On September first, Hermione and her parents were on their way to breakfast before they said goodbye one last time for Hermione’s wizarding education. They stopped at an old diner a couple blocks away from where the girl would soon be loaded up with people who both hate and love her. Her father was sitting beside her toasting his hands with the steam from his black coffee, and her mother in front of her with a plate of egg whites and toast.
A tall blonde boy walked into the diner, saw Hermione. He promptly ignored her, and she him. The Grangers finished their food and got up; ready to go when he sauntered over.
“Do you want me to walk you to the train?” His voice was sugarcoated in the most let-me-deceive-you fashion that sounded fake even to Hermione’s ears. Mr. and Mrs. Granger both looked lovingly at Hermione.
“That would be lovely dear, what do you think?” They stared at her expectantly.
Hermione’s mouth scrunched up in an odd twist. “Oh yes, positivley lovely. If I make it until then, I’ll see you at Christmas.” Her parents gave her a hug and she left with Draco Malfoy at her shoulder. Hermione caught another sight of her parents sitting down to one last cup of coffee, both still in their fall jackets.
“Are you the Head?” His voice echoed softly and it took her a while to understand what he was talking about.
“No, no…I think Melody Ginhg is.” She kept staring at her shoes. “You know, the transfer from Singapore?” She added when he didn’t answer.
“Yeah, yeah. I met Melody, pretty girl. Doesn’t speak English though,” he was looking at Hermione quizzically but she didn’t know she was what was keeping him so warped. Her eyes were everywhere except near Draco. “I don’t know why Snape would do that. Sometimes that bastard really does have a stick up the arse.”
“What do you mean ‘Snape’? I thought McGonagall would be Headmistress.”
“No can do, Granger. It was in with our book lists, and all over the
Prophet. Didn’t you read it?” He started glaring at his shoes the same way she was glaring at hers. “Tons of controversy. Like
‘He’ll be feeding Gryffindors poison’ and
‘Hufflepuffs will be hanged one by one’ and fun stuff like that.”
“But that’s preposterous---”
“That’s what I said. Everyone knows that Snape was a good guy all along, why would he start poisoning Gryffindors now? Or hanging Hufflepuffs? Not that it’s a bad idea or anything--”
Hermione focused her glare on Malfoy. “They were right about
that. It’s just no poison that doesn’t have a signed entry form can come into Hogwarts. Snape, as Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, wouldn’t be able to get it granted. Slughorn maybe. But not Snape.”
“Couldn’t he sign his own form?” Draco was looking at her again, the two locked in a stare-down. “Being the
Headmaster and all.”
“No, the entry form has to be signed by the Minister of Magic.”
They had reached the platform and were staring at the brick wall.
“You don’t believe Snape’s Headmaster, do you?” Malfoy whispered softly.
“No, but I do believe you’re full of bullshit.”
Someone cleared their throat behind Draco and Hermione. Two people actually, someone with messy black hair and another with fiery red. Hermione let go of her trolley completely and threw her arms around them.
Ron and Harry let go of Hermione and she stepped back beside Draco. “Tsk Tsk, Granger, no swearing around children, you should know better.” He bowed to Harry and Ron, mockingly, of course; when he got up his signature smirk was in place. He twirled a perfect turn on his perfect boot and walked through the brick wall. The Golden Trio followed slower and with not as much flair but in the end they were all on the other side.
She was getting ready for bed now. Dressed in nothing but panties and a hot pink tank top waiting patiently for Lavender who had been in the bathroom for nearly twenty minutes while Parvati was slinking around the room looking for a gold chain she had lost the year before. The light shone from the open bathroom door and Lavender sauntered out. She flipped the duvet cover of her bed and fell into it, somehow synchronizing falling, sliding, and pulling the cover back towards her chin in mere seconds. Hermione finished her business in the bathroom and flicked the light off.
Crawling into her bed, Hermione drew the curtains on the four poster closed, placed a light-seeping spell on them, and opened the nearest book; in this case her new one for Arithmacy.
“You know, you shouldn’t read all night, it slows your metabolism. And quite frankly, you’re looking a little pudgy. It’d do you good to ease up on the chocolate cake as well, you ate as much as Ron and Dean put together.” Lavender said, her head peeping through Hermione’s curtains.
Hermione ignored her and fixed her concentration on her book. Bitter thoughts leaped through her head, all ending with Lavender somehow dying qrotesquely. She soon gave up any pretense of getting a head start on Arithmacy and stared at the ceiling.
Sure, she’d admit she wasn’t one of those super thin models that walk the runway on that stupid, shallow, muggle TV show; but that didn’t necessarily mean that she was obese. There were a lot of average-sized girls at Hogwarts. Over the years, Hermione had just chalked that up to good genetics but doubts crashed Hermione’s mind to a burning point.
The only thing that was special about Hermione was her brains, but Lavender had proved time and time again that having that didn’t match up against beauty.
She studied the girls she knew well, there was Ginny and…Ginny. Okay, so what did Ginny eat? Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. That was the exact same as she had. Was there a reason Ginny was so much smaller than her? Could she just have bad genetics, and everyone else have normal genetics?
She stopped making sense to even herself.
She watched Ginny all throughout the next day, never paying much attenting to anything else except comparing their serving sizes and how fast they ate. Hermione felt absolutely sick to her stomach by the end of the day.
She saw the size of pudding dashing her friends plates, she knew she could eat that in one bite. Suddenly, she felt very large, surrounded by a flock of small and delicate chicks. Something must have shown on her face because Harry leaned over. “Hermione? Hey, are you okay?” She forced a smile.
“I’m fine, but I could ask you the same question, you’ve hardly eaten anything today.”
Harry grinned at her over his goblet. “Crabbe jinxed me on the train. I’ve had foul diarrhea since yesterday.” Hermione laughed and got up to leave before consuming anymore.
“Um…I have homework. I’ll see you guys later.” She left the great hall feeling the eyes of all her peers and wishing her tummy would evaporate so she didn’t have to put up with the humiliation of her size.
Back in her room and with no prying eyes, Hermione was pacing. She was a teenage girl, of course she had felt insecure about herself before. But not like this. There was a monster raging in her, she could feel the beast at her core.
She told herself Lavender was just a petty seventeen-year-old girl who coped with making herself high on hairspray and the sick chemicals they put in lipstick. Lavender skipped lunch to maintain her weight and studied
Cosmopolitan magazine like the bible. She flipped through her mental catalogue of Hogwarts students for someone that Hermione felt was just like Lavender.
Pansy Parkinson.
Both girls’ were stupid, incompetent, dimbos, who were easliy the best looking girls in the entire school. Both were scrawny, they had nice legs, a flat stomach, and a hot boyfriend. Well, Lavender was between a hot fling and…Ron…who really didn’t count.
Hermione went over to Lavender’s heaping pile of clothes by her open and spewing trunk. Pulling out a green shirt, she slid it over her head. The fabric came over her head but was uncomfortably tight around her arms. Her belly bulged from beneath the hem and she sucked her tummy in until her hipbones were evident. The shirt came to just above Hermione’s belt. She turned sideways in the mirror and stared at the new angle, her stomach was sucked so far back she did look like Lavender. It’s just, Lavender doesn’t suck. Hermione knows this from actually seeing Lavender suck. The girl was a twig. A terrible, truth-telling twig.
Just a couple pounds.
I’ll stop when I look like her.
No harm done.
Hermione grbbed a notebook and scrawled the amount of calories she had (probably) consumed and laid it to rest under the pillow on her bed.
Nobody was in the room and after just minutes of not being able to sleep, she started to do jumping jacks. She counted 500.
Hermione was scared.
She sat in front of Harry again and watched as he carefully cut the omelet on his plate up. As Ron, beside him, went through a pile of eggs, bacon, and hash browns.
Walking into potions, she was still terrified.
“Miss Granger,” Slughorn’s happy voice echoed off the walls, “You’re late.” He seemed happy with the observation.
“Uh…yeah,” She craned her neck over her shoulder at the clock. “I guess I am.”
She took the inside seat of Harry and Ron in the middle row. “Sorry, I don’t know how it happened.”
“Ah, we all make mistakes. You just happen to make fewer.” Slughorn walked to the front and began their first potion lesson of the last year.
“Hermione,” Ron leaned over across Harry, who made an indignant sound. “What the hell, why are you late?”
Harry looked dismal at the ignorance. “What Ron
means, is that your never late, and you didn’t come to breakfast, we assumed you would have been here already.”
“Like I said, I don’t know what happened.” Hermione gazed at Slughorn trying to drown Harry and Ron in their own stares, with her mind.
“Well, weren’t you there?” Ron asked grossly.
She raised her hand.
“Miss, Granger, I don’t suppose you can read minds now?” He chuckled at his own joke. Some of the Hufflepuffs joined him. “I haven’t asked a question yet.”
“I would like to request a seat change.”
“And I would oblige, if there were any seats left.” He turned back to the rest of the class and continued to instruct them on the construction of their next potion.
Hermione sat uncomfortably with Ron and Harry staring at her.
By the end of the day, she was proud to say she had only eaten the morning meal.
But her stomach complained horribly and she fell alseep on the wrong side just to qualm the pains. She was pleased to observe the ridicule in her stomach had silenced by the time Hermione woke the next day.
~~~
A/N
New plan… I’m goning to revamp the story to my liking and continue with it from there. It has become cluttered and please don’t get mad if I take out some part in this mess you liked. If you have any questions or ideas, I’d be happy to hear about them in a review.
Until next time, EvilLordChocolateMocha.
(P.S my spell check doesn’t seem to be working, and I practically live on that thing, so please ignore all the incorrectly spelled words, J)
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