A Garden and a Library | By : meegwun Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female > Snape/Hermione Views: 4128 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0 |
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor any of the characters from the books or movies. I do not make any money from the writing of this story. |
‘A Garden and a
Library’ – HP fanfic by Meg Erskine
HG/SS
Rated R
A/N- My first fic in a VERY long time. Hope it doesn’t
disappoint. Other than that… I own nothing, JK is a goddess, sorry to corrupt
her characters in such a manner. ;) Hope nobody is offended by the
characterization of Hermione. I took some liberties and made some assumptions.
Also, the prologue is somewhat of a tester. It’s just a very
small bit of what’s to come. I want to gauge people’s responses before I post
more.
... she was deathly
pale, and seeing
The river of her father, cried “O help me,
If there is any power in the rivers,
Change and destroy the body which has given
Too much delight!” And hardly had she finished,
When her limbs grew numb and heavy, her soft breasts
Were closed with delicate bark, her hair was leaves,
Her arms were branches, and her speedy feet
Rooted and held, and her head became a tree top,
Everything gone except her grace, her shining.
Apollo loved her still. He placed his hand
Where he had hoped and felt the heart still beating
Under the bark; and he embraced the branches
As if they were still limbs, and kissed the wood.
- Ovid, Metamorphosis ‘Apollo and Daphne’
“If you have a garden
and a library, you have everything you need” - Cicero
~Chapter 1 (Prologue)~ ~Reminisce~
If she was a religious girl – a dreaded thought for Hermione
– she would have indulged in a priest-monitored confession. But avoiding the
entrapments of most organized religion, and with a rather sophisticated
understanding of human weakness and susceptibility to suggestion, she keeps the
guilt and fear to herself.
And what is guilt but a manifestation of her parents, human
and vulnerable and afraid. As Muggles they missed out on the confidence that
comes with harnessing a tangible inner power. They had to fight harder for
enlightenment. It wasn’t substantial or physical like it was for Hermione.
Their misguided terrors and shame were out of place in her heart, a witch’s
heart, ripe with the confidence that comes with magical ability.
At her desk, the wood grains are glowing lines beneath her
folded arms in the afternoon light. She toys with crumpled paper, the rustling
of it against the wood bringing her the comfort of regularity. If only she
could capture this moment in time, her fears would still be real but in stasis,
needing time and care to blossom, to enfold her. But time, a cruel constant in
a world where matter reigns supreme, ticks on, metered by that misguided
creation- the clock. Reigns. Reins. Time is a king with a crop and a
destination.
Time’s destination today is backwards, or so she is willing
it to be. Back to times when her melancholy was supplemented with the warm glow
of first love, so much richer in the realization of the very substance of the
thing we call love- the reality of it. The great rush of gratitude to know that
it is not just a myth spun by manipulative overlords or children’s authors, but
a reality confirmed by the great poets and minstrels of the ages.
Hermione, today, is no wandering singer of songs, no poet at
a cluttered desk. Her desk is crowded only by the glowing wood grains and a
scrap of discarded paper. The floor surrounding her, worn and ancient, is host
to a quill, brushed aside. Ink spreads across the raw hardwood and the rusting nails.
It is her final conclusion. Her one and only ode to love. A poem written in
chaos.
It is the realization that love is not a poem or a sonnet or
a book or a picture or a feeling or a smile or a lover’s kiss. It is not a tree
or a river or skin or a heart. A touch or a glance or a shout.
Hermione finds herself beginning to be at peace with the
truth of it.
Love is an ink stain. Love is a pen abandoned. Love is an
empty desk. The opposite of words. Expressed through speech and touch and smell
and sound, but ungraspable.
She opens her mouth and traces the story with language, her
human instinct. She closes her eyes and remembers.
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