Hope for a Cure

I’m not the type of person to write a journal. I’m not really interested in myself at all. But my doctor wanted me to keep it- my healer, I mean. Isn’t it funny how even after thirty-seven years in the magical world I still think like a muggle? I seem to be reverting more and more lately. Just yesterday, in class, I referred to my ‘train of thought’ and they all looked at me blankly. I’m not sure muggles still use trains, anyways. I haven’t really been around them since my mom died and my father…

Anyways, it’s good to have something to do- it hurts so much more at night. Everything; the loneliness, the sickness, the world has become such a weight somehow and I can’t sleep for the pain of it. And books, I don’t know, seem pointless, somehow. No matter how much I learn it will all die with me. That thought interrupts my perusing of some interesting tome on ward casting or whatever and then I can’t bring myself to go on. If I were a muggle I could watch television, movies, browse the internet- but computers and televisions don’t work here. The wizards don’t have as much capacity to stop thinking as the muggles do.

I must admit, though, that I have been reading a lot of fiction lately- muggle and magical. I never had much use for it before.

I live for the morning, when I can pretend to be just getting up, like a normal person, and go down to the great hall for breakfast- not that I normally manage to make it through the whole thing. It’s funny- I miss the feeling of eating, chewing and swallowing. I wish the sight, sound, scent of food didn’t make me so sick. I’ve become a skeleton of myself- my robes hang off my frame like there’s no flesh underneath. Bless Draco and his potions or I don’t know if I’d still be alive.

There’s another thing I can’t get used to- I’ve been his colleague for twenty-three years and his enemy for only seven, but I still haven’t got used to the fact that he’s a decent person. Possibly because he’s such an annoying git. Sometimes just the sight of him makes me want to hex him. Ron would never believe that I’m actually taking potions he gives me. I can’t just hear him now ‘Are you daft? The bloody ferret only wants to poison you.’ In some ways it’s a good thing that he died before Draco came out as a spy or he might have died from the shock.

I really miss him- Ron I mean. He is dead twenty-eight years this June- I don’t know how I’m going to survive it, really. We had such a little time together- only three years, really, even if we were friends for so much longer. I’m not sure I’ll make it to then anyways- I’m fading fast and I’ve given up hope for a cure. Residual curse sickness has killed so many of the Order- Tonks, and Oliver, Luna- not to mention the civilians. It’s ironic, really, how many people are still dying from Voldemort, so long after he was killed. Like what happened in Japan, with the nuclear bombs. Goldworthy too, although I always thought that that might have been mostly just a broken heart- the symptoms are pretty much the same- inability to live.

I think I’ll take a bath, read some poetry. I used to think Coleridge was just sill y, but now I think there might be something of substance to him. Maybe not in ‘Kubla Khan’ but there’s something about the Rime which makes me think- about things other then the tunes of the past which are stuck in my head.

Who knows? Maybe I’ll end up writing poetry- I’m sure some of my students already think I’m a dotty old woman (imagine being an old woman at forty-eight! Or course, they’re so young- I can’t quite believe I was ever that young).

Mmmm… I love this bath milk- Mrs. Weasley- I can never get used to calling her Molly, although every time I slip up she says ‘for God’s sake, Hermione, you’re forty-eight- I think that’s old enough to use my given name’ she’s really loosened up a lot- I think it’s the grandchildren. But, um, where was I? Oh, yeah, so she gives me so much wonderful stuff for my birthday every year- I think she sometimes forgets that I’m not one of her children. Ron’s death was really hard on her- Charlie and Percy’s too. Anyways, into my bath. It smells so good…