Disclaimer: Penelope Clearwater and Percy Weasley belong to J.K. Rowling,
who is so kind as to share her world and her characters with us.
Note: Imagine that Penelope comes from a Muggle family and that her parents are devoted and Christians . . . and their daughter is a witch.
Penelope
The church saith that there is one God and one Truth and one God and one Truth alone.
The church saith that there is one way to Paradise and one way alone, and that way is through God.
The church saith that all heathens must burn in the eternal fires of Hell.
The church saith that all witches must die.
Her father was a pastor, her mother a woman who as a child dreamed of becoming a pastor's wife. And she? She was a witch.
A witch who waved good-bye to her honest, God-fearing parents every fall and boarded a train that transported her to the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry where she studied the arts of the Devil himself and displayed an unsettling aptitude for said black magic. The very first letter from Albus Dumbledore had arrived when she was eleven, inviting her to attend the school, and had sent her father in a righteous fury and her mother into a virtuous faint. She herself had been shocked and then curious. "The fascination of the abomination," as Joseph Conrad wrote in one of her favorite books, Heart of Darkness, had drawn her onto this path of evil, had led her to beg to attend the school where everyone would be like her and make strange things happen quite unintentionally. The culmination came when all the mirrors in the house mysteriously shattered into a million shards that revealed bits and pieces of their faces in a jumbled discord of distorted reflections.
"We can't deny what she is," said her mother.
"What will I tell the congregation?" moaned her father. "That my own daughter has chosen the Devil over the Lord?"
"Why?" she'd asked, puzzled. "All I'm going to do is be with kids like me."
"You're a witch!" he'd shouted then. "A bloody witch! You know what good Christians used to do to witches? Burn them! Hang them! Break their bodies on the wheel!"
He'd said more too, but that last image was all she could remember of the conversation now, seven years later - the wheel. A wooden wheel, with pointy spokes radiating from a central hub to pierce its rim. Pierce and pierce and tear it up inside, eat it up inside, and never show a sign outside. Smooth outside that the world saw without ever seeing the points of the spokes buried within the rim. Witch. Strap her to a wheel and bind her fast so her body can't escape and then destroy her from outside, but how does that change anything on the inside? Even after the spokes are broken, their pointed ends remain.
A gentle touch on her shoulder. She half-turned from the railing, knowing already who it would be. She even managed a slight smile. "Hello, Percy."
That dearly familiar face with serious eyes behind thick glasses and cheeks cropped by sunset-colored hair - that dear face was anxious now. "I thought I'd find you up here, Penny. Everyone's left already, you know." Unspoken words - won't you reconsider your decision? For me? Please?
"I know." No, I can't because I've made it and can't or won't go back, not even for you. Not even for you.
This corner of the castle was hers - hers because in seven years no one had ever claimed it or even bothered to come up here and she figured it belonged to her as much as anything else in the world did. It was more of a covered balcony than a corner, found at the end of a lng corridor dark even in the daytime, where there were no torches mounted on the walls to light her path but only a streak of daylight flowing between the balustrades at the very end of the hall. Out here, up here suspended over empty space, balanced somewhere between Heaven and Hell, she could think as she could not at home where even the air thundered with her father's sermons or at school with the other students who accepted their magical powers as normal talents and never wondered what Hell was like.
The good shall go to Heaven. The evil shall be punished in eternal flames, like those flames that licked and nibbled and then gobbled away at witches' bodies but never reached the stakes within. And the normal, everyday people who might nurse an uncharitable grievance or pilfer a walnut from the grocery store but on the whole tried to be good? Their hope lay in Jesus and Jesus alone.
No room in His heart for girls who tried so hard to be good Christians but then found out that they had unholy powers they'd never asked for or wanted and who by definition consorted with the Devil even though she'd never seen the Devil once in her seven years at Hogwarts.
"Do you think we're all going to Hell?" she asked Percy wistfully.
He made an impatient sound, having answered the question too many times already. "You know I don't believe in any of that. Rather hard to go somewhere that doesn't exist. But by your standards, probably."
"But we're not bad people," she mused. "At least, I don't think we are. Not too bad anyway. Not like the Death Eaters or - or You-Know-Who. If we're going to Hell - and they're going to Hell - where's the distinction?"
"I don't know, but we'd better get going."
Together they walked back along that long dark corridor and down the stairs that changed places and through the stone foyer and out of the castle she'd come to know so well, come to think of as her own personal set of sharpened spokes. She was leaving it forever now, but the spokes - the spokes would remain, maybe had always been there, since she was born.
"Maybe there are different levels of Hell," suggested Percy as they headed for the carriages.
"You're just humoring me," she accused.
"Yeah, well." He shrugged and helped her into a carriage before clambering up and shutting the door and finally asking the question that permeated the very air. "Are you really going to take a year off from being a witch - from all contact with us?"
"Yes."
"And after that year - what then? Will you still remember us, Penny? Think about it. We're young; a year is a long time! Will you even want to remember us a year from now, a Christian year from now? Or will you turn your back when we meet on the streets and pretend you never know us, never talked with us, ate with us laughed with us?"
"I would never do that!"
"Wouldn't you?" He regarded her steadily. "By your standards, we're all condemned, you know, condemned as surely as if we were mass murderers. While you - you can slip back into the good Christian routine. You came to learn control over your magic - you've learned it now - you don't need us anymore."
"I hope not" - but that wasn't true and he knew her too well. She had been hoping that time away from her wand and spellbooks could blunt if not round those points.
"Damn it!" he shouted suddenly. "Why can't you accept us for what we are? Why can't you accept me for what I am and see past the wizardry? Why do you constantly paste 'I'm going to Hell' signs on our foreheads and then regard us with pity? Fine, maybe I am going to burn forever for crimes I never committed, but that's my business, not yours! Stop being so goddamn self-righteous all the time and drop that saintly self-torment!"
Self-torment! Was that all he saw in her constant soul-searching? "You have no right to say anything! You have no idea what kind of life I come from! How can you judge me?"
Taking off his glasses and rubbing his forehead, he spoke as though tired, "How can you judge me?"
She looked at him across the carriage - so far away - and could already see him receding into the distance, disappearing into the flames of forgetfulness. He smiled wearily and shrugged as the carriage jolted to a halt at the railroad station where the train sat waiting. As always he helped her out of the carriage. Usually they searched for a compartment together, but this time they stood on the platform and shook hands.
"I wish you all the best" was all that he said, in that stiffly formal tone she knew he reserved for emotional situations. And then he swung onto the train and was gone.
How can you judge me?
It's my business.
You don't understand.
It's my choice.
My choice my future my life.
Free choice and I chose. Choose. Will choose. One of those. One of these days.
Hell. Are we all going? Does it matter if we've done anything wrong or are born different?
The church saith. The church saith.
The church saith that thou shalt find the path of the right.
The church saith that there is hope for all humans.
Perhaps even hope for one witch born Christian. Or one Christian born witch. Maybe she would go back to the wizarding world. Or maybe she would stay in her parents'. Who knew? Who - suspended in doubt between Heaven and Hell - knew?
Maybe after all the wheel would not crack under the strain.
Standing before the train on a bright summer day, she could almost see the wheel again. A wooden wheel basking in the bright summer sunshine. A wooden wheel with polished wooden spokes that fit smoothly into notches in the rim.
Note: Imagine that Penelope comes from a Muggle family and that her parents are devoted and Christians . . . and their daughter is a witch.
Penelope
The church saith that there is one God and one Truth and one God and one Truth alone.
The church saith that there is one way to Paradise and one way alone, and that way is through God.
The church saith that all heathens must burn in the eternal fires of Hell.
The church saith that all witches must die.
Her father was a pastor, her mother a woman who as a child dreamed of becoming a pastor's wife. And she? She was a witch.
A witch who waved good-bye to her honest, God-fearing parents every fall and boarded a train that transported her to the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry where she studied the arts of the Devil himself and displayed an unsettling aptitude for said black magic. The very first letter from Albus Dumbledore had arrived when she was eleven, inviting her to attend the school, and had sent her father in a righteous fury and her mother into a virtuous faint. She herself had been shocked and then curious. "The fascination of the abomination," as Joseph Conrad wrote in one of her favorite books, Heart of Darkness, had drawn her onto this path of evil, had led her to beg to attend the school where everyone would be like her and make strange things happen quite unintentionally. The culmination came when all the mirrors in the house mysteriously shattered into a million shards that revealed bits and pieces of their faces in a jumbled discord of distorted reflections.
"We can't deny what she is," said her mother.
"What will I tell the congregation?" moaned her father. "That my own daughter has chosen the Devil over the Lord?"
"Why?" she'd asked, puzzled. "All I'm going to do is be with kids like me."
"You're a witch!" he'd shouted then. "A bloody witch! You know what good Christians used to do to witches? Burn them! Hang them! Break their bodies on the wheel!"
He'd said more too, but that last image was all she could remember of the conversation now, seven years later - the wheel. A wooden wheel, with pointy spokes radiating from a central hub to pierce its rim. Pierce and pierce and tear it up inside, eat it up inside, and never show a sign outside. Smooth outside that the world saw without ever seeing the points of the spokes buried within the rim. Witch. Strap her to a wheel and bind her fast so her body can't escape and then destroy her from outside, but how does that change anything on the inside? Even after the spokes are broken, their pointed ends remain.
A gentle touch on her shoulder. She half-turned from the railing, knowing already who it would be. She even managed a slight smile. "Hello, Percy."
That dearly familiar face with serious eyes behind thick glasses and cheeks cropped by sunset-colored hair - that dear face was anxious now. "I thought I'd find you up here, Penny. Everyone's left already, you know." Unspoken words - won't you reconsider your decision? For me? Please?
"I know." No, I can't because I've made it and can't or won't go back, not even for you. Not even for you.
This corner of the castle was hers - hers because in seven years no one had ever claimed it or even bothered to come up here and she figured it belonged to her as much as anything else in the world did. It was more of a covered balcony than a corner, found at the end of a lng corridor dark even in the daytime, where there were no torches mounted on the walls to light her path but only a streak of daylight flowing between the balustrades at the very end of the hall. Out here, up here suspended over empty space, balanced somewhere between Heaven and Hell, she could think as she could not at home where even the air thundered with her father's sermons or at school with the other students who accepted their magical powers as normal talents and never wondered what Hell was like.
The good shall go to Heaven. The evil shall be punished in eternal flames, like those flames that licked and nibbled and then gobbled away at witches' bodies but never reached the stakes within. And the normal, everyday people who might nurse an uncharitable grievance or pilfer a walnut from the grocery store but on the whole tried to be good? Their hope lay in Jesus and Jesus alone.
No room in His heart for girls who tried so hard to be good Christians but then found out that they had unholy powers they'd never asked for or wanted and who by definition consorted with the Devil even though she'd never seen the Devil once in her seven years at Hogwarts.
"Do you think we're all going to Hell?" she asked Percy wistfully.
He made an impatient sound, having answered the question too many times already. "You know I don't believe in any of that. Rather hard to go somewhere that doesn't exist. But by your standards, probably."
"But we're not bad people," she mused. "At least, I don't think we are. Not too bad anyway. Not like the Death Eaters or - or You-Know-Who. If we're going to Hell - and they're going to Hell - where's the distinction?"
"I don't know, but we'd better get going."
Together they walked back along that long dark corridor and down the stairs that changed places and through the stone foyer and out of the castle she'd come to know so well, come to think of as her own personal set of sharpened spokes. She was leaving it forever now, but the spokes - the spokes would remain, maybe had always been there, since she was born.
"Maybe there are different levels of Hell," suggested Percy as they headed for the carriages.
"You're just humoring me," she accused.
"Yeah, well." He shrugged and helped her into a carriage before clambering up and shutting the door and finally asking the question that permeated the very air. "Are you really going to take a year off from being a witch - from all contact with us?"
"Yes."
"And after that year - what then? Will you still remember us, Penny? Think about it. We're young; a year is a long time! Will you even want to remember us a year from now, a Christian year from now? Or will you turn your back when we meet on the streets and pretend you never know us, never talked with us, ate with us laughed with us?"
"I would never do that!"
"Wouldn't you?" He regarded her steadily. "By your standards, we're all condemned, you know, condemned as surely as if we were mass murderers. While you - you can slip back into the good Christian routine. You came to learn control over your magic - you've learned it now - you don't need us anymore."
"I hope not" - but that wasn't true and he knew her too well. She had been hoping that time away from her wand and spellbooks could blunt if not round those points.
"Damn it!" he shouted suddenly. "Why can't you accept us for what we are? Why can't you accept me for what I am and see past the wizardry? Why do you constantly paste 'I'm going to Hell' signs on our foreheads and then regard us with pity? Fine, maybe I am going to burn forever for crimes I never committed, but that's my business, not yours! Stop being so goddamn self-righteous all the time and drop that saintly self-torment!"
Self-torment! Was that all he saw in her constant soul-searching? "You have no right to say anything! You have no idea what kind of life I come from! How can you judge me?"
Taking off his glasses and rubbing his forehead, he spoke as though tired, "How can you judge me?"
She looked at him across the carriage - so far away - and could already see him receding into the distance, disappearing into the flames of forgetfulness. He smiled wearily and shrugged as the carriage jolted to a halt at the railroad station where the train sat waiting. As always he helped her out of the carriage. Usually they searched for a compartment together, but this time they stood on the platform and shook hands.
"I wish you all the best" was all that he said, in that stiffly formal tone she knew he reserved for emotional situations. And then he swung onto the train and was gone.
How can you judge me?
It's my business.
You don't understand.
It's my choice.
My choice my future my life.
Free choice and I chose. Choose. Will choose. One of those. One of these days.
Hell. Are we all going? Does it matter if we've done anything wrong or are born different?
The church saith. The church saith.
The church saith that thou shalt find the path of the right.
The church saith that there is hope for all humans.
Perhaps even hope for one witch born Christian. Or one Christian born witch. Maybe she would go back to the wizarding world. Or maybe she would stay in her parents'. Who knew? Who - suspended in doubt between Heaven and Hell - knew?
Maybe after all the wheel would not crack under the strain.
Standing before the train on a bright summer day, she could almost see the wheel again. A wooden wheel basking in the bright summer sunshine. A wooden wheel with polished wooden spokes that fit smoothly into notches in the rim.