Diary Of A Lost Girl

The Diary Begins…
 
“ I dream in black and white
I’ve long forgotten exactly who I am.”
Spiderman, Veruca Salt
 
There. I have marked it. I have spent a year in here, in the filthy depths, the very bowels of this great grey fortress. Everything is grey here. I feel colour-blind.
Sometimes I think that this marking of the days is simply the last vestige of my humanity. For it’s painful to look at them, these pitiful tally marks scratched into the dirt that covers my walls, organized into months, as is my way. But I also feel joy, a tiny speck of joy. Not very much, it’s true; but it’s almost heartening to know that I have retained enough of myself to pay attention to such trivial details as these, the hours that have passed. Though they no longer seem so many anymore.
Occasionally, I will turn my head to look up at the sunrise, only to blink and find myself staring at the dull rays of sunset. It is not sleep that comes upon me at those times, but something greater and much more terrible. It is a blankness that is the beginnings of death. A death that sometimes is more alluring than not; it is so lonely here.
They don’t keep Dementors here anymore. Those beasts were moved to some other outpost before I came here. But Azkaban is stark and unyielding enough without them. It’s still a wizard prison, really, though now those who were prisoners are the jailers. It’s been called Voldemort’s greatest coup.
I’m not afraid to say his name anymore.
Every day here, I repeat my name out loud, lest I forget it. I have forgotten so much already that repeating is less a task of purpose than one of silent resignation. Resignation to the fact that, one day, I will forget that last essential thing too.
Would I answer to Hermione Granger now, if someone called me? I wonder.

* * * * *

If I get out of here… if… someday… I will live a life without regrets. There are too many things that I regret now for me to do otherwise.
Mostly, I regret the hiding. I hid behind Platonic ideals of love when lightening surged through me every time our fingers brushed. I don’t know how I survived that steady ache of longing I felt every day. Longing to kiss him, to touch him, to make him mine. I was sixteen when I last saw him. Harry. My love.
We were at the Burrow that month… it was the summer before our sixth year. It was a summer both beautiful and frightening. For we were full of love, but… there was something terrible about those loves, which war had so strangely warped. Yes, war. With Voldemort.
Ron was a man obsessed – with Cho Chang. And she was obsessed with him as well. Perhaps it was a window out of Cedric’s death for her. I don’t know. They were both less than human that summer; some animal instinct had taken hold of them. I’m sorry to say that I was, well, less than patient with them those last weeks, when Cho came to visit. It seemed they were anywhere and everywhere… there was no privacy in that house.
Ginny was an ally… some of the time. She never seemed to notice Ron and Cho, snogging or worse, and oddly enough, they took pains not to disturb her. Perhaps they understood her enough to comprehend that her long, flowery letters to Neville Longbottom (a friend, rather than a beau) were just another form of that desperate love we all felt for each other, as friends, family, or lovers. Voldemort, in all his horrific glory, had risen, and nothing would ever be the same again.
Perhaps we might never meet again under the many roofs of the Burrow.
I doubt we ever will, now.

* * * * *

There it goes again… time slipping through my fingers. I was thinking about that summer… yes, that final summer at the Burrow.
Harry and I were… different from the others. I was more studious than ever, panicking over the newts as if they were two week, rather than two years, away. Maybe it never occurred to the others that I wasn’t sure if I’d live that long. Everyone (even Ginny, a little) was annoyed with me by that fateful day we went in to London.
Except Harry.
Towards the end, near that final trip to Diagon Alley, he was almost manic-depressive, terrified and allured by what the future held. Maybe he knew more than the rest of us. It frightened me – and what could I do? I was lost. The rest were better off than me – at least they knew their own desires. I was trapped in a box I had made for myself, neatly labeled “Harry’s Friend” in my own handwriting. I didn’t help him – which breaks my heart. But what could I do?
It made my heart beat faster just to look at him. I could hardly bear to be in the same room with him. Eventually, I came to fear what I most wanted – I never thought that he could ever feel the same about me.
The day came when Harry and I went to London via Floo Powder. Not together – me behind him, not speaking. Unfortunately, had I been nervously chattering non-stop, perhaps Mrs. Weasley would have heard us. And informed us that the Floo Network was having some trouble that day.
But we found out for ourselves when we emerged in Knockturn Alley.

* * * * *

I’d never been in Knockturn Alley before. Perhaps there was a time when it was less dark, less dangerous looking. It was only late afternoon, but it seemed as if night had already fallen. We hadn’t gone two steps towards Diagon Alley before we were abruptly accosted by two men in dark cloaks. I don’t remember anything until when I woke in that dark room, with one lone shuttered window.
We hadn’t been chained or anything. I don’t think they even knew who I was; just that they’d picked up Harry Potter and some girl in Knockturn Alley. As I later learned, they weren’t even part of Voldemort inner circle of Death Eaters. (If they had been, I’m sure they’d have had the presence of mind to kill us before going out to eat.) There were some wards up on the room, though; I could sense it as soon as I woke. The place reeked of Dark magic.
Harry was out of it. Worse than out of it, actually, it took me several minutes to bring him ‘round, and that was with the pitcher of water I conjured and dumped on his forehead. As I poured it, I recall thinking many complimentary thoughts about Dumbledore, who had lifted the ban on using magic on summer hols for fifth years and above, and Professor Flitwick, who had taught me a handy spell to make my wand invisible to anyone beside myself.
“Harry, Harry!” I wailed. It’s as clear as day to me now, even if I’ve forgotten how to make everything I ever learned in Potions. I shook him until his familiar green eyes peered blearily at me.
“Hermione?” he said groggily. “Where are we?”
“I don’t know! We’ve been kidnapped.” Now that he was awake, the anxiety I had been holding in the entire summer came to a head, and I burst into tears.
To this day, I am still amazed by him. He was groggy, half-Stunned, and soaking wet, yet he knew enough to hold me while I cried. Any debts Harry ever owed me were repaid then. So when I had cried myself out, I turned my head up to his.
And kissed him.

* * * * *

If lightening had trickled through me when our fingers brushed, then this was something greater than a simple strand of fire, perhaps a blazing river of flame. I don’t know how long it was until we broke apart for breath. Personally, I felt like I had been turned to jelly. I would have fallen over if Harry hadn’t had a firm grip on my shoulder.
“I think… I should get you out now,” I said, my voice wobbling a bit.
“What about you?” Harry asked. He sounded rather unsteady as well. Oh, poor Harry. I should never have kissed him, I realize that now. Perhaps it would have been easier for him to let go.
“They’re Dark magic wards, Harry.” I raised my wand wand. “Videritus.”
The air shimmered with a yellow, pearly colour. A colour I was quite familiar with.
“That’s- that’s-” he muttered.
“The Sercaptivi curse,” I answered. “Defense Against the Dark Arts extra credit last year. I think I can hold it long enough for you to get out through that window there.”
“Hermione!” Harry exclaimed. “Do you think I’d just leave you here?”
I looked at my feet. “Harry, I have the wand, and there’s no way I can hold the spell long enough to get both of us out. They’ll kill you. They won’t hurt me. Just go.”
Suddenly, a noise like that of a door being slammed echoed in the room.
“Hermione-”
“Go. Vera forma!”
A crack echoed through the room, and the air glittered again, this time with a dark shade of fuchsia. So Harry kissed me, a quick sort of kiss that was over almost before it began, and went. His ankles were barely out of the window before I lost my grip on the spell and fell back on the bed, exhausted. An eerie yellow light lit the room.
When I next woke, I was in a carriage, on the way to Azkaban. And my wand was gone.

* * * * *

That is how I got here. And that is what has tormented my mind for every single hour of every single day, every single tally mark in the dirt on the wall, for the year I have been in here.