So I'm actually slowly becoming obsessed with the ASoIaF series right now, as it seems I cannot exist in real life without losing myself in a fictional world. Quite pathetic, and painfully true, I'm afraid. So of course, as is the case with any new fandom I happen upon, once I start to fall in love with the characters I feel the urge to play with their feelings for my own childish amusement. However, since I am quite intimidated by the intricacies of the Westeros universe, I diverted my creative juices back to what will always be my ultimate universe, series, fandom and ship of all time, for ever and ever (amen). So here we are with another HP story I started last year and forgot all about, so forgive me if it seems disjointed near the end (because it is). It is impossibly wordy and probably OOC and definitely did not end the way I had anticipated, but, well...it is what it is I guess. How is it that my words always seem to run away from me?

D: Not mine.

"Keeping secrets safe, every move we make, feels like no one's letting go.

And it's such a shame, 'cause if you feel the same, how am I supposed to know?"

GLEE- "Pretending"

Keep a secret? Well, that is a strange sort of question, isn't it?

After all, secrets by definition aren't for telling, are they? If they are worth anything, they are worth keeping, and she kept them well. Of course she kept secrets of her own...but that was nothing unusual.

Everyone had at least one, and those who could hold their tongue might be filled with them. She learned quickly that to be the latter was preferable. Mother kept them quite well, and so did Father, and to be privy to theirs filled her with a grandiose sense of importance at a very young age. Of course, these secrets were miniscule in scale, usually in the form of forbidden candies dropping into her pockets while the other had their back turned, always with a tiny smile or a single finger pressed against their lips-

"It's our little secret"

And it was. She kept their secrets, even when that sticky sweetness of them got the best of her, insidiously working its way down through her enamel and rewarding her with a trip to her parent's office and a dreadful shot of anesthetic delivered to her tiny mouth. She didn't mind, so much, though, because after the numbness wore away and the guilty look left their eyes, the candies came again, along with the attentively heeded warnings.

She liked secrets.

Secrets were like treasures, buried deep in the ocean and no one held the map but herself. She was always the one to find them, little bits of shadow she could catch in her hands for but a moment before they escaped through her fingers in wisps of smoke. You had to swallow them up, these secrets, pour them into your mouth and press against them with your tongue until they fell back, down-down-down into your belly, where the shadows couldn't be seen in the dark. Secrets would dance behind her navel, squirming, wiggling, trying to get out, and the ticklish sensation made her giggle. She wasn't worried though, because she knew she was very good at keeping such things were they were supposed to be. Oh certainly, sometimes the smoke would creep back up, unfurling itself behind her teeth and slithering about the roof of her mouth, threatening to seep its way back into the light. Sometimes a tendril would steam from between the diastema of her central incisors, spilling into letters which had the potential to form directions on her unwritten map of treasure. But she was quite practiced in smiling while she swallowed, forcing the rest of the words back down deep inside her to join their companions before they caused too much trouble.

Her Mother said she should keep her secrets in a book, locking them away on ink and paper for safekeeping. She even bought her a lovely little diary, bound in green leather and fitted with a sturdy brass lock over the fresh, blank pages. But when the smoke turned to words on the paper, her secrets felt false and lifeless, as though she had formed them from childish dreams of fairytales. Such stories were fine for some, much to her mother's perplexity, not herself. Even when she was too small to read on her own she found that she preferred the truth of fact over the fantasy of fiction. And so just as the fables gathered dust on her shelves, the lock on her journal became rusty from disuse.

Besides, seeing her secrets spelled out on parchment made her feel exposed, unsure. You had to keep your secrets protected, hidden, undisclosed- because there wasn't always going to be someone to keep them for you if you let them out into the world. Unless, of course, those people were keeping them from you. She liked her secrets, and she liked knowing other people's secrets, but she didn't it when they knew hers.

It was hypocritical, yes, but such were the way of secrets, in the knowing and not.

And yet, this was almost another sort entirely. She didn't even know she had a secret like this one, one she was keeping and yet being kept from at the same time.

Because despite her best intentions, sometimes her secrets had a way of coming out- even those she didn't know she had. Because when she was eleven, she received someone else's treasure map, but the secret it lead to, it was her own. Because it was a scary treasure, but an exciting one. Because she knew this was one secret she musn't ever tell, for it wouldn't do, to share a secret that didn't completely belong to you.

That was, she supposed, when she started to guard them so much closer.

She might have, maybe could have, shared her secret with someone like people tended to do. Possibly with friends, over chocolate treats and glittered nail polish like girls tend to do, but she hadn't any of those really, and so her lips and teeth and tongue remained sealed. She used to confide in her parents, but as she grew taller she found them to always be so occupied, busy, busy with work, work, work, and all too often her words fell upon deaf ears. And as Father found dogs to be dirty, and Mother thought birds noisy, their empty house was silent and completely devoid of wide, kind eyes who wouldn't breathe a word to anyone for to pour her secrets out to either. But she wasn't unhappy.

She had the smoke between her teeth and the tingles in her tummy.

And soon, she would have Hogwarts. A place certainly full of secrets, but the best sort, the kind that could be shared with others who also kept them.

She longed for a confidant in the aged corridors. Instead, she found a new secret.

An entirely ordinary one, the kind that girls had been keeping for as long as there had been people to inspire them and others to keep them from, the kind her own mother had surely kept herself, as well as her grandmother and probably every person she had ever crossed paths with. But despite its common nature, this one was brilliantly new to her, the one sort she had never hidden before. It was quite pathetic, actually, as she would tell herself over and over again in the days, months, years to come, how utterly unexceptional such a thing was, juvenile really...and yet still it kept a heart-clenching hold on her like nothing she had ever felt.

She had hoped it might not have to be a secret for long, and from the way the smoke swirled and tickled inside of her whenever the object of her secret was near, for once she doubted her ability to keep it locked away. She had stood on the cusp of release on so many occasions, but time and time again she found that it was best to keep her mouth closed. And so she tried to block it out, to fill her mind, her mouth, her being, with other secrets. Those of the helpful variety, of course, those she found in sturdy, trust-worthy textbooks.

So many unthinkable trails to hidden treasures were to be gleaned from the library at Hogwarts! She could barely contain her desire to drink in all that the musty pages contained, secrets that were so very different than the ones she had once penned herself, in what could only have been another life. Mythical, magical wonders only dreamed of in that other world came clearly into being here, the kind of secrets that would keep her parched throat desperately thirsting for more to hold when the heat of the summer and the silence of an empty house threatened to smother the smoke that had been building inside of her all throughout the school year. Secrets that no one would ever, could ever, believe even if she dared to loosen her tongue and let them fall freely into the stagnant July air.

Secrets that had been tried and tested, secrets proved true. She couldn't say the same of her newfound bit of treasure map. The one that seemed to lead her to nothing but dead-ends or rooms where the floor fell out from beneath her, leaving her empty-handed with nothing but scrapes and bruises all over her heart to show for her effort. How many times had she thrown that map to the ground after it had lead her on another fruitless mission, swearing to herself that the fortune it promised was not meant for her and that to keep following such a dangerous path would prove nothing less than idiotic?

And yet, how many times had she gone searching for that scrap, always finding it barely a breath away somewhere inside of her, and seizing it with just as much hope as the first time she had laid eyes on it.

Her knuckles were white now, as white as the snow that fell all around her outside the tiny tent as she clutched the last tattered remnant of that map with a terrified sense of desperation. It was illegible by now, worn tissue-thin from overuse and held by hands that trembled violently from so much more than the biting cold surrounding her. Flames cast dancing blue shadows over her features, illuminating the hollows beneath her eyes and the wetness on her cheeks, but doing nothing to quell the winter winds which infiltrated the numerous blankets she lay huddled beneath, cutting through their threads as though they were no more than a whisper in the dark.

She remembered other whispers in the dark, where there was warmth and anticipation and hesitant touches atop dusty sofa cushions, where secrets had not seemed like nearly such a fantasy. But that might as well have been another lifetime ago.

Here there was another type of darkness, and so much of it that her meager flames could not begin to penetrate it, hiding even the familiar shadow she knew kept watch just beyond the tents opening and making her feel more alone than she had thought possible. She wasn't sure which was stronger, the cold or the dark, couldn't be sure of anything really, anymore. For though the bitter frost had most certainly claimed every inch of the countryside which spread before them, from where she lay she could not be sure of anything but the darkness. The dark could even cover the snow and the ice and everything which it lay atop, swallowing up land and sky until nothing at all existed around her in this miserable world but black, black, black.

Darkness was always there, always lurking waiting to consume whatever dared brave its depths. It was the darkness into which he had disappeared, somewhere as black and thick as pitch where her screams did not carry, no matter how loud she cried. And it was the darkness into which she finally broke down and released her secret, that secret she had clung to so futilely with chapped fingers and a broken heart and a pale, shimmering ribbon of hope. Hope which was unraveling with every morning that dawned bleak and bright and so very, very empty. It was no use holding it back any longer, not when she knew the darkness would take it from her in the end. And so with chattering teeth she spoke it into the silence at last, smoke curling out from between her lips and freezing with her breath into the night air in a long, thin wisp of gray.

And then it was gone.

Just like him.

For in the end, she feared the darkness always won.

Silly Hermione, we all know that isn't true! And she will find out soon enough...

Any other GRRM fans out there with some rec's for me? A rec and a review, and I will love you forever (my affections are far too easily won).