Parade of the Sun - Dramione

PART NINETEEN.

2:09pm

"Do you know what I find interesting?"

Malfoy glanced down at his watch, and she didn't know if it was habit, he forgot it was broken, or if he did it for effect. "I only have another hundred years or so before I die. Better make it quick."

"When we came out of the forest yesterday, and those people saw us? It made me think of these stories I've heard in the papers about people who live their entire lives in the jungle. It doesn't happen very often, but one day a person just comes walking into civilization. And they don't know language, or things like social decorum, or clothes, or even things like - self-esteem, shame--"

"If you're going to suggest we start walking around nak--"

She gave him a disapproving look. "The sight of you naked would likely be the final push into madness."

"I'm not sure what books you've read, Granger, but that's usually somewhere near the beginning."

"Wh--"

"Though, I'm glad you're acknowledging how much you're teetering on the edge. D--"

"Anyway," Hermione said loudly over him, unwilling to further discuss her mental stability. "It makes me think about the soul. This very thing that makes up who we are, and how in these people, it is unlearned. For us, who we are is shaped by society. There are some things that are base, but it's mostly buried. We learn who we are through language, social interaction, books, parents, money--"

"Etcetera," he drawled, as if she was going to carry on for twenty minutes.

She glared at him, hating to be interrupted, though he did it often enough. "I just wonder what is closer to a true self. If these people even recognize a self until they are in society and have something to compare it to. Or if we don't fully recognize our true self until we compare it to them - without all the rubbish--"

"It's the same thing, Granger." She stared at him until he gave an exasperated sigh and kept talking. "There are a lot of different ways that people are raised, and a lot of different events in people's lives that shape them. Society or not, we all have different selves. You put two people in the jungle who have never known civilization, and they are going to be different people. They encounter different animals, or problems, or food, or weather. You put us in the jungle, and we're going to be different people too."

"But we already are different people. From--"

"Exactly. A tiger jumps out, right? A tiger jumps out in front of one of these jungle people who have dealt with them their entire lives, so they know how to fight it, and they aren't afraid. It jumps out in front of another jungle person, who has never seen it before, and that person is going to run. A tiger jumps out now, in front of us, and I'm going to see if I can run first. You would probably stay and try to pet it--"

"I wouldn't go that far--"

"Or, it's war," he cut in, and he didn't look at her when she turned her eyes to him. "A war jumps out in front of us, and our selves formed by society, and all those things you listed. All those differences that made us separate people. And you're going to run at it like it's the purpose of your life. And I... We already know that story, Granger.

"It doesn't matter where you put people, or what they know - it only matters that they know different things. Society, or a jungle, it's all the same in the end. We're shaped into these people, into these selves. There is no such thing as a true or false one, just the lives that got us there. The only thing that makes these jungle people truly different from us is that they don't have to look at other people and see where they went wrong. See what makes them a bad person - because nothing does outside of society."