The summer night, ironic as it can sound, has always been soothing to me. The crickets chirp and make their music, the lightning bugs come out to play, the frogs, deep buried in the mud, let out loud belches of sound that resonate for what seems like miles. The heat is not too coarse; the cold is not too strong.
I remember when I was younger, much younger, my mother used to tell me stories about the beings that live in the stars. Orion, with his two strong, loyal dogs; the mighty bear in Ursa Major; and shamed Cassiopeia, upside down half the time to learn humility. My mother would make up new stories every night -- stories that had nothing to do with the real myth, the real truth. She once told me that Orion, the Hunter, loved a mortal woman, and wished her to join him in the sky, and that she refused, for she didn't love him as he did her. My mother was a fantastic story teller, and the stars her perfect tale. I missed her with an acute pain when she died so many years ago.
I used to talk to her, sometimes, after she died. I would go outside and just rest, letting my mind wander. And I'd see one of those constellations, and my thoughts turned into a prayer for her; soft, quiet, and comforting. Even though those were the hardest times for me, regarding her death, they were also the most bittersweet. That feeling, haunting though it can be, is woefully welcome in the absence of light.
There is something soothing about a breeze in the night, the way it dances across your skin, whispering comfort to your heart. I used to believe that even soft winds like that could move the stars. I thought that anything was possible.
And how ironically, how horribly, I was right.
After I received the bite of my destiny, I lost control of a part of me. Of course, no one knew, no one could tell that anything was wrong -- but I had lost something of myself, something that no child should ever have to go without.
My innocence.
I could no longer comfort myself with the knowledge that I was just like every other child. I was different, and I had the absolute misfortune to be completely aware of it. I knew there was a bad, an evil, part to me. I was frightened of, and for, myself. There was no cure for that, no wolfsbane to dull that pain. I was alone -- utterly alone.
Until I went to Hogwarts.
James and Sirius were already best friends when I got there; they had known each other since childhood. The teachers were informed about me, of course, but Hogwarts didn't tell the other students of my "medical status," as some called it -- all they knew was I was different. I wasn't the same as everyone else.
I was disappointed -- so disappointed. I thought that Hogwarts was going to be my haven, a place where I could be accepted. That was when I began to feel bitter about who, about what, I was.
Different. Always different.
My friends became my lifesavers. Without them, I would have been lost, my mind out of my control. Their consistent acceptance of the beast that lay mostly dormant inside me was appallingly necessary. I relied on them for it, and I loved them for it. We would have risked anything for each other. There was nothing I needed more than that growing up.
So when I first became a Professor at Hogwarts, I was hardly surprised to find that James' son, Harry, had developed the same boundless friendship with two other children. Ron and Hermione were his safe guards, his place to come home to. Harry helped me realize that all children need that haven -- not just children with special needs or an eccentric "medical status". Gratitude towards my childhood friends would have overflowed me if the sadness hadn't bottled it up completely and let my grief and anger spew forth instead. With James dead and Sirius locked away at Azkaban, I could hardly have anyone to look to for anything.
The deaths of my friends were the worst blow. Sirius might as well have really been dead, as far as I was concerned. He had betrayed a Marauder, and there was nothing he could do to redeem himself on that charge. I believed that I cared nothing for him, though if I had looked within my heart instead of relying on the scarred surface, I would have seen that that was not true. As for James and Lily -- they had just started their lives -- had just had their first baby! -- and they were taken from their lives in a snap on the whim of the most evil and powerful wizard of our time. I had been at their house the night before they were killed. If only I had known, I had berated myself. The 'if only's droned on, day after night after day, never relenting their building pressure upon my emotional sanity.
I remember just reading the headlines about James and Lily's death and Sirius' confinement after being aware of both facts. A sick, hot feeling crept up in my throat, commonly disguised as bile, but really just the bitter truth of horrible realization. I cried for a long time.
And then Sirius' name was eventually cleared at the end of Harry's seventh year, though it hardly mattered then. Nothing except his death mattered. Nothing at all.
I sank into a depression. To lose both best friends, and be reunited with one, only to lose him again, is nothing I could ever wish upon anyone else. There is such an exquisite pain to losing a loved one that there are no words penetrating enough, frighteningly alone enough, for me to use to describe how it feels.
Dumbledore knew what was happening to me. He understood pain, and death, and sadness as well as he did silliness, and joyfulness, and light. He offered me my old Defense Against the Dark Arts position again, and when I adamantly refused, he dug in his heels and pressured me so much that I was just too tired to protest any more. And so I was headed back to Hogwarts.
I taught for twenty years in the same Defense Against the Dark Arts position. New students came every year, and some of them I liked, and some of them I didn't, and I taught as best as I knew how. And I thought I was healing.
I realized something one day when a very small First Year with vibrant red hair and noticeably green eyes approached me. Of course, it had to be James' granddaughter and Harry's daughter that asked me, "Professor? Are you sad?" that I realized... I was. I hadn't healed. I hadn't even started. By crawling into the shell of my teaching, I had become something that was not wholly what I am. I had lost a part of myself and didn't even know where to begin looking for it. Her small, sweet voice penetrated my heart with a few simple words. And my eyes were opened.
This time, I cried even longer. But it was good.
And that's why now on some nights, with those lulling summer sounds flowing over me, I can pick out my favorite star in the sky, and maybe even smile a little.