Loss of Control

Chapter One

To the other Gryffindors in the Common Room that November evening, it would have appeared like any other. Hermione was sitting in a corner of the room, books, notes, pieces of parchment, strewn across the table in front of her. Lazily collapsed on the floor beside her sat Ron and Harry who were enveloped in a game of Wizard's Chess.

"Are you almost done yet Herm?" Harry asked, stifling a yawn as he did so. "I'd like to rewrite it with the revisions before I go to bed tonight."

Hermione didn't reply, her hands gripping tightly in the mass of brown hair that hung about in a sea of wild bushiness. Yanking at her scalp until she could feel the soft burning sensation spread across comfortingly, she stared down at the essay that she was suppose to be correcting for her friend. Above his messy scrawl, she could see the neat writing of her own, crowding in the small spaces he left above each line for this purpose. Grabbing the parchment and ignoring the desperate urge she had to crumple it into a ball with her fist, she thrust it onto the ground where he lay. To her dismay - or perhaps relief - the angry action went unnoticed.

He smiled up at her, his bright eyes twinkling. "Thanks a lot Hermione, you're a lifesaver."

She smiled sadly back at him, sighing quietly to herself at how easily she allowed a smile and fond look from his emerald orbs, or Ron's own chestnut ones, to twist her into doing anything for them. When they first came desperately to her, begging for her expert advice with an essay that was due the next day, one she finished a week ago, she wanted to do nothing but laugh in their faces. She wanted to laugh mercilessly at them and walk away. She clenched her fist, the nails digging into her palm, as she thought how amazing the feeling would be. But every time they smiled at her, looked at her with those eyes, she bent and relented.

Winding her hands back into her tresses, Lavender Brown's voice cut into her thoughts. She remembered the small girl coming up to her, a look of amusement on her eyes as she caught Hermione the night before, it coming upon one in the morning. She was still working at revisions to another of her essays, having put it aside to help the boys.

"Don't you ever get tired of it?" Lavender asked with a smile, and tone of amusement.

"Of what?" Hermione asked, darkly, sending a glare up at the girl, who either didn't notice or ignored it.

"Of working all the time," she replied still smiling. "Don't you ever want to just push it all away and go out and have fun?"

"Fun is a foreign term to me," Hermione muttered, relieved when the girl finally abandoned her attempts and walked away, shaking her head, up to the dorms.

"Don't you ever get tired of it?" It rang through her head like the pealing of bells on church day. She looked down at Harry, his essay tossed carelessly to the side as he continued on with his game. It hovered just next to her foot, and she had to tense her muscles to ignore the impulse to reach down and rip it to shreds.

This time it was Ron who looked up, although he was oblivious to Hermione's tensed up state. "Have you finished mine yet 'Mione?" he questioned, his eyes glued back to the game. "I'd like to go to bed soon too." He gave her a lopsided grin, before immersing himself with the game again.

She felt like giving him a great kick in the stomach as he lay sprawled out there. Flashing through her mind she could see him doubled over in agony as she grabbed at the parchments and books in front of her, ripping paper, throwing books, yelling. She could picture the shocked looks on their faces, the curious glances and blatant staring of the other students. She could see the pair of them whispering hushed urgencies at her, trying to stop the scene she was causing.

"Don't you ever get tired of it?" Of course she was tired of it! She was sick of spending her afternoons alone in her dorm doing her own papers as they roomed about the grounds laughing, or flying about the Quidditch Pitch. She hated spending her evenings cooped up in the library or common room. She would fish through books and hastily correct the multitudes of mistakes that filled their writing that was scrawled in a matter of minutes. She was tired of the fact that they expected her to do their own work. She was sick of the fact that she was nothing to them but a person help them coast through life. Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, and Ron Weasley the Boy Who Lived's best friend, both of which were incredibly charming, good looking, and extremely popular to the ladies. She was sick of the fact that they seemed to have so much time to go romping around with the girls of Hogwarts, but had no time for the one girl, who when it came down to it, would die for them.

Hermione mentally scolded herself for thinking such thoughts. 'They would die for you as well,' she told herself. 'Would they?' another voice in her mind spoke up. 'Would they really be willing to die for you? You're nothing to them; they can easily find another brainy witch to solve their problems. What about Padma Patil? She could easily be as intelligent as you, and she is beautiful as well. They don't need you. They only pity you, for without them you would have no one.' Hermione had to choke back tears at the harsh realization that her conscious came up with. 'NO!' screamed the other voice. 'Harry and Ron would never be like that.'

She shook herself violently, scattering the voices that floated through her head.

"Herm, are you OK?" piped up Ron from the floor. "You're really pale, and you're shaking like mad." His eyes were flooded with concern, and Hermione wanted to retch at the thought of what had just been going through her mind moments before.

Looking down at her right hand, she could she it shaking as her clung to her quill. "I'm fine," she said, taking a deep breath to calm herself. "I just need to go to bed."

Ignoring the two sympathetic nods that her statement received, she thrust Ron his essay. Without bothering to gather her things, she turned and swiftly made her way to the stairs leading up towards her dormitory.

"Bloody hell," Ron muttered to Harry as she disappeared from sight. "She didn't correct a thing!"

Finally reaching the solitude of her room, she was pleased to find it empty. The night was not young, but it was still too early for the others to be making their way to bed. She didn't bother to wave her wand and ignite the lamps, preferring the comforting blanket of the dark instead. As her eyes adjusted to the shadows, she could see the room was in upheaval, the contents of Lavender's trunk had been strewn about the room as if a hurricane had passed through. The girl was definitely not an organized one, but this was by far the worst.

Kicking off her shoes, Hermione padded softly towards the door to the bathroom. Just as she was about to step inside, a glistening object caught her eye, the silvery metal catching in the moonlight that streamed in through the open curtains. Her foot hovered over the object for a few moments, until she returned it back to the ground and stooped to pick up the piece of metal.

Softly running her fingers over the edge, she recognized it to be a Muggle razor blade. Thinking back to the many conversations between her roommates, she could distinctly remember Parvati berating Lavender incessantly about how she insisted on shaving the Muggle way, instead of the easier magical method. Carelessly, Hermione tossed the blade onto the nightstand next to the closest bed - her own - and continued on into the washroom.

Returning to the room a few minutes later, she felt no better after splashing her face with cold water. Decidedly, she tossed herself onto her bed fully clothed, and began to rub her temples, her eyes closed.

'What have they ever done to you to make you think such cruel hateful things,' she thought. 'They are great friends to you, and yet you think nothing but cruelties towards them.' A solitary tear made its way down Hermione's cheek, leaving a glistening trail behind. As it hovered, perched on the corner of her mouth, she reached out tentatively with her tongue, and caught it. She could taste the slight saltiness blossom out across her tongue.

Her eyes darted open as she choked back a sob. 'Why am I such a horrible, hateful, spiteful person?' That was when it caught her eye again, its metallic surface winking at her in the moonlight. Picking up the tiny blade from where it lay on her night table, she again ran her thumb lightly over the surface.

Grasping the end tightly in one hand, her mind went blank as it hovered over her skin. Without a thought, she pressed it deeply in, just above the left side on her left wrist, and watched in wonder as the redness of her blood seeped around the blade's edges. Slowly she pulled it further up her arm, mesmerized as she left behind a sticky red trail.

But then Hermione came to her senses, and quickly dropped the razor, it falling with a dull ring back onto the wooden surface of the table. She wrapped her small hand around her wrist, desperately trying to press the fluids back into her body. The dull sprinkling of pain barely registered in her mind as she panicked at the thought of what she had just done to herself.

'You deserve it,' the mean voice in the back of her mind spoke up. 'You deserve only pain for what you have thought about doing.'

Still clutching her arm, left with a dull throbbing sensation, Hermione fell back into the pillows of her bed, wracking sobs overtaking her body. Slowly, she drifted off into an uneasy sleep, her hand never leaving the now dried track of blood that made its way up her arm. Although she tossed and turned relentlessly that night, she never stopped clutching it with fervor, waking with blossoming yellow and blue bruises snaking their way around the tiny bony area.