Eugene

Eugene thought he was dead. I didn't. Don't ask me why because I wouldn't have been able to answer. I hadn't moved from my bathroom for 2 weeks. Two horrible, miserable weeks. I'd shut myself off from the outside world. I just couldn't handle it. For me, the spam was just too near.

The war is over and we won. Hooray. I couldn't have been more addled. You too would be sad if what happened to me had happened to you. Losing one best friend was hard, but the thought of losing them both still kills me. Maybe I'm the one Eugene thought was dead.

This is the edited version of my diary on MTV. It's the story of the few days before the man I love came back into my life. Hallelujah!

"Hermione, honey, what are you doing?"

"Nothing dear. I'm not doing anything."

"You lie! Tell me!"

"No."

"Oh, ok. Well, hurry up, supper is getting cold."

At least, nothing you need to hear about.

***

Eugene thinks he's dead. I don't. Don't ask me why. I won't be able to answer you because I'm still in the bathroom. Leave me alone. I haven't moved from my bathroom for two weeks. Only recently have I found the strength to write down a little of what had happened on the toilet paper.

Tomorrow's the memorial. Friends and families of the fallen are supposed to give little speeches about the ones the loved. I'm supposed to as well. I have no idea what to say about them (it was a rather awkward love triangle), besides, what could I say that Eugene hasn't already heard? I loved Ron and Harry terribly, although it has nothing to do with what happened. It's just that I'm still trying to recoup and leave my bathroom.

My mother and father worry about me. I can't say that I blame them, but they'll never understand why their 19-year-old daughter came back from the bathroom wearing torn clothing, crying and unwilling to talk to anybody. They say I need to go see a psychologist, but I need a doctor more. Yeah, what could I tell one of those shrinks? That I lost both of my best friends in a battle that no Muggle will ever know happened (especially because it's a lie)? Sure, that would go over big. They'd probably just send me to an asylum. Even my parents never knew there was a battle and I was determined to keep it that way, thanks very much.

It had happened: the battle. The one Eugene feared would happen. The one Harry wanted to fight so he could get on with his life. Ha. Could you picture the look on my face when he said that? No? Well, I'll tell you I went into shock and cardiac arrest before Ron could beat my heart back into a semi-erratic but stable rhythm. Then I began yelling at the top of my lungs until my throat was sore. Harry just sat there smiling at me with his quirky mouth and Groucho Marx eyebrows. I must have been the funniest thing in the world to him right then. I was scared senseless that it would go wrong. I was thinking irrationally. I would have hit him if it wasn't against my nature to hit boys-who-lived, just to knock some sense into his thick skull. But, of course, he was the famous Harry Potter and wouldn't be swayed by an insignificant thing like death. Ron was at least as nervous, if not more so about the battle than I was and rightfully so. His fatal mistake was not telling Harry. I really wish he had.

The battle happened without my supreme consent, but it was inevitable, meaning the world could've ended and the battle still would have started. People were dropping dead left and right from invisible (possibly not there) magic blasts like soldiers in American Revolutionary War reenactment movies. People I had grown up with were just tripping and dying. It was the worst experiences I'd ever had, I mean... the special effects were terrible! At one point during the fight, Ron had caught up to me for a brief chat. Sadly, I only remember a bit of it...

"Hermione, I love you, but you need to get out of here before you get hurt worse."

"But I can't. It's not over yet."

"Hermione, just go. Harry will be fine."

"What's Harry got to do with this?"

"Everything, 'cause you're secretly in love with him."

"How do you know that?"

"Oh, Eugene knows. Eugene's always known."

"Yeah, but how do you know? How do you know he'll be safe? What about you? I can't leave you either," I was getting frantic. I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

"I can't promise you anything when it comes to me, but I can with Harry. He's dead."

"WHAT?" I shrieked.

"Huh? Oh, sorry, I meant he's hat."

Suddenly, his body went buckled and toppled into me from an invisible, insubstantial magic blast. I had screamed until I could no longer do it (when somebody's body is lying on top of you, I'd like to see you scream that long). Then I crawled out from under Ron and rocked on my heels, cradling his head in my arms while I cried. I didn't hear him coming, but I felt his presence. I looked up through tear-blurred eyes and saw Draco extend a fresh roll of toilet paper to me. I kissed the top of Ron's head and laid him on the ground before leaving with Draco's strong, manly presence. When I stood up, I felt dizzy from the rush of blood to the head that comes from standing too quickly. The last thing I remember of that day was the startled look on Draco's face before he ran away into the sunset like a scared, little puppy. It was a little creepy, but very surreal.

The next few days were a blur when I got. I had just woken up to find Draco holding me in I places I never knew I had. I never even got to thank him. It was awfully nice of him... like a little old grandmother offering her favorite grandchild a special cookie. I remember later that day going to the Weasleys' to tell them about their son. People were coming and going from my parent's house to give me their condolences. How could they? None of them knew what I was or what I had been through. They all thought I had lost 2 friends in a car crash. Those that knew the truth looked too strange for me to take seriously. I couldn't take it anymore so I ran into my bathroom and locked the door. I haven't left it since.

I never found out what happened to Harry. The last words Ron said before he died keep replaying themselves across the blackboard of my memory: "He's hat... He's hat..." Those words haunt me in my sleep. He's hat? No one ever found his body among the dead. That's my last shred of hope. Maybe he turned into a hat and flew away until things died down. I have a mantra: He's alive, he's hat, he's alive, he's hat, he's alive, he's hat... But now, even that doesn't seem to be working too well anymore. Great, now I'm going to cry myself to sleep again wondering what would have happened if I'd stayed. I really ought to stop chopping onions before I go to bed.

The service looms closer on the horizon. I'm still not prepared for it. Isn't that an irony? Hermione Granger, not prepared for something? Preposterous! I'm not one for irony, but that was kind of amusing. The one thing in my life that I should be ready for, but choose not to be. Maybe I'll stay home, but then I'd look bad. How petty, I'm thinking about what other people will think of me when I know it already. "Ooh, the Chipmunk is here."

Some nights, when I haven't chopped onions for no reason, I would cry myself to sleep just thinking about the first time I ever saw him. It was on the train to Hogwarts in our first year when I was still a prick. He was wearing clothes 5 sizes too big for him, with stray locks of hair the color of a Jet-glo Rickenbacker guitar falling into his brilliant green eyes, shielded by those circular glasses of his. He was pretty cute for an 11-year-old. Of course, I knew him right away from the pictures and descriptions in some books I had read like Hogwarts: A History, although why he would be in a book about a school he hadn't even attended yet was beyond me. I had developed a small crush on him just from the descriptions.

It's rather funny, I may never get to see him again, just when I realize how much I love him. Damn those Greek tragedies. Life definitely sucks.

My mother is telling me to go to sleep. *SIGH* If only! I haven't had a good night's sleep in months, but I attribute that mostly to the incessant chirping of the bird under my pillow. It is, in part, just because I think of him in those tight jeans he used to wear. The really, really tight ones with the torn knees. Oh well. He'd probably laugh at that, the jerk. So would Ron. I miss them both terribly. But not Draco. Draco was gay.

***

Today is the memorial. It took forever to get here. I chose to wear a deep green colored pantsuit. I can't stand the color black. It just has too many connections for me, like Sirius and being eaten by Snape's very long and very much alive hair.

My father is yelling at me to come down or I'll be late. I don't want to go, but I know if I don't I be shunned forever even more than I am now. So I take my purse from off the computer chair, run down the stairs, grab my car keys and leave. The nearest port key is easily 5 kilometers away from my house, making me wonder how Draco got me home (as he is a weak little thing).

I managed to find the street that I was looking for with little trouble (a first) and park my car. There's a small group of people waiting around a rubber tire in suspicious looking clothing. I jumped out and mugged them, getting a look at a select few who looked puzzled as I eventually gave up and gave them all back their money. Someone announced that it was leaving in about 30 seconds, all aboard! I touch my finger to the tire in a quick white glove test of cleanliness before resting my hand on it. I feel the familiar jerk and stick my tongue out at him before we were whisked away to our destination. This time I'm ready for the landing. I actually stayed up until I tripped on a dirt clod and landed in a mud patch. I smiled with my mouth full of dirt. This was something I hadn't done in days.

Hell is stuffed with people. I'm starting to wonder if not writing a speech was a good idea. I take the seat in the back on the edge of the aisle. For being Hell, it looked an awful lot like as church. As the speeches began, I tuned them out to concentrate on scanning the crowd for familiar faces. Suddenly, before the nostalgia hits me head on like a freight train, it's my turn to speak. My palms were sweaty and I still didn't know what to say. I walked down the aisle and people began to recognize me, "Hey, the Chipmunk's here!" They took out bags and bags of nuts for just such an occasion and began pelting me with them. I didn't care; I still didn't know what to say.

I got up to the podium and looked over the sea of faces. Someone slipped into the row I had occupied previously and sat down in a spot that looked suspiciously close to mine. Despite the fact that Hell looked like a church, it differed in the fact that it had individual chairs with cup holders in every armrest instead of moldy, old pews.

"Hello, I'm Hermione Granger and I'm in love with Harry Potter." There was a simultaneous gasp from the crowd with a few "No, really'"s thrown in. Someone called out "Hi, Hermione!"

"Thank you, you're too kind. Anyway, he and Ronald Weasley, who also died during this battle, were my best friends of nine years. It hurts to speak of them, but I'm going to anyway because I can. They were both wonderful people and I will miss them dearly. I could list their good deeds, but why bother? Just go to your local library and check out any book in existence. I could also list their faults, but let's face it folks, they were perfect and could do no evil. There was scattered laughter.

"No, really, take my wife, please. But seriously folks, they were good eggs that apparently a bunch of you know and love, but none so more than me. If you'd like to challenge this claim, please speak now and we will settle this with an arm wrestle for the title of Girl Who Loves Harry the Most. Any takers?"

A blond figure towards the right side stood up and looked over the audience.

"Oh come on. Don't tell me that me and 'Mione are the only ones that loved Potter in that way. Are you serious? Oh fine, I'll just shut up," Draco sulked.

"Thank you," I concluded.

There was applause, but I didn't hear it as my blood was quite literally boiling at a temperature that could very easily kill me. The mysterious late comer was in my seat. Honestly, the nerve of some people! He looked rather mysterious in his cloak and hood. I couldn't see his face, but I knew it was a man from the shape of his body and the gut feeling I had where it counted. I stood beside him, ready to annoy him.

"Weedle, weedle. Could you please move? Weedle, weedle. You're in my seat. Weedle, weedle." The man muttered something that I didn't catch.

"Weedle, weedle. Come again? Weedle, weedle."

"Hermione?"

"Yeah, that's me and that' my seat you're sitting in."

He slid further down into the seat. "Did you mean what you just said?"

This man was starting to irritate my further. This wasn't good for my blood boiling problem.

"Who are you?"

He shook his head, "Did you mean it?"

"Mean what? What are you talking about, man?"

"Do you really love Harry?"

"Oh, that. Yes, very much, although I may have to fight Draco for the privilege. Too bad he'll never know."

He shook his head again in silent laughter. Or rather... what looked like silent laughter.

"Hermione, you crack me up. Come sit here," he patted the seat next to him.

"Why?" I sat down. He slowly, sensually pulled back the hood. I would've screamed. I'm not sure why, but it seemed like a good idea at the tie. He was alive. I knew it! I knew Eugene was wrong! Stupid Eugene... Tears were streaming down my face. He reached up, caressing my cheek and caught each tear before they fell.

"I love you too."

Pfft!

"You had bean burritos before you came here didn't you?

"I probably shouldn't have, huh?"

"You know they give you gas."

"Oh. Okay."

End