Not a Goodbye

Chapter 10

Dear Diary,

Godric, I can't believe I've resorted to writing my feelings down into a journal. I haven't been able to say the words out loud, but they're eating me alive inside. The darkness is spreading. Quickly. Unbearably. It's like toxin that I can feel start in my toes, wiggling left and right until it's through my thighs and into my stomach, making something close to butterflies flutter there. Though the toxin would probably kill those too, just like it's doing to me.

It would move into my chest, slithering around until finally it would wrap its cold and dark hands around my heart. Squeezing. Squeezing. So hard until that's all I can feel anymore, all I want to feel. It's getting there. I've been distancing myself from everyone around me, trying to create boundaries so that D.H. (Dark Hermione, I have dubbed her.) stays far far away.

Harry has been noticing, I see it in the way he is careful around me. The way that his eyes linger as I walk to my bedroom at night, not his - not ours. I can tell by the way his hand inches closer to mine at the dinner table like he wants to grab me, and when I move away I can see the sadness leak into his green eyes. It kills me really, maybe more than the toxin that is spreading within me. But I can't risk an episode, not one that could put my loved ones at risk, they don't need that after we just finished a war.

But the thing is, I'm at war with myself all the time. D.H is getting stronger by day, and I can actually hear her inside my head. It's my voice, but when I look in the mirror I can see her lips moving, but it's not me that's talking. She's inside of me, she's brainwashing me into thinking that I can be evil even though I don't want to be. It scares me, the power that she has over my thoughts.

I'm not crazy. I know I'm not. I can actually have conversations with her, with it. She's inside of me and there's nothing I can do but hope light will wipe out the darkness. But the question is: how much light is really left inside of me?

"Hermione? Mione -" Hermione snapped her journal shut as she realized Harry was standing at her shoulder, looking down onto her pages. She hated herself for getting so wrapped in her writing that she had almost exposed herself unknowingly. "Time to head to bed, love."

The two of them had been sitting in the library for over an hour, but at one point Harry had excused himself to find Ron, most likely to play a game of chess. Now the sky was dark outside of the bay window, and Hermione realized how tired she was. "Okay, " she whispered, not having much energy for anything but a whisper these days.

    They walked their way to their shared common room where the fire was still lit from the morning, the drapes pulled and the room silent. Hermione wished she could open up to her boyfriend, he didn't deserve to have anyone hiding secrets from him anymore but the thought of him leaving her terrified her. She didn't mean to put on her cold exterior, the one that she had placed around herself during the war, but the war hadn't ended for her. She wasn't sure it ever would.

    "Hermione," Harry stopped her as they split to go to their separate bedrooms. "Please love. Just come to bed with me tonight. I miss you. I miss us."

    Hermione feigned confusion. "What do you mean?"

    Harry's green eyes narrowed in on his girlfriend, "Don't act daft when we both know you know exactly what I'm talking about. You're creating barriers between us, you're driving us apart. I can't do anything -"

    Hermione grabbed his hand, the first real connection that she had initiated in a very long time. The spark that they always had between them remained and both of them yearned for more. "Do you trust me? Do you trust that I know what I'm doing, Harry?"