In Five Words
I live in a world where I ought to know who I am.
Everyone else seems to know who I am. The Boy Who Lived, The Chosen One, the words go on and on and somehow never describe me. They leave me feeling empty. The truth is, I've never known. I'm kind of hard to pin down.
I remember when I applied to university at Bimblewort's Advanced School of Magick in London. There was a question on the application that read "Describe yourself in five words." Here were my five words: there is no fucking answer.
I wasn't accepted.
Later, I thought maybe I was defined by those around me. But those around me died. Lily, James, Sirius, Remus, Tonks, Fred, Dobby, Colin…without them, I am quite literally empty. A little shell with nothing to do. Now that I'd saved the wizarding world (and I was only seventeen at the time) I was faced with a whole lot of nothing. I had lived off of adrenaline and fear for the first seventeen years of my life. Then that was gone, and you can't quite beat that rush with anything else. It's the truth.
So then I decided if I really am defined by those around me, and I lived the first seventeen years of my life trying to save those around me, the five words on my application should have been: I am a people person. But I don't even know what that means.
I know what I am supposed to sound like. I am the boy who slept in a cupboard the first eleven years of his life. I am the boy who lived with an abusive aunt and uncle and a fat cousin. I am the boy who is courageous, loyal, dutiful, passionate, occasionally rash, but essentially good. I am the boy who broke the rules, but always to benefit the way of the Light. I am the boy who had two best friends, Ron and Hermione, and we were a perfect circle. But these words don't mean anything now. And maybe never did, even back then.
Ron and Hermione got married. We promised one another nothing would change; we would still be as close as ever, the three of us. Things change anyway, when two out of three friends start having sex together and making plans to get married. I was suddenly a third wheel. A wobbly third wheel. A third wheel that got stuck in a rut.
They didn't want to help me discover myself, when they were so interested in discovering one another. It wasn't that they were unkind. But their words of comfort rang hollow in my ears. "You'll be fine, you can pull through anything," and "We understand," when in fact I don't think they did. They are still my closest friends and I see them often, but I can tell it is getting uncomfortable.
Hermione is pregnant now, and they want to call it Rose. I think to myself, late at night, that it is an okay name. I don't want children very much. Late at night, Ginny often presses on my shoulders with her hands, murmuring about the patter of little feet and I want to curl away, into a ball, because I am still a child myself. I think Ginny is teaching herself to believe when I see it, I'll love it. Even though I might not right now.
How can I take care of someone else, understand someone else, know someone else, when I don't even know myself?
Hermione has read all the parenting books ever published, I think. She has read up on the nine months before a birth, the birthing process itself, the period right after the birth, and then the growth and development books. She mentioned she is going to teach the baby sign language. Hermione told me this as she drew her hand away from her face, waving it like a long trunk and saying, "Elephant." It will know how to speak with its hands before it knows English.
Ron's take on parenting is different. He rolls his eyes at the stacks of books Hermione has bought and says, "You feed it, you burp it, it grows." He does not know how to change a diaper.
I think Ginny wants a baby now because she has always been last to experience everything. Last to go to Hogwarts, last to graduate, last to get a job, last to get a boyfriend; she does not want to be last to have a baby. She keeps saying how fun it would be to experience it with Hermione. We'd have to start soon, though, she says, because Hermione is already beginning to show. She has already begun reading some of Hermione's books.
Ginny should have had me fill out an application before she decided she wanted me. It could have said "Describe yourself in five words" and I could have said "I do not want children," along with "I am a people person" and "there is no fucking answer."
It would maybe seem like the first thing I would want to do after defeating Voldemort is settle down. It's just not that simple. A sense of normalcy, I welcomed with open arms. A sense of routine, I did not. Ginny is funny and quirky and sharp-witted, which is not dull. But settling down and making a home, making a family reeks of a stifling routine, because I know once I've officially committed, with pen and paper, there is no going back. There is no returning to any sense of danger or rebellion once I've penned my name on a marriage certificate, or penned the name of my first child on its birth certificate.
I think I am selfish. Another sentence that could follow "Describe yourself in five words." I don't like this, because I have always hated those who are selfish and greedy. Many of my actions have been predicated on the well-being of others but deep down, somewhere in the depth of my guts, I fear I am viciously greedy and selfish. It is not a pleasant feeling, wondering if you would leave the love of your life because she wanted a baby and you wanted excitement. A baby is exciting, Hermione would tell me. Ginny would tell me, too. I would listen and nod, but silently think a baby is neither the gut-wrenching fear nor the pulsing adrenaline on which I had fed in my younger years. You feed it, you burp it, it grows.
The thing is, people can't be summed up in five words. I can't sum Ron up, or Hermione, or Ginny, or even little unborn Rose. Not even any of my children, who are just ideas at the moment. People pride themselves on many things. We think we're superior, we think we're complicated and special and then we reduce ourselves to five words. We think because we have learned to make cars so we can kill the earth, we are superior. We think because we have learned to make guns so we can kill one another, we are special. We think because we think about what we think, we are complicated.
Maybe it doesn't matter that I don't know myself, if I am just going to be reduced to five words in my own bad handwriting. I don't even know why it's so important. Those five words don't even let others know me. At the end of the day, they are just five words pulled from a dictionary, reaped from a vocabulary and pressed into paper with ink. If Ginny could be accurately summed up in five words, I wouldn't want her. If Ron could be summed up in five words, I wouldn't believe it. If Hermione could be summed up in five words, she would find five better ones and disprove the previous summing up. If I could be summed up in five words, I would lose myself.
It is a popular question. While I have been mulling over my identity and the essence of all things me, I am filling out a job application and it reads "Describe yourself in five words," and I write "I will not do that," and then "See attached essay."
Fin.
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Disclaimer – Rowling's. The words and the idea are mine.
Author's Note – Review if you've got something to say, good or bad.