Unofficial Portkey Archive

No answer. I bit my lip before raising my hand to knock but the door swung open to reveal a young woman of seventeen clad in baggy gray sweats and a tiny green tank top that clashed with her long mousy hair. She looked like a bloated fish with her puffed out cheeks and the dark mascara running down her cheeks in black rivers did not shed light to her current appearance.

"Come to tell me to shut up again?" Was her snappy replacement of 'good morning'.

I tilted my head almost politely. Almost. "Yes," I replied shortly. "And please do."

She sighed dramatically, the blaring music still drumming on my sensitive ears, but of course Penelope here did not seem the least bit affected by the horrendous noise known as 'metal'. "It's not like I don't want to," she said in exasperation. "I mean look at me!" She roughly ran a hand across her cheeks, smearing the already running mascara across her face. She groaned and I felt my impatience melt. This girl was after all, only seventeen, and my roommate since last summer when she moved to New York from Canada to continue her studies. She really was a sweet girl when she wasn't in the state that she was in now. She didn't have to explain to me what on earth was wrong. I could read her like a book and reading was my specialty.

"It's just that," she sniffled and retreated into her room, "he was so awfully nice! And...and real you know? Wasn't acting like anything he wasn't...but then he was because he was a frickin' jerk!" Her sob turned into another shriek as she jumped onto her unmade bed and landed face first into her pillow. I flinched, knowing that it was my turn to do the laundry today and I would be working the sponge and soap hard at trying to get all that black guck off her pillowcase. I sighed and took a careful route towards her bed, avoiding the hazards of CD cases dotting the floor and scrunched up balls of paper with her noticeable scrawl on them.

"Penny, he really isn't worth your tears," I insisted, feeling like an answering machine as this was probably the tenth time I had fed her this line. I sat down on the edge of her mattress while giving her a comforting squeeze on the shoulder. She sat up slowly, crossing her legs and leaning her forehead against my shoulder as she did so. I decided not to mind that her tears were running freely down my t-shirt and arm. This girl was going through some emotional trauma. Feelings that I hadn't got to feel for a long time.

"Hope, you're always the one comforting me," she shifted herself into another position before groaning. "Oh, your blouse! I'm so sorry..."

"It's okay. I was thinking this blouse was a bit too old for work anyway," I lied and Penny simply looked apologetic before grabbing some tissue from her nightstand.

"You're like a big sister to me," she laughed hollowly while she blew her nose. "I really would be an utter mess without you."

"Hey, we live in the same apartment. I wouldn't want a flood in here," I replied lightly and she finally gave me a smile. I guess I played the role of big sister quite well, even though I never had any siblings. "Come on, I'll make you breakfast before I head off to the Dome."

She nodded with much more enthusiasm than before, making me smile ever so slightly. I didn't notice Penelope's clear eyes fixing themselves carefully on me, but when I made the move to get up from her mattress, she gently grabbed my wrist and pulled me back. I turned to look at her questioningly and she simply looked back at me with equal curiousity.

"You know Hope, you can smile you know."

"Pardon?" I blinked back at her in surprise. I wasn't expecting her to say something quite out of the blue as that.

She shrugged and finally shifted her gaze to her toes which were painted a bright ruby red. Wiggling them ever so slightly, she continued, "You just always seem so...distant and uptight about things. I rarely see you smile or just take a holiday off work, and when you almost seem like you're going to crack a smile, you hold back," she paused and turned to look at me steadily again. I felt like she was trying to look into me and it made me feel vulnerable. I quickly looked away, but not before she repeated, "You can smile. It's not a sin or something."

I laughed and she held up a hand in front of me. "See, you always laugh like that. It doesn't even sound like a laugh," she insisted. "Where's the emotion in it? Come on Hope, I know you're human."

Something in my head told me that I had to get out of this room fast and my feet instantly sprang up. I ran a hand through my straight blonde hair and shifted my silver-rimmed glasses off the bridge of my nose. "Right, after you get yourself cleaned up breakfast will be on the table. I'll see you around," was my brief good-bye and I quickly darted from the room as fast as a Firebolt.

I heard one loud distant shriek coming from Penelope's room when I stepped foot into the kitchen. I knew she hated it when I ran from her, especially when she tried to pry into my thoughts and everything that ran inside my head. I knew she wanted to know me. Really know me . But I couldn't -and- wouldn't let anyone in. I knew what would happen if I would. When you let trust and friendship and all that crap mingle into one.

It just didn't work and you'd end up going through hell.

"Have you ever fallen in love?"

I jumped slightly when Penny poked her head into the kitchen, her face washed and free of black blotches. I was currently putting a mug away and I stopped short in doing so when her question finally sunk in. I felt her bare feet pad across the tiled floor towards me and stop abruptly beside me. She propped her elbows on the counter and turned towards me. "Well?"

"Well what?" I mumbled quickly and moved off towards the fridge to pull out two eggs.

"Have you? You know, fallen in love...felt love? That feeling that makes you feel as if you're walking on clouds and falling through them and flying up to walk on them all over again?" She waved her arms around for emphasis and I couldn't help but snort. She frowned. "I'm serious! You're twenty-one and I won't believe you if you tell me you've never fallen in love before!"

I cracked an egg rather forcefully, the yolk breaking as it landed in the pan. "Love? Maybe. Maybe I have fallen in love before, maybe I've felt it before. So what?"

"So what? So tell me about it!" Penny said with a roll of her eyes. "You know all about my messed up love life and I don't know anything about your's. Don't you see something wrong with that?"

"Not at all," I relied shortly and cracked the second egg more elegantly this time.

"Hope! Peh-leeese," she whined.

I sighed. When Penelope started whining there would be no end to it until she got what she wanted. She was very much like the annoying little sister, except you would think she would be less annoying as she was quite old to have a child's tantrum. "Okay. Yes, I've fallen in love before. But honestly Penny, do you really think the word forever has anything to do with love?"

"...Um, yeah?" Penny looked at me as if I had grown another head. "Have you not read any sappy romance novels in your life? Or watched some romantic happily-ever-after movie?"

"Yeah. I didn't like Cinderella. The singing rats spooked me out."

"No! Well, kinda that, but I mean...you know--," she waved her hand a bit. "Forever always comes with the word love! Well, when you find the right one that is...you know, soul mate and all. I guess I haven't yet, but when I do, I know it'll be a forever kind of thing." She glanced at me as if expecting me to agree with a huge nod.

I simply poked the eggs and absentmindedly let go of the pan-handle to wipe off the oil that had gotten on my fingers. How utterly innocent Penelope still was. She honestly believed in fairy-tale love. She honestly believed in finding that perfect person out there that would be the almighty one. And once you did that, boom! You'd be in love like there was no tomorrow and it would never, ever fade into nothingness.

I heard the distant sizzling of oil on the pan but my feet didn't carry me back towards it. I couldn't stop thinking. Thinking about how absurd the concept of 'loving someone forever' was. Sure, you'd think you'd love forever when you found that person that made your insides squeeze in that wonderful way. You'd promise to live together happily and have a bunch of children and name them after your great grandparents.

But I once promised him that I would never leave him. I once promised him that I would be the one to make him breakfast every morning. I would be the one that gave him cuddles and kisses when he felt the least bit unloved. I would be the one by his side beyond our present lives. A year, a decade, a century-- time would not pull us apart. This he promised me. And this I promised in return.

And yet, I left him.

"Hope!" a persistent hiss woke me out of my reverie. "The eggs are getting really..."

Eggs? I instantly jumped back towards the pan and groaned. The yolk was utterly rock hard along with the egg white. I picked up the pan and dumped the contents into the garbage and made my way towards the fridge again but Penny stopped me. She looked at me worriedly. "You really seemed gone then. What's on your mind?"

"Nothing," was my instant reply. "Sorry about breakfast. I'll quickly fry another one--"

"No, you don't have to. You're going to be late for work and I can just go grab something later," she trailed off and looked at me uncertainly. "You were thinking about him weren't you?"

"Him? What him? There's no him," I answered, rather flustered that I had so stupidly been caught in such deep thought. By persistent Penelope no less.

"Right," Penelope nodded slowly, looking awfully unconvinced. "If you feel like talking--"

She was interrupted by a brief scream from outside our door and an occasional banging. Both of us immediately crept towards our front door, wondering if it could be a burglar in action during bright morning...in an apartment building too. The thought seemed odd enough but we didn't let our guard drop. Penny reached out a tentative hand to turn the knob and I felt my right hand instinctively find its way towards the pockets of my jeans. But they were empty.

The knob turned, and Penelope swung the door open quickly.

We ducked almost instantly when a ball of some sort hurled into our apartment, our neighbour Mrs. Beaton sprawled in front of her door with her hair in disarray. She pointed numbly at the flying object and cried, "I thought we weren't allowed pets in this building! This is absolutely insane! A bird of all things!"

Penelope nodded and tried to open the door a bit wider, tempting the flying ball of fur to leave...but I found myself gently closing the door behind me, much to Penelope's confusion. The door clicked shut.

"Hope! We have a bird in our home. It's flying all over the place and you want to leave it in here?!"

I shook my head, a part of me wondering if I was still asleep in my room or maybe still at work editing some article for my boss. Maybe I had just fallen asleep and everything really wasn't happening. I mean, I was in the middle of the U.S.A., living an absolutely normal life with a nice teenage roommate and we got along quite well. Yes, I wasn't quite the happiest person alive but I managed.

But when this flying fur ball entered my sight, my heart had leapt up to my throat. A million possibilities were running through my head in quick pace. I was so lost in worry and thought that I finally snapped out of it when Penny tugged on me, something grasp tightly in her hand.

"Hope, look," she whispered excitedly. "That bird, -no-, it's an owl...it had this clutched to its leg. And look, it's like one of those olden day messenger birds like in the movies..."

I barely heard her awed voice. I barely heard anything. My eyes were fixed upon the creamy envelope clutched in Penelope's hand and the familiar neat printing on the front bearing one name that I thought I would not see ever again.

"But this bird isn't that smart is it?" Penny chuckled. "Delivered to the wrong place alright. Never heard of a H-e-r-m-i-o-n-e Granger before...that's one odd name too. How do you even pronounce it? Her...her...meh..."

I didn't stay to see if Penny could finally pronounce the name or not. Instead, I quickly snatched the envelope from her and ran.