it's always funny to me when i read a book with complex female characters who express a wide range of emotions, not all positive, and i think "oh she's like me fr" and then i go read the reviews and everyone's pretty much like "these women are despicable"
I asked ChatGPT to recite an underrated Emily Dickinson poem, and it gave me this one:
After great pain, a formal feeling comes –
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs –
The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?
The Feet, mechanical, go round –
A Wooden way
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought –
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone –
This is the Hour of Lead –
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow –
First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –
Hermione awoke at what she could only assume was midnight.
It was Harry's turn to keep watch outside the tent. Exhausted, Hermione had fallen asleep almost instantly, as she did every night. Then, just as predictably, she had woken up about two hours after her head hit the pillow.
The challenge now was to relax herself enough to allow her body to drift off again. And she knew how that usually went.
Even before she, Ron and Harry had gone on their Horcrux hunt, Hermione had been having difficulty sleeping. In the months they'd spent in the Forest of Dean, though, her insomnia had worsened.
Her right leg twitched suddenly, which didn't bode well for her chances at falling back asleep. Relaxed muscles were a thing of the past.
So many unknowns existed in their quest this year. Even the idea that Voldemort had created Horcruxes was only a hypothesis. What if the Dark magic in the diary and the ring was something else, something Voldemort had invented? And even if they were Horcruxes, what if Harry hadn't fully destroyed the Dark magic in the diary in their Second Year? What if a flicker of Voldemort remained and had since regrown in the diary, in the years that followed? Why hadn't Dumbledore kept the diary, to make sure?
But it didn't solve anything to worry about Horcruxes that had, hypothetically, already been crossed off the list. Hermione needed to look ahead, to solve the impossible riddle of where Voldemort's other Horcruxes were hidden.
Where could they go that they hadn't gone already? Hogwarts, Hogsmeade, Diagon Alley, Albania. Harry had discouraged them from digging in the foundations of the orphanage, but what if he'd been wrong? Then there was Hogwarts — certainly a smaller area to search than the entire country of Albania, but somehow just as daunting. The risks of Harry getting caught and brought to Voldemort seemed far too high. But they'd likely have to search the school eventually. How would such a search even begin, though? Perhaps Harry was so attuned to Voldemort that the Horcrux might... call to him? But, no. Harry hadn't been drawn to the locket at Grimmauld Place, before Mundungus had pawned it... Or had Dung gotten ahold of the locket before Harry had even arrived? But Harry also hadn't seemed to sense Ginny's connection to the diary back in their Second Year, otherwise they might've gotten to the bottom of Ginny's possession far earlier. But perhaps Harry was more attuned to Voldemort since his return?
And then there was the other, unknown Horcrux. Something of Ravenclaw's. Or Gryffindor's? According to Harry, Dumbledore had been skeptical that Voldemort had turned something of Gryffindor's into a Horcrux. However, he hadn't ruled it out entirely. Wouldn't Voldmort have wanted to complete the set? Four Hogwarts Horcruxes for the four Hogwarts houses? But perhaps as the Heir of Slytherin, Voldemort had nothing but distain for Gryffindors. Still...
Hermione rolled onto her side with a dry sob. She hadn't even really wanted to go over these questions again for the millionth time, but now here she was, wide awake yet exhausted. Hermione, who'd always based her worth on her mind, no longer seemed to be in control of her thoughts anymore. These questions were always cycling unceasingly through her head — when she ate; when she slept; when she stared out at the forest, terrified that a Death Eater would materialize and stun her before she even registered what she was seeing. Every night, she woke up every two hours, unable to distinguish between her restless dreams and her restless thoughts because they were one and the same. Her fear of failure (even more acute in adulthood than in childhood, when all she feared was poor marks from McGonagall) racked her body like pain. Solutions used to come to her this way, and Hermione didn't understand why the sudden epiphanies that had so often been the end result of her obsessive thinking had seemingly dried up.
Perhaps the stakes had always been lower before, but it seemed absurd to think this way. She, Ron and Harry had always taken way too much initiative to save the day — to protect the Philosopher's Stone, to discover the Heir of Slytherin, to free an innocent convict.
"You're taking on too much yourselves," Mrs. Weasley had told Hermione last summer, as she'd tried to persuade her to return to Hogwarts in the fall. "You're only children. You can't do this alone."
Hermione had stifled a sigh as she'd helped with the wedding decorations, assuming that Mrs. Weasley didn't understand that taking on too much was exactly what she always did. What all three of them always did.
But Hermione was willing now to admit that Mrs. Weasley had been right. This year, everything was truly up to the three of them. Only them. Future books about this war would inevitably have a chapter about where Harry Potter had been, what he had been trying to accomplish, as Voldemort slowly took control of the wizarding world. Whether she'd be named or not, Hermione had a direct role to play in that chapter. If the three of them succeeded, so too would the world that she loved. And if they failed, everything she cared about and everything she held dear would be gone. And it would be her fault.
#the implications for the ginny weasley thematic universe …
i will elaborate (threat)
ginny almost dies after the chamber of secrets is opened a second time, but the first time around, myrtle literally did die. myrtle wasn’t abducted like ginny was, she was just there while the basilisk was out and about. so on the one hand, myrtle’s is the fate ginny narrowly escaped. on the other hand, what happened to myrtle is what was supposed to happen to all the students that got petrified the second time around, which is what riddle was doing through ginny. myrtle is the sole victim of the murders riddle was trying to commit using ginny’s body.
ginny as a final girl (for the horror enthusiasts) - you could argue that there’s no such thing as a final girl in isolation. by sheer definition, the final girl is the sole survivor of a group of people, usually teens, usually her friends, that die over the course of her story, tasking her alone with its retelling. but the name ‘final girl’ also tells us at least one other girl was present at the start of the movie (the trope was first identified in the slasher genre) and was killed. that’s myrtle, dying - and ginny, living to tell the tale.
somehow, i badly want these two to be friends - with all the tension and all the comfort that entails. and i want ginny to figure out how to honour myrtle’s life and memory. it seems like everyone else has forgotten about her, the bullied teen girl that died in a lavatory.
fun tidbit for the horror/mythology scholars again: in goblet of fire we learn that myrtle occasionally hangs out in the black lake with the merfolk in the black lake. hogwarts has a lady in the lake of its own and her name is myrtle
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