Emerald Ink
My grandmother just died, and that's why I'm writing this. It really wrenched my heart right out of my chest, you know, watching the grandmother I'd never known lying an inch from death, telling me I had my father's smile. I'd never known my grandmother because she was my father's mother, you see. My mum wasn't too fond of my dad, and I can't say I blamed her, because, see, my dad was a horrible drunk. He would sneak out into the shadiest parts of London every night while my mum slept and drink and smoke and bet on everything in the British Isles. Well, one night, she caught him, and they haven't seen each other since. That was before I was born.
My sister, Petunia, who was four years old at the time, says she remembers a lot of shouting, and some banging and the slam of a door, which, if you think about it, kind of makes sense. I don't trust Petunia's memory all that well, though, so I really had no knowledge of my father until yesterday. My mother never spoke of him, and the way she went about it made it the most finite rule in the house. It became even more finite when Mum remarried.
Anyway, now that I've got that whole sob story out of the way, back to my grandmother. I nearly started crying sitting there while she said that stuff about my dad… 'Lily, I wish I could tell you about your father… you have his smile, you know, darling, you've got your father's smile, and I wish I could tell you, oh, I wish I could tell you but I just can't remember… I never wrote it down, Lily, my sister gave me a book but I never wrote it down….' And then she started crying, right there, all ninety-six pounds of white hair and age spots, and her caretaker escorted me out of the room. She died fifteen minutes later.
The reading of the will was yesterday, and I was the only one who went. My mother, of course, did not attend. She prides herself in pretending that Nathaniel Hopkins – my stepfather – is my real father, even though my sister and I kept our original surnames, Petunia by law and me by choice. Petunia was out with her hideous boyfriend, who took her back to his house to 'comfort her', but I'll bet they're shagging instead. And if my mother couldn't go, really, why should Nathaniel? He didn't even get an invitation. So I Apparated there by myself.
It was a kind of pointless thing, really, for me to go to. Only one thing was left to me – a leather-bound book, this book, filled with completely blank pages. I brought it home and tossed it on my nightstand and didn't give it another thought until this morning. So it's an old book… so what? But I kept thinking of what she had said in those last, fatal moments… I never wrote it down, Lily, my sister gave me a book but I never wrote it down….
So at one o'clock in the morning, I got up and cracked it open, and after sneezing away about three layers of dust, I found what I was looking for written in the front cover.
To Clara… to record all your wonderful thoughts and musings and treasure them for-ever. With lots of love always, Elizabeth.
Tears were threatening to fall again – and they are now, after re-copying those last sentences in here, which is, I suppose, rather silly, because I never really knew my grandmother anyway – so I put the book back on my night table and returned to sleep, only to wake up at eight this morning and write all of this, because if I don't leave a record of who I am now, I'm going to die when I'm eighty completely unsatisfied because I'll have no recollection of who I was, who I am. And I don't know if it's going to be any good, but all that really matters is that I can read it, right?
If I'm really going to do this thing properly, I'd better put in some vital statistics. My full name is Lily Florenna Evans… I'm seventeen years old, and I'm going to be a seventh year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. If you don't know where or what that is, I'm not really a witch, magic doesn't exist, and I don't go there, and you'd better stop reading now, or there will be serious repercussions. If you do know where or what that is, I'm not going to go into a) how I got my letter and b) what it took to convince Mum and Nathaniel that it wasn't just a prank, etc. You should already be able to infer the process of a Muggle-born receiving her first Hogwarts letter. All I'm going to say is that it was the cause of a major falling-out between Petunia and I, and we've never gotten on all that well since.
Physical information… I'm about five foot two inches tall – or short, whichever; I think the latter is more accurate – and I have no idea how much I weigh, but I'm fairly thin and I have no abnormal body parts that exceed the allotted standard of weight for someone my size, as far as I know. I have thick red hair – but not bright, obnoxious red, thank goodness – that's sort of off-curly on some days and tangles very easily and hangs about halfway between my shoulder and my elbow. My eyes are unusually green, and it's perhaps because of this that that's been my favorite color since I was a very small child. And that's also why I'm writing this in emerald ink.
I guess all I have left to do now is write what I've experienced before I forget it all. I'll start as far back as is consequential, and that's the beginning of my sixth year at Hogwarts – last year. I miss everyone and everything so much, maybe it'll actually do me some good to write everything down and get it out of my system before it becomes the victim of my longing foggy perception, sewn into the tapestry of time to never again be unraveled. Yes, the beginning of my sixth year….