Chapter Text
She hates this, she really does. She hates that she has to bow her head to people she knows are phony and fake. But before, before she knew better, she had worshipped them like gods in human form, and now…now she knew better. And that loss of innocence, the knowledge that had hit her like a sledgehammer, had fractured something in her.
But she still dips her head, forces a facsimile of respect onto her features even as she rages against the authority figures she once so adored. Because she has a purpose, a reason.
She had been alone for so long, before Hogwarts. The other children at her primary school had taunted her and cruelly mocked her for her intelligence, and maybe it would have been alright, had her parents been there, warm and welcoming. But instead they were sharp and demanding, with high hopes and expectations, and she had never dealt well with parental disappointment.
So she had turned to the next best thing for approval. Her teachers.
They had been warm and welcoming, praising her for her intelligence even when the other children mocked and scorned her. It had been something she dearly needed, and she had clung to it like a drug. She had gradually begun to believe that authority figures had to be right, they had to be, because it needed to be that way.
When she had received her Hogwarts letter, she had thought that this, her magic, this was why she was so strange and disliked. She had hoped that she would find friends in this strange world.
She had been wrong.
Hogwarts had turned out to be like everywhere else, and the children had been even crueler because she wasn’t a pureblood, or even a halfblood. She was trash in their eyes, a muggleborn, a mudblood.
And her isolation had been nearly complete. She struggled, reaching out and trying to help others, but they scorned her with cold eyes and furious words, and she knew now that in her childish desperation she had driven them away with her ‘know-it-all’-ness. But it had still hurt, to know that she was alone, like always, with her parents’ expectations weighing down on her.
And then the troll had come, and a tiny boy with flashing green eyes had come to her rescue alongside the obliviously cruel ginger that had hurt her.
She had found a friend from a situation that would have killed her, and in the rush of adrenaline she took the blame for everything, and those green eyes glittered with something that was not quite right.
But she ignored it, because she had friends. It was something new, something she had never had before.
And they had settled into a routine, and she had luxuriated in the sense of not being alone. But then Quirrell and the Stone had happened, and she had had to let the green eyed boy, her savior, go on alone because she had to. And she hadn’t wanted to, had wanted to grip onto him like a drowning man grasps a piece of wood to stay afloat, but she had let him go.
It had torn at her, but she let him walk through the fire alone while she went back.
And then they were going home and Harry was alright, and there was something not quite right in his eyes, but she ignored it again, because he had to be alright, because he was strong.
She had been wrong, then, but she didn’t realize that until later.
But now, now she knows, now she could be there for him, her savior. Because she knows what is hiding behind those emerald eyes, the fractures that exist. And knowing that he—they?—trust her with that knowledge, with knowing that weakness…
It is humbling.
So she dips her head and smiles and nods and looks away from crystalline blue eyes, all the while holding the image of her savior in her head. Because she doesn’t care about teachers or authority anymore, she doesn’t care about those who had hurt him. She’ll be there, holding out her hands as she helps him put his fractured self back together again, even just a little bit, because he deserves so much better.
And she’s scared, terrified really, because what happens if she messes this up? Will he just…shatter into millions of little pieces? Or will he just be left alone, to drown in his own darkness and not quite there-ness?
And she won’t, can’t, let that happen; the idea makes her heart break, just a little bit. So she tries to be there for him, letting him piece himself together at his own pace.
She’ll be his protector, his sword and shield against those who were supposed to protect him but have hurt him so much.
Because he is her savior, and she owes him at least that much.
She be his savior in turn.