She Remembers Liberty

*

" . . . not a reject, but a poor and naked man, in love with a sun which leaves no shadows."
-Albert Camus

I got the letter a few days after the school term started. It was on a thin sheet of paper, typewritten with an old typewriter, and all it said was, Your mother has died. Please be advised that you will return to your home for a period not to exceed one week at the discretion of your school's headmaster. The funeral will be held in three days, and your father has requested your presence. There was no 'yours truly', no signature, just the same letter that many of the students at my school received at one point or another, and it was in the same stilted, awkward language that a grade-schooler might have used. I suppose I was lucky, since it came so late into my adolescence - I was, just then, fifteen years old - and it didn't surprise me in the least, although I pretended that it did, and, after a few moments of momentary lapse (pegged down, incorrectly, as shock), I began to sob. After all, the first thing my mother had taught me about surviving in the new order of things was that I had to play by the rules, and the rule was very clear in this case: howl on and make sure everybody thinks that you're devastated.

But I'd known it was coming. Known it and hated it and ignored it all the same. I wasn't devastated, but I was sad, and it was the kind of sadness that accompanies each landmark in a life - each change and passing. I felt it deeply in the pit of my stomach, and in the tightness of my chest, but it didn't make me want to cry, only to square my jaw and set out to remember her properly, to comfort poor Dad, who would be devastated, for they had loved each other very deeply.

I still cried.

So there I was, being handed tissues by the school secretary and waiting to speak to the Headmaster. If it had been any other day than Wednesday, I wouldn't have been able to see him, for he wasn't there most of the time; but he was always in his office on Wednesdays, and, although I was wary of him, I was also glad of seeing him. (Afterwards, I thought it must have been wrong to feel glad about seeing somebody so soon after learning of my mother's death: but there it was, all the same.) The headmaster was not an unkind man, that I had ever known; but he was a wizard, and, although there must have been good wizards somewhere, I, at fifteen, did not feel comfortable with them. He kept his wand in plain sight, always, and we all knew that this was purposeful, because we were never to forget that he was master and overlord at this school.

Although most of the school was luridly-lit but mostly gray, the office was a different matter. Here there was dark wood panelling on the walls, beautiful lush carpeting, comfortable chairs (a far step above our desks, certainly) and a distinct air of importance; and we were never called here on trivial matters, only very serious disciplinary issues, the occasional expulsion, and deaths in the family. Because the headmaster was often absent, other problems were left to the teachers, who, being non-magical, were better able to relate to us anyway. We got important messages at the office even when the headmaster was away, but even then it was usually the teachers who went to collect them.

But I was certainly glad to see the headmaster, who, as I said, was always kind to us. When Alice Ballard had been called down (this was the euphemism we used for a visit to the office due to a death in the family), she'd come back and, from what we could get out of her, she'd told us that he'd been a great comfort to her and had said all the "right things". I felt that I could use some kindness, for, although my mother and I had not been close in the sense of many mothers and daughters, we had loved each other in our own way, and been as close to one another as possible, for I was away from home a great deal, at school, and she was a private sort of person anyway.

Mother, I'd been told by my father one day in the summer before my fifth year of school started, had changed a lot since the government had shifted. (This was another euphemism used mostly by older people, to signify the invasion and destruction of the British government in 1984.) But she was not cold, nor really distant; just different, and I, having been only three at the time, couldn't remember her changing - indeed, could not think of her as being any different. She still smiled a lot, and went about her daily business without a hitch, but she lacked something, according to my father. Or perhaps she had gained something . . . a certain steel somewhere in her mind, or (dare I say it?) her soul - for she did, undeniably, have a look in her eyes sometimes, a look which spoke of strength and will-power - and of having those and still giving up.

But we never talked about that.

I shifted in my chair, annoyed that it was a little too squashy, which was stupid, in a way; after all, I didn't usually get to sit in such comfortable chairs at school. At home, we had nice old antique furniture (a rarity in times like these, but a luxury I felt was worth having); at school, we had straight-backed chairs with desks that were a bit too low, or our bunk beds in the dormitories that were a little too stiff and a little too small to do much else but sleep in. It seemed to me that there was really no happy medium, or perhaps that it was just impossible to please me. It's probably easier to be picky when you've got more than two options.

The secretary seemed to have taken a liking to me, possibly for the lack of hysterics I'd presented her with. She was probably used to screaming girls pounding on the floor at the unfairness of the world, but I refused to have hysterics. Not only was it completely uncharacteristic of what I'd shown so far in school (and I knew that they knew what I was like) but it's really a lot harder to pretend than you'd think. "It will be all right, dearie," she said, and I think there was concern in her voice, although it might have just been that I couldn't hear her very well with my face in my hands and my sobs blocking out a lot of background noise. "It's a terrible thing, to lose a parent," she added, a bit wistfully, and I chanced a peek through my fingers to see her looking a little teary herself.

For a witch (and I mean that literally), she looked a lot less like the sharply-dressed women in the papers than like my favourite aunt, Great-Aunt Diana, who had always had a kind word to say to everybody and who had taken anybody's unhappiness on as her own. She'd been very easy to talk to. I wondered for a moment what Great-Aunt Diana was doing these days - I was sure she was up and about - and again, it was only afterwards that I thought about the appropriateness of this chain of thoughts.

I nodded, as though I didn't trust myself to speak.

Then the door opened, and she said, "He's ready to talk with you, Miss Granger."

I thanked her and stood up, shakily, more because I'd been in a very uncomfortable position than because my legs were somehow connected to my emotions. All that stuff with girls collapsing after hearing bad news - total idiocy, if you ask me. To draw attention to oneself - not the brightest thing to do. And I was a very smart girl, even for my age; I had a lot of stuff figured out. "Thanks," I said, wiping my eyes, for it simply would not do to see the headmaster still in tears if I could help it - and I certainly could, because I didn't really feel like crying even yet, which I thought was vaguely strange even then. Perhaps this is only because, having not had a funeral yet, my mother seemed to be at home in London three hundred kilometres away; or it might be due to the simple fact that I was feeling desolate rather than angry. Either way, it was that much easier for me to look brave as I walked cautiously into the headmaster's office, which I had never seen before.

It was as beautiful as the outer office, but it was eerie, filled with magic things I could not comprehend and that I edged away from; glowing orbs provided a soft light that fell on the headmaster's mahogany desk, which was covered with papers and with other things - folders, a few pictures that were turned away from the door so precisely that they must have been ones that moved, any number of wizard quills, and a coffee mug. Light came in, too, from the large window behind the headmaster's chair, and, because the rest of the school had no such windows - any windows we had were high and thin, letting in only a fraction of the sun's light, and we worked mostly by the buzz of fluorescent tubes on the ceiling, which wasn't as bad as it might have been, though the light was very bare and very harsh at times.

"Hello, Hermione," said the headmaster kindly, and protocol kicked in. There were certain things we had been drilled on as small children, and one of them was addressing the headmaster. It wouldn't have done not to be polite, especially since I wasn't going to be expelled or punished.

"Hello, Headmaster Lovegood," I said, averting my eyes. He asked me to sit down, and I did, more because he told me to than because I really cared if I stood or sat. It wasn't as though anybody is ever in the headmaster's office for very long; after all, I had private transport coming for me to take me back to London. I could look at him now, if I was careful not to stare and offend him, and I looked. He was a very unremarkable man, really, dressed in the hated wizard's robs with his wand on his desk - so casually! I was actually angry for a moment at the implication, but I got hold of myself . . . there was really no use in being angry.

It was just the way things were.

"I know you've had some very disturbing news," he continued, "so I won't keep you long. I just wanted to offer you my condolences and ask you a few questions." I looked up more sharply than I'd intended, because his voice had become very stifled, and it was then that I knew. I was a smart girl, a bright girl, and I knew that my mother had not died in an auto accident, or because she'd got suddenly very sick. When the headmaster asked you questions in a certain tone of voice . . . well, I'd heard stories.

And I was a very smart girl. Even though he looked unremarkable, he must have been put here for a reason, and I had a feeling that this reason was that he was very good at extracting information from students. Terror rose and subsided in me for a brief moment, as the possibility of magic being used upon me hit me full on; and then I squared my jaw and thanked him for his concern. I would just have to tell the truth as it once had been; and although I knew what my mother had been doing, had already even found her guilty of it in my mind, I would tell the whole truth as it had been thirty minutes ago.

He asked me if my mother had been a resistance member, if there was any possibility that she had been part of one of the factions that fought the government and were usually rooted out and destroyed thoroughly as an example to others. I was a bit annoyed at his lack of tact, but I told him no, there was no possibility. After all, I had seen her a lot during the holidays, so there was a grain of truth in that. If she'd disappeared - "shopping" - every few days, well, that was perfectly normal. "She and I were really close," I added, "I'd have known, she'd definitely have told me." An outright lie, but they couldn't prove it without magic, and they generally didn't waste really powerful magic on stuff like this.

His few questions turned out to be that one question. He went on at length about how he was sorry about my loss, and how he hoped I'd be able to cope. Dismissal was also an escape, and one that I took gratefully, leaving quickly and with only a minimum of courtesy. I was supposed to change out of my school uniform and pack for five days away from school - the prescribed amount of time, the same period they gave everyone for their grieving.

So I left, secretly relieved, and a little disappointed at the way he'd conducted the interview. Anticipation was my worst habit, and I was often disappointed when I let my expectations rise.

*

I pretended to cry with my friends, who were all very understanding and who distracted me clumsily from my mother's death. That they tried was enough; it was all I wanted and more than I expected. Although I had close friends, even loyal friends, I was not, by inclination, a person who expected very much from her surrounding world. This is perhaps just because I was quite self-sufficient at the ripe age of fifteen, or possibly because I'd already spent more time away at school than at home with people to take care of me; whichever reason, I was surprised and gratified at their attentions and their careful - though not always perfect - condolences. Not many of my friends had met my parents, really only one or two on the rare Visiting Days our school had been kind enough to grant us as young children, but nearly all of them knew what it was like to lose a loved one. In the world we lived in, how could they not? I was lucky enough to have both my parents with me for fifteen years; I knew some girls who had never even known their mother, or their father, or both.

But I didn't tell that that my mother had fallen to the government and not an accident. It was dangerous to even speak of such things, in times where talking was only tacitly permitted to us anyway; and I don't mean to say that we were stupid, or vapid, but we were afraid. A teenage girl - even a bright one - could become a statistic by talking about the Emperor's doings, by learning about wizards and their powers. We'd had no few of our headstrong classmates disappear in the previous years, and they disappeared permanently, lost and gone forever. They were warnings, a flash in the darkness to tell us that what they were doing was wrong. To use a cliché, there were no second chances. Although our lives were a little paler than we'd have liked, stuffed into a box where we spent most of the year at school and the rest closely watched by our parents and the Ministry, they were ours and really the only thing we owned. Oh, we had things, possessions - clothing, books, even (in some rare cases) electronic equipment like typewriters - but we didn't have what the government held over our heads tauntingly: freedom.

So our lives - the simple processes of gas transfer and circulation, our senses and our sensibilities - these were what we had, and these were more important to us than any of the things that we used to enhance them.

And even then, the Ministry could take them, ruin them, and even end them. Some people hated them for that power; others, like myself, simply resigned themselves to it. When they told us that God was merely something we'd invented to comfort us in our inferiority (to them, of course), we believed them. When they told us to listen to our teachers, not our parents, and to read the newspapers in good faith, we did it, because any sign of disbelief - any sign that you were about to become a problem - was dealt with appropriately. Always appropriately.

Our lives, though precious to us and to those around us, meant nothing to them. We were short-lived, non-magical, and they didn't really care about us except to keep the world going as it always had. We did what they chose for us, and, though they didn't keep with concentration camps (that I knew of), they reminded me a lot of the late Nazi party in Germany; and the Emperor was not far from being Hitler, or perhaps he was closer to Spain's Franco: a cowardly, powerful man who cared nothing for the loves and lives of the people he'd taken over. His motto seemed to be, First Britain, then the world - and, true to form, he'd done it. Britain, Ireland, all the little countries from Andorra to Luxembourg and everything in between, the neutral countries . . . and America, where the bloodiest coup in the history of this planet took place. There were decimated cities and even provinces within that barren wasteland . . . I wouldn't have ever lived there.

There were less than fifty-million people left in Canada and the United States afterwards. Even the Ministry could only estimate how many people died in the wars. The point is, the Muggles lost. We lost. Not everywhere - he didn't even bother with much of Africa, with other places that were too poor and too war-torn to be of any use or amusement to him - but we lost. He could have taken them any time, and everybody knew that. Foreign relations simply melted down to one thing: never piss off the Empire.

And I couldn't forget Russia, because Russia is the only free country in the world today . . . but nobody can get in or out. A prison, of sorts; a utopia you can't get out of. There's a magical force-shield all 'round it, put up by some of the so-called greatest wizards of the century, and no one can get in. The Emperor himself tried, but he hadn't the power, and there are still hundreds of the magic folk there - monsters, witches, and wizards, who maintain it. Russia might hold secrets; it might only hold those few who could escape before the Steel Rule - as many call this age - came down.

We lost humiliatingly, after only a few weeks, although the war had been going on in the wizarding world a long time before 1984. For the first few years, you might have identified it with the Emergency Republic - the Terror - because there were executions and arrests and things that nobody talks about anymore, and they happened every day. Nothing we could do would stop it; nothing could curb it. After those three years, though, things settled down into the current system - schools and visits and being pushed into whatever job you're needed for, if you're a Muggle - and that's what most people my age had grown up in.

These were bitter things to say. They were worse to imagine, but, thankfully, I never had much of an imagination. I could play the piano, I could conjugate French verbs, and I could manipulate the quadratic equation better than anybody in my class, but I never imagined those wars.

I packed my bag slowly that day, letting my fingers linger over the worn material of my skirts and blue jeans, and over the soft material of the sweaters Mother had made for me that summer - "Because it gets so bloody cold up north," she'd said, and it was true. She'd always been a brilliant seamstress, and she knit more beautifully than I could ever hope to; a truly formidable lady, my mother.

I missed her terribly, but distantly. An awful thing to admit, but a true one, a real one. It was as though my mother had been gone for many years, leaving only the ache in my stomach and the mild detachment I felt as a sign that she was gone.

*

We lingered outside in the warm September sun, waiting for the car that was supposed to come for me, my friends and I; Agnes, Colin, Justin, Mary, and I, a sad little group whose sentences faded into murmurs before we got to the end. I was wearing a black skirt and a white shirt, the kind with buttons and a collar and sleeves that reached my fingertips for lack of tailoring; the skirt came to my knees, a respectable length, identifying me undeniably as a Muggle. The wizards liked Muggle fashions for that reason; we never wore anything that looked even vaguely like wizard's robes. Not that we could, for the laws against impersonating anything of a magical nature, but we didn't anyway. Sometimes I thought that there had to be wizards who sympathised with us, somewhere, like the people who hid the Jews in the Second World War, but I'd never even heard of such people. Did they exist? Would they ever exist? Occasionally I wondered how different they were from us - was it just the magic, or was it something else that I could never comprehend - a nuance in the soul or a darker shade in the mind - that made them different?

Sometimes I thought that people were people, and other times I didn't think they were people at all, but some kind of plague sent down by the fates to punish non-magical people for our sins - for our wars, for our hatreds, for our violence. It wasn't such a bad theory, but it was pessimistic, and I never told anybody about it.

We chatted for a while, sometimes about my mother, sometimes about school and our teachers, and often about the future - what was ahead for us, five Muggles of varying degrees of intelligence. It wasn't often allowed that we were out of classes, but they were my friends and had got special permission from our maths teacher.

The car came, and my friends began to fade back into school, where they should have been in the first place. But a hand touched my arm, and it was Colin Creevy, who was a year younger than I was and ten years more mature. "Hermione," he said, and I could tell by the determined sadness in his eyes that he knew. Beyond all reason, little Colin of the spindly arms and the one lame leg from a house raid gone wrong, knew. "I knew your mother. I hope you'll be all right." Real tears stung my eyes for a few brief moments.

I often cursed him afterwards for wishing me well, but then, not knowing what was ahead, I thanked him and went home to my family.

*

Super flumina Babylonis illic sedimus et flevimus cum recordaremur Sion
In salicibus in medio eius suspendimus organa nostra
Quia illic interrogaverunt nos qui captivos duxerunt nos verba cantionum
Et qui abduxerunt nos hymnum cantate nobis de canticis Sion
Quomodo cantabimus canticum Domini in terra aliena?

The church was not very big, and it was full of people - so it was hot, and I was sweating by the time the priest had finished. It probably hadn't helped that I'd worn black all over, from my skirt to my shirt to my blazer. It was strange, but keeping my mind on the heat - irritating and uncomfortable as it was - kept my eyes off of the coffin and kept the tears from my eyes.

Was I a bad person? I didn't cry at my mother's funeral. By then, I was so exhausted with preparations and condolences and family gatherings that the most I could do was to sit there and not leave. Nobody seemed to notice, but it seemed absurd to me that a young girl who loved her mother as dearly as I should not cry at the funeral . . . but the tears didn't come and I was sick of playing the game.

My hair, for once, was tame, in a low tail at the nape of my neck as usual; freshly washed, as always, but more limply wiry than curly, as though the heat was perhaps affecting it, too. Although it was still thick and tangled abominably, I hadn't had to fight it nearly as much as I should have that morning - or perhaps that was just my imagination, and I'd simply been going through the steps. I'd been reading some old books of my mother's, books she'd read at university before she'd switched into dentistry; the Oedipus plays of Sophocles, the comedies of Aristophanes, George Orwell, A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, To Kill a Mockingbird . . . all books that, had the Emperor even thought banning books would gain him power, would have been burned or banned. The language in them was so foreign that it took my full concentration to read them; even 1984, a novel with an unfortunate title to go along with the world's unfortunate history, seemed alien to me. I loved them, but they were from a world too unlike my own for me to read them thoughtlessly, as one would read Cosmopolitan or Winnie the Pooh.

A hymn echoed through the halls of St. Monica's; my mother had been Catholic, although Dad, of course, was a proper British Anglican. She'd loved this church, with its stained-glass windows and the haunting acoustics of a place where the ceiling is much too high.

I hated it. Hated church. Although religion was not banned in the Empire, I didn't believe in the Catholic God - lightning and thunder one moment, and then forgiveness and mercy the next. Religion confused me and made me angry; I loved the direct sciences of math and physics, where answers were right and wrong. Although my mother had me baptised, I did not attend church with her when she went; and she went regularly every Sunday, sang in the choir, the whole nine yards.

The funeral was not as bad as I'd have imagined, but it was bad enough. It took place the day after I arrived from school, on a beautiful Friday I thought was quite suitable, for my mother had loved autumn and loved Fridays. There were Ministry officials everywhere, as there always were when large groups of Muggles - anything over fifty or so - got together. They had their wands out, and they looked brutish and suspicious, as though any moment we were going to revolt and they'd have to kill us all. I think they might have enjoyed the thought of getting rid of us, but they followed their strict orders without a hitch. We were cowed and unlikely to make any move against them; sadness and fear were so thick in the air that I could nearly smell them - the scent of magnolias and stale bread, so thick and sweet and heady that it made me quite sick.

While everybody else was praying, I kept my eyes open. I looked at the ground, across the pew, at my father - so deep in his misery that his face was etched in painful lines - and then, finally, at the row just beside ours. It was there that I saw him. He was looking at me curiously, and he was the last kind of person I'd expect to see there: a wizard. He wasn't dressed like a wizard, but he held himself like one . . . and, on his belt, was a wand. That cinched it. It surprised me, and my eyebrows lifted; had I not been on the end of the pew (at my own insistence) I might not have seen him. He had red hair and brown eyes, and you could tell, just by looking at him, that he was very tall and awkward.

What are you doing here?, I thought fiercely at him, although he couldn't hear me of course; my eyes stayed on him after that, surreptitiously. What was he doing here? Why was he intruding on this - it was my mother's funeral!

I thought all at once that perhaps the criminal - although killing Muggles was not strictly illegal - had come back to see the family of the one he'd killed; but that was ridiculous, because he didn't look guilty. Indeed, his face was open, bared for the world to see, and he looked sad . . . unhappy, as though seeing this was one of the worst things he'd seen in his life. He stopped looking at me after a while, and fidgeted with his hands; his ears were red, although I couldn't tell you why, but it was clear enough why his shoulders slumped as the mass continued.

I'd seen enough people say goodbye to a loved one to know that.

Who was he, then, this tall and mysterious wizard who had invaded my mother's death and her funeral, her church and her solace? Just another guard? Or a boy my mother had known and hadn't told me about? This boy whom I suddenly sympathised with, who had not been praying when I myself had not . . . I felt a bit like I knew a secret part of him, having seen him with his head unbowed - him looking at me and me looking at him when we both should have been looking at nothing but our own memories.

Had I known, I might have just run away. But I was curious, as I had always been, and I wanted to know who he was. A name, or a full look at his face - something. He'd obviously known Mother . . . maybe, in a moment of clear and refreshing passion, however briefly it lasted, I just wanted to know something more about the woman who had given me life. I wanted to know more about the boy who had known her, and who seemed to have loved her, although not as I had or could have.

The mass was over, and the heat was forgotten as I stood up, still glancing every few moments to my right, to make sure he was still there. In a trashy novel, I suppose he would have disappeared: but this wasn't a novel, it was my life, and he began to walk towards me as I started towards him. We met in what was probably the middle amidst a crushing crowd, and I avoided the inevitable relatives and friends-of-family by ducking my head. "Who are you?" I asked, more as a matter of course than because this was what I really wanted to know. Even then, indecision shook me. Did I really feel this strongly? Should I?

Who was to say that passion was not the road to destruction? Easy is the descent into hell . . . I believed that, held it close to my heart. I was talking to our silent enemy, an overlord of my own kind, because I was curious. I was not a cat, but felt extremely stupid; he answered only after a few moments of silence, during which I could hear sobbing from the back of the church, and felt my father put a hand on my shoulder to let me know he was leaving with my Great-Aunt Diana.

I looked at him, or, rather, looked up at him, because he was very tall. His hair seemed redder under the coloured light that came in from the stained-glass windows, and his skin was very fair and covered with freckles. He wasn't handsome, but he was solid. He looked like somebody you could depend upon. "Uh," he said, and it made me wonder if perhaps teenagers in the wizarding world were not so different from myself, "My name's Ron. Listen, Hermione, I know you don't know me and you probably don't trust me, but your mum asked me - if anything ever happened - to come and tell you some things. She'd have written you a letter, but . . . " he trailed off, and I knew that he meant that letters were dangerous.

But how had he known my mother? "How did you know my mother?" I asked him quietly, glancing over my shoulder to make sure nobody was approaching. I shouldn't have worried; I seemed to be the only person to notice the wand that was hidden partially by his jacket.

He looked a little nervous, and was tugging at the collar of his dress shirt as though it was very uncomfortable. "Can we talk somewhere else? There are too many people here."

It was stupid. Going off with some wizard boy alone? It was a stupid decision, and I should have just walked away. Worse things than rape had happened to girls who did things like that, and they'd happened to girls I'd once known, or still knew, depending on the severity of the incident. Some girls had just disappeared; others weren't so lucky. I should have told him to sod off and leave me alone.

But I didn't. "There's a park behind the church," I said, much to my own amazement. "Nobody should be there," I added, and I think I sounded bossy, although, at the time, I wasn't thinking much about the tone of my voice. "But - " I said, and my voice was a bit unsteady, "don't even think about making sport of me."

He looked at me in astonishment. "I wouldn't do that!" He sounded a bit offended and a bit ashamed, and his whole face flushed a deep red, as though he was embarrassed by even the thought.

And, crazily, impossibly, stupidly . . . I believed him.