.
No. She's not a veela, but he couldn't have been looking more intently had she been one.
Wiping away your tears once more, you scold yourself immediately. You don't want to compare yourself with her. You know you shouldn't. You know it's not healthy. And you know you won't win.
But still.
You realize that you can't stop crying. You're only seventeen, after all. Life is not supposed to be that complicated when you're only seventeen.
But you don't like to cry. You like to be strong and logical, not feeble and pathetic.
And it's embarrassing because you're quite aware at any moment someone might come and find you, and then you'll have to make up a whole stupid cover for your tears, instead of screaming out the truth and only the truth-that you're scared. That you've finally come to terms with it." That you simply love him. That you always have. Not like a friend. Not like a brother. But that way he doesn't love you, but her.
When did it happen? How did it happen?
With your eyes fixed on your beautiful shoes, you try to remember. But it's difficult to point out a moment, a day, a fact. You have loved him for so many years that you just can't say when it all started to change.
One moment you were so sure about your feelings for Ron, crying over him and Lavender. But later you allowed yourself to think that maybe everything would be all right in the end. Not only because Lav Lav was now history, but because you saw that Harry, blessed and always blatantly obvious Harry, had started to see Ginny the way she had been seeing him for years.
Seeing Harry and Ginny finally kissing, you felt like jumping, because you knew she was happy, and Ron was happy, and he definitely looked happy. Everything would be all right.
That night, later in your room, you were still beaming thinking about Ginny's happiness, but mostly about Harry's happiness, and how much he deserved it. It's always been about that for you. It's always about him being happy and content and safe. What else could you do but beam?
The next few days you were ecstatic. The four of you laughing together, studying together…"Then one day you missed Harry after lunch time. You thought he would join Ron and you to finish a couple of essays, but he had preferred to go by the lake with Ginny. Quite understandable, you thought with a grin.
But days went by, and even if you did not fully realize it by then, your stock of grins was coming to and end. Maybe it helped that you seemed to be growing more and more apart. Or the fact that Ginny started to act like you were a burden to him. As if she never had come to your room crying her eyes out because he would never love her back." As if you never had supported her. Or him."
He's not you're business, she told you the day you arrived to the Burrow for the wedding after a rather cold welcome and a rather tense talk.
That was it. That was, you know now, the moment you became aware of what those little twinges you had been feeling in your stomach for a while meant. Great timing,Granger.
But she was right, after all. He's not your business. You helped her to make him her business; you did your best to help Ginny out of her nervousness, her shyness and her clumsiness around him. Just like you did with those little girls years ago.
And so now, at this very moment, you're seriously taking into consideration that perhaps you should stop helping people at all."
All of the sudden you feel very tired. You just can't stand your shoes anymore. You wish you were at home, in your room, far away from the music, and the people…and away from him.
You would gladly give all the galleons in your Gringotts vault and all of your Outstandings just to trade these tears for the ones you spilt over Ron and Lavender during the last term.
Enough is enough."
"
As you calm down and wipe away your last tears once more, you promise yourself, your old self, that you're going to sort this out. You're not going to lie to Ron, nor to yourself. You're going to focus on the quest. You're going to focus on his safety.
You're not going to focus, not even for a single minute, on the fact that you're never going to be her, but you will always be his Hermione.
You are so lost in your new resolutions that you fail to notice the soft steps approaching until it's too late to come up with a believable explanation.
Don't let it be him. Please don't let it be him."
"
Your rotten luck.
"
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