Character

"Oh."

It was really all she could say. I mean, really, what do you say when the man you've given everything, Goddamn everything to, tells you: "I don't love you anymore."

Now, on hindsight, she supposed she could have asked, "Why?" But isn't that demeaning? Someone has just told you, in no uncertain terms, that you have been unceremoniously cut out of their lives because they no longer love you (how can you stop loving someone?)...Bit tacky, really, to question it after that.

She could have asked, "Is there someone else?" Though if she had to be honest with herself, she really didn't want to know the answer to that. Oh, yes, can't you just picture it: "Of course there's someone else, that's why I don't love you." No, that wouldn't hurt a bit.

So now she lay on her bed with the curtains drawn tight. Her wildly oscillating thoughts were prone to be a bit dramatic at the moment, and she thought she might well just live in bed for a while: eat, sleep, drink, cry, urinate there; like that woman who did the same after being dumped. Well, she just got up after a few months and sold the whole stinking (literally) mess for a whopping amount, didn't she? Called it 'art'. Hmph.

She looked listlessly around her. She didn't know why she was here, really. Of all the places, this was bound to have the most memories. Of course, if you thought about it logically, the bed was where the majority of their relationship had taken place.

She groaned and furrowed deeper under the covers, inhaling to see if any of his scent still clung to the pillow. She paused, mid-sniff, realizing, with a laugh, that that was rather pathetic. His scent? What was she, a bloodhound? And after everything else she had held on to, she was now going to cling to his scent? Really, the rational part of her brain pointed out, ugh.

She closed her eyes. Not that it was necessary. Absolute darkness ensconced her, and she could see the images in her head play as vividly against the bed-hangings as against the inside of her eyelids. But she closed her eyes, because it brought sharper focus to the memories, and the memories were like sprinkling a gallon of salt on a freshly inflicted wound. Pain so real that it was physical coursed through her, and she had to gasp to regain her breath.

She honestly didn't know what she had expected. Endless love was nothing but eternal bullshit, and she had never believed in it. But, on some level, she had wanted it to go on without ending...no one goes into a relationship saying, "I want it to end." Nutters, those people would be. But no, she had thought, or expected, somewhere in the back of her always-logical mind, that when it did end, she would have some warning. The souring of the relationship, fights, smelling another woman's perfume on him, lies, excuses: some kind of clue that her world was about to come crashing down.

But instead he had held her, and kissed her, and kept her close throughout the night. And in the early morning, just hours before, as he pulled on his shirt, she had seen the look in his eyes and had pulled the covers up to cover her chest because suddenly, he had become a stranger. Still, when he said "I don't love you anymore," she hadn't been able to say much more than "Oh." And she still didn't know why or for what or for whom or since when, but it was over. And when you looked at the big picture, what did the reason matter? It was over.

She heard the bell ring as if from a great distance. She parted the curtains around her bed, gathered her uniform and washed and dressed as always in the bathroom. She wished her late-rising roommates good morning as she rushed down for breakfast, where she steadfastly avoided concerned glances from her friends and curious stares from him. She gathered her books and marched into classes where she scored 112% on all her homework assignments and test and concocted a perfect potion, much to Snape's ire. She studied in the library and laughed with her friends and when she felt like crying, she laughed some more.

She was Hermione Granger, damn it, and no miserable, all-engulfing, gut-wrenching heartbreak was going to bring her down. Life went on.

Plus, exams were around the corner.