WINDFALL
My Confessions
By Godswake
*~*~*
Chapter four: Mea Culpa
Chapter song: Bad Habit, the Dresden Dolls
Disclaimer: Harry Potter's image and the story that came along with it strolled into JK Rowling's head, not mine. The day I think up something as brilliant, I'll write about it.
Three days, eleven hours, seventeen minutes and counting.
This is how long it had been since I'd cut.
I didn't know whether to be proud or not. I had stopped for a period, yes. I was healing. But that wasn't thanks to my own self-discipline or perseverance. No. It was all because of a boy. A silly boy who had made me promise something that hung over my head constantly- like my own shadow on the walls. I couldn't figure out why I had suddenly stopped. I only knew that any contemplation of renewing the morbid ritual would later make me feel a heavy stab of Catholic-like guilt. Mea culpa, mea culpa. It was worse than the will to pick up a new blade.
But it had only been three days.
I hadn't told Morgana about what happened in the tower with James. She had been working on her apprenticeship with Madame Pomfrey that night and still didn't even know that I ever left the common room. She probably would have taken it the wrong way anyway. What she didn't know couldn't hurt her, as the cliché saying went. So I supposed that what she did know would.
I was waiting for her just then. I had finished lessons about an hour ago and Morgana was due to be let out of the Hospital Wing just in time for dinner. I stood in the frame of the doorway, watching my lovely friend bustle around after the efficient school nurse, finishing up an afternoon's work and displaying a natural skill and ease in the trade. Morgana was to be a healer one day, and with Madame Pomfrey's blessing. We would live together and support one another… though, while my best friend's future was already beginning to take shape, mine was not even being considered. I had no idea what career path I would follow, but what normal thirteen-year-old did? Perhaps it was my carpe diem philosophy that was to blame, but at that point in my youth, the period of time from then to when I would live independently seemed interminable.
I observed as Morgan gathered up her things and received an affectionate squeeze from the young resident nurse.
"It's always wonderful to have you help me out in here, Morgana. I look forward to Thursday."
"As do I!" she replied gracefully. That was another part of Morgana's charm. She could say things like `as do I' at age thirteen and not sound like a prick.
She strode confidently to meet me with her bag swung over her shoulder.
"Ready?" she asked.
"Yep. Been ready." We started to make our way down to the Great Hall for dinner.
"I'm sorry about that. Lindsey Garret, you know, that pretty 6th year with the curly brown hair?"
"I think so, yeah. What about her?"
"She came in about a half an hour ago with bruises and cuts all over he body. She was too dazed to tell what happened, and Madame Pomfrey had me sit with her."
The image of a pretty girl staggering into the hospital wing all covered with sores was disturbing.
"That's… strange."
"Yeah, I know. Pomfrey still can't figure what or who did it, but I have no doubt that she'll be able to sort it out. The woman is really amazing."
"I've heard." My tone was flat and glum. Sometimes I couldn't help sounding less than interested when others were being praised. I was a teenager, after all. Though still a new one.
"How was divination?" She asked me. The brilliant girl had decided to swap the class for a chance to volunteer in the Hospital Wing.
"Well, I have absolutely no gift for it. I had this idea in my head before I decided I wanted to take the class that I would walk in, and the professor would jump up and rave about my aura, and I would be predicting things, amazing things, left and right from then on. But I cant even make out shapes in a lump of tea leaves."
"I don't think that really takes away from your own personal merit. Tea leaves are a shady subject. Right up there with puppets and mayonnaise."
"Sorry, puppets and mayonnaise?"
"You heard me."
"But what do tea leaves have to do with puppets and mayonnaise?"
"They're creepy."
"Creepy?"
"Puppets cant move their eyeballs, but they can speak. Mayonnaise is lumpy and it makes me cringe."
We arrived at our destination and took our usual seats at the Gryffindor table, slightly apart from the rest of our peers. "I really don't know how to respond to that, Morgana."
My friend said nothing, but grinned wryly, like she knew a secret, and shoveled a mound of mashed potatoes into her mouth.
We had been in a near state of contented silence for a few minutes; the breaks in conversation only pierced by the occasional light-hearted question or comment. How was your day. Pass the sprouts. Did you do your arithmancy homework. I have to pee. Etc. The monotony was broken when James, Sirius and Remus approached us. Peter remained seated with his head bowed at the other end of the table.
"Hello Morgana."
"Sirius."
I giggled. They were both suffering from enormous crushes. I thought they fit.
"What do you all want?" This came from my lips.
Remus answered my question.
"James had us come over here with him."
"For moral support," added Sirius.
"-He said he wanted to check in on you- was that it, James?"
"Yeah, that was it." He looked uncomfortable. "Alright, Lily?"
"So far, yeah. Thanks." I looked up at him. The Great Hall was melting away from behind his frame. He had hazel eyes.
"Oh, James. Look at the way Morgana eats her peas. It makes me wanna touch myself."
"Inappropriate, Padfoot!" Remus gave Sirius a threatening glare that he cowered under.
"Sorry," he said sheepishly. He stole a wink at Morgana before walking away, and I saw the Hall fall back into focus and I started laughing. They would make a cute couple, really.
"See you in herbology tomorrow then, you two?"
"Yeah, see you," Morgana spoke for me. I had lost my breath for a minute.
When Remus and James had also found their seats, I stated the obvious.
"He likes you."
Morgan put down her fork and began gathering her things. "It's not mutual." She said coldly. She stood up. I did the same.
"Morgan, what is it?"
I got no response, but proceeded to follow her, agitated, upstairs. It seemed to take days for us to reach the portrait hole, though Morgana nearly ran, and I followed closely in her wake. After climbing through, we were met by an empty common room.
"Morgana, what is it with you?" I pleaded.
She turned sharply. "What just happened downstairs, Lily?" She spoke softly, but I would have rather had her shout.
"What do you mean?" I spoke back just as quietly.
"James. James, Lily. Something's wrong. Something's wrong with you that I don't know about."
"Nothing's wrong, I-"
"So how do you explain what just happened? Why was James Potter concerned about you?"
"What, can't anyone be concerned for me?" I felt my temper rising in spite of myself.
"Not for no reason! And right now I'm concerned. You used to tell me things, Lily, and you don't anymore. It scares me."
I sighed. The only thought that blasted through me head was that, for awhile, I had forgotten that Morgana was my dearest, and only real, friend. I had to tell her. I felt myself pulling back my sleeves- and nearly keeling over at the sensation I felt as I did it. I was opening up- offering up my problems to the world. Anger, frustration, relief, disgust, regret, joy and ecstasy coursed through me. A throbbing wave of electricity. Of positive and negative energy all at once, both keeping my sleeves down and rolling them up for my friend to see what lay beneath. Morgana gasped.
"I did this," I sad. Methodically. Mechanically. Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa…
"What do you mean?" she was staring at my arms, looking numb and white as a Lily flower.
I walked closer to her, forearms outstretched and resembling the familiar stance taken by statuesque Virgin Marys. "You asked."
I saw Morgana's eyes finally leave my wounds and find their way to my green, empty ones.
"Why, Lily?"
I shrugged. I felt like being cruel. Like playing up my sickness. It was so easy.
"Why not?"
"But… you… you never told me."
"How could I?"
"You told James." Now Morgana was being cruel. I backed down. It was her turn.
"No. I tried to hide it. He saw."
"I cant believe you. You're awful."
"I'm awful?"
"Yes. You're awful because you're hurting and you didn't tell me. You confided in a stranger. I've lost your trust. Cover your arms, please, they're making me-"
"-Queasy?" I pulled down my sleeves.
"Mad."
I looked away. I began contemplating my retreat to bed. I wanted to hide under the covers for a while. I felt vulnerable.
"You know, Lily, if you didn't spend so much time dwelling on your depression, you wouldn't be depressed. You wouldn't do something like cut yourself for reassurance. It's so cliché, isn't it? The troubled, brilliant girl with an affinity for self-destruction. I feel so sorry for you. But I suppose you don't need me. You can figure this out on your own."
She turned and went back toward the portrait hole, resolute. But she spared me this before she crawled through the threshold: "Unless, of course, you want to call up your friend James Potter."
My new friend James.
There was nothing left to be said. I went to bed that night unsatisfied and incomplete.
_____
Whether my inner clock woke me late or early I was never curious enough to find out, but I was greeted the next morning by a sunrise and a dormitory devoid of any other thirteen-year-old Gryffindor girls. I got ready on my own time; slowly letting the previous day's events rolls over me like a quiet storm.
I was clam but my mind was brewing. Morgana hated me, but James was concerned. Had I lost one friend and gained another? I let the question trail off, and the reason why was obvious. I wasn't ready to hear the answer just yet.
That morning, I was spared having to exercise the practice of discretion with the lack of prying eyes in the dorm. I took advantage it, and made special care to cover my arms with make up rather than obtrusive bandages that screamed, "I slice up my own skin! Pity me!". I wore long sleeves under my robes. I knew if I did this, people would wonder. It was still warm outside, after all. But better they wondered than knew. I wished people would stop their wondering. If they did, maybe I would stop hurting. Maybe.
When I jab a sharpened object in
choirs of angels seem to sing
hymns of hate in memorandum
I chanced a glance in the mirror, and found myself apathetic to the sight before me. My green eyes seemed far away.
"Somebody fix me," I whispered out loud.
_____
Herbology would have been Hell if it hadn't been for Remus. I was beginning to really like him. He was so complex. Intelligent, but silly. Artistic but methodical. A grounded Dreamer. He was almost completely effeminate in manner and appearance. Something else about him, though- something less visible- was virile. The combination, however odd or mysterious, suited him. It made him even more intriguing. Tangibly so. He was easy to talk to, I think, because he was sad like me. And two sad people never failed to connect.
"We make good herbology partners, Lily."
"Do we, Remus?"
We poked and prodded at the plant we weren't supposed to be touching.
He laughed in a lovely way. "Oh yes, I think we do."
"God, will you look at this thing? What's it called again?"
"A leafdoll plant."
"It's squishy."
"It's fabulous."
It was my turn to laugh. "No, Remus, you're the fabulous one. I think its such a pity that all of our time together is spent pruning and poking odd leaves."
"Too true," he agreed.
"I blame it on the peculiar, time-consuming institution that adults like to call `education'."
"Now wait a minute," said Remus in a warning tome. He had adopted his `stern' facial expression, which, though it did make a body feel guilty, was sweet nonetheless. "Are you saying that education is a waste of time? Would you rather not be intelligent?"
"Intelligence cannot be taught, silly. I thought you knew that."
"No, it can't. You're right. But it can be enhanced. I know, because I am educated." He gave me a "holier than thou" nod, and I raised an eyebrow.
"Touché," I surrendered.
After turning his attention back to the front of the classroom where the herbology professor was busy instructing, poor Remus fell into a small fit of coughing. Though fleeting, this was horrible to witness; somehow he resembled a sick and weakened animal that caused those who witnessed it to feel the deepest, most awful pity. Those few seconds made my heart ache.
"Are you alright, Remus?" I put my hand on his back to comfort him. He was small and frail and I could feel the prickly bones in his spine.
He turned to me and attempted to convey health for my reassurance, but failed.
"Oh, I'm okay. I had something in my throat."
"You sounded pretty bad." I was not convinced. I was starting to notice how tired he looked.
"Don't be ridiculous, Lily. I'm fine." This statement, along with the lopsided smile that played around his lips, told me that this topic of conversation was to end here. I had enough tact to let it slide, but Remus floated in and out of my head that whole day.
_____
I had decided I didn't want to feel anymore.
I wanted to be fucking numb.
All my thirteen years, and I assume, in all the lives that I had lived before them, the ones that had slipped out of memory, were wasted. Gone. I was thirteen years old, so why wasn't I in love yet? Where had the angel gone that was to tell me I was a prophet- that I was the apocalypse? Was He lost? Had someone forgotten me?
I often got the urge to scream, or else to do something violent, but I always got myself to bottle it up. How would I explain to someone that I had thrown a chair because I wasn't all-powerful? That I had broken a vase because hardly anyone knew my name? I would be labeled a lunatic, and rightly so. I was completely mad inside, and no one knew it. A closet nutcase. How it hurt me.
But surely, one day the sky would open up. A supreme deity would descend upon the Earth and deliver the news of my absolute superiority to the rest of the human race, and of my mission to save life itself. Everyone would love me, and I would meet that person whose soul's very imprint was branded on mine like a memory. I would know what it was to be happy- not fleetingly, but forever.
I kept imagining this, and nothing came. I could not just accept reality. So I would just have to wander through life… dead. Feeling nothing. I would start that day. Morgana no longer needed me, after all. It would be easy to teach myself to just be. And to forget that I had ever had potential.
_____
I decided that I would put my method into practice in the common room. I had first wanted to stomp all over my inability to feel, to cut it open, but know I was embracing it- trying to remember it again. I needed to let this wash over me, so I sat by the window and looked out for a long time.
"Lily."
Lily. Lovely. I think that meant something to me once.
"Lily."
An urgent, passionate word. A sound…
"Lily? Are you all right?"
I came round. Furious at my weak mind for letting something real penetrate its surface, my eyes unclouded and James Potter was sitting across from me.
"Oh." My own voice sounded distant. "You."
He laughed. "Yes, me. I wanted to check in on you. I thought you might like to have a chat."
"A chat? Oh no, we can't have a chat."
"Why not?"
"I'm tying to… die."
"What? That doesn't make any sense."
Quiet.
"Lily, will you stop looking out the window? You're scaring me."
No clouds. Just a gray mist hovering. A gray mist…
"Lily!"
I saw a hand, his hand, touch me and turn my eyes to meet his brown, golden, hazel, gray blue gaze.
"I can't feel you," I said, dry. "I'm numb."
"Stop this, lily."
I saw another hand take hold of my face before I closed my eyes.
"I'm numb, I'm numb, I cant feel this. Numb. Your hands are too real. Get them off my face, I hate real things. Numb, I'm numb, I'm… oh my God. Oh God."
Numb people aren't supposed to cry.
"Shh. You'll be okay, Lily. You'll be happy. I'll help you get happy, I promise. Shh."
James held me, and didn't seem to mind that his collar and neck were soaked with tears. I liked that.
_____
"Ablutophobia- fear of bathing. Ha! Old Snivelous definitely suffers from that particular ailment."
"Arrhenphobia- fear of men. Understandable."
"Thaasophobia- fear of sitting. Now wouldn't that suck?"
"Yes, but wouldn't scolionophobia- fear of school- be awesome? `Um, excuse me teacher, I have to leave your class immediately. I suffer from scolionophobia.'"
"Ha! Definitely."
It was sunny, and one week following my embarrassing crumbling breakdown, I was sitting by the lake with James Potter under the willow tree of his choice and laughing at a book of phobias that I had brought from home. Somehow, it was therapy. It made me feel a little less nutty to know that there were people out there that actually had mental aversions to things like bald people, chins and peanut butter.
"Verbophobia- fear of words"
"Sesquipedalphobia- fear of long words. That's great. That's gotta be the longest word in this book."
"Fear of thinking. Peter Pettigrew comes to mind."
"Fear of constipation."
"Fear of knees."
"Fear of insanity. Fear of pain. I relate to the first, but not the latter. I like pain, sometimes. I'm sort of a masochist."
"I know that," said James.
"James, do you think I'm crazy?"
Hazel met green.
"I know you're not. You're more grounded than you think." His eyes shifted back down to the large volume before us. "Now here's one I don't understand at all. Philophobia."
"Fear of-?"
"- Fear of being in love. Can you imagine?"
An earnest smile spread across my face.
"No. No, for once, I really cant."
_____
Morgana had stayed true to her word, and had successfully ignored me for the past two weeks. I kept telling myself that she would come round. She wasn't as happy as she wanted me to think she was; hanging around with the other girls in our year and laughing a bit too loudly when I came close. No matter. James was doing a fair job of taking her place. My scars were healing, after all...I had not had the urge to hurt myself- given in to that will to self-destruct- in over two weeks. Two weeks. Two weeks, and now forever seemed a piece of cake.
I tried reflecting on why I had gone so suddenly from happy to sad. But I couldn't remember ever really being happy. Or if it had happened, it had been fleeting, and easy to forget. I had always been so easy to get depressed, and so difficult to pull myself from such a state and find elation once again. I didn't know what it was. What was wrong with me. And even though James had succeeded admirably of late in keeping me cheerful, the lack of Morgana in my life was, in truth, beginning to weigh me down.
I had been brooding once again in my grove, but needed to go back inside to reconcile things with Morgana, using whatever method I could. I would not back down till I had befriended her again. I was prepared to apologize to her, as well, and was quite sure that now she had had some time to cool down, she would accept such a gesture, and willingly too.
I had only taken a few steps outside my hiding place, when the world seemed to freeze and go dark. I had a moment to calculate my surroundings: they were falling and fading, dreamlike, all around me. My body went stiff, and whispers lulled me as everything went black. I wouldn't remember hitting the ground.
_____
Someone was cradling me.
A soft buzzing sound was in the air. I was more aware of my full weight than I had ever been, and I was heavy. And weak. My head was spinning and my skin stung. It was not a good pain. Still, I felt comforted, because someone was speaking softly in my ear, and I was being placed, ever so gently, on something soft.
The last thing I felt in the darkness was the cold on my face before I opened my eyes, at a loss as to where I was and how I'd got there.
"Oh, Lily!" I followed the trail of the graceful sound and found Morgana kneeling beside my hospital bed, holding and stroking my hand in an effort to comfort me.
"Morgana," my own voice croaked. "Aren't you… angry with me anymore?"
"No, darling, not in the least. I'm so sorry about that." A tear cascaded down her cheek, turning the mascara that she wore into a dark watercolor that painted the skin around her eyes.
"Morgana." I said. I was becoming more and more conscious with each moment that passed. "What's happened to me? Why do you look so afraid?"
"Because," and this time another voice came from the foot of my bed. "You, Lily, have been the second victim in group-motivated attacks on young muggle-born girls." Dumbledore stood with a concerned look etched in his wise face, granting the boy who stood beside him a brief look of pride. James.
"What?" was all I could get out.
The old man smiled sympathetically now. "This young man, James, found you lying unconscious on the ground around one of the more obscure borders of the forbidden Forest. We are lucky he did, and have much to thank him for. He carried all the way from that location to here, on this bed in the Hospital wing, where your friend Morgana and our dear Madame Pomfrey attended to you."
I suddenly became aware of the fact that my scarred arms were bare and exposed, and hurriedly pulled down my sleeves. I looked up, and made eye contact with James, who gave me an odd look, but said nothing. I hoped no one had noticed. I also found that my stomach was wrapped in thick gauze.
"What is this for?" I asked, touching the place I had been violated.
"There was something written on it," said Morgana, looking cautious.
"The word `mudblood' was scrawled across your abdomen in your own blood, as was the case with Miss Lindsey Garrett, the first victim, who lies beside you."
I looked over, and my sight revealed a beautiful girl, sleeping and weak, her long brown curls falling every which way about her. I did not know her personally, only by name, but at the sight of her, my heart swelled. I had never felt so much love for a person I had never met.
"Out of my way, all of you! This girl needs rest!" Madame Pomfrey bustled over to me and my visitors, making them scatter like crows. She began fluffing a new pillow for me as she turned to Morgan.
"Morgana, love, go and tend to young Lawrence McEvoy over there, will you? His wand's backfired again."
She squeezed my hand and left. Dumbledore and James reached the threshold. The headmaster walked through it, but James stopped, and looked at me for what felt like a lifetime before I closed my eyes and fell back into a deep sleep.
_____
I sat tapping my foot impatiently in out dorm room in the middle of the night. My release from the hospital wing about a week ago had stirred the school's interest in the previously non-existent me, and now I was being pointed at or whispered about whenever I walked up and down the corridors during the day. It made me passionately angry, and that night, I was trying to control an urge. One that had been hanging over my head for a month. Ever since I'd stopped cutting. I couldn't control it. I felt like a person on a diet, being taunted by visions of cupcakes and ice cream. Mt tormentor was not food, but a knife. Blades. Razors. My eyes kept darting longingly to the pair of handheld scissors on my nightstand.
After minutes of trying to suppress the need to sever my skin, I got up, picked up the scissors and made a beeline for the bathroom, where I quickly propped my leg up on the sink, forgetting to lock the door. I rolled up my pant leg. Surges of guilt tortured me. You promised James. You promised. It's your own fault you're so weak and stupid. Everything's your fault. Mea Culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa, mea…
"Lily, please don't do that." Morgana was standing in the doorway, pale and terrified.
I looked at her, and then back at the hand that held the pair of scissors. I jabbed them forcefully into my calf.
When I jab a sharpened object in
choirs of angels seem to sing
hymns of hate in memorandum
I threw my head back, exalted. The relief.
"But I have to, Morgan. I cant stop." I was laughing now.
"Oh, Lily."
Thin tears of blood flowed like a spring down my pale leg. Beauty.
"I'm so sorry Morgan. I think I have a problem."
-This chapter is for Dede. Because we both know how awful reality can be. -
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