Doldrums

Chapter 1 Part 1:

On Their Way to Hogwarts I

For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin--real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way. Something to be got through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.

Alfred D'souza

It was no good. It was no good at all. She stared at the damp bushy hair in the mirror in frustration as she dried it with a hair dryer. The product had failed to rise up to her expectations as did the last few products she had bought. The actual colour of the hair dye turned out to be of a lighter tinge of brown instead of its darker counterpart and only served to highlight the disparity between the now light brown hair fringe against the darker brown colour of the rest of her hair. Eyebrows knitted into a fierce frown, she threw the latest bottle of hair dye onto her bed, removed the protective gloves from her hands and dumped them onto the dressing table. An aggravated Hermione fell onto her bed, which had lots of different brands of hair dye products strewn all over it.

Hermione hated to dye any part of her hair because not only would the dye ruin her hair; it also had a very pungent smell. Yet, to dye her hair was imperative if she was to stay on in a Muggle school. She recalled the first day she stepped into the school compound, only to be hurled roughly by the collar by the school discipline master to the principal's office to be lectured for breaking the school rule. Apparently, the headmaster and discipline master were under the impression that Hermione had dyed her fringe white to make a fashion statement or as an act of rebellion against the school authorities. Despite the explanations she offered for her seemingly offensive act, the headmaster refused to believe her and ordered her to dye her fringe back to its original colour again. Although she had later dyed her fringe brown, it seemed as if the first impression of her with her white fringe would last throughout the school term. Her classmates would engage in pranks directed at her and call her names. More often than not, the teachers would assume the "culprit" of those undesirable pranks to be Hermione. Therefore, frequent trips to the headmaster's office were unavoidable. Sometimes Hermione could be forced to go to the headmaster's office more than thrice in a single hour.

The white fringe aside, Hermione as a person was also suspect in her peers' eyes. Hermione was never comfortable around her peers. For one, she was an extreme study-aholic, if such a word ever existed. While hardworking was her middle name, boringly serious was her nickname. Never once was she seen without a book thick enough to give the "Book of Shadows" in Charmed a run for its money. In short, she preferred studying to her peers, who very much favoured shopping and gossiping to studying. Furthermore, topics which Hermione could never relate to often cropped up in the middle of their project discussions. Did Hermione see the girl with elephant thighs lumbering down the hallway earlier? When the said girl walked past them, the ground underneath everyone literally shook like the experience one got prior to an earthquake. The way Hermione's peers sneered at those they deemed to be below them in status and appearances made the protagonist shudder with apprehension at the insensitive gossip they would say behind her back.

Despite their undesirable character traits, Hermione never once despised them. In fact, she loved them for some reason unbeknownst to her. Considering her present situation, perhaps she thought she was in no position to chastise them. Or perhaps she was just being sympathetic to their pretentious selves. After all, once her peers were stripped of all the tittle-tattle and contemptuous attitude towards those they considered to be lower to them in the social hierarchy, they were just people devoid of personalities and a sense of self identity. A sense of identity was very important to the existence of a human being. It gave meaning to his life, as if to tell him that his entire life was not lived out in vain. Most of the time, people needed to do certain things to affirm their self-existence once in a while. Some athletes loved the glory of winning medals on the track because according to some perceptions, the notion of winning others was a demonstration of their prowess. However, these same people failed to consider the effect of winning on the athletes' psychological selves. To these athletes, winning gives them something to look forward to in life. When life became tough, winning is a pillar of support for them. Without the notion of winning, life ceased to be of meaning to them. Therefore, Hermione never blamed her peers for gossiping behind others' backs, though she thought they could channel some of that negative energy into something more productive. It was a waste of time gossiping about others while that time could be spent on cleaning up her bedroom, reading a book or even playing a sport. However, much as she did not approve of their behaviour, she never sought to change them or their personalities for that matter. No, she was not as noble as that. Voicing her true opinions would be a detriment to her relationship with her peers. They would never listen to her at any rate because she knew exactly their feelings towards her. As long as she could still hold on to the tangible relationship, though fragile, she never minded suppressing her emotions or views about certain matters. At least, she would not be alone. That was what mattered most.

She did not want to be alone anymore.

Loneliness was not something she could cope with ease. She realised that now. Actually, she came to the realisation on the very first day of school. It was unbearable and she was not accustomed to it at all. Throughout her childhood days, her parents had surrounded her with all the warmth and love they could shower her with. It was therefore a shock to her when she was ostracised on the first day of school, and she was very miserable. What had she done to deserve the cold shoulder her classmates gave her? The white fringe appeared so ludicrous a reason to begin with. She did not ask for it. It just occurred but nobody understood that principle that some things could happen without a rhyme or reason. People chose to find a cause, fallacious or fabricated it might be, to shift the blame on because they wanted to understand something they did not understand. To these people, whether the knowledge was true or false was never an issue. Finding a reason to satisfy that loophole in their understanding was of more importance than anything else. They could not admit to themselves or anyone else for that matter, that there was actually something in this world they did not comprehend. Furthermore, the idea of knowing something stabilized their otherwise turbulent life. Their lives already had their own heap of worries as it were. Why would they want to worry about little things like Hermione's hair when they could just dismiss it with a stupid reason? It was strangely comforting; perverse that might appear, to live with the assumed knowledge, while suppressing the part of the brain that was acutely aware of the erroneous belief in that assumed knowledge.

Hence, every day, Hermione ate her lunch in the noisy, unruly cafeteria alone at a corner, as if there were an invisible wall separating her and the rest of the students in the cafeteria. At her corner, everything seemed to come to a standstill; time halted in its endless movement. Everybody ceased to exist. She was in the world but in a world that only belonged to her and no one else. Initially, she was not comfortable with such a feeling- the feeling of loneliness, so she took up reading to occupy her time. That way, she would have no time to think about anything else. Books consoled her lonely self and accompanied her through the difficult days when no one else would. From books, she gained an invaluable and inseparable companion she never thought possible. Yet, they could never replace human beings with their life and vitality.

Hermione recognized the fact that she was never as adapted to loneliness as she initially thought herself to be. And it was her present peers with their gossipy personalities that brought her to that realisation.

For one, she missed the warmth they emanated and the sense of reality they brought to her; the sense that time was consistently moving on without stopping for her; without waiting for her. She recalled reading such a proverb in a book once. Time and tide waits for no man. She was the one who had stopped in her footsteps and never moved hence after. Time did not. Time would never wait for anyone. Time did not have the capacity or ability to do so. Only human beings possessed that ability. That was when she comprehended the fact that reading would only cause her lose herself in the false reality her books created for her. She experienced day and night as the characters in the books did; experienced various feelings of grief or happiness, anger or peace as the characters in the books did. Although she no longer felt lonesome, she could not shake off something nagging at her at the back of her mind.

And that was reality.

Only through contact with real human beings could she experience a true sense of reality. Thus, she was more than grateful when her gossipy peers finally took notice of her. Whether it was pity or something else on their part, she did not mind. At least, she was somewhat in touch with reality. Yet, she could never fully be comfortable with her peers either, so she was often stuck between these two contradictions. Sometimes when her friends were talking amongst themselves, she merely wanted to hole up in some godforsaken corner of a room and read her book. However, there were also times she would rather listen to the endless but meaningless speeches her peers made than reading her book. Though it only occurred once in a blue moon, she would just want to tear her hair apart when she was unable to decide what she truly wanted.

At times, Hermione would wonder what happened in the operating theatre that day she was wheeled into it. The nurses gave vague answers as to how they found her alive even though she was already dead for more than half an hour. Even the doctors could not explain her situation. Tests were carried out on her blood, skin tissue and hair samples but the results showed nothing of the extraordinary. The only thing the doctors could tell her conclusively was that the melanocytes in the hair bulbs at the fringe area suddenly died and stopped producing melanin; hence the white roots seen at the hair fringe. But as to how the entire fringe became white, the doctors was totally clueless as to the explanations for so strange and rare a phenomenon. Thus, it appeared as though Hermione was destined to live a school life filled with her classmates' taunts and sniggers and listening quietly, though uncomfortably to her peers' derisive remarks about other schoolmates. That was until she received a letter from Hogwarts. As she was not aware that there were actually wizards in this world, she was very surprised to realise that a school for wizards existed. She did not know whether to feel flattered or honoured to be chosen to enrol in such a prestigious and ancient wizardry school.

Magic!!! That was it! That was the solution to her problem. With magic, she could change her white fringe into brown. At the same time, she feared that the real wizards were not as progressive as she imagined them to be. Muggle books had always portrayed wizards either as precursors of the future or jackasses of the present. Fervently, Hermione had hoped the wizards would not be as narrow-minded as the Muggle-borns had been. Besides, Hogwarts was a name she had already taken a liking to. She was sure she would enjoy school life there. True to her instincts, she enjoyed her life at Hogwarts more than she did at her Muggle school. Although the process took some time, she made firm friends with dependable Harry and Ron. Only when she was with them could she safely be herself, though to a certain extent. They were still in the dark about her white fringe. Hermione could not work up enough courage to confess to them about it yet. Moreover, she was not certain whether to take chances with the other wizards or not. As a precaution, she thought it a wiser move to dye her fringe brown instead of flaunting the white fringe, which might invite more questions or unkind remarks, which she possessed no desire to hear again. And that would be the way of life until one day while she could find the right spell to right her appearance. Little did she realise she would have to wait for another year before she could finally fulfil that one and utmost desire she had harboured since that day in the hospital.

"Hermione!" Her mother called out from the stairway, breaking Hermione out of her thoughts. "Time to go to the train station!"

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

The train station oversaw a bustling activity with an atmosphere akin to that of the airport. There were teary goodbyes as parents held their children tightly in their embrace for the last time before parting unwillingly with their precious ones. Other parents were busy squeezing the various medications, vitamin pills and snacks which they had bought at the very last minute from the stalls located in the train station into their children's already bulging suitcases. As the schoolmates from the same House were reunited again, they greeted one another excitedly and shared warm, ecstatic hugs with one another. After that, they lapsed into animated chatters, updating one another on the latest developments in their lives and catching up on the latest gossip about their schoolmates and teachers. Some of the girls were happily exchanging fashion tips and passing the latest fashion magazines around their friends. This vibrant scene contrasted starkly with the solemn atmosphere emanated from a family at the corner of the train station.

"Did you hear what I said, Draco?" In order to augment his warning, Lucius rapped his cane hard on the ground. "Do not do anything that would potentially embarrass or ruin the Malfoy name."

At that moment, Draco was trying his best to indicate to his pals, Crabbe and Goyle to give him a hand in shaking his father off his back. Keeping his eyes in the direction where they were situated, Draco narrowed his eyes at times and pursed his lips in the hope of passing on his message to the two thickheads. Much as Crabbe and Goyle were muddle-headed and foolish, they could not mistake the pleading signal their leader was sending to them but both shook their heads fervently. The word fear was written all over their faces. Helping Draco was one matter but going against Lucius in the process of doing so would be a huge mistake which they were reluctant to make. While Crabbe pointed his fat and short index finger towards the carriage and hurriedly boarded the train without waiting for Draco's response, Goyle pretended that he did not see Draco and busied himself with lugging his baggage onto the train.

Mentally cursing the two spineless pea brains, Draco muttered mechanically under his breath, like a robot repeating the lines keyed into his programme. "Yes, Father."

"Yes" and "No" were standard answers in a Malfoy family because the questions were always phrased in a way that merely required a mundane "yes" or "no". Draco knew his father too well. Each question his father posed to anyone had a specific agenda and he only wanted to hear the other party concur with the responses Lucius had in mind, not anything contrary to Lucius' responses. To this day, nobody but Dumbledore dared to oppose his unspoken rule. Even those in the Ministry of Magic had to give way to Lucius sometimes unless backed by Dumbledore, of course. Lengthy answers were also a huge taboo when speaking to the older Malfoy because they would only invite questions and doubts that might deviate from his line of thought, so Lucius hated anyone giving him lengthy answers.

"Did you hear what I just said, Draco?" Impatiently, the older Malfoy rapped his cane on the ground again to show his disapproval at his son's inaudible reply to his question. Never one to like feeble responses to his questions, he was especially critical and harsh when his son answered in that undesirable tone. For Lucius, feeble responses were an obvious sign of frailty and weakness, which did not augur well for the great Malfoy name. Anyone born to the Malfoy lineage had always been powerful and influential wizards, whom everyone feared and his son was no exception. Lucius did not raise his son to be a weakling but one destined for a great future.

Angrily, Lucius gritted his teeth as the prophecy the seer told him years ago popped into his mind. For years now, he never forgot the humiliating thought of his son's destiny intertwined with a mudblood. To have the pure blood of a Malfoy tainted with the impurity of a mudblood was the worst and most unforgivable sin a Malfoy could ever commit in his lifetime. To prevent that from happening, from that day of the given prophecy, Lucius became stricter with Draco, constantly brainwashing him with disdainful remarks of how all mudbloods were always beneath them, both in status and wizardry. Therefore, it was with great displeasure when he learnt that Hermione, a mudblood excelling in all areas which Draco should have excelled instead.

"Yes, Father." Draco repeated his earlier words with more confidence and forcefulness as compared to his previous attempt, hoping that would temporarily ward off his father and ease out of the uncomfortable situation.

Despite the deafening chatter created when everyone simultaneously spoke in loud volumes on Platform 9 ¾ , Draco could hear the threatening undertone in his father's voice very clearly. The lighting on the platform highlighted his father's fine wrinkles running like railway tracks on his forehead, adding to the stern imposing stature Draco always knew his father to be. Whenever Lucius frowned, the wrinkles would become especially more prominent and protrude from his smooth pale forehead. The Muggle proverb was absolutely true. Time and tide indeed waited for no man. No matter how influential or wealthy his father was, he would still age just like any other ordinary human beings. Nevertheless, Lucius did not seem to be concerned with that. His only one ambition in life was to become the most powerful wizard and that the Malfoy name was one which would be admired and feared throughout the wizarding world. Therefore, he spent much of his life building up the Malfoy reputation and of course, Draco was expected to do the same.

With his father around, Draco was always very conscious of time. In fact, it was not an exaggeration to say that his entire life was run on schedule every day. Promptly, at four every morning, he had to wake up. Then, he was given thirty minutes to wash up, after which he was expected to finish his breakfast alone in the dining room within thirty minutes. Punctually, at five, he would commence his first lesson of the day, which was Latin. The duration of every lesson was an hour and altogether, he would have to attend seven lessons before he could get to enjoy an hour's break for lunch. Following that, he would have two hours of self study sessions, another three for lessons and one hour of sport before his day ended. Even then, he had very little time left to play for he must be in bed by nine every night. It was very exhausting to repeat the same routine day after day. Occasionally, he would wish that there was a spell to stop time; not temporarily but forever. He wanted some time to himself, though he was not sure how he would use this "time". Maybe he could space out and think of nothing, something he had not done for a long time. Once Lucius caught him doing it and naturally, Draco was then harshly and firmly warned against doing so in the confines of his home or in Hogwarts. Although Draco dutifully complied with what his father required of him, he had never once gained the older Malfoy's absolute trust and confidence in him.

Draco wondered if that was because of the prophecy the seer said years ago but Draco knew that was a silly question. A vehement detractor of Muggle-borns, though more within the confines of the Malfoy mansions than in other places, Lucius never halted for a second on demonstrating his disgust for the Muggle-borns. Like the Slytherin ancestor, he never had a liking for Muggle-borns and always thought magic should only be practised among the purebloods. Knowing his father's disdain for Muggle-borns, Draco had stayed as far away from them as he could, though he acknowledged there was one Muggle-born who invaded his life all this while.

Hermione.

If only she had not been so intelligent and good in her studies, perhaps his father would have more faith in him as a person. And the fact that she was a Muggle-born was greatly to his disadvantage. Because of that, he could never suppress his urge to throw cruel retorts into her face whenever he caught glimpses of her at Hogwarts. If he could not beat her in class, insulting her would be an excellent way to vent his anger, since he could not very well admit his childishness stemmed from the fact that she was academically more brilliant than he was. Depending on how one looked at it, that would be tantamount to political and personal suicide. At any rate, he could not bear to see her smiling with happiness when she glanced at her two bodyguards when he was suffering in misery because of her.

Lost in his thoughts, he failed to notice someone running towards him in the carriage. In an instant, they collided into each other, and Draco's luggage was sent hurling through the air to the end of the carriage. A furious Draco recovered his composure rapidly, swiftly but roughly pulled the person by the collar while maintaining eye contact with her.

"You!"