Unwitting
Disclaimer: I am not J. K. Rowling, so it follows that none of the characters, themes or ideas from Harry Potter belong to me.
"Looking back upon the events of the past, it is those random, apparently insignificant instances in time that quietly shape our future, our actions… whilst we move through them, unwitting." AU. Pairing not explicitly mentioned (at least initially), though I wrote it with a specific pairing in mind :)
A/N: Instalment number four… the perspective is first person, from the POV of the main female protagonist. As I've said, this is my first ever fic, so if you could drop a review, I'd really, really appreciate it! Constructive criticism is well loved :)
It's funny how the mind works. It can create a feeling of denial so strong that it creates the illusion of a shifted reality. How does that saying go? "Thou doth protesteth too much." Entirely too much.
I stare out of my window, sitting curled up on my window sill like I do whenever I'm feeling contemplatively grey. You know, I was never one to let anything go. I've been a perseverant girl all my life, I fought to stay in my NEWT transfiguration class despite my abysmal lack of aptitude for the subject, I worked for the Head Girl badge that is currently pinned onto my maroon knit sweater, I worked to keep the peace between my sister and my parents when they argued about her hatred for my `abnormality'… I've worked to try to make myself a better person.
It's so hard for me to `give up' - those words are foreign and abhorrent to my vocabulary. And yet, now, it's the only thing left for me to do. The only option. The autumn wind is blowing in my face and I'm quite certain that the tip of my nose is red with numbness, and my face pale. I watch the richly vibrant autumn leaves, their lively colour belying the season they represent… and I connect it with my denial. They are but a shadow of life, despite their wayward dance.
I watch those leaves, hypnotised, and unwittingly, as though entering a pensieve, I travel back to another similar such day, so many years ago.
O O O O O
A young girl dances haphazardly amongst the flying autumn leaves, laughing delightedly as the wind plays with her streaming, wavy red hair. Her green eyes sparkle, and if one were pressed to use a word to describe her, it would speak of life. It's a habit of hers, a habit that she developed after her parents passed away during her first years at Hogwarts … dancing in the old park before heading back to the Orphanage every evening… a large drop of rain splatters onto her spinning head and she stops, taking in a comically deep breath and rubbing at her head bemusedly. She watches the lake ripple with raindrops, and sights a young boy skimming stones. His black hair is messy, his glasses glinting in the dying sunlight. They end up in the shelter of the same tree at the edge of the Forest, for the castle is too far away.
It's a curious age they're at… an age when everyone is `friend-able', when everyone is interesting, and the appraising judgement and prejudices that develop as we grow older are non-existent. They sit crouched together in companionable silence, sharing small talk as they watch the rain fall, sharing a squashed bar of Honeydukes' Finest Chocolate that the boy has chivalrously produced from his pocket. Later, as they trudge through the soggy grounds on their way back to the inviting warmth of the castle, the boy quietly slips a bright red-orange star-shaped leaf into her pocket, a small smile on his face as he watches her blowing red hair.
O O O O O
They become friends of sorts. They meet incidentally, and develop a natural camaraderie. Sometimes, she laughs so hard at his antics, that she can't breathe and her eyes stream with her mirth, whilst he sits beside her, dramatically thumping his fist on the table and guffawing loudly. On occasion, they steal off to the Kitchens, and make up interesting backstories about their Professors whilst eating hot chips with tangy tomato sauce and chocolate biscuits and donuts. When it rains, they can sometimes be seen sitting under their Tree, watching the raindrops hit the grounds and disrupt the lake's surface together.
One day, as she returns to the warmth of her dormitory, she admits to Mr. Melon, as she bids him goodnight, that she likes this boy. Mr. Melon nods sleepily, smiling an indulgent half smile as his eyes droop, his snowy white nightcap rising and falling with each sleepy breath.
O O O O O
Later that year, a public altercation with a saccharinely sweet girl, Sophia, changes the way things have come to be. After he hears Sophia's hysterical report, the young girl with the fiery, self-righteous temper becomes the predictable villain in his eyes… and he comforts the poor sweet other, who cried copious amounts of tears, and wiped them prettily with her embroidered white handkerchief. The next time the young girl heads to their Tree, settling down with a bundle of their favourite chocolate biscuits, freshly made from the Kitchens… and intending to explain her point-of view, she sadly notes that he doesn't appear.
She waits hopefully until the rain has stopped, until the sun goes down and it is almost too dark to see. Unceremoniously wiping tears of frustration from her eyes with the sleeves of her black school cloak, she tosses the uneaten biscuits as viciously as she can into the lake, and observes wryly as a great tentacle erupts from the surface and sinks them beneath the water. She never visits the Tree again, but gazes wistfully at it in passing as she trudges back and forth from her Care of Magical Creatures lessons.
Now, as she spins in the autumn wind, she habitually collects bright red-orange star-shaped leaves, tucking them into her shirt front pocket with care, and adds them to the growing collection in her desk drawer. It's a habit that she never quite grows out of. For years afterwards, she and the boy do not exchange a single word.
O O O O O
Until this year. We are Heads together, and I remember him chasing after me on the first day back.
"Hey!" he calls, and I know instinctively that it's directed as me. I bristle, and begin to run, my footsteps echoing dramatically against the cobble-stoned floors as I disappear down a corridor.
Later that day, I stand on the steps of the castle with the afternoon sun slanting across my face, laughing with Hestia about something or the other. I see him walking past us with his friends. By habit, we make eye contact, and I watch him impassively as he makes his way towards us. He greets me, and engages in small talk. My surprise renders my replies short, and they hold a suspicious air borne of my long-standing hatred of his impact on me. I watch his face whilst he talks, running a hand through his hair, and notice the louder, abrupt tone he uses… as though he's forcing the words out. If I didn't know better, I'd call it nervousness.
O O O O O
By chance, we're at the Portrait Hole at the same time one morning. He pokes me in the shoulder and greets me whilst I look up, surprised at the contact. I respond and want desperately to turn away, but an innate sense of politeness holds me back. I fall in step beside him as we make our way down to breakfast, my mind curiously hyperaware of the sounds of our echoing footsteps, and of his uncommon proximity. He cracks a joke of some sort, speaking at a speed which is incomprehensible to me first thing in the morning, but observing that old twinkle in his eyes, I smile vaguely back. On the stairs, I almost lose my balance and grab, in an unconscious act of self preservation, onto his forearm. I squeak in apology, my face reddening as he places his hand in a pocket, and utters not a word save a muttered goodbye as we go our separate ways.
O O O O O
We have Head duties to run together one evening, and the paperwork is due in to McGonagall by eight tomorrow morning. I rush into the Common Room, and scan it before my eyes rest upon a solitary figure, splayed out on a particularly favourite squashy couch of mine. The firelight flickers on his face, glinting off his glasses.
I whisper his name, unsure if he's awake, and announce my name to identify the speaker.
"Yeah, I know", he responds, matter-of-factly, his eyes half-opening as he peers up at me. For a person who I've barely spoken to or seen this year, and not spoken to for several years before that, I'm taken aback that he knows the sound of my voice whilst he's almost asleep. I falter, and I can feel my face colouring up over my own ridiculousness at paying heed to something so tiny… something that shouldn't be important.
His girlfriend calls him from across the room.
"- It doesn't matter", I finish, barely audible and laughing nervously, before rushing up the stairs to the Seventh Year Girls Dormitories without looking back.
O O O O O
That was yesterday. And today afternoon, I've decided that it's enough. It's gone too far… I cannot stand another being having so much influence upon me - and their not caring a whit… their being indifferent in return. It's humiliating, and it has to stop now. I've said this to myself so many times before. Sternly dictated to Mr. Melon (egged on by the dear's vigorous affirmative nods and punctuating foot-stamps) what a judgemental, presumptuous, arrogant, self-important twat he is. And to my recurrent horror, it doesn't seem to work. At all.
It begins to rain, and I resist the strong urge to run out as I usually do into the Hogwarts grounds, and let in drench me, chill me to the bone, so that I can only concentrate on the impact of the falling drops with my skin.
I have to accept that I care about someone who doesn't return the feeling… to see through the wall of denial that I've built up with my self-pride. I have to admit to myself that I want … to get to know James-bloody-Potter again, despite everything … no matter how pathetic and needy that is. And accept that the feeling's not returned, and that nothing is ever going to come of it. But even as I think that, my fingers reflexively touch the wood of my bed-side table.
It's the hormones, I think piteously, as I try to swallow against the threatening onslaught of salty tears. Sodding… hormones. Furious at myself, I rip open my drawer, and remove the carefully stored collection of autumn leaves that I've aggregated over the years… that I've charmed to stay their original colour. Ignoring Mr. Melon's "clang" of dismay, I impulsively throw them out my window, watching them plummet to the ground, disfigured, and smile in grim satisfaction. And then I finally let myself cry… over how pathetic and impulsive I am, and how frustrated and utterly helpless I feel.
I don't see Hestia as she creeps into our dormitory later that evening, carefully plucking off the edge of my scarf the original autumn leaf that was placed in my pocket so many years ago by a new acquaintance. It's the brightest one. I didn't see her sharing a wink with a relieved Mr. Melon as she places it carefully back into the drawer. She's called me crazy so many times, as she'd watch me hoard my treasures. I never told her why, but she accepted their curious significance to myself. I silently thanked her when I opened that drawer again a week later, regretting my impulsiveness and blowing out a breath of relief to see it still there. Serendipitously.
O O O O O
There was always a lingering sense of irrepressible, subconscious certainty that there was something there. Something in the recurring, unconscious eye contact, the fact that those eyes seem to only ever narrow in that way and hold that expression when glaring at me, that different nervous tone that I've never heard him use before… I smile humourlessly at the depth of my denial… my furious attempt to salvage my pride… and what mystifies me is that that certainty refuses to let go.
Graduation is fast coming upon us, and I sternly tell myself that it's time for me to move on. As I sit, eating my apricot jam toast in the secure confines of the Great Hall, watching my one real friend Hestia concentrate heavily as she quarters a blueberry muffin and dips each part in vanilla yoghurt before chewing it methodically - in that endearingly ridiculous way of hers… sharing a greeting with a cheerily waving Hagrid… passing a blushing little first year my pot of condiment … I genuinely smile for the first time this week. Time will go on, and life has to move on with it.
Some day, I hope, when I'm an old, old maid surrounded by multiple generations of kneazles, knitting Hestia's kids winter scarves from spirals of coloured smoke, I'll be able to reopen these memoirs and revisit them as fond memories. (And also, perhaps, laugh at the Drama Queen antics of my younger self.)
I carve out a reminder on the trunk of our Tree later that day, during a free period. And I charm it to stay there, because I want to remember. Always.
"Lily and James were here."
O O O O O
Please let me know what you think, I'm always looking to improve :)
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