Lover of the Light

The Good and the Almost Good

Lover of the Light

Chapter Twenty-Two: The Good and the Almost Good

Her eyes were seeing things differently now. It was as if she'd been going throughout life the past couple of months looking at things through cheap contact lenses. There was a layer of fog between her selfish and stubborn judgment and the actuality of reality in those past months. But now, now she'd lost the lenses, blinked, and really started seeing everything around her for the first time in a long time. She started seeing everything with a different light, with brand new eyes.

It wasn't just that the walls around her stopped seeming so dark and imprisoning, but there was something very eccentric and beautiful about the room she now called her bedroom. There was something exciting about the purple walls and their leafy prints; it made her happy. The walls from her bedroom in the Granger household were plain and simple—just like Hermione Granger was. Hermione Granger was confined and proper, calm like the washes of pastel purples and blues on the walls of her muggle home. Upon discovering her true identity as Aria Zabini, Hermione also discovered that she was far more than just that righteous and goody-too-shoes witch she and everyone saw her as. There were subdued parts of her that were selfish, cruel, wrong, passionate, and tragic. And, honestly, she loved that. She loved that she was flawed, that she was consumed by unsteady fire.

Life had a way of twisting things and showing truths that people try to hide or ignore. At the beginning of Life's tricky game, Hermione would have given up her soul in order to stay a Granger; the muggle-born bookworm everyone knew and was comfortable with. She would've fought with anyone in order to cut the tie that linked her to the Zabinis. Of course, Life decided that things were not that simple, that there was something waiting for her beside the Zabinis that she needed to discover. Though she suffered greatly, her new view on things was letting her accept the fact that maybe, after all the passing time, there was a greater lesson in all of it. That maybe she did gain something.

"Why do you think you fell in love?"

Sitting in an armchair that had been configured from one of the many books in a massive bookshelf against the furthest wall of the young mistress' bedroom, Deon Zabini halted the command he was about to give his bishop in the game of Wizard's Chess against his son. The man's emerald eyes appeared confused, contradicting the seriousness that he'd been giving to the game.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

His wife smiled. Allegra was sitting on the left side of their daughter's massive bed; the latter on the right, between her mother and her father. Allegra was snuggled closely to Hermione's side, clutching her hand, running caressing fingertips over her knuckles. There was something territorial about the way she held on, pressed tightly to her daughter's side, but she didn't seem to notice it. She just enjoyed the smile that was highlighting her beautiful face, the happiness in her honey-colored eyes, and the bliss inside the bedroom.

It had been two days since Hermione was discharged from the hospital, ordered to stay in bed for a few days before returning to Hogwarts. The brunette protested, proclaiming loudly that she was perfectly fine to return to school and catch up on her studies, but she'd found that Mister and Mrs. Zabini could be more strict than she anticipated. She knew they would give her anything if she asked for it, but almost losing her, because of her dance with death, her biological parents did not give in. It was only two days, she was on her last, and she found that she wasn't as annoyed as she was letting on.

"Why did you fall in love with me?" Allegra clarified. "Do you ever think about that? How is it that you and I ended up so madly in love with one another that we ran away from duties and our families? It doesn't make sense."