Détraquée by Hystaracal on AO3
"All her growth was the conveying of a corpse of hope."
(From 'The Rainbow', D.H. Lawrence)
This is a story about coming into one's own, a meditation on the twilight of girlhood and the violence of crash-landing into womanhood. Follow Hermione as she navigates through the quagmire: Saving the world, getting top grades, falling in love, lust, and a whole lot of trouble, and comes out of it hopefully (at least) partially sane.
The process of not hating him had been like scaling a wall with no purchase. It was an obstacle so high and harrowing, she couldn’t see the top. All her focus was on scaling the damn thing without causing any casualties. How was she supposed to have known that there was no even ground on the other side either; that, in fact, there was nowhere to land at all? How the bloody fuck could she have guessed that on the other side, there was only an endless plunge... A perpetual freefall. Permanent, amplified vertigo.
//
For so excruciatingly long, she had been helpless against life’s circles, always spinning, spiralling, and circuiting. Draco had picked her up and carried her to the sun. They were in the white-hot centre of it all, the point of burning stillness, and everything revolved around them.
//
Hermione straightened and began to walk. The Spectre of Time trailed behind her.
But what was life if not a constant spate of dying? Each second marked its own death. Each death was marked by the footfalls of the Spectre; by the beat of her pulse.
//
If feelings were quantifiable, if she could pick them up, shake them free of impurities and guises, and compare them on a weighing balance, Hermione would have demonstrated what she knew for sure — that she had been resented more than she had been loved.
//
“Y’know what, Hermione,” [Harry] slurred, “You’re my four brothers and a sister.”
An absolutely gorgeous celebration of and love letter to Hermione — and the banality and weight of life and growing up. A fic like no other, whose breadth and depth are unparalleled and whose story is inextricable from its form and style. It requires complete surrender from its reader, but if you can give yourself up to it and its "gentle" Hermione (who nevertheless steamrollers you with the volume and intensity of her narration), the reward is immense: humor, pathos, angst, pining, joy, and a deliciously posh, arsehole Draco. Hermione's life is much more complete here than in many fics. Her social circle is large (many more Gryffindors get characterization and page-space here than is usual in Dramione), her job well-imagined (this is one of the best and most realistic portrayals of wizarding politics and Hermione's job in Dramione), her parents are complex, fully-realized characters, and the young adult wizarding world she lives in is expansive.
Art: Girl with a Hole in her Stocking, Michael Thompson, 2008
