I'm sitting here listening to your voice, but not listening to your words, remembering that summer: the summer holiday in second year, when you stayed at my house. You played doctors and nurses with me, bet you don't even remember. You were bored and giggly and I made you lie down, examined you, wanting to see what secret shades there might be to your skin, so different from mine. Skin all walnut cream and delicious honey, mine like milk, poured all over you: thought you'd taste so sweet, it was a shock to find you tasted just like me. Salt sweat on softness tipped with velvet circles the colour of my name, lavender brown. New tender hair as soft as kittens' ears and little breathy giggles. Better examine me here! you said, taking my hand..
And now here you are undressing in the same room as me, like you do every night, and I can't even look in case you catch me staring. I have to hide my face, pretend to be writing in this journal - not that you'd care if I wrote it all down, you'd never look for my secrets. Not worth your time to pry, because it's only me, isn't it? Your best friend - and you know everything about me. I'm the book you've already read. Nothing to learn here. So I sit, I scribble, I hide while you talk about boys, boys, boys and Hermione gets to speak my thoughts instead as she interrupts your monologue: "God, Parvati, don't you ever think about anything else?"
Things in the magical world change while you are not looking, and not always as you would like them to. It's hard to tell when the change took place, exactly. Maybe it was changing all along for me, growing with me all these years. Then came that day in Divination. Always we'd had the same omens, you and I, or very similar, but this time your tealeaves said Luck, and mine said Love. Oooh! you squealed as we giggled and wondered who. Walking round school half scared, half excited all day I watched people, waiting. Some of them watched me too, but nothing happened. Then, just before bedtime, I saw you.
You and that Ravenclaw boy. Kissing.
Oh I'd seen you kiss before, of course I had, but this time, your eyes were closed, and he was very gently kissing the side of your face, looking at you so tenderly. And my first thought was a hot anger, as if someone had stolen something from me. That honey cheek, shadowed where dark down forms at the corner of your jaw; that smooth caramel whorl of perfect ear with its tiny gleam of gold. Those funny little short hairs on the edge of your brow which you hate, and pluck, and they grow back within a day. The things I've seen all day every day, have sat next to for five years, my personal close-up view of you - and it came to me suddenly: I don't want anyone else to know you like I know you. But someday, someone probably will.
Like black freezing water choking me, heavy as Jupiter. Down-to-the-bone cold, cold like an ice planet, cold like alone. And then Padma came along, broke it up, you walked off giggling (people say you're alike but I could tell her from you in the dark any time) and my last thought as I walked up the stairs to the dormitory on my own was that Divination was rubbish, and those stupid tealeaves were wrong wrong wrong. But of course they were right. Soon you'll come and sit on my bed like you always do, and I'll close my book and give you all of my attention. Laughing in all the right places. Freezing still, not breathing when you lean your head on mine, not inhaling your skin, not feeling your heat, not giving anything away. And in this drawer beside the bed is every letter you ever sent: but of course you know this. Take it for granted. Isn't that what best friends are for?
And now here you are undressing in the same room as me, like you do every night, and I can't even look in case you catch me staring. I have to hide my face, pretend to be writing in this journal - not that you'd care if I wrote it all down, you'd never look for my secrets. Not worth your time to pry, because it's only me, isn't it? Your best friend - and you know everything about me. I'm the book you've already read. Nothing to learn here. So I sit, I scribble, I hide while you talk about boys, boys, boys and Hermione gets to speak my thoughts instead as she interrupts your monologue: "God, Parvati, don't you ever think about anything else?"
Things in the magical world change while you are not looking, and not always as you would like them to. It's hard to tell when the change took place, exactly. Maybe it was changing all along for me, growing with me all these years. Then came that day in Divination. Always we'd had the same omens, you and I, or very similar, but this time your tealeaves said Luck, and mine said Love. Oooh! you squealed as we giggled and wondered who. Walking round school half scared, half excited all day I watched people, waiting. Some of them watched me too, but nothing happened. Then, just before bedtime, I saw you.
You and that Ravenclaw boy. Kissing.
Oh I'd seen you kiss before, of course I had, but this time, your eyes were closed, and he was very gently kissing the side of your face, looking at you so tenderly. And my first thought was a hot anger, as if someone had stolen something from me. That honey cheek, shadowed where dark down forms at the corner of your jaw; that smooth caramel whorl of perfect ear with its tiny gleam of gold. Those funny little short hairs on the edge of your brow which you hate, and pluck, and they grow back within a day. The things I've seen all day every day, have sat next to for five years, my personal close-up view of you - and it came to me suddenly: I don't want anyone else to know you like I know you. But someday, someone probably will.
Like black freezing water choking me, heavy as Jupiter. Down-to-the-bone cold, cold like an ice planet, cold like alone. And then Padma came along, broke it up, you walked off giggling (people say you're alike but I could tell her from you in the dark any time) and my last thought as I walked up the stairs to the dormitory on my own was that Divination was rubbish, and those stupid tealeaves were wrong wrong wrong. But of course they were right. Soon you'll come and sit on my bed like you always do, and I'll close my book and give you all of my attention. Laughing in all the right places. Freezing still, not breathing when you lean your head on mine, not inhaling your skin, not feeling your heat, not giving anything away. And in this drawer beside the bed is every letter you ever sent: but of course you know this. Take it for granted. Isn't that what best friends are for?