Ballad for the Lost Romantics

BALLAD FOR THE LOST ROMANTICS

CHAPTER 13

"Hermione."

One word, my name, uttered in such a stark contrast from how he usually spoke it with a soft reverence that it caused my heart to jump into my throat.

It wasn't a plea, a prayer, or even a friendly greeting, for that matter. It was an accusation.

Slowly, as if fearing what my eyes would find, I turned away from the Quidditch locker rooms and met with a sight that forever seared itself into the back of my head, never to be lost or forgotten.

Oliver Wood stood before me rigidly still, eyes wild and accusing as they met mine, a wrinkled envelope clutched in his tightened fist.

The envelope that had contained my recent article.

My mouth moved, but no sound emerged. All of the air had been sucked out of my lungs, and all I could do was stare in fascinated horror at that envelope clutched in a death grip in his hand.

"Or should I call you Lady Rowena?" he sneered.

I winced at his tone, the sneer making his usually lilt, Scottish tongue sound foreign and alien.

"Just when were you going to tell me you had another identity?" he demanded fiercely.

Taking in deep, calming breaths (for on some level I'd known that it wouldn't have remained a secret between us forever) I prepared for what was no doubt going to be a trying argument (or passionate conversation, as I prefer to see it).

"It's not like that, Oliver," I said in the gentlest tone I could muster under his fiery eyes.

"Oh? And just how exactly is it, Hermione, because I'm having some trouble figuring it out on my own," he countered.

I closed my eyes and looked towards the Forbidden Forest, "You weren't supposed to find out this way," I muttered.

This was clearly the wrong thing to say. "How was I supposed to find out, Hermione? Over some tea and some of Hagrid's rock cakes? For Merlin's sake, Hermione, your bloody Lady Rowena and you didn't tell me!"

I cringed. "It's not supposed to happen like this," I found myself whispering, not really for him, but more as if I was pleading with some higher power to agree with me and then change it all; I'd give anything for him not to look at me in that hurt, guarded way.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he fairly ordered me to answer.

"Because," I swallowed down the lump forming in my throat, "because you said it didn't matter."

"Merlin's beard, Hermione! It didn't matter when I thought you weren't Lady Rowena! But now you are and it does!"

Tears were pricking at my eyes as I met the blunt of his anger. "But why, Oliver, why does it matter now? It's just some stupid column!" I cried out, valiantly fighting to hold my tears in check.

"Because," he said, his voice suddenly going unnaturally quiet, "because you have lied to me from the beginning of our relationship. Were you ever going to tell me you were Lady Rowena?"

And, funny really, I haven't even thought about telling him until that precise moment. "N-no," I stuttered, but knew without a doubt.

"And why not?" he snapped, slightly taken aback that I had answered in the negative.

"It didn't seem important?" I tried; unable to meet those eyes that I knew had to be lit with a brilliant fire of rage.

"It didn't seem important? Bloody hell, Hermione, I fell in love with you when you wrote that first article, and it didn't seem important?"

Suddenly, age old bitterness welled up within me. "You didn't fall in love with me; you fell in love with Lady Rowena."

"Jesus, Hermione, you are Lady Rowena!" he swore, "And you've lied to me, for all of these months..."

"I had to, Oliver! You never would have understood," I miserably explained.

I pleaded that he'd understand now, though.

"Good Lord, you didn't even try! And now you've lied to me this whole time! Gods, it feels like everything you've ever told me is a lie!"

I felt my heart wrench as I began to hear the raw hurt under his angry words. "That's not true; I meant what I said before. I do love you, Oliver."

He threw my words back in my face. "If you love me, Hermione, then who have you been writing about for these past seven months, hm-m? Who is he?" he ended in a forceful shout.

Frustration, mingled with desperation, began to spread throughout my entire being. Gods, why couldn't he just see? Why couldn't Oliver just stop to think about those articles that were so obviously about him?

And, what really stirred that desperation and frustration, why couldn't he have just loved me from the same moment I fell in love with him? Why couldn't he love me enough to listen and to understand what was so evident...

"Oliver, you aren't thinking clearly," I stated, trying to calm him down so that maybe he would see.

His eyes widened incredulously. "I'm not, am I? For the love of the Gods, who is he, Hermione?"

"Use your head, and think, Oliver!" I yelled at him, coming to my wits' end with hoping he'd understand, for Oliver was too blind to see clearly what was right in front of him. "For someone so smart, you can be quite thick at times."

A deafening silence fell over the scene.

"You've lied to me all this time-" he stated, very detached and impersonal now.

"That's not true. Everything I've ever said to you holds true to this very minute, and you know it," I bitterly spat out, my own sneer masking my usual voice.

It was almost as if he didn't hear me (or maybe, he didn't want to hear me).

"Gods, I can't even look at you anymore."

He might as well had taken his ten-speed firebolt and lodged it through my heart. There is no way to describe how those words made me feel. I don't even want to think about it right now, today...

"Then you don't have to," and with that said merely out of spite, I brushed past him and walked as quickly as my short legs could carry me straight to the girls' bathrooms where I then proceeded to cry my heart out.

I hadn't locked my crying self in a bathroom since my first year.

Gods, I felt as though the Hoover Dam had burst within me, as though bludger right after bloody bludger kept hitting my stomach, one right after the other in a never ending assault on my person. It felt as though my whole world had been flipped upside down, and then one of those bludgers slammed into it, shattering what had been so perfect only moments before into a thousand, sparkling pieces. All of these metaphors and more are only mere approximations of how I felt in that brief moment suspended in time.

So this is what it feels like when you're heart is breaking...I idly thought as I slumped against the back wall.

But, I wasn't so lost in my heart ache to not realize that someone else had joined me in the deserted, and not to mention, haunted, bathrooms.

"Hermione?"

Ever so slowly, I lifted my head from my knees to see Ginny standing with a frown of concern for me, even though tears were streaming down her face as well.

"What's wrong?" she asked over the lump in her own throat.

A fleating smile touched my lips. Ginny always put others before herself. "I could ask you the same thing," I mumbled in a small voice that was riddled with sorrow.

Ginny gave a single laugh followed shortly by a sniffle, "Just Ron and Harry being their usual selves. They've both stopped talking to me."

I frowned. "Both of them?"

She nodded. "Yes, Ron and I had a huge row over me being bloody Lady Rowena and how I was breaking poor Harry's heart. And all the while, Harry just sat over in the corner; silently watching. We've been on the non-speaking terms for about three days now."

My frown deepened. Ron, I could see overreacting and throwing a hissy fit (I'm sure we all remember the Viktor Krum incident), but Harry? Harry was the type of guy to mediate an argument and not pick sides. He was above the petty childishness of the silent treatment (sorry, Ron). It just didn't make sense for Harry to be acting so pighead-ish...

That whole day for me, really, just didn't make any sense.

"Men are wankers; stupid, thick wankers that don't give a bloody damn for anybody but their stupid, bloody thick wanker selves," I grumbled, tight lipped and glaring at the floor as the tears began to come back again with a vengeance.

Ginny lifted a brow. "Why do I get the feeling we are no longer talking about Harry and Ron? What happened with you and Oliver? Is he why you're here in such a state?"

I blinked once and looked at the lovely, chipping floor tile. "He found out, Ginny. He found out that I was Lady Rowena and he thinks I've been lying to him all of this time."

"Oh, love, I'm so sorry," and I could tell she truly was for she seemed to have forgotten her own heart's sorrow from only seconds before, "Why didn't you just tell him it was him you wrote about?" she queried gently, kneeling down beside me.

"Dammit, Ginny! I didn't want to have to tell him; I just wanted him to be able to see what had been there for so long all by himself, so that maybe I'd know that what we were feeling was real... Gods, does that make any sense?" I rushed out.

Ginny picked at her nails. "Sure, in a weird way."

"But I guess it wasn't real. Just a momentary lapse of judgment on his part," I sighed, refusing to shed the tears that were already rolling down my face.

There was a long moment of silence where we both wallowed in self-pity before Ginny suddenly asked, "You hungry?"

I gave a short laugh, "Starving," I proclaimed.

Getting up to our feet and brushing ourselves off, we made our way down to the Great Hall for lunch.

To say it was awkward would have to be the understatement of this entire story.

But it wasn't only awkward for me. No, it was an inspiring meal.

As I sat there besides Ginny who was moodily eating her lunch, I found myself feeling disconnected from everyone and everything there.

It was almost as if I were having an out of body experience (or astro-projection, if you will) where I was on the outside looking in on Hogwarts.

And I did not like what I saw.

People who were once friends would now appear as enemies to people who didn't know any better. Brothers (Ron) were fighting with their sisters (Ginny). Best friends had turned against each other (Lavender and Parvati).

And worse of all was Oliver Wood sitting at the Head Table, stabbing his fork into his meal with a mixture of furiousness and desperation, most likely envisioning it to be me...

All of this because of one person: Lady Rowena.

It was my fault and I was finally able to see in stark reality just how the quest to find out who I was had affected Hogwarts. I was finally able to wrap my mind around the problem, and to find the only solution available.

This was not what I had started writing for, I thought in horrific realization as I determinedly rose out of my seat, drawing a few curious glances.

With a steely glare fixed pointedly around the whole hall, I briskly marched out and went purposefully up to my rooms where I then proceeded to write my last Ballad for the Lost Romantics...

Oliver had kept the one I had meant to send, after all.