Cycle Treachery
“Often father and daughter look down on mother (woman) together. They exchange meaningful glances when she misses a point. They agree that she is not bright as they are, cannot reason as they do. This collusion does not save the daughter from the mother’s fate.”
-Bonnie Burstow
“Does this dress make me look fat?”
“Really, mum?”
This certainly could not have been the dire emergency her seemingly distressed mother had alluded to over the phone.
“I'm serious ‘Mione,” she moaned in an infantile tone that made Hermione want to properly bash her into the door frame she was currently slumped against.
“You look fine mum, and why does it matter how you look anyway it’s not like Andreas hasn’t seen you before.”
“It matters because I hold myself to a certain standard Hermione,” And she says it with such conviction that Hermione almost buys into her whole ‘I do it for myself’ bullshit. “I wish you’d make more of an effort,” she adds as an afterthought as she tosses a milky white bodycon dress to the side and resumes her frantic shuffling of hangers occupied by shimmering sequins and satin slips.
Hermione’s jaw tightens at her nonchalance.
“What about a maxi dress? No, I don’t want to look matronly…”
“But you are a matron, like, by definition.”
“34 is the new 25 Hermione.”
“You’re 37.”
“Good luck proving it,” she says with a wink.
Hermione wishes she could live as comfortably as her mother in her own delusions. Meds would probably help.
Meds…
She was forcibly brought forth from her reverie before it could properly form by her mother threading a perfectly manicured hand through her hair in feigned distress.
“Mum, stop— ow, that hurts!”
Or maybe it wasn’t feigned.
“You’re not even using that moisturizer I gave you, it's as brittle as a haystack!”
“MUM!”
“Oh stay still there’s just a knot I wanna get out, just—
Her horrified reply of, “MUM, NO!” Came out as more of a battle cry than an order as she swatted away her mother’s deft fingers.
“Oh, You’re such a crybaby Hermione, honestly. You get that from your father.”
“Stop.”
Her mother scoffs and mumbles obscenities under her breath like a scolded child.
Hermione’s mother was no longer allowed to speak negatively about her father in her presence as per the request of Dr. Anderson, it, quote, “would not do for a child in this state to hear such things about a parent, especially one who they regarded so highly at the time that they passed.” It would make her “terribly confused.”
And anyway, as long as Hermione had known it, the story had always been that her mother was the problem. Which, you know, tracks.
Hermione wasn’t naive enough to believe her conception had anything to do with any sort of ‘love’ between her parents. Hermione was a trap, put simply. Her mother’s only substantial tie to a wealthy older man whom she’d been hooking up with but wouldn’t leave his wife, her own truth revealed to her after playground banter turned to talk of home life wherein a well-meaning but properly clueless 7-year-old Luna Lovegood told her that, “My mummy said that
your mum’s a gold-digging whore.” She then proceeded to ask Hermione if she’d be able to bring some in to show to the class.
Despite the manner of her unfortunate conception Hermione had always found more camaraderie with her father than anyone else.
Her father was the only person she really allowed to know her. Being around her dad wasn’t a performance in the way it was with everyone else, she could be alone in a room with her father, not speaking a word, and feel more at home there than surrounded by a room full of relatives at any mock-family reunion.
He wasn’t just smart, or hardworking, or business savvy, he was patient, and nurturing, and he understood the way her brain worked, all the aches and feelings she couldn't verbalize, her father knew, because her father was the same.
Talking about him hurts in a way that's almost tangibly physical. Like stabbing a knife into her chest cavity, twisting deeper and deer with each word. Saying her feelings are ‘still raw’ would imply that she’d ever heal. For Hermione healing for this kind of hurt simply isn't possible.
Instead, she keeps the hurt inside of her, deep in a place where only she can get it but peeking through just enough in everything she says or does. No amount of meds or ‘homes’ can ever take away what her father left inside of her. It’s hers.
But sometimes she slips.
When he passed she took it hard.
She doesn’t like to talk about it, least of all with her shrew of a mother.
“You may go now since you refuse to help,” her mother huffs after a beat.
Hermione pushes off the wall and leaves without a word.
xxx
P: What are you doing right now at this very second?
H: sulking
P: Boo. That doesn’t sound fun.
You should come to a party!
H: no thx.
P: ???
H: i'm not in the mood for a party
P: That’ll change.
I’m outside
H: go home.
P: Bitch.
Her doorbell rings.
Heaving a sigh Hermione rises from her perch on the window seal overlooking her garden. Her ideal spot for hugging her knees soberly and gazing wispily upon her property with great feminine melancholy.
Her pity party is decidedly ruined now, might as well go open the door.
xx
“Pav, I’m so serious, go home-”
“No way am I allowing you to miss your big welcome home party, sorry, it’s just not in my nature.”
“That party isn’t for me, Parvati.”
“Well, no, but it could’ve been if you’d told anyone you were back.”
“Yea.”
“Yea,” Parvati spits back mockingly.
“Yea, I’m sorry I mean I’ve just got a lot of stuff on my mind recently.” It’s far from a proper excuse and it hasn’t been just recently either, but Parvati seems to be content with it for now because she casts her eyes downward fidgeting awkwardly with the strap of her bag employing a look of properly sombreness even though Hermione knows how terrible she is dealing with any topic of the serious variety.
It really was sort of cunty to soft launch the dead dead card at her.
“Alright, I'll go.”
“Yes, god, thank you! The cab here was not for naught!”
“Yea, whatever let’s just go,” Hermione huffs in annoyance making a move towards the door.
She finds herself being forcefully shoved back by Parvati's surprisingly strong arms.
“Well, you’ll have to get dressed first, Hermione.”
Hermione looks down at herself in anger, “I am dressed?”
The darker-haired girl dramatically slaps her hand across her mouth muttering, “Oh my god I almost believed you for like three seconds.”
Hermione’s offended shout of “Parvati!” was quickly snuffed out before it came to fruition as she found herself being forcefully shoved once again, this time in another direction.
xxx
The room is dark and quiet. The only light, emitted by the bright blue of a computer screen shining in stark contrast with the pale boy sitting in front of it. The only movement, the steady blinking of the cursor as it rests in the search bar, and the even rise and fall of the boy's chest as his hands hover above the keyboard.
Tom is researching.
The bulk of this happening on the surface web, giving him access to the most wholesome and family friendliest of debauchery and exploitation in nice, shiny packaging. One doesn’t even need the dark web to gain access to content that’d make a normal, feeling human’s skin crawl. In fact, Tom remembers a time when the average 8-year-old could open Youtube and watch a 360p video of a beheading on the family computer, wipe the search history and be down in time for supper. The rules now have only changed slightly. Instead, our 8-year-old has to fall down pipelines and rabbit holes, clicking links and closing tabs and politely declining advances from horny housewives just miles away and ready to play.
With the creations of seemingly unmonitored media like Reddit and 4chan came a whole new playing field, combating the war of boredom and desensitization.
Tom likes to think he is above indoctrination.
He just likes watching.
A video of a soldier coming home, a mother falling to her knees wracked with sobs as two children jump with joy leaping gleefully into their father’s arms all whilst a hyper-active German shepherd runs circles around the picturesque family wagging its inky black tail. A second video to contrast, ‘Try not to Cry challenge,’ a woman being told that her lover won’t be making it home for Christmas, there's been an accident, no survivors. He left a note though, a poem for their unborn child. The woman still weeps.
A few more clicks and another woman is weeping for a different reason. ‘Please, don’t, NO! Bang.’ It only took 45 seconds. A scroll through a flood of faceless comments, ‘Faaake, no way, show the body, Not enough blood. Staged. You sickos really get off to shit like this? *Pepe the frog gif* Um wtf, How did I even get here?’
If Tom cannot feel he wants to understand. When you’re happy, you smile, when you’re sad, you cry. But you can also get so happy that you end up crying. This is different from sadness crying but they both still come from the same place. Tom has learned the most believable way for someone like him to exhibit these sorts of emotions is to look as though you aren’t trying to.
If you look as though you are reluctant to cry no one will question why there aren't any tears at all. Scrunching your eyes closed and hiding your thinned lips behind your hand whilst shaking slightly will do just fine for him in place of trying to imitate a traditional laugh.
Still, it’s good to practice. He’s got nothing better to do.
Gently closing the top of his computer he stands from his desk, he needs to see himself in a place with better lighting and the bathroom mirror will do just fine. He gathers his clothes as though he’s going for a shower although a quick sniff of his underarm reveals that an actual shower wouldn't be a bad idea at all. He’d do his practicing afterward.
xx
Blaise Zabini’s house party is more of a small get-together than anything else, much tamer than anything else he allows to go down in his mother’s six-floor Victorian whilst she’s out roaming a new foreign country with a soon-to-be ex-husband.
This is nothing compared to that. Hermione can do this.
“I’m gonna go grab us drinks,” Parvati says, patting her back before she rushes off in a different direction. “Wait- no pav, don’t-'' but before Hermione can finish she’s already gone. “-leave me.”
Hermione searches the crowds of small conversing groups in hopes of spotting a familiar face, coming across that of Ginny Weasley. She was just a year her junior but spent most of her time hanging out with people Hermione’s age, at first because of her older brothers but now mostly due to the fact that she’s dating fellow football freak, Dean Thomas. She’s known of Ginny since they were in primary school and she’d trampled her in a game of playground fifa. She’d said she was sorry but that she shouldn’t have been ‘in the way.’
Hermione steels herself and makes her way toward her.
It’s easy for her to blend with the group of mindless nodding heads, engrossed in a most riveting story about, boat shoes? Hermione could already feel herself checking out.
“....His own brother”
“Yea I heard about that”
“But did you see the pictures?”
“There's pictures? No fucking way.”
Suddenly Hermione was listening again.
“I mean, is it so hard to believe? The signs were there, he’s always been a freak,” came the ever-grating voice of Cormac McClaggen.
They were talking about Tom.
“Granger, weren’t you like best friends with him?”
Hermione looks up to find a sea of eyes all placed firmly on her, the question at hand, imposed but none other than Ginny Weasely gazing at her with a look of genuine curiosity.
Hermione chokes and hesitates not quite knowing what would be the proper response under so much scrutiny.
“Yea, but like only ages ago,” Parvati interjects as she flocks to the group two Kronenbourgs in hand. “Right, Hermione?”
“Um, yea, yea, ages…ages ago.”
Weasly nods in understanding while the other prying eyes look away from her in disappointment at losing a chance of having access to exclusive insider information on an alleged kid killer.
“Hermione here is actually back from a trip, studying abroad in the States,” Parvati announces as if it is the most exciting news she’s heard all week. “So,” she says raising her cup, “Drink to that.” The others do so in unison Hermione goes to do the same until she realizes what Parvati had just said.
“So how was it?” Asks Neville Longbottom, the only other person who hadn’t taken a drink as well. “Oh.. um..,” she stammered helplessly, she really was a shit liar. “It was fine, a lot of…sun, so…” “Oh,” Neville nods.
“Hey, what program did you go with Granger? My cousin has been dying to get out of here but she’s been waitlisted like everywhere she goes,” comes the inquiring voice of Romilda Vane.
“Um, well,”
“Hermione didn’t use a program, Her parents had friends out there and she just needed a break so it all just worked out.” Parvati had either spent a good portion of her time ironing out Hermione's cover story or was concerningly good at lying on the spot, either way, Hermione didn’t want to put her talents to test any longer, it was time to get out of there.
“Will you all excuse me for a minute? I need some fresh air,” Hermione gives an empty smile gesturing weakly to her face, and leaves without looking back. At her back, she could hear the conversation steadily shifting in her absence as she no longer held their interest.