Aliens In My Head

Aliens in my head

I read a lot. Really a lot! Everyone knows. That comes along with the learning stuff I suppose. So, no one wonders. They let me read.

I love it. I'm addicted to the written word, to the knowledge of long past times. I want to possess it! Yet sometimes... sometimes it possesses me instead.

It's somehow strange to have all these foreign thoughts in your head. They're not your own.

They make sense of course! A lot of sense. They're logical. But they're still not your own. You weren't there, you haven't experienced, what you now take for granted because you read it. You read it in a book and you know it is right. Someone was there while it happened and he wrote it down, so you could learn it.

Sometimes, however, I think I'm going insane because of all these aliens in my head. I know perfectly well I'm making no sense at all, thank you very much! But I can think for myself. I have my own thoughts! No one doubts, do they? Sometimes I do...

Yet every time I realize that I need to stop reading, every time I do stop, I open my eyes and see that I'm alone.

I can't stand to be alone! I have friends for God's sake! Damn good ones! The best one can have, if truth be told. They both love me! One as a friend for life and one... one as a friend and... and for the woman I become. They are there for me always.

Nevertheless, I'm still alone, when I lay the book aside. And when I'm alone... I read!

I know I could walk over to one of them, any of them, anytime and they would smile and truly be happy to see me. One would lay his arms around my waist and pull me close and one... one would always listen, when I want to talk.

But I don't walk over to them.

So I'm alone. And when I'm alone... I read.

What if I just stop? Right here? Right now? Ha! Stop reading in a library! That's like one starting the very first day of a diet in Honey Dukes!

But anyway, what if I just walk out now? I could, couldn't I? And then I could stop?

Ha! I wonder how they would react. Me, Hermione Granger, avoiding the library. Me, not even laying one gloved hand on a book anymore.

Of course I'd still listen in classes. I'd still want to possess all the knowledge. I just don't want the written word to possess me anymore. And while listening to the teachers, I'm still able to think of my own. They're not as mighty as books, at least not anymore.

Yet I don't go. I fear leaving. I'm proud of my grades... somehow. And I fear to see what's left, when I don't obey that alien ghosts in my head anymore.

If I stop reading now, how long will that last? Two days? Three days? Would I be cured then? Or would I just look back thinking I wasted those days, which I could have spend reading?

Would I loose myself or would I finally be myself? And if I loose my self then, who am I now? Am I even myself when myself would stop existing without those alienthoughts?

"Hermione?"

I look up to see Ron, who smiles at me offering his hand to pull me up from the library table.

To pull me up...

"I want to go to Hogsmeade." He says.

"What about Harry?"

He shrugs. "I didn't ask. I want to go with you." He says this as if there would be nothing more natural.

I let him pull me up saying: "Okay. Let's go then."

When we walk out of the library, he looks back to the table I sat at some mere moments ago.

"You left your book behind." He says and makes an attempt to pick it up for me, yet I just hold his hand a little tighter and he stops.

"Yes, I know." I say. At least it was worth a try. He just shrugs again. It doesn't bother him seeing me leaving a book behind. It's... unimportant to him.

We make our way to the Entrance Hall. He doesn't even know, what he just did to me. What he did for me.

"Ron?"

"Yes?"

"Spend a lot of time with me the next days, will you?"

He smiles at me somewhat sheepishly. He doesn't know why I'm saying this now. How could he? One hour ago, I wouldn't even have known it myself.

He looks me in the eyes, searching. Then he seems to have found, what he was searching for and pulls me close, making the distance between us non existent anymore. In this moment I know, I am actually there... somewhere deep inside of me... and he found me. When he pulls back again, he smiles.

"All the time you want, Mione. The next days and forever."

I give him a smile and we go on, on to Hogsmead.

I wonder what I'll be like in two or three days. In a week or a fortnight or...

"I think I choose forever."

And so we go to Hogsmeade to spend an afternoon together.

Every change begins in just one moment.

I wonder, where I read that one... No! I think that one was... mine!