Certain Dark Things || Book Three

xxx. grieve it on its way

cxxv. grieve it on its way

Growing up, Harriet remembered there came a time when anything the Dursleys said or did ceased to have any effect on her.

It'd been different when she was little, when she would peer into the kitchen or the den and see Aunt Petunia with Dudley and would wonder why she wasn't allowed in there, or why her Aunt never kissed her forehead or smoothed her hair. She eventually learned to accept that invisible line between herself and others; normal people deserved kindness, sincerity, and affection, and Harriet—whatever she was—did not.

After that, nothing mattered. She took Aunt Petunia's cold scorn and Uncle Vernon's rude remarks with numb acceptance, forging a specific understanding of the world, one that allowed her to find spots of contentment in an otherwise drab, cruel existence. She lived for those moments when Aunt Petunia would say something half-way kind, when Uncle Vernon would tell off Dudley for being a bit too rough on a girl, no matter how scrawny and freakish she was. Harriet hardened her heart from a young age, and though she wasn't happy, she wasn't sad, either. When she decided to stop being surprised, to stop expecting more, Harriet felt nothing at all.

Then, she came to Hogwarts.

Somewhere along the line, Harriet's heart lost its flinty exterior. It softened, and Harriet started accepting kindness into her life with gratefulness rather than desperation, eager to meet new people, looking for and seeing the best in them whenever she could. Somehow, she'd forgotten the simple, quintessential fact that people, for all intents and purposes, were the same. They were all people, and they shared between them similar strengths, follies, and faults. They were liars—just like the Dursleys. Just like Sirius Black. Just like her god-sister.

Harriet returned from Hogsmeade and tried, for hours, to make sense of what she'd learned, to twist reason out of the agonized bramble taking residence in her heart—until she decided it best not to try, best to push the tangle of emotion down into her belly and ignore it. People were liars. Thinking otherwise had, apparently, gotten her parents killed.

"Because he was their best friend! Because he sold them out to the Dark Lord!"

It was easier when she didn't try to unwind the threads from one another. It was easier not to listen to Hermione, to toss Elara's notes into the fire unopened, to ignore the ravens Mr. Flamel sent and the Headmaster's passing concern in the corridor. She spent time with Livius, or with the portraits, or forced herself to run on the track until her shins hurt and she vomited in the bushes. It was easier to surround herself with reptiles and dead people and to punish herself than it was to accept Elara Black's betrayal.

Harriet stood outside the Great Hall and listened to the sounds of dinner commencing within. Her stomach had turned to lead in her middle, and so the smells drifting through the open doors did nothing to entice her appetite. The warmth pressed into her, too heavy and close, and Harriet felt smothered by the idea of going inside and pretending everything was all right. She turned and walked away.

It was easier this way.

x X x

Something was wrong with the Potter girl.

It didn't take a genius to see it. The whole of the staff realized an inexplicable riff had driven Potter and Black apart, and neither had taken the division well. For the week, Potter's presence in the Great Hall had been a rarity, the two sat apart from one another in lessons, and Potter refused to contribute to any classroom discourse. The homework she turned in lack depth or care, parts of it blatantly plagiarized from the book—and Black was no better, when she actually deigned to appear in class. The girl was dejected and ill, Pomona reporting that she'd shattered a wall of glass in one of the greenhouses on Tuesday.