INVISIBLE STRING

2.THE VOICE

CHAPTER TWO
THE VOICE

Every time you call me crazy, I get more crazy, what about that? - Mad Woman by Taylor Swift

BREATHING HEAVILY Hermione shot awake from her bad dreams, her eyes fixating on the dirty spot on the ceiling that seemed to ground her to reality in times like these.

In fourth year, just as the girls had been getting ready for the Yule Ball, a makeup charm had gone wrong, hitting the ceiling right above Hermione's bed.

Seeing as they didn't know how to fix it and it was only a small mark, the girls just decided to leave it there.

Now the cherry red didn't remind her of Lavender's lips that night but about her blood as she layed on the ground, dead and bitten by a werewolf. Hermione didn't even dare think his name. Not because she was scared of something like a name, but because that was recognition he didn't deserve.

Her chest was raising and falling unevenly and way to quickly as she moved over to lay on her side and tried to calm her pulse.

The alarm clock on her bedside table showed two thirty in the morning, way too early to even think about waking up.

She sighed, taking a big sip from the water she put on her nightstand, her eyes finding the mark on the ceiling again.

Suddenly she was getting angry at it. Angry at the ceiling and the mark and the world. She didn't know what possessed her, but next thing she knew, she was firing charms and curses at the spot, hoping it would go away.

But it didn't. It just glowed brighter and brighter, redder and redder until it transformed into more of a scarlet colour.

It was mocking her.

Why wasn't it going away? Why was it staying, just like the memories?

Maybe Hermione should try one of the memory charms. She had promised to Ron she wouldn't do it, him having seen first hand the effects a wrongly cast memory charm could have in his second year.

But how could he expect her to have the power to do it and not even try? Have the power to make all of this go away and continue to live in her misery?

Hermione sighed, just wanting to make her mind shut up and go blank for a moment.

Sometimes she wished she wasn't as bright, as intelligent, as she actually was. Sometimes she hated, despised, her mind and her intellect. Her thoughts.

Sometimes they dragged her into dark corners and deep pits she didn't know to escape from.

Hermione

Hermione looked around. Where did that come from? She was sure she must have been imagining it, there was no way someone had actually called out for her.

Someone with a voice like that anyway. But then again: Hermione

The voice sounded strange, as if was being repressed somehow, something or someone not wanting it to reach out to her.

Hermione

"Yes?", she felt more than stupid talking to the nothingness.

By now the tip of her wand was glowing brightly with a quickly cast Lumos, but to no use. There was just nothing.

Hermione

Again. And again and again.

The voice didn't shut up anymore.

And believe me, Hermione had tried to make it shut up. She had tried all silencing charms she knew, but there was no use.

She tried falling asleep again, a pillow pressed tightly against her ears, but it didn't work.