JK's characters- well, one of them. If the idea of two girls loving each other grosses you out, then I think you're silly and you know where the Back button is. And, yeah, try to guess who it is.
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She kissed me the first time- I just wanted you to know that. Gripping my back with her bitten-down nails, savage, that left bruises. Not that I was complaining necessarily; I was a thrill-seeker back then and I'm sure she'd tell you I haven't changed at all since that first day.
She was top of the class, kind of pretty in a vague way, pureblood. Dunno what she was on about but she had tons of nervous habits. Her lips were raw and tender and her hair fell over her face and covered everything she was.
I guess it was a challenge for me in the beginning. I was out to everyone I had reason to tell and no one minded; I was class clown, no threat. My friends were jealous of me, instant makeovers and I could always crack them up. I guess I was never much more than a novelty to them but I didn't think of it that way and if I had I wouldn't have minded. Much. I was never alone, it just didn't happen. I always had someone to talk to.
Her, though-- that's a different story and one I never fully understood. She wasn't popular, supposedly, whereas I was, supposedly, but she was the one everyone went to when they had a problem or felt off. And me, I was just nothing much-- comic relief. But I was popular, supposedly. But I'm not good at understanding girls and boys don't interest me enough to try my hand at figuring them out. So that can remain a mystery.
What's not a mystery is what it meant when I first set my sights on her-- dawn in the library where I was going to cram for some test we had in a few hours. She was there, and she looked sad, and I felt sorry. She seemed sweet enough and I was on a sugar high from Chocolate Frogs and Sugar Quills I'd eaten with a friend of mine (us in the common room, me goofing, her snickering, our raucous laughter echoing past midnight till she reminded me to study). They made me cocky (more so than usual) and she was pretty in the morning light. Made a right spectacle of myself, I'm sure, asked what she was reading (Herbology text), how long she'd been at it (all night), "Well, aren't you tired?" I asked, and handed her the one last Frog. That's what you do for girls, right? I persuaded her to go to bed and was walking her to her common room when she just kissed me, like that. I've described it, you'll remember, and I'd only copied off her tests and not imagined she would taste that ripe and sour and not what I expected. My back against the wall and I had no idea what was happening, no, not a bit. She'd looked so innocent and I was full of sugared brashness, thinking I could take this girl with brown hair that shone gold in sunlight, and now she was taking me. "Oh shit," I said when she pulled away, softly, and she looked so driven. Hungry. She seemed awfully serious and she just went on walking, leaving me drained and breathless. Needless to say, I failed the test.
The next time I saw her was in the halls, 'cos we were in different houses. Besides I was taking as few N.E.W.T.s as possible whereas she was taking everything and I didn't know why. My friends thought I was joking when I lumbered over, calling her name. She peered at me from underneath her hair, set her teeth and ignored my voice until I tucked her hair behind her ear and I could see her eyes then. She smiled, blink-and-you'll-miss-it. My heart stopped. "Meet me at Hogsmeade?" I asked. "On Wednesday."
"All right," she said. I walked back to my gawking friends, who seemed to think I'd done it for their benefit. My heart began again and I was disappointed, as I'd liked the quiet.
It was in Hogsmeade that she learned to talk. I found her and tugged her along by her sleeve, asking her things on the way. She had two brothers, and two parents. When she grew up she wanted to be a Healer. She went on and on about this, about how much she wanted to help people, and it was really quite cliched but, with her, it felt new. We got where I was leading her, an empty lot, so she kissed me and cut herself off in midsentence.
She wouldn't give me the Ravenclaw password because I wasn't trustworthy, so I told her ours, and she would slip into the common room unnoticed and we'd go up to my dormitory if no one else was there. Eventually she started asking me things too, but all my answers were less passionate. Like: ""What do you want to be when you grow up?" "An Auror." "Why?" "My father used to be one. It seems nice." "That's not a reason." "Sorry." It seemed to make her sad that she could be so tense, so intense, and I stayed whimsical and mischievous. I couldn't help it though 'cos I was too mercurial. I suppose it was some kind of release, I mean I'd never cared much about anything and in a way she was the only thing that made me feel alive.
And it was intoxicating really, in a roundabout way. I ended up admitting she was my first kiss, even counting childhood. I thought she'd be surprised as I had a habit of acting like I'd bedded every girl in our year, but she saw through my without even trying. Through everyone's.
I had this friend, a quick and stocky Hufflepuff with long dark hair and blue eyes. We'd flood the toilets in his bathroom and he thought it was so cool that I could go in, no one ever found out it was me. He didn't seem to get much sleep and then one afternoon I saw them outside, talking; he looked limp as yarn and she was nodding, coaxing. "Hey, thanks," he told her once he had, then leapt up when he saw me coming and we planted Dungbombs in the empty classes till night fell.
I asked her what was wrong with him and she said his brother was dying, poisoned, nothing they could do. "He never told me that," I said.
"How could he not?" she asked. "Aren't you friends?"
"I don't know," I said. That wasn't how it worked for me and never had been. Everything about her was so deep and to the point- her kisses, her relationships. I just had cronies and companions, nothing big. Compared to her my world felt featherlight, unreal and frail. So that was how I kissed her, and she didn't seem to mind.
My grades improved 'cos she was always making me study. She wasn't hard to distract and we usually got some other stuff in during tutoring sessions, but I did learn. I kind of liked the buzz I got from getting O instead of E and A, my usuals, and disappointment when my grade was not that high. I wasn't used to having something matter to me; it refreshed me, kind of.
She didn't seem to like her family much. They sent her money presents with no note unless her grades were perfect, then scribbled a few lines of praise. Once my dad was taking me out of school to walk around in Muggle London, which he said was prime, and I asked her to come along. She seemed a little weirded out by him- he hugged me and we joked the whole way back. (She was crap on a broomstick, I swear.) I just don't know. Once we were there, though, settled in our flat (sharing a bed), she seemed to loosen up. My mum liked her, which might be what did it. It was astonishing to watch her giggle, snort, neglect her homework. And then she'd look up, I'd be staring at her, she'd raise an eyebrow and I'd blush. Which I did not do, normally. She liked that.
"You're very lucky," she told me that night. Despite her newfound zen she remained bound to codes of childhood, elaborate rituals. She'd take the blankets and sheets and wind them around herself, cocoonlike, wrapped around her eyes and head. I slept deep but restless, rolling around and kicking off my covers. She didn't like this and I'd wake the next morning with burises I hadn't had the night before, when she'd grown tired of my disturbances.
"I am? Why?"
"Your family and everything. Your dad. It must be nice."
"Mm, yeah."
"You're not listening."
"Yeah I am. You think I'm lucky."
"No, you're not listening."
The first day she didn't like the Muggles much, but Saturday was better. We were in a shop and I kept making fun of them, going in multiple times, different guises and she laughed. But eventually she though I was being mean, steered me kind of roughly into a bookstore where she presented me with several self-help books, completely stern except for her eyes, which were amused. It was so cute. I put them all back in the bookcase, as I did leaning close to her ear so I could say
"I love you,"
quietly, and without anyone hearing. I don't know why I expected her to say something back back, but she didn't so it probably never mattered anyway was just me being dumb. That night way past one, when my parents were asleep, I woke up because she was crying in my ear. "Hey, shh," I mumbled incoherently, still half asleep.
"Leave me alone," she said.
I woke up more because she seemed so lost. "What's the matter, love?"
"Tt's just Danny, I suppose. I mean what's he going to do? His family? He's their light.."
"What?"
"You know, his brother..."
"Oh, right. How'd you think of him?"
"I don't know. It's not fair. ing hell, my parents are going to kill me."
I'd only heard her swear once before, when she got a P on some assignment. She went insane, her nails and mouth were bloody, said she might , but then she was okay and seemed to forget all about it. "Why, what'd you do?" I asked.
"You know- this, with you. They'd kill me if I told them, but I won't of course. I'm just afraid they'll find out somehow."
Their homophobia was less surprising than her acknowledgment that we were something more than friends. Physically, we kissed and groped; verbally, she nagged and tutored me, and she pretended not to know about the former.
"They won't find out," I said, trying to be reassuring.
"I suppose so." She slipped her hand down my pajama bottoms which she'd never done before, but it wasn't particularly shocking 'cos she usually initiated things and was always the one to move it to the next level. I wasn't sure she'd let me touch her there, if I tried.
The next morning she seemed unaware that anything had happened and we were back in the land of an unspoken friendship with benifits. It was our last day there; we were leaving Monday so as not to miss classes. We shopped a bit, did a little homework and I met a dog with floppy brown ears and crystal eyes. I made cat and bird sounds at him, which he seemed to enjoy but I knew it was annoying her so I stopped sooner than I would've otherwise.
Night fell early or maybe I just thought it did. We went on walking alone and everything I said made her attack me. So I apologized, but she didn't like that either. Then she kissed me in an alley, much to my surprise as people were nearby. We could've been seen and she was so careful to avoid that normally. We went back onto the sidewalk and I tried to hold her hadn but she didn't want that, and I asked her why. Probably that was my mistake. "You're such a jerk, you know that?"
"No," I said. "Why?"
She sighed. "Because you are. You don't understand other people at all."
"So?"
"I don't know," she said. She still seemed angry.
"So what's wrong with that?"
"So you never even try. You never try anything much."
"I'm okay where I am."
"No you're not. You can just do whatever you want, you don't have to worry about the consequences. You've never had to hide, or concentrate. Because tomorrow you'll be someone else."
"I'm trying, love."
"No you're not! You don't. You just let everything wash over you. You can escape yourself too easily. That's why you don't understand me and people like me, because you've never been held down."
"Whatever," I said, withdrawing from her.
She hit me, unexpectedly. I studied her through one eye as the other burned.
"Did that hurt?" she asked.
"Yes."
"Have you ever felt anything?"
"Are you okay?"
"Do you think I'm okay? But I'm better than you are. At least I know who I am and what I have to deal with. You're nothing. You're twelve different girls if you're alive at all, and I'm starting to doubt that."
"I know, love, but.."
"This isn't working. You do know that?"
"Yeah, I know." The only thing I really noticed was that she was saying this in public. Wasn't like her. Of course, neither was I. "But you admit there is something?"
"I suppose. But it just bounces off you."
"Sorry."
"I don't know. Maybe you can't help it. Goodbye." She turned to go back to my house, to pack her stuff up. I stood there, feeling bad for probably the first time in my life. Stuff had happened, it's just that I'd never noticed it. I jammed my hands in my pockets and wondered why I'd been born. I could not imagine how it would feel to have her violence, her fragility. I started walking home, too, slowly. I tried to tell myself I meant something, it wasn't all just fun and games. But I didn't know. Then I saw myself in a dark store window and it wasn't any of my usual faces. An ugly bruise was coming into being on my right cheekbone. I looked haunted, battered, or maybe that's just what I told myself. Maybe I could be someone new now, someone serious, intense. Isn't that what happens to girls who get hit?
I stared into my colorless reflection's eyes which seemed unbalanced by the mark. How very noir of me. I swallowed 'cos I wasn't walking anymore. I wondered just how much I was ready to change, even for myself. I shut my eyes and concentrated and when I looked again my face was plain and pale and I was me again, although it still felt tender to the touch.
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Reviews= fun for the whole family.
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She kissed me the first time- I just wanted you to know that. Gripping my back with her bitten-down nails, savage, that left bruises. Not that I was complaining necessarily; I was a thrill-seeker back then and I'm sure she'd tell you I haven't changed at all since that first day.
She was top of the class, kind of pretty in a vague way, pureblood. Dunno what she was on about but she had tons of nervous habits. Her lips were raw and tender and her hair fell over her face and covered everything she was.
I guess it was a challenge for me in the beginning. I was out to everyone I had reason to tell and no one minded; I was class clown, no threat. My friends were jealous of me, instant makeovers and I could always crack them up. I guess I was never much more than a novelty to them but I didn't think of it that way and if I had I wouldn't have minded. Much. I was never alone, it just didn't happen. I always had someone to talk to.
Her, though-- that's a different story and one I never fully understood. She wasn't popular, supposedly, whereas I was, supposedly, but she was the one everyone went to when they had a problem or felt off. And me, I was just nothing much-- comic relief. But I was popular, supposedly. But I'm not good at understanding girls and boys don't interest me enough to try my hand at figuring them out. So that can remain a mystery.
What's not a mystery is what it meant when I first set my sights on her-- dawn in the library where I was going to cram for some test we had in a few hours. She was there, and she looked sad, and I felt sorry. She seemed sweet enough and I was on a sugar high from Chocolate Frogs and Sugar Quills I'd eaten with a friend of mine (us in the common room, me goofing, her snickering, our raucous laughter echoing past midnight till she reminded me to study). They made me cocky (more so than usual) and she was pretty in the morning light. Made a right spectacle of myself, I'm sure, asked what she was reading (Herbology text), how long she'd been at it (all night), "Well, aren't you tired?" I asked, and handed her the one last Frog. That's what you do for girls, right? I persuaded her to go to bed and was walking her to her common room when she just kissed me, like that. I've described it, you'll remember, and I'd only copied off her tests and not imagined she would taste that ripe and sour and not what I expected. My back against the wall and I had no idea what was happening, no, not a bit. She'd looked so innocent and I was full of sugared brashness, thinking I could take this girl with brown hair that shone gold in sunlight, and now she was taking me. "Oh shit," I said when she pulled away, softly, and she looked so driven. Hungry. She seemed awfully serious and she just went on walking, leaving me drained and breathless. Needless to say, I failed the test.
The next time I saw her was in the halls, 'cos we were in different houses. Besides I was taking as few N.E.W.T.s as possible whereas she was taking everything and I didn't know why. My friends thought I was joking when I lumbered over, calling her name. She peered at me from underneath her hair, set her teeth and ignored my voice until I tucked her hair behind her ear and I could see her eyes then. She smiled, blink-and-you'll-miss-it. My heart stopped. "Meet me at Hogsmeade?" I asked. "On Wednesday."
"All right," she said. I walked back to my gawking friends, who seemed to think I'd done it for their benefit. My heart began again and I was disappointed, as I'd liked the quiet.
It was in Hogsmeade that she learned to talk. I found her and tugged her along by her sleeve, asking her things on the way. She had two brothers, and two parents. When she grew up she wanted to be a Healer. She went on and on about this, about how much she wanted to help people, and it was really quite cliched but, with her, it felt new. We got where I was leading her, an empty lot, so she kissed me and cut herself off in midsentence.
She wouldn't give me the Ravenclaw password because I wasn't trustworthy, so I told her ours, and she would slip into the common room unnoticed and we'd go up to my dormitory if no one else was there. Eventually she started asking me things too, but all my answers were less passionate. Like: ""What do you want to be when you grow up?" "An Auror." "Why?" "My father used to be one. It seems nice." "That's not a reason." "Sorry." It seemed to make her sad that she could be so tense, so intense, and I stayed whimsical and mischievous. I couldn't help it though 'cos I was too mercurial. I suppose it was some kind of release, I mean I'd never cared much about anything and in a way she was the only thing that made me feel alive.
And it was intoxicating really, in a roundabout way. I ended up admitting she was my first kiss, even counting childhood. I thought she'd be surprised as I had a habit of acting like I'd bedded every girl in our year, but she saw through my without even trying. Through everyone's.
I had this friend, a quick and stocky Hufflepuff with long dark hair and blue eyes. We'd flood the toilets in his bathroom and he thought it was so cool that I could go in, no one ever found out it was me. He didn't seem to get much sleep and then one afternoon I saw them outside, talking; he looked limp as yarn and she was nodding, coaxing. "Hey, thanks," he told her once he had, then leapt up when he saw me coming and we planted Dungbombs in the empty classes till night fell.
I asked her what was wrong with him and she said his brother was dying, poisoned, nothing they could do. "He never told me that," I said.
"How could he not?" she asked. "Aren't you friends?"
"I don't know," I said. That wasn't how it worked for me and never had been. Everything about her was so deep and to the point- her kisses, her relationships. I just had cronies and companions, nothing big. Compared to her my world felt featherlight, unreal and frail. So that was how I kissed her, and she didn't seem to mind.
My grades improved 'cos she was always making me study. She wasn't hard to distract and we usually got some other stuff in during tutoring sessions, but I did learn. I kind of liked the buzz I got from getting O instead of E and A, my usuals, and disappointment when my grade was not that high. I wasn't used to having something matter to me; it refreshed me, kind of.
She didn't seem to like her family much. They sent her money presents with no note unless her grades were perfect, then scribbled a few lines of praise. Once my dad was taking me out of school to walk around in Muggle London, which he said was prime, and I asked her to come along. She seemed a little weirded out by him- he hugged me and we joked the whole way back. (She was crap on a broomstick, I swear.) I just don't know. Once we were there, though, settled in our flat (sharing a bed), she seemed to loosen up. My mum liked her, which might be what did it. It was astonishing to watch her giggle, snort, neglect her homework. And then she'd look up, I'd be staring at her, she'd raise an eyebrow and I'd blush. Which I did not do, normally. She liked that.
"You're very lucky," she told me that night. Despite her newfound zen she remained bound to codes of childhood, elaborate rituals. She'd take the blankets and sheets and wind them around herself, cocoonlike, wrapped around her eyes and head. I slept deep but restless, rolling around and kicking off my covers. She didn't like this and I'd wake the next morning with burises I hadn't had the night before, when she'd grown tired of my disturbances.
"I am? Why?"
"Your family and everything. Your dad. It must be nice."
"Mm, yeah."
"You're not listening."
"Yeah I am. You think I'm lucky."
"No, you're not listening."
The first day she didn't like the Muggles much, but Saturday was better. We were in a shop and I kept making fun of them, going in multiple times, different guises and she laughed. But eventually she though I was being mean, steered me kind of roughly into a bookstore where she presented me with several self-help books, completely stern except for her eyes, which were amused. It was so cute. I put them all back in the bookcase, as I did leaning close to her ear so I could say
"I love you,"
quietly, and without anyone hearing. I don't know why I expected her to say something back back, but she didn't so it probably never mattered anyway was just me being dumb. That night way past one, when my parents were asleep, I woke up because she was crying in my ear. "Hey, shh," I mumbled incoherently, still half asleep.
"Leave me alone," she said.
I woke up more because she seemed so lost. "What's the matter, love?"
"Tt's just Danny, I suppose. I mean what's he going to do? His family? He's their light.."
"What?"
"You know, his brother..."
"Oh, right. How'd you think of him?"
"I don't know. It's not fair. ing hell, my parents are going to kill me."
I'd only heard her swear once before, when she got a P on some assignment. She went insane, her nails and mouth were bloody, said she might , but then she was okay and seemed to forget all about it. "Why, what'd you do?" I asked.
"You know- this, with you. They'd kill me if I told them, but I won't of course. I'm just afraid they'll find out somehow."
Their homophobia was less surprising than her acknowledgment that we were something more than friends. Physically, we kissed and groped; verbally, she nagged and tutored me, and she pretended not to know about the former.
"They won't find out," I said, trying to be reassuring.
"I suppose so." She slipped her hand down my pajama bottoms which she'd never done before, but it wasn't particularly shocking 'cos she usually initiated things and was always the one to move it to the next level. I wasn't sure she'd let me touch her there, if I tried.
The next morning she seemed unaware that anything had happened and we were back in the land of an unspoken friendship with benifits. It was our last day there; we were leaving Monday so as not to miss classes. We shopped a bit, did a little homework and I met a dog with floppy brown ears and crystal eyes. I made cat and bird sounds at him, which he seemed to enjoy but I knew it was annoying her so I stopped sooner than I would've otherwise.
Night fell early or maybe I just thought it did. We went on walking alone and everything I said made her attack me. So I apologized, but she didn't like that either. Then she kissed me in an alley, much to my surprise as people were nearby. We could've been seen and she was so careful to avoid that normally. We went back onto the sidewalk and I tried to hold her hadn but she didn't want that, and I asked her why. Probably that was my mistake. "You're such a jerk, you know that?"
"No," I said. "Why?"
She sighed. "Because you are. You don't understand other people at all."
"So?"
"I don't know," she said. She still seemed angry.
"So what's wrong with that?"
"So you never even try. You never try anything much."
"I'm okay where I am."
"No you're not. You can just do whatever you want, you don't have to worry about the consequences. You've never had to hide, or concentrate. Because tomorrow you'll be someone else."
"I'm trying, love."
"No you're not! You don't. You just let everything wash over you. You can escape yourself too easily. That's why you don't understand me and people like me, because you've never been held down."
"Whatever," I said, withdrawing from her.
She hit me, unexpectedly. I studied her through one eye as the other burned.
"Did that hurt?" she asked.
"Yes."
"Have you ever felt anything?"
"Are you okay?"
"Do you think I'm okay? But I'm better than you are. At least I know who I am and what I have to deal with. You're nothing. You're twelve different girls if you're alive at all, and I'm starting to doubt that."
"I know, love, but.."
"This isn't working. You do know that?"
"Yeah, I know." The only thing I really noticed was that she was saying this in public. Wasn't like her. Of course, neither was I. "But you admit there is something?"
"I suppose. But it just bounces off you."
"Sorry."
"I don't know. Maybe you can't help it. Goodbye." She turned to go back to my house, to pack her stuff up. I stood there, feeling bad for probably the first time in my life. Stuff had happened, it's just that I'd never noticed it. I jammed my hands in my pockets and wondered why I'd been born. I could not imagine how it would feel to have her violence, her fragility. I started walking home, too, slowly. I tried to tell myself I meant something, it wasn't all just fun and games. But I didn't know. Then I saw myself in a dark store window and it wasn't any of my usual faces. An ugly bruise was coming into being on my right cheekbone. I looked haunted, battered, or maybe that's just what I told myself. Maybe I could be someone new now, someone serious, intense. Isn't that what happens to girls who get hit?
I stared into my colorless reflection's eyes which seemed unbalanced by the mark. How very noir of me. I swallowed 'cos I wasn't walking anymore. I wondered just how much I was ready to change, even for myself. I shut my eyes and concentrated and when I looked again my face was plain and pale and I was me again, although it still felt tender to the touch.
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Reviews= fun for the whole family.