It was 10 pm, on a Saturday. On this beautiful summer night, in the midst of a messy room, one bright, red head was despairing over her Potions work.
Ever since Hermia had stepped off the train, her mind had been endlessly occupied with the worlk load she had to complete during the summer holidays. She had started to get to it almost immediately after she arrived home, and she had not stopped since. It wasn’t that they ha´d been assigned an insane amount, or that it was exceedingly time-consuming, or difficult to get down, but the girl still invested herself in the work as though her life depended on it.
The past school year had not exactly gone well for her, the grades she had received for her exams half convincing her that she must not have attended classes at all, or worse, that she might in the end really not have anything but ‘shits’ for brains, as her sister had once so eloquently suggested.
One thing was clear, she had to study through the whole summer if she wanted to have any chance at all of making it through next year.
The only problem with that plan was that, by now, after hours of working, reading, writing, and studying without a proper break, her head was throbbing ceaselessly against her skull, the words on the paper seemed to blur together, and the more she tried to concentrate the harder it became for her to get anything done. It was a disaster. Yet, she was determined not to give up. The harder it was for her to finish the work by tonight, the more she insisted that she could do it, if only to prove it to herself.
In all this haze, she had not even noticed her older brother knocking on the door, and slipping into her room - not until he started to speak.
Her head jerked up in that instant, and when her eyes met his, Hermia was glaring at him. She would have perhaps given him a warmer welcome if it hadn’t been for his offer to help her, as though he thought she was not capable enough to get it all done on her own.
Augustus had wounded her pride.
”I don’t ´need help from you or anyone else”, she snapped.