Another one for Kitty East's 25 Challenge. This one isn't nearly as fun as the others, and is really just me doing some venting. Don't worry, I'll be back to sappy romance soon. Prompt: Liar Liar POV: first person, Lily
Some people call me crazy, but if you ask me that's just a cop-out. It's just so they can give me a word – a label – to explain who I am, what I do, and why everything about me is the way it is. People do that a lot actually – make up a new name for something that they don't understand. It's called the evolution of language and, ironically, it's probably one of the greatest things that mankind has ever achieved. Although, I will admit that it's difficult to point that out to a first year girl who's crying in the bathrooms because some Slytherin git called her a Mudblood.
"Don't worry," is all I can really say. "I know how it feels."
It turns out that doesn't help much, either.
"What do you know?" she asks desperately, her big, wide eyes looking up into mine. I guess I sort of understand where she's coming from.
On the surface, my life seems pretty good. I'm getting good marks, have good friends, and am sort of okay to look at. I've had my share of boyfriends, although some of them I definitely could have done without. But, all in all, I'm fine. Fine is good word to describe me. A better word than 'crazy', at least. Absolutely, one hundred percent fine. Below the surface though, you start to understand how unsatisfactory 'fine' can be.
Take my family for instance. They're fine. As long as fine means only just holding together. Tuney left a week before I came to school. She said she couldn't deal with living with such a freak anymore. Actually, she didn't say it at all. She left a note with that written on it. A piece of paper, lying at my place at the table. So that was fine.
There's more to it than all that, but I know for a fact that no one on earth would care to hear my sob, sad story. Bad things happen all the time, right? We learn to deal with them. And if we can't deal, we fade away, destroying ourselves. That's the power of humanity for you, I guess. Muggles and wizards, plumbers and aurors, squibs and death eaters – it doesn't matter who you are, all it really comes down to is what you are. And, more often than not, the answer to that is human.
I laugh at the girl, rolling my eyes.
"Believe me," I tell her. "I know."
Her eyes narrow. "Liar," she says.
Because, of course, when you're there on the bathroom floor, your make up all smudged because of the tears, and the most terrible thoughts you've ever conjured running through your head, you won't believe what the stranger girl without the smudged make up says to you. I know I wouldn't. When you're down there, a product of the self-destructiveness of the human mind, evidence of the achievement of evolution of language, you're not thinking about how a person's mind can destroy them or about how it's actually a good thing that new words are being made up to describe new things. Which is fair enough, I guess, seeing as you definitely have other things on your mind.
I stand up, and give her one last sympathetic smile. Clearly, she doesn't want me there if I'm not going to be sympathetic. No one wants empathy anymore, these days it's all about your own experience being the worst ever: having been dealt the cruellest insult, being cursed with the nastiest spell, getting given the most homework. Extremities and exaggeration are all in this season. They always have been.
And that is precisely why 'fine' is the biggest lie I've ever told. Maybe 'crazy' is a better word.