It was a different world.
For the last six years, I had lived a strange and different life, away from my house and my parents and my primary school friends. But always before, I had returned to this, and had known that here I was home, home and safe.
Not anymore. Now, when I looked around, I felt only the ghost of my past prancing about, mocking me.
I was yours, the room taunted. I was yours, once. And you loved me—I loved you. You lived a charmed life, with perfect grades, loving parents, once-in-a-lifetime friends. And you gave it up for teacups and frogspawn. You gave up everything, to go and live in a dismal castle with wretched boys and incomprehensible girls, to fight in a war you can't win, to support a champion you will never understand.
Why had I done it?
All at once I felt lonely, and distant. When I had decided to attend Hogwarts, at the age of eleven, I had never imagined the effect it would have on my life. I thought it would be a boarding school—unusual, perhaps, but not distressingly so.
I had never dreamed, when I had sent back the regal looking owl—wasn't it pretty?—that I was, in all actuality, signing up for a world as well as an education.
It had taken me until now to realize, that, just as I had gained a world, I had lost one, as well.
Tears stung my eyes. It wasn't fair. When I was in first year, I had always imagined I would go back to the muggle world, attend a muggle college, and get a muggle degree which I would employ in the world I had been raised in. I would marry a muggle man, and normal children, and use my magic to help their lives. I would tell my husband I was a witch, and he would love me better for it. "Amazing!" I imagined him exclaiming, in adoration. "Simply magical!"
After I met Harry and Ron, the plan had changed slightly. I would occasionally host magical parties, and every morning an owl would deliver the Daily Prophet. I still did not want my children to be magical; I, like my parents, had been taught that a "normal" education was better, and painful instances of my magic erupting freakishly had marred my otherwise perfect childhood.
But by third year doubt was creeping up in my mind. I had come to love Hogwarts, and the people in it. So what if my old friends would have thought me a freak? I was no longer ashamed of what I was. In fact, the idea of living in a society that considered me abnormal began to seem distasteful. And by the middle of my fourth year I considered muggle society the inferior to wizard.
Part of that was due to the Triwizard Tournament, and Victor. At first, he was only an athlete, and one of a silly, "abnormal" sport. But…he taught me to appreciate Quidditch, and it was he who made me wonder if I could ever be happy with a Muggle man. I did not love Victor, but he was the first man to ever call me beautiful, besides my father. I do not think it was a coincidence that he was also a wizard.
When I was in my fourth year, I began daydreaming about marrying Ron. But he did not quite fit into my mental picture of the perfect home: my redhead would never be happy living as a Muggle, and he would never have non-magical children.
This confused me. How could I remain part of the world I was raised in if I could not live in it?
But I didn't have much time to ponder it. The few years before O.W.L.S. were so engrossing, both academically and emotionally, with everything that was going on with Harry, that I began thinking about a magical career, as opposed to a "normal" one without realizing it at all. Hogwarts was more and more becoming a home to me; when I returned to my parents during the summers and breaks I found myself surprised by new advances in technology, and new happenings with my old friends. I found myself feeling quite odd, and a little sad, as if I had been left behind. My old life was moving on without me.
During the end of my fourth year everything changed. Cedric Diggory was murdered, and Lord Voldemort had returned. Harry had been through what Dumbledore called "a terrible ordeal." And one could always trust Dumbledore.
I roundly told my parents that I could not stay at home for the summer, not when Ron and Harry might need me. They were upset, and—they could not understand. What was a magical war to them? They told me that my cousin Elizabeth was getting married, and that my old friend Torie had become a high school cheerleader, and wanted me to come to a summer performance. These were, I was surprised to realize, trivial matters, compared to the Order of the Phoenix and Harry Potter facing Voldemort and Ron Weasley inviting me to stay with him and his family at Grimmauld Place.
Fifth year was hell for Harry, and for those of us around him, what with losing Sirius and the pompous High Inquisitor. I was indignant on his behalf, and unhappy with the Ministry. During the Christmas holiday, I returned home for a fortnight, only to be called back to Grimmauld Place by an attack on Mr. Weasley.
That summer I came home at last—for a little while, but I was anxious, and distracted. The wizarding world was at war. I talked to my old friends and cousins only to find that their affairs were no longer important to me, nor mine to them. While I could bury by head in my fluffy white pillow, on my lacy, ruffled canopy bed, all I could think about was how hard of a time Harry must be having, and how my pillow needed a Fluffing Charm.
Now it is the summer after sixth year. Dumbledore is dead, and tomorrow I leave with Harry and Ron to search for the four remaining Horcruxes. I look around my room, and I see only the shadow of my former life. When I was younger, I lived in a fairyland, and then in the pleasant cloud of denial. But I'm done with it. I can only live in one world. It's time to choose.
My parents want to move to France. This talk of Voldemort, that they read about in the Daily Prophet, which they subscribe to in order to "keep up" with me, scares them. They want to take me to Paris, where I can enroll in a nice, safe university and become an oral surgeon—my old life's career choice. They don't understand.
There's a war on. My world is at war, and my best friend is going to go up against Voldemort, aided by the boy I love.
When he does, I intend to be there at his side. It's my world as much as it is his. I chose it when I was eleven, though I didn't know what I was about. But perhaps it chose me, for magic sings in my blood like a song I can never forget. As do Harry, and Ron, and Hogwarts. Hagrid, and Dumbledore. Sirius. Winky.
I can only have one life, just as I can only have one world.
I intend to fight for both.
Never, never looking back.