Swandive

I’ve got a lack of information,
but I’ve got a little revelation
And I’m climbing up on the railing,
trying not to look down
I’m going to do my best swan dive into shark- infested waters
I’m gonna pull out my tampon and start splashing around

‘Cuz I don’t care if they eat me alive
I’ve got better things to do than survive
I’ve got the memory of your warm skin in my hand
And I’ve got a vision of blue sky and dry land.
-Swandive, Ani DiFranco

Swandive by Phaballa 1.
Hermione tells herself she’s not jealous. But sometimes when they’re all getting ready for bed and Lavender climbs onto Parvati’s instead of her own, Hermione feels a twinge of something—not jealousy, she insists, it is too much of an ache for the heady rush of jealousy—as she crawls into her own bed and pulls the curtains. She pretends not to care but she listens anyway, feeling that twinge again at every soft peal of laughter, every whispered secret she will never hear because she’s not a part of them. They are friendly but they’ve never been friends, and Hermione knows she will always be an outsider.

She tells herself it doesn’t matter about Parvati and Lavender because she’s got Harry and Ron. What does she need girls for when she’s got two of the bravest, most loyal boys in the world as friends? And yet sometimes during dinner when all Ron and Harry can talk about is Quidditch and more Quidditch, their mouths full of food as their words jumble over each other’s in a meaningless cacophony of sound, Hermione finds her eyes sliding over to where Lavender and Parvati sit. If they speak of Quidditch at all, it’s only in terms of what they might wear to the next match. Instead they sit calmly, chewing their food at a sedate pace and talking about classes and boys and the latest Prophet headlines. Hermione watches them, feeling guilty for not listening to her friends, and feels that twinge again, that ache. Ginny’s no help, as loud and raucous as the boys, always happy to talk sports, and Hermione can’t help but wish her friends were more than what they are.

2.
One day when she tries to sit with Parvati and Lavender during herbology, Ron and Harry give her confused, hurt looks that have her sighing and moving her things over to their planters instead. Later, as they are all walking back to the castle, Harry examines her closely, his mouth a tight line that says more than his words ever could. He looks at her with eyes that know, and Hermione wonders what he’s thinking, if he’s guessed. But knowing Harry, she thinks, he probably assumes it’s got something to do with him. It doesn’t, not really. It’s just... this longing she has, as if she’s missing something very important, some secret only Parvati and Lavender can let her in on. Only they look at her and see an outsider, and for a moment there, walking between Ron and Harry, she feels so disconnected—caught between two worlds, neither of which she really feels a part.

She stumbles on a clod of dirt and nearly goes falls down, thinking with the calm of one who has accepted her lot that her strings have been cut; she’s a puppet with nothing holding her up, no support, no connections—and then Ron catches her arm in his firm grip and hauls her back onto solid ground. She smiles at him, but it is forced, her lips feeling as if they belong to someone else as she pulls them into the uncomfortable shape. Stretched thin, she thinks—she is stretched thin like her smile. She is a part of something after all, a part of Harry-Ron-Hermione, but it is a relationship that has grown stagnant to the point of convenience and expectation, a symbol at best. They grind her down between the two of them until she can hardly breathe, and she knows they will never be enough.

3.
Hermione doesn’t realize just how much of an outsider she really is until halfway through sixth year. She begins to dream again in those cold winter months, haunting visions of futures possible, none of which she would ever want to see come to pass. In the most frequent one, all of her friends are dead and she is left alone on a great icy expanse, shivering and as drained of life as the world around her.

She wakes from the dream one night to find the dormitory empty although it is well past midnight. Lavender’s bed is undisturbed, blankets folded neatly across the bed, pillows fluffed and waiting for a head that barely ever rests there. Parvati’s is the opposite, blankets a tangled mess at the foot, pillows strewn haphazardly across the bed, stuffed animals tossed carelessly to the floor, hangings askew. For a moment Hermione is overwhelmed by a deep sense of panic—she is sure they have been taken, that she really is alone this time, and so very cold. But she is Hermione: people expect her to have a level head and think these things through before acting rashly and so she does. She sits up in bed and takes several deep, even breaths, forcing her mind to analyze the situation coolly, pushing aside the rush of fear and dreadful certainty (they’re dead, taken, gone, alone) that makes her heart pound fast and heavy in its cage.

She grabs her wand and creeps down the long spiral staircase, the stone flagging almost unbearably cold beneath the soles of her feet. Toes curling against the stone, she holds her wand in front of her defensively, prepared for attack.

But Parvati and Lavender are alone in the common room, perfectly safe, curled up on the couch in front of the fireplace together. An uncomfortable tightness settles in her chest at the sight of them, and something else—a sort of liquid warmth—unfurls in her mind, clouding her thoughts. She barely recognized the feeling for what it is. Hermione is not the sort of girl to long for something she can never have. And yet.

She almost speaks then, but before she can even open her mouth to demand in her cringingly bossy tone that the other girls return to the dormitory, Lavender leans over Parvati and kisses her. The words die on Hermione’s lips and her wand dangles uselessly from her fingers. She’s never really seen anyone kiss before, not like this. Her parents’ kisses are dry and chaste, almost perfunctory, but this... this was a slow, languorous thing, open and wet, tangled tongues sliding sinuously against each other, and Hermione fancies she can almost feel the exchange of heat as they breathe each other in.

She means to leave. She knows it’s an invasion of privacy for her to stand there watching, and the very act of doing so makes her feel inexplicably more excluded than she ever has before. Because, now she knows that it’s not just their friendship she is missing out on, not just the simplicity of whispered confidences beneath blankets in the dead of night.

4.
A month after that night she hid in the shadows and watched her roommates, Ron kisses her. He presses cool, dry lips to hers, his breath caught on a little sigh as his hand wraps around the nape of her neck, fingers sliding beneath the heavy weight of her hair to rub the pale, delicate skin there. He kisses her and she lets him, stands there with her face tilted up toward his and her eyes opened wide, thinking, Is that all?

She expected more somehow. She doesn’t understand how something that looks so nice can feel so bland, and when Ron pulls away with a shy grin, she cannot force herself to return it. Instead she turns away, fingers pressed against her lips in distraction, wondering if there isn’t something more than this. The weight of expectation drags at her once more, like a hook stuck firmly into her spine, linking her inexorably with someone who can’t make her feel even a tiny bit of what she did from her place in the shadows, watching.

Ron doesn’t make her chest tighten or her breath hitch painfully in her throat. She never feels that twinge when he’s around, that deep ache she can’t quite figure out, just this—the slow but inevitably drag of obligation that makes her hate him just a little.

5.
Hermione is surprised when Ginny climbs into her bed the next night, filling the enclosed area behind her hangings with the sharp scent of soap and pine. They haven’t done this since they were much younger, after Ginny’s first year and the nightmares that followed. Hermione is surprised but she doesn’t show it, just holds up the blankets so Ginny can slip beneath them. They make a tent beneath the blankets the way they used to, sitting cross-legged in front of each other, studying one another by wand light: the curve of smooth cheek, the deep hollow of collarbone, the graceful arch of neck that makes them so different from their male counterparts.

“Ron kissed me,” Hermione whispers. “Yesterday.” She has missed this. She knows it isn’t what Lavender and Parvati have and never will be—she and Ginny aren’t meant for that. Hermione knows she has a duty, and Ginny too, to Ron and Harry, no matter how hard she prays that things could be different. But they can’t. There’s the war, and Voldemort, and her boys. They need her more than she needs this. She pushes the thought away, hating the bitter tinge it lends to this moment. She just wants to be here, now, and forget the rest.

“I know,” Ginny whispers back. Her voice is husky and low. The difference in tone sends a shock of something down Hermione’s spine that leaves her feeling weak. The ache is back, intensified by the bright fall of Ginny’s hair against the white smocking of her modest nightdress.

Hermione doesn’t know why she does it, just that it feel right somehow to reach out and cup Ginny’s cheek in her palm, to lean forward and press open lips against Ginny’s. She slips her tongue into Ginny’s mouth and is surprised by the incredible heat of it, the smoothness of tongue sliding against tongue, the sharp sting when Hermione flicks hers against Ginny’s teeth.

The heat seems to spread, down her throat and around to her neck, a slow slide down her spine as they gasp in hot pants against spit-slick lips, to the pit of her stomach and lower, a slow, aching warmth that has her arching against Ginny until they tumble backwards onto the pillows. The crush of her breasts against Ginny’s, the feel of another body beneath hers, small and lean and arching up against her as their mouths clash in a tangle of teeth and tongues and heat. So much heat, and this is all, Hermione thinks. This is all.

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