Tears of the Phoenix

Tears of the Phoenix

~~ 1 ~~

Facing Your Past

"And you wake up to realize

That your standard of living

Somehow got stuck on survive."

--Creed

The rising of the sun is a beautiful thing. It is a sight of beauty and splendor and, for me, a sight of hope. It gives me the feeling that there is a tomorrow, no matter how strongly I believe the contrary. It's easy to lose your hope in a position like mine, but the sun's first rays sneaking over the distant hilltops and reaching your face, blinding you momentarily and searing tears into your eyes can help give you back some of the lost hope. Often times, this small occurrence is the only hope I have and usually that is not enough.

On this particular morning there is no sunrise, no first rays--at least, none visible to me. Clouds are setting in as they do in winter--seeming to be more of a solid gray blanket than clouds at all. I sigh as I look out the window at the gloomy dawning day. My constant, nagging feeling of lost hopelessness seems more prominent than ever. Not that it ever really goes away; I have not felt any joyful feeling for two years now. I stopped living then, at the end of my fifth year here at Hogwarts. Now I merely exist. Before that time, I'd never really known the difference between the two words. I'd have used them as synonyms of one another anytime. Now I know the difference. To live is to have reason to awaken, even if that reason isn't always good. To exist is to force yourself to make it through each day, doing so only because you are too meek and frightened to do anything more drastic. It is when your entire life has stopped having any meaning, when all dreams of the future are lost in a bleak void. When it takes every last bit of strength to wake up and force yourself to live through one more day and when you don't see any difference between life and death.

Maybe I've even stopped existing. What is beyond that, I am unsure, but whatever there is, that is where I am. I'm no more than a shell of my former self. I've been forced to block out happy memories, been trained to feel nothing. It's the only way to make it in the world I'm in. Had I spent each waking moment reminiscing of times lost, I'd have gone insane long ago. I learned that lesson the hard way, not too long after Voldemort won the war. My memories were too powerful to stop and each passing day was spent remembering until I could take the comparison of my old life to my new one and the memories of the things I'd done no longer. I quite nearly killed myself. When I'm in one of my blacker moods, I'll often wish I had. After all, how much worse could death be? Certainly no worse that my current position.

I struggle off my window ledge and jump the two feet or so down to the floor. I quickly change into my school robes, once more feeling glad that it was only two more months until I left here for good. I can't stand it any longer. Everything I see in my day-to-day travels in the castle I'd once loved so much is enough to sicken me now. From the green bands around the cuffs of my robes to the Slytherin banners hanging high and proud in the Great Hall, everything is different. Hogwarts castle, which had before always been so jolly and inviting, is now a cold and lifeless place as though it were filled with a thousand dementors. The only happy thoughts ventured are thoughts of cruelty from the Death Eaters. Sickened, I remember--from my group. The Dark Mark on my arm leaves no questions about the fact that I am one of them. It is a fact I try hard to forget and yet one I can never seem to tuck away.

As I join the kids in the main halls, I duck my head and keep to myself. Still, I can hear the cruel words thrown in my direction. I have no place, not a single person in this world cares whether I live or die. Actually that's not true, I decide grimly. Most would prefer me dead. My fellow students--my fellow Death Eaters, I am sorry to say--hate me. I am a joke among them. My deed to their service is well remembered, but they do not care. Each day I am ignored and shunned, not that I care much. These people are not ones with which I would care to associate if I wasn't forced. Still, dragging on and on into months and years, their attitudes toward me quickly become depressing.

I suddenly am slammed into a wall and my books cascade from my arms and onto the floor. Cold laughter echoes from just about everywhere as the students stop to watch me gather my fallen books. Without looking, I can pick out one voice among them, no doubt the one who'd pushed me in the first place--Draco Malfoy. One of few familiar faces left here with me. He kicks the book I am reaching for and laughs again. "Go fetch, Mudblood," he jeers, to the roars of his audience.

I stand, shaking my hair behind my neck and glaring at him. "Leave me alone, Malfoy, or I promise I will hex you into next year. These may not be my surroundings, I may hate every single one of these sorry classes, but if you care to remember, I'm still top of every one them. Which is more than I can say for you. Of course, I've always been better than you in that respect--why should anything change now?"

An angry murmur runs through the crowd, which I ignore. My eyes and thoughts are trained solely on one and that one is standing in front of me. I can see the hatred in his eyes as he turns away. He knows I am right and knows that I could--and would--do as I'd threatened. "Then leave, Mudblood. We don't want you here. Oh, that's right--your old pals don't want you either. Kind of a sorry existence, isn't it? No one who cares about you. Pathetic, really." He says nothing more as he walks back down the hall. I watch his back through eyes narrowed into slits, still ignoring the stares from the people walking past slowly. I kneel back down and grab the book he'd kicked--Advanced Dark Curses--and fight back my reeling emotions. It was one of the few times he'd managed to get to me. His comment was a deep wound that would most likely never heal and I felt as though he'd deepened it by several inches.

I head back the way I came. I am not hungry. It is too difficult to eat surrounded by the Death Eaters anyway--too hard not to focus on Lucius Malfoy sitting tall in the Headmaster's seat at the High Table. When I am back in my dorm, I sit down on my bed and stare out the window where the first fluffy snowflakes are beginning to drift downward from their gray captor. Malfoy's words ring through my head: "Oh, that's right--your old pals don't want you either." For the first time in many months, I feel a few tears stinging at my eyes. I'd given up crying long ago, knowing it did me no good. My resolve seems to be breaking down.

Malfoy is so right it hurts. Harry and Ron, the last I knew, were a part of some rebel group opposing Voldemort and his Death Eaters. I tried last year to write to them, some part of me hoping they'd be able to see what I did had been to protect them. Of course, I had been hoping in vain. They didn't know, nor can they unless I tell them, which I cannot do. After many weeks, I'd gotten a return letter from Harry--a howler. His words were angry and harsh, shouted through the Great Hall like hundreds of sonic thunder blasts at once. When the letter had finally stopped and burned itself into ashes, I could feel my heart going with it. The Light side would never give me a second chance. This was the last time I'd cried.

Of course, the Howler had been heard by the whole school. It was the favorite thing of my peers to throw at me, even now, a year later. Lucius Malfoy, of course, had seen to it that I was punished painfully. If I look very closely, I can still see some of the scars. None of this bothered me though. The damage had come from the letter itself.

I am an outcast to both sides, stuck toeing the line between the two. I am rarely referred to by name here--usually everyone, including teachers, call me by "Mudblood." They use my name in the Light rebel camps sometimes, but when they do it is uttered as a curse, a filthy name to be spat rather than spoken: Hermione Granger--traitor of the Light side. But they don't understand. No one does. No one can.

Sometimes, such as now, I wonder why I even bother to go on. My life is meaningless. The hatred pouring in from all around me is suffocating, nearly unbearable. I am an outcast in a world of pain, terror, and horrors. The only reason those few good souls left survive is for their friends, family, and dreams. I have none of those. I am a teenager loyal to the Light side, but not allowed to show it in a school of the Dark Arts. I suppose the answer to why I continue lies in my hope, or what little of it is left. Though I know it is not rational, I still cling to the small, vague hope that one day I will escape this pitiful existence to return to my friends on the side of the Light. Now I see the hopelessness in such a dream and the horizon goes dark. It is during times like these when I begin to contemplate suicide once more.

I have a knife in my trunk. I've had it for a long time, for the purpose of self-defense. It is not unheard of for one of the other students to attack me. I am a favorite target. Lately, though, I've begun looking at that blade quite differently. Now I get up from my bed and open the lid of the trunk. It seems almost as if I am on autopilot as I pick up the knife and turn it in my hands. It catches the light filtering in from my open window and glitters tantalizingly. Suddenly there is no question in my mind.

I walk over to the windowsill where I had stood just twenty minutes ago. I sit down in my same position and gaze out over Hogwarts grounds, trying to transform them in my mind to look as they had before. While the grounds look the same, they are not. It is impossible to illusion myself otherwise. All I have to do is look over at the burned shell of Hagrid's hut to remember that.

I jerk my gaze away and look back at the knife. Two quick slits and it would be over. I raise the blade and press it against the skin of my right wrist. I pause a moment to look up and take a last deep breath of winter air. My eyes wander over to the Forbidden Forest for the last time. For a moment all seems quiet and still, but a jolt of movement attracts my eyes. I have been trained to notice the slightest movement and zero in on its source impeccably. I had not lied to Malfoy--I still am top of every class. It takes me a moment to distinguish the figure, and I probably would not have been able to see it at all had it not stood frozen on open ground, staring back.

Finally, I recognize the face. The hand holding the knife loosens its grip and the blade clatters to the windowsill. The light coating of ice on the sill propels it over the side, dropping it into a snow bank far below. I take no notice. I am in shock.

The face belongs to a person I'd accepted that I would never see again, a friend I'd given my life for.

Harry Potter.

~~ 2 ~~

Out of My Mind

"Sometimes it's hard to keep on running.

We work so much to keep it going.

Don't make me want to give up."

--No Doubt

I am shivering where I stand. The fact that my feet, wearing tattered and hole-filled shoes, are buried in a bank of snow along the forest's edge doesn't help matters. More snow is drifting down from above, coating my dark hair in soft white. The silence of the snow is eerie. Rain comes down and pounds on things. You can hear it; you know it is there. Snow is quiet. If you don't look, you won't ever know of it's presence. Standing along the forest of a place I've had nightmares about for two years now, listening to silence of my group coupled with the silence of the snow sends shivers down my spine. It has to be an omen--not a good one.

I am not aware of any of this, though just a moment before it had been foremost in my mind. Now I am frozen where I stand, unable to move or take my eyes away from the figure in the window of what once was Gryffindor Tower. My breath is caught in my throat. It is a ghost from my past, a person I'd never imagined I'd have to see again. Hermione Granger. My one-time best friend who betrayed me in the worst of ways. I hate her so deeply it frightens me sometimes. I wonder how it is possible to go from loving someone to hating them so utterly. Then all I have to do is remind myself of all the pain she has caused the entire wizarding world--her two "best friends" most of all--and I have no more questions.

But seeing her is different. It is so simple to remember old times and pick them apart, looking for any little clue of her hidden dark side. It is easy to let my hatred fill me. But when I see her, even from such a great distance, it is all so much harder. Instead of feeling simple anger, a flurry of emotions overcome me. Regret. Sadness. Things I'd long since stopped feeling.

"Harry, move it!"

I hear Ron's voice in the back of my mind, but it is distant, as though coming from very far away. I don't move. I watch as Hermione lifts something to her hand. I can't tell because of the distance--I can barely tell that it is her--and then she looks up. Our eyes meet. The oddest sensation overcomes me--a powerful mixture of desires. Part of me is desperate to confront her, while the other part wants to run in the other direction. What she'd been holding drops from her hand. It is small and glittery and it falls the seven floors to the ground, where it becomes buried in a snow bank.

"Harry!" Ron yells again. He is right beside me now, shaking me violently. I finally look over to him. My face must give away my emotions, because he frowns. "What is it? We have to move if we don't want to be caught!"

I can only shake my head. I look back up at the window where Hermione is still as frozen as I am. I cannot see her expression from here and I wonder how she feels being confronted with the aftermath of her diabolical actions long ago. Is she feeling regret? I doubt it. If there is one thing I've learned over the past couple of years it is that people like her, people who can so effortlessly betray the ones they love, have no regrets. And you can have none where they are concerned. Perhaps she feels elation. The very idea nauseates me.

Ron turns to look where my eyes are fixed. He squints for a moment, then his eyes grow very wide. "Merlin," he whispers. Still staring, he pulls me back a step. "Harry, let's go. She'll betray us in an instant! She's already proved that. We've got to get out of here!"

The urgency in Ron's words reaches me. While I have heard everything else he's said, nothing has really had any meaning. His last comment does. I turn away. Ron is right--Hermione will turn and run to Voldemort the second she moves away from the window.

We run back into the forest and Ron calls out our signal to abort the mission. Our meager forces are spread out wide over an area of about half a mile. I have come out of my shock by now and am back to playing my role as leader of the group. I attempt to appear indifferent and unaffected, but I do not fool myself. Seeing her has shaken me deeply. It is all I can do to hold it together so that I can lead my group safely out of the forest.

I do not remember the trip back to our hideout. I think Ron took over leading the group about halfway through, but he hasn't brought up anything since. I do know that he was the one that led the group Apparition once we were back at the safe point. We are currently residing in an old, abandoned Muggle cabin deep in a forest in the countryside. We'll probably move soon--we have to every month or so, or Voldemort and his forces will track us down too easily. It's relatively easy to find places to stay--most of the country is in ruins. Voldemort controls everyone, Muggle and wizards alike. Most Muggles are dead. Voldemort has no use for them. He massacred them. Many escaped to foreign countries, but it was hard. He has control of most of Europe now. I am unsure of the Dursleys' status, nor do I particularly care. The main leaders of the Light side have been killed. There aren't many Light supporters left who have not finally given in, been forced into slavery, or have been killed. Some of us are being held in Azkaban, which was emptied of Death Eaters and filled instead with some of the members of the most notorious rebel groups. Our particular group has not lost a single member to imprisonment. We have been lucky--but there is no telling just how long that luck will last.

Despite the cold, I do not stay inside the cabin once we return. The walls seem to press in on me, suffocating me. I leave the cabin and walk the short distance to the small creek the runs near it. I brush the snow off a large rock and sit down, staring at the rapidly freezing water and the snowy banks. In one area, where the ice is much thicker, I can see a fish trapped within the ice. I feel an odd kinship with that fish. I can relate exactly to how it must feel--swimming along through life as usual one day, then without warning becoming trapped. Knowing your life is seeping away from you slowly, with all you need to continue just beyond your reach.

My mind is buzzing. Just this morning we were all so excited. We thought we actually stood a chance at striking a real blow to the Dark Arts school. We dared not use the passages marked on the Marauder's Map any longer--Hermione knew of those, and what she knew, the Death Eaters were aware of. Fred and George recently managed to remember the location of a different passage, one not marked on the map. We supposed it had to be very well hidden if my father and his friends hadn't found it and Fred and George had such trouble locating it as well. We'd felt secure in the knowledge that this time we would win. I should have known better, after everything that's happened. I should have known that in this world, life was never going to cut me or my group a break. We were all ready, in our positions along the forest's edge.

And then she comes in.

I find it hard to even say her name. It causes me pain, thinking of how she'd once been my friend, how I'd once even been romantically interested in her, however vaguely. Then she'd betrayed us, leaving us in this bleak position. And again she's foiled our plans.

My eyes close and the memory I'd been trying so hard to keep at bay is finally released from my meticulously constructed barriers. Voldemort and Lucius Malfoy busting down the doors in the front of Hogwarts school and marching in, shooting down anyone in their way . . . Hermione following dutifully behind them . . .

A hand falls on my shoulder and my eyes snap open. I jump to my feet on instinct. I look over to see Ron standing beside me and relax. He is not looking at me, staring out over the creek just as I had been doing moments before. His face is blank and expressionless as always. He's never been the same since Voldemort won the war. His whole life was destroyed, more utterly even than mine. His parents and Percy were killed. Bill and Charlie are taking cover in Romania. They can't get back to England without getting killed themselves. Ginny, Fred, George, and Ron are all with our rebel group. All of them are completely different people. Fred and George rarely joke anymore; Ron is bleak and cynical; and Ginny is withdrawn and silent, often prone to fits of tears with no warning. I guess we've all changed. I don't suppose a person could live through what we have and not have their lives be affected. But the four siblings have been through so much more.

"Are you thinking about her?" asks Ron quietly, breaking the silence. He spat out the last word with an intense anger. If possible, Ron hates Hermione even more than I do. He blames her for the deaths of his parents and brother. Rightly so, I believe.

I nod.

Ron shakes his head. I can see the frown on his face. "Another plan of ours she's ruined. Don't pay her any mind, Harry. She's not worth it. Believe me, I've spent enough time thinking about her, playing with everything she once did and told us in my head, feeling the resentment and the betrayal. Don't bother with it. All you're doing is allowing her to have further control over you. You're letting the memory of her prolong the pain that she instigated. She'd want to keep hurting you. Don't let her."

Ron's words are harsh, but true. I know he is right. I try so hard to block her from my mind, but I simply cannot. I have been trying for the past two years. I can usually keep her tucked away in some distant corner of my brain, but she is never fully gone. I doubt she ever will be. You don't just forget someone who has given you this much grief. And now I can't even hide her away. Seeing her has put me back at square one, where my every conscious thought is centered around her. I do not tell Ron this.

We say no more; there is nothing left to be said. The silence between us is not quite companionable, but one of understanding. Finally, Ron turns and walks away, muttering something unintelligible about being cold. I do not follow. I sit back down on the rock. It is beginning to snow again. I am no longer even attempting to put her out of my mind. The hours slip past me, snow gradually building around me. I am only wearing a light jacket, but I don't feel the cold. I am far too lost within my own head. As darkness descends around me, clarity dawns. I know that I will never be able to put Hermione out of my mind until everything is wrapped up. Until every last bit of disbelief I may harbor is banished. Until I understand. I know she betrayed us--for a long time that was all I cared to know. But now I hunger for the answers to the burning questions that have plagued my mind for years: Why did she do it? When did she go over? Was she ever truly our friend, or just a deceptive liar? The only person I can get these answers from is Hermione herself, and I can no longer deny my desperation to know them.

For the first time, I feel ready to face my past--to face her. With hardened resolution, I stand. I tilt my head back and look up at the sky. Patches of deep sapphire show through the stormy clouds, silvery, crystalline stars speckling them. I close my eyes and focus on returning to the safe Apparition point. I am going to see Hermione Granger. I want to put her out of my mind, I tell myself. I want to be able to move on with my life. Yet deep in my head, a voice nags me tauntingly, a voice it takes all my will to ignore: Are you sure you aren't just foolishly hoping she might still somehow be your friend?