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Dool Tree

Chapter 19

The afternoon of the 31st, before the Halloween party, Hermione was laying in bed, feeling ill and tired and lonely. The bar of pretty-smelling new soap from Snape sat, unused as of yet, upon her bedside table.

She reached from beyond the curtains of her bed and stroked it a little with her thumb, then brought said appendage up to her nose to sniff the sticky residue. She'd never thought much of the scent of freesias, but for some reason they struck a chord in her. Now she couldn't wait to visit her aunt, who grew them, so that she might pick a basket-full.

Beyond her domain, she listened to the voices of her fellow dorm-mates as they pranced about, preparing for the ball. Everyone was there, save Deborah and Jenny; the former was at the mansion already, being tended to by her mother and probably many house-elves, while the latter...well, it could only be imagined where Jenny might be.

But Lily, Dorcas, and Mary were all brimming with excitement, which made Hermione feel sad. She might have joined in, since the oppressive force of Deborah had been whisked away to the land of silk stockings, pins, and sewing thread, but the fact that the other girls were preparing for Deborah's party quailed her.

At least, that's what she told herself; it was more likely that it was both a combination of this fact and the fact that she'd eaten far too much at lunch, and now she was bloated and couldn't button her already-too-tight jeans, and thus was sulking.

"Oh, Deborah's going to look so stunning tonight," Dorcas said merrily. "But I guess you two are fit to compete with her if ever anyone could!"

Yeah, Hermione thought petulantly, yanking at the button-flaps of her jeans, trying to get them to close around her over-stuffed tummy. Though I'd be a real stunner, too, if I could go...stun everyone with how my dress is coming apart at the seams!

"Oh shush, ducks, this ol' thing's lasted me an 'ole six 'ears, what with me careful expansion charms an' all," Mary said. "It's Lily 'oo's the real beauty, eh?"

Six years! Hermione thought, aghast. My clothes haven't lasted longer than three or four years... She peeked out the curtain to evaluate Mary's dress, then nodded to herself. Well, I guess that is feasible. She's got the same body I had at eleven. Even if I had anything from that long ago, it wouldn't fit now, what with my big belly...

Feeling even more depressed, she sat up, pulled her shirt off, and looked down at the creamy rolls of flesh that surrounded her abdomen. It was fascinating as much as it was shameful and disgusting, to see to what extent she'd grown.

If only I'd acquired something in the way of knockers, while I'd been at it.

"You lot are too nice," Lily said with a giggle. "Oooh! Let me spin."

There followed a pause and a thump as Lily lost her balance and grasped Hermione's bedpost. Hermione saw the other girl's fingers as they made their imprint on the chintz, and they looked like a dementor's. Hermione quickly pulled on her shirt again, tucking it into her underwear so that it wouldn't ride up her belly. She didn't want anyone to see her like this, if someone thought it would be okay to open the curtains uninvited.

"Lovely, simply lovely!" cheered Dorcas, and Hermione exhaled deeply. They didn't even apologize for disturbing my curtains, she thought, and noticed with chagrin that as her diaphragm expanded, so did her stomach's volume, and thus the hem of her shirt snapped up to rest at her waist, revealing four (in her mind, eight) inches of flabby stomach that Hermione detested to see.

The door to the dorm opened, and Hermione heard the light tread of Jenny Hazard enter the room.

"Hi, all," she greeted, clearly morose but trying to sound chipper. "Getting ready for that party? I say! You look topping, Lily."

"Thanks, Jenny," Lily said, though a bit more quietly, "I wish you could have come." Wish I could have, too, Hermione thought.

"Aw, cheer up, mate, don't worry 'bout it," said Jenny dismissively, sounding as though she was trying to forget the whole thing. "I'd not have remembered the incident anyhow, if Mary hadn't told me that I'd been Obliviated." She laughed bitterly at that. "Fancy that? Well, while you all are cavorting at this shindig, I'm going to 'ave me a lovely smoke, I will. Who wants to go to some silly party anyway, that's what I says. I don' like gettin' all dolled up for some guys..."

Her tone was forced into flippancy. Flopping onto her bed, she continued, "I admit, I prefer to dress down if you know what I mean, ladies."

It was very obvious that she was disappointed at being not included, however, and the other girls tried to be chipper.

"That's the reason you're not going," Dorcas said with a giggle.

"Yeah, and besides, Debbie's definitely jealous," Lily inputted, "I mean, it's her party, but no doubt she knows you'd be the one that the boys'd flock to all evening!"

"It's like potions, really," Jenny said with a shrug, though she sounded as though she'd reasoned it out already, had come to a conclusion that she only half-heartedly believed, and was trying to repeat it over and over again. "Some ingredients have a powerful waft. You could say the same 'bout me. Only while newt's eyes smell real gross, I smell like really hot s-"

"-I'm really sorry about that whole thing," Dorcas interrupted, in a confidential tone. It was interesting how chipper she was this evening; the girl was brimming with self-confidence. Hermione wondered where she'd got it. Did she steal what vestiges of it that I had in September?

"Aw, don't bother," Jenny said, "though, I must say, Dorky, you've lost some weight." Her tone was a bit strange, as though she was sad and trying to hide it through disapproval.

"I've been sticking to Mary's regimen," Dorcas said, sounding mildly annoyed. "Three cups of applesauce a day, one boiled egg for breakfast, four slices of chicken and a few raw carrots at lunch, and a bit of broth with vegetables at dinner. No grains, no dark meats, no...chocolate...or muffins..."

Her words trailed off, and all of a sudden she sounded quite unhappy.

"Huh," Jenny said. "Huh." Hermione didn't hear anything else from her, save the telltale unwrapping of one chocolate frog...another chocolate frog...another chocolate frog...

Even with the background chatter, Hermione dozed for a quarter hour, until she heard some juicy information that made her perk her ears up.

"Peter kissed you?" asked Lily in surprise.

"Uh-huh," Dorcas replied, her voice as cheery as a lark.

No wonder she's so frivolous and confident today, Hermione thought, sluggish and apathetic. She's got herself a bloke.

"My first kiss, I must say," Dorcas continued, and all the girls oohed. "His first one, too, I'll bet..."

Jenny let out a half-hearted snort at this, her head propped up by her elbow.

"I'm just...ecstatic, you know?" Dorcas went on, her voice oozing with joy. "Like, my life is finally the way I want it. I'm thin(ner), I've got a great job as Deborah's assistant, and I've got myself the guy I've been crushing on for two years, you know? It's like...this year has been my best. And it's all thanks to that book I read, Dr. Hegel's Guide to Self-Improvement. It really worked! I feel like I could do anything...even be Head Girl next year, if I wanted to..."

"That's Lily's dream, don't ye think ef bargin' in on it!" Mary said, though it sounded like her mouth was full of hair-pins. (Which, if she was the designated hairdresser of them all, that would explain her relative silence for the whole conversation.)

"No, no I wouldn't want to be Head Girl, not really, of course," Dorcas replied gently, succumbing to her place in second-class, "but I feel so great that I feel like I could, you know?..."

At this, Hermione tuned out, her attention melting into introspection. Have I ever felt like that? she wondered, feeling bitter. Just so deliriously happy that I couldn't stand it?

She found nothing in her process of recollection.

And now...now I'm most definitely NOT there, she whined to herself, feeling anxiety and depression forcing itself upon her shoulders.

Let me think about something that makes me happy, she thought, like...like Ron...?

The question wasn't meant to be a question. In fact, she knew quite clearly that she shouldn't have wondered if Ron made her happy at all. But for some reason, she felt like it was a stretch to remember him, aside from the idealized memories of him that she'd been reliving over and over. It was terrifying to realize how much she'd forgotten about him. Did he take his ham sandwiches with katsup or mustard? Were his burps, the ones that directly followed large meals, higher or lower in sound than the ones that occurred an hour after eating? Was the shade of his hideous maroon sweaters more on the light side or on the dark side? She simply couldn't remember some of these little things.

How miserable a friend I am, she noted. How miserable a lover.

It didn't occur to her that she might be just a little silly with trying to scrape up these trivial things from her memory. But then again, her memory was something in which she'd always taken so much pride.

As her eyes began to fill with tears, she heard the other girls gathering their bags and leaving the dormitory, apparently to the party.

Hermione was alone again.

Belching loudly in a way that could have competed with Ron, she pulled her shirt up again and looked at her distended abdomen, just stared at it. I look like I'm preggers, she thought, not realizing that she might have been exaggerating in her distress.

"Hey...'Mione?"

Oh gracious me! Jenny's still here! That loud burp...oh dear!

Filled with embarrassment and guilt, she remained silent, hoping that the other girl would decide that she'd been mistaken and eventually leave.

I have become the perfect fatty, she mourned. I belch, loud and long, without remorse or shame!

"'Mione?"

She says my name like Ron did... Hermione thought, and then the curtains were suddenly pulled apart. Jenny stood there, her eyes a little red and her e'er-present smile absent.

"Hi," she said quietly. "You okay?"

"Fine, fine," Hermione growled, pulling her shirt down as far as it could go. It didn't hide the fact that her underwear (pulled all the way up) showed because her jeans wouldn't button.

"I don't think so," Jenny said, gently ungrasping Hermione's fingers from the hem of her shirt. The shirt bounced up again to reveal fleshy skin. "Over-ate?" Jenny said in a companionable fashion, and Hermione shrugged, pulling her shirt down again with one hand.

"No need," Jenny said, detaching Hermione's fingers once again, letting the shirt shimmy up once more. Jenny placed the palm of her hand on Hermione's stomach, which made Hermione's hair prick up.

"What are you doing?" she hissed at the intruder, sitting up straight and glaring intently.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I'm just interested," Jenny said, retracting her hand quickly. Before she could appear to be embarrassed, she clarified, "Erm...well, I need to touch someone, you know. Feeling rather blue."

"Because of the party fiasco?" Hermione asked brusquely.

Jenny nodded. "Not very groovy, you gotta admit."

She sighed. "I don't ask for much from these people...but they've got a vibe that crushes my spirit, man."

"And I'm different?"

Jenny's eyes were soulful and deep. "Ain't your spirit bein' crushed, too?"

"What an abstract way of thinking about it," Hermione said, trying to internalize what Jenny had said. Was she being crushed by the other girls? She wasn't sure, but she realized that Jenny had a point.

"We should talk," Jenny said. "Us misfits should hang together, man, like all those other hussies, only different. How 'bout after the 'alloween feast, yeah?"

"Mmm...sure," Hermione said, though she was reluctant to admit that she didn't have any work to do.

"Groovy," Jenny said, perking up a little bit. "You can bring a friend, if you want. Preferably of the bloke persuasion. And bring some food...lotsa."

With that, she patted Hermione's protruding belly, saying "Take care, now", and slipped out of Hermione's four-poster.

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After this strange intercourse, and after a brief nap to settle her stomach, Hermione went to the library to attempt at some studying. The cold, arid atmosphere was most calming, and she curled up in her usual corner, though she was hoping that Severus wouldn't come. She was miserable enough about the party, but she didn't feel like adding insult to her injury. Sure, she'd booked a hang-out date with Jenny, but that wasn't enough to lighten her spirits.

For a while, Hermione was left blissfully alone. Snape was nowhere to be heard or seen, and since a good third of the school was also at the party or preparing for the Halloween Feast, nobody was in the library.

She couldn't concentrate on her books, though; she would start reading something like A Study on the Life-Cycles of the Gunkworm and its Relevancy to Potions, but instead of poring over the recipe and envisioning how to make it in her head, the words blended together on the page, and her eyes began to get a little bleary. When she tried to put her mind to history, reading The Primary Phase of the Goblin Wars, even the pictures couldn't hold her attention, and she ended up staring at a corner of the library ceiling. In despair, when she tried to reason with the novel Ragged House-Elf by Boomie von Klackety (which, disappointingly, wasn't much about house-elves at all) the style of the prose and the author's subjective, misogynistic tirades made her so angry that she hid the book in the deepest depths of the dusty history section.

Upon returning to her table from this self-assigned task, Hermione was surprised to see Severus there, decked out in a cream-colored suit that was both too big for him and making his skin look like plaster. His mood was visibly low, as well, and Hermione was quick to spring into action.

"Hi, professor," she said glibly, slipping into her chair. "You look like hell, frozen over."

"Go away," Snape growled, his head hanging low like an admonished swan. He'd made an effort with his hair, which was parted neatly and oiled, and...did she see a smidgen of terribly-blended concealing makeup on the circles under his eyes?

"That's inconvenient," Hermione said, taking out a chocolate bar from her bag and splitting it in half. "Here. This'll help."

He looked at the piece that she pressed into his hand, somewhat dumbfounded.

"What?" she asked as she watched him look at it. "You've seen chocolate before, right?"

"You don't need to give me...I'm used to...only Lily's ever..." he said, struggling with how to respond.

"It's melting," she observed. "Eat it."

He responded well to the command, quickly inserting the progressively-gooey thing into his mouth. This resulted in chocolate being spread across his lips, as well as his hand. He licked furiously, his squishy long tongue trying to get every drop of the stuff from out of the crevices in his hand.

The sight could be fairly erotic, given the right circumstances, Hermione thought. She'd always loved watching Ron eat. But for some reason, she wasn't turned on by it; instead she pitied Snape all the more. He looked like no one had ever done him that service before...as though he's the kind of person who always gets excluded when someone gives out candy, the kind of person who always gets uninvited from parties...like me, really.

Then something clicked in her mind.

"Have some more chocolate," she insisted, feeling a bit queasy. "And after, tell me what you're doing all dolled up like you are. From whom did you borrow that suit?"

"Bulstrode," the glum young man replied, taking a grubby handkerchief and wiping off his hands before touching the next piece. Once invited to take the other half of the chocolate bar, he made no complaint.

"Were you planning on going to...that party?" Hermione asked, empathizing greatly.

"I did," Snape said snootily, shaking a little bit with indignation, and Hermione realized that he smelled a little odd.

Like...nail-polish?

That wasn't quite right, but she couldn't place the smell.

"What happened, then?" she asked, readjusting herself, curling her legs under her bum.

"Rejected. No invitation."

"Did you lose it?" Hermione asked, genuinely puzzled.

"Never got one. My date...invited me, but she was planning to meet me inside. Without her, I wasn't allowed. For being a Slytherin."

"Wait..." Hermione asked, incredulous. "So...you went with Lily?"

He nodded.

"It's just as well, what happened" he commented, terse. "I wouldn't have wished to be where I was more than slightly unwanted."

What strange phraseology, Hermione thought. 'More than slightly unwanted'?

"What do you mean by that?" she asked, realizing that Snape was wholly crushed.

He opened his mouth to reply, but shut it again quickly, closing his eyes and resting his chin on his chest.

"Please...Severus...talk to me," Hermione begged, feeling all the more sad because he was sad. "I...I want you to talk to me."

He remained quiet, his teeth clenched and his shoulders a little bit hunched forward.

"Well, here's something that might cheer you up," Hermione said, "me and a girl from my dorm...we're having a little party tonight. She said I should bring someone with. Do you want to come with me?"

Somber, he contemplated this for a few minutes, though Hermione wasn't sure at first if he'd even heard.

"Fine," he said. "After the feast?"

"Yes," she replied.

He nodded again. "Not formal, I presume?"

"Not at all," Hermione replied with a smile. "So you go get out of that ridiculous monkey-suit. It's six sizes too big, and the wrong color for you besides."

Snape shrugged. "Beggars can't be choosers," he said sagely, and rose. He still looked desperately unhappy. "Later, Hermione."

He walked out of the library, taking a drink from a vial from his pocket as he went.

Alcohol. Firewhiskey, Hermione mused. That's what he smelled like. Not nail-polish. Poor dear. At least he has some company, tonight...

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The Halloween Feast was far from a feast, in both levels of merriment and food. The house-elves seemed to have forgotten the date, because there was not the usual feast-level of magical variety. The food was excellent, of course, though the tables were simply not groaning with festive delicacies.

Perhaps the reason for this was that Dumbledore was not present. Nor was McGonagall.

The relatively sparse arrangements were fine by Hermione, who was trying to makethe conscious effort to not eat more than half a plate of food, realizing that her weight problem was growing more and more serious. She knew that she needed to get under control again.

Hermione had to sit alone, since it seemed that Jenny had come early and was sitting with the older Quidditch jocks. It disgusted Hermione to see how much that girl ate, yet Hermione was filled with envy. How could that little stick eat so much and still not show it?

But Hermione ate up, filled up her bag with goodies for the party, and rose.

She observed that the people-count was severely depleted, because so many people had gone to Deborah's party, including a large number of teachers. Only a few remained to supervise; the willowy Sinistra (with whom, notably, Deborah did not have class), Hagrid, Filch, and Professor Button, the boring and nerdy Muggle-studies teacher.

It's not fair, she reasoned, that the entirety of the school will give Deborah her grades based on this stupid party!

It would have made her sick to her stomach, if she wasn't still so hungry.

Severus, as he approached her, was the only distraction she found for food.

"Hi," she greeted kindly, "do you have something to bring to the party? If you don't, you should grab something to contribute; we're all just..."

Her eyes widened as Snape showed her the label of a large bottle of firewhisky, which he hid in his robes again as soon as she'd seen.

"No," he said, rather smug. "Nothing whatsoever."

"Where'd you get that?" she hissed, super-paranoid that one of the teachers would see. "That's such a violation of the rules!"

"Erm...Bulstrode. He's coming, too, and bringing two more bottles. But he wanted me to carry the third."

"I...see..." Hermione said, still not thrilled.

"So, where are we going to go?" Severus asked. He seemed a little more loose of tongue than he had been earlier, but the fact that he still had alcohol on his breath made Hermione shiver.

"I don't know," she said, trying not to let her nose be overwhelmed by the smell, "but I figured we could just wait for Jenny-"

"-Jenny? Jenny who?" Severus asked, eyes widening in horror. "Not...not that girl! Not Jenny Hazard, the 'come-and-go' girl!" The realization was forceful. "Ugh! Merlin! No wonder Bulstrode's going!"

"Yeah...well...we kinda are room-mates," Hermione said, sighing, biting her lip as her cheeks, embarrassed. "Does...does that mean you won't come?"

He paused, glancing into her eyes.

"Fine," he said, begrudgingly, "but no funny business, understand?"

"Of course," she said, instinctively taking his hand and squeezing it.

Severus gave her a strange look, but didn't comment.

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