Quote Me if I'm Wrong

Chapter Seven: Who I am and Who I am Not

There is something liberating about not pretending. Dare to embarrass yourself. -Drew Barrymore

I remember the first things my mother told me as a child were the fairytales. My mother told me all of the stories, she wanted me to learn the morals, but I just learnt to believe in magic.

It was every night my mother would sit on the corner of my bed and talk to me until sleep overtook me. Sleep in itself is an adventure, a land where you tumble in and out of reality. But the part where you are out of reality is the part that's real. Every night. Until I was nine.

Nine...Cats have nine lives.

My mother didn't. Not when the drunken trucker hit her car.

My mother died leaving me in a world where there was no magic. No way to hide under billows of blue fabric and keep the world from seeing me. So...when no fairy godmother came I found my own way to hide. I found the masks. Scarlet for the burning passion of anger, green for happiness, green had to penetrate the blue equaling an upsurge of sorrow. I wore the blue one a lot.

Until my stepmother came along. Then I wore the black one. The one without emotion, I was the girl who threw herself in the way of something and never looked back to see what was coming. The black mask could hide me from the world. With no emotions I can't be hurt, no injuries, no wounds to rupture when the tears that don't exist flow free.

I was starting to forget what my purple mask looked like. Purple is the color of relief, serenity, being a float in a sea of calm. But when the letter came in the mail I found the faded purple mask buried under shields of love and hate. That letter brought me a little gleam of hope and I took that hope and ran with it until I hit an oncoming problem. Problems could bruise an already purple mask.

When I got my chance to leave the evil Dentist Bitch from Hell I jumped. I thought I would finally walk free of my circular masquerade, and live among the exposed. But I found the masks weren't objects I could pull from my trunk, they were part of my skin, and my skin was starting to take on an eerie black tone.

It took a troll, a hero, a jester, and time, lots of time, to remove my masks. A troll! The masks were once again things I thought part of my past and I decided that the world could see my feelings, for I had things to lose now. When you have to lose you tend to risk. Ironic, isn't it?

There is a certain ecstasy that comes with not pretending, you are not confined to the colors of the rainbow, you can be the shades that the Leprechauns did not paint. Being petrified didn't make me take refuge in the shields. Stealing wands form an escaped convict and then later freeing the same convict on the back of a hippogriff didn't scare away my true face. Seeing my friend embark on a three tasked journey didn't even cause me to flinch. The thing that brought me back to acting... was love.

Love, the thing in this universe that is supposed to set me free, turned against me and I ran hiding behind a mask that was not mine. The mask was somebody else's; it was not a shade I recognized. For I could see and feel love, and I feared that I shouldn't have been running from it. But I did, I ran, and this time I didn't run forward toward the inevitable, I retreated.

I had seen love, I had felt love, love was not something to flee. I loved my father; my birth mother, Harry, Ron, the Weasleys...but I hadn't the acting ability to face this love without a mask. Maybe seeing Ginny once fall for a dark love made me want to fall away. Tom had enraptured Ginny and made her a mere marionette.

There is only so far you can walk back until the curtain lifts on the stage and the strings break on your mask and you fall into the arms of the person you were hiding from. I had seen Ginny tumble for this same man, not that her brothers noticed, and I didn't want to be burnt to a crisp in the waves of depression.

I haven't felt the fire yet, my robes remain intact, and I can't imagine where I left the mask Draco and I once shared.

While that one mask may have fallen away I have come to be rather aquatinted with a brand new set, but they are not all my size, and I am not fit to wear them.

The masks I see everyday are Ron's, Ginny's, George's, everybody seems to be hiding beneath a mask. Ron hides from the memories infesting his mind, the brains at the Department injected him with thoughts not his own. Ginny shows us all this façade of happiness, but she is wallowing in a loss deep as our own. Or she was wallowing, until she couldn't hide it anymore and in her last moments sent us all a message. Though the message blurred, and the words not written smeared. I think she was trying to tell, no show, us that we can't use the masks continuously. She did that, and now...she'd gone.

The twins have the most well crafted and most intricately hewn masks I have ever seen. Each detail added by hand, every concealment placed meticulously by steady fingers. I don't know what secrets they hide, but they're hidden far beneath gauze, glitter, and smiles galore.

Every one, the teachers included, keep hidden from us the faces creased with worry, noses lined with anxiet, and eyes shifting with uncertainty. I can see through their poorly placed ploys and their truest colors shown to me. And sometimes I think I alone can see.

But then I think I'm wrong. Often I get the feeling that he is watching us travel through life ducking in corners, bleeding into shadows, I think he can see every mistake we make as our masks obscure our vision. We are blind, but I think Sirius can see.

I wish I could see with the clarity he sees with. Life would be blissfully easy, but to have his clear vision I would need to be dead. Dead, Sirius is dead, and I don't like it. I thought I had come to terms with this. I need my masks, Harry can't see me losing my sanity like he and Ron are. No, I can't. I can't go back to sheltering under a mask again. I love Sirius, but I'm not going to shudder under a mask, not again. Not Ever.

However, two among our number walk amongst the players showing the depth of their souls to the common passerby. Harry hasn't the will to delve into the exercise of facial muscle and he cannot conceal that dreamy mode he plays. He does not hide from us, he hides from himself. Though his darkest nightmares are the threads of what has come to pass.

One other boy can keep hidden from others the turmoil of himself without a mask. Draco shows the world everything, but often they are too blind to see, and he is the boy who built the wardrobe where I now retire my masks.

But the biggest lie of them all is the lie we all fear. We fear to say the name that runs from the past. We cower to the man afraid of his own face. We all run home to our families in terror of a creature who prowls the night attacking the people like him. The people with his blood. I tell myself he too only presents a mask, but my mind will not listen and fear runs my blood cold and my mask of inner peace covers my soul. I am not alone in the quest to keep from myself the demon that fears his own masks.

My masks were sewn from the highest of fears, from the strongest of wills, and with the finest threads. Yet, they are beginning to unravel. And as the fine embroidery that took ages to put in place concedes defeat, I find that it is time for a new reflection in the mirror.

I want desperately to see me. I no longer want to run from my real sense of style. It is time I peal away what I am not and become what I am.

I am Hermione Granger, and I am not here to play dress-up with Snow White.