Do you ever have those moments where everything around you is blocked out and your brain decides to take you back to a forgotten memory?
Maybe it's just me…
It was late August and, for once, it had been a hot, dry summer. Our feet kicked up the red-brown dust as we ran in the Potter's back garden. James had just turned eight and, much to my dismay, there were still two long weeks until my own September birthday. We'd spent the entirety of summer playing our new game where I was the princess locked in the evil hag's tower (the Potter's tree-house), James was my dashing prince come to rescue me and Al was the old hag. He was willing to play any part in our games. Since our parents had told us to let Hugo and Lily play too, we christened them the innocent peasants who would get slaughtered either by Al or James depending on how the storyline went that day.
This particular time, James had saved me within the first twenty minutes and so Al had taken the peasants captive in the tower. We were all truly excited, this wasn't one of our more common scenarios. Although Dad and Uncle Harry were officially monitoring our play, they were far more interested in discussing whom the Chudley Cannons had appointed their new manager. James and I were huddled together under the tree, just out of Al's eyesight, comparing strategies on how we were going to recover the captured peasants.
For some reason Merlin only knows, we decided that the best solution would be to have our five-year-old siblings jump from the fifteen foot high tree.
"You'll be fine!" James called up to them. "Princess Rosie and I will catch you."
"We promise," I'd reiterated.
I still remember their scared faces peering down at us; eventually Hugo had pushed Hugo aside and stood with his toes just off the edge of the wooden ledge.
Maybe if Al hadn't tried to stop him as he stood there, he wouldn't have lost his balance.
Maybe if Lily hadn't screamed as he began to fall he wouldn't have turned and smacked his chin off the tree-house floor.
Maybe if Dad and Uncle Harry hadn't started panicking and shouting as Hugo plummeted to the ground, James and I wouldn't have lost our concentration.
Maybe if we had never been so stupid, he wouldn't have fallen through our arms and hit the ground in a crumpled mess.
Dad pushed James and I roughly aside and scooped up Hugo's broken body. Lily and Al both climbed down the rope ladder and watched, alongside James and I, as Dad told Harry to call Mum and explain what had happened and that he was taking Hugo to Mungo's.
I wasn't allowed to visit him while he was in hospital. I stayed at the Potter's for the rest of the day but none of us had any desire to play anymore. I just couldn't keep the image of how disjointed and broken Hugo had looked out of my mind. A few hours later, Mum came to take me home. She told me he was going to be okay but Dad had to stay at the hospital with him overnight. I told her I was sorry and she said that she knew we hadn't meant to, but we needed to think more before we did things.
He was fine in the end, of course. A broken collarbone, a fractured leg and a sprained wrist were all fixed within a week. We were always too scared to play in the tree-house after that. That was the first time that I ever saw Hugo properly hurt. Knowing that I'd caused it made it so much worse.
And that's what my mind goes back to right then, as Hugo runs from the Great Hall. The same sick feeling courses through me and I bite down hard on my lip to try and regain some feeling in my numb body. It takes a few seconds before the whispers re-start, harsher and thicker than before. They seem to stab into my skin like pricking knives and make the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
I'm jolted back to reality as a warm hand clasps my own and begins to drag me from the room. My eyes are swimming with tears obscuring my vision so I blink hard to expel them. It's then I can finally make out who's still pulling me up the stairs and along the corridor.
It's James. His messy, jet-black hair flapping lazily against his head as his long strides lead me forwards. But he looks like I feel, sick and worried, but mainly just confused
"Where are we going?" I gasp, trying to keep the choking sobs from rising up in my throat.
My brother, my little Hugh has just been humiliated in front of the entire school because…
And that's what I was trying to make sense of.
She'd called him faggot. I'm not stupid, I know what she's insinuating.
"Just come on," James tells me. "Did he tell you? That he's you know…?"
"What?" I come to a stop.
"Well you know, that he's gay?" James stops beside me, leaning on the corridor wall.
"Of course bloody not," I say. "Besides, he might not be, it might just be that stupid bitch making things I up; I swear to God when I get my hands on her."
While, I'm thinking about the various spells I would do, James furrows his brow and turns me to directly face him.
"Rosie come on, I thought you were all for equality and no prejudices," he says.
"I am," I tell him quickly. "I just, you know, never thought it would be…"
"Your own brother," a voice from behind us says. My heart leaps but when I turn I don't see Hugo, I see Theo.
Don't get me wrong, I love that boy as much as I love some of my cousins but right now, I just need to get to my little brother.
I start to tell him this, but he cuts me off, "Look, I was just thinking maybe I could talk to Hugo?"
"I don't know, Thee. I feel like I just need to be there for him right now. We have no idea how this is going to affect his life. What about the people who won't accept him, what if my parents don't accept him. And then there's all the extended family, some of them are bound to have a problem with it, with him. My money would be on Uncle Percy but then again, Nana and Grandad are rather conservative. And then there's the fact that he'll never get the chance to have the traditional family." I'm rambling, I'm spouting bullshit but that's what I do when I'm nervous. "I mean how can any of us know what going through his mind right now? It's-"
"Rose I'm gay," Theo says.
Well that shut me up.
"What?" I splutter. And then before I know what I'm doing I smack him round the head.
"Um, ow?"
"Why didn't you tell me? You know I like to know things…"
"Yes, Rosie, we all know how intolerably nosey you are, but your little brother is currently alone in that cupboard," James says, pointing to a supplies cupboard a little way down the corridor.
"How the heck do you know that?" I ask. I guess I am a little nosey, or as I like to put it, inquisitive. "Are you like telepathic or something?"
James looks thoroughly perplexed, "What's that?"
"More like telepathetic," Theo mutters, and in even a situation like this, I have to high-five him for that one.
"Anyway," James says, his brow still furrowed, "We, the Weasley-Potters, all know that that cupboard is the cupboard where you go when you need to get away."
"Well why don't I know about this?" I ask indignantly.
"It's only for the boys," James says, rolling his eyes.
"Oh." Why am I constantly feeling like I know absolutely nothing today?
"I'll go talk to him," Theo says. "You know, if that's okay?"
I nod, "What are you going to say?"
"Everything I'd have wanted to hear."
A part of me feels like it should be me there, holding my little brother and telling him that everything's going to be okay. "Tell him I love him and I'll come and find him later," I tell Theo.
"Sure, Rose," he gives a quick hug and a reassuring smile.
Before either he or James can say another word, I find myself turning and running back down the corridor. I slip out of the castle through a side exit that Al and I discovered in second year.
The night air is crisp and blissfully silent. My trainers are almost completely drenched with dew the second I wander through the long grass so I do the logical thing and pull them off, continuing barefoot down the hill to the lake, which glistens like a silver oasis.
I have made some very stupid decisions in my life, but stripping down to my underwear and going for a dip in the lake in early winter is definitely up there with the stupidest. After, you know, encouraging my brother to fall out of a tree-house, of course.
I stand at the edge of the lake, the cold water lapping gently at my toes. Goosebumps cover my bare arms and legs and I shiver slightly as the cool night breeze whips around me. I enter the lake slowly, one tentative step at a time. The cold water stings my skin like pins and needles but the sheer coldness of it is unusually calming. The only sounds that penetrate the icy night air are the far-off hoots of owls and my own ragged breathing that leaves white swirls of mist.
I'm pretty sure I must have been dropped on my head as a baby. That's the only explanation for my certain insanity. Really, what kind of mentally sound person does this?
I'm up to my hips now, the frosty water causing my underpants to stick to me.
I bet it was Dad who dropped me, honest to Merlin, that man can save a goal in Quidditch easy-peasy but you ask him to unload the dishwasher and he'll drop three glasses and two bowls. Yes, we have a muggle dishwasher, Mum says they're so much more practical than washing each plate by magic.
The water is now gently lapping against my chest now and the bottom half of my body is fully numb; my skin has turned wholly white with cold and I can see my legs gleaming brightly through the green tinged water.
Talking of Mum, what the hell was she smoking while she was pregnant with me? It's all my parents fault that I'm so messed up. Totally not anything to do with me.
Whoever would have thought that the best way to clear your (slightly crazy) head would be to submerge yourself in icy water and risking giving yourself hypothermia? Apparently it is though, looking up at the half moon and the constellations of bright stars that sparkle in complete clarity on this cloudless night, everything seems to fall right into place.
I'm contemplating staying here in the lake forever, sure my legs may fall off but then I'm one step closer to being a mermaid so who's the real winner? I'm laughing at my own astounding wit when another voice cuts through the silent night.
"Weasley?" I try to spin round in the water too quickly and my feet get entangled in whatever magical plant Longbottom is currently cultivating here and my whole body falls down into the water with a huge splash.
Smooth, Rose.
Right as I'm trying to work out which of these plants feels (I don't want to open my eyes in this water) most like Gillyweed, I finally manage to pull the slippery weeds off my feet and rise to the surface. I gasp for breath in the way that I imagine a seal would if it suddenly realised that it, in fact, couldn't breathe underwater. Wait- can seals breathe underwater or are they like dolphins? That's the thing about going to magic-school; you're all hunky-dory changing a kitten into a teapot but as soon as someone wants to know which aquatic animals are mammals, you're screwed.
Definitely need to have a sharp conversation with my mother about these side effects of pre-natal drug use.
I turn around to find Malfoy shaking his head and laughing at me from the shore.
"Look away!" I shout to him, staying ducked down in the water to avoid showing my bra.
"Jesus, Weasley, were you skinny dipping?" he laughs again but obliges and turns to face the castle.
"Eh, not quite," I call back and quickly wade as fast as I can back to the shore, scanning it for wherever I dumped my clothes.
"Do you even have clothes with you?" Malfoy asks and I detect a certain snigger in his voice.
"Somewhere," I reply though I'm starting to panic, bloody clothes can't just get up and walk away by themselves.
"Are you alright, Weasley?"
"Absolutely spiffing."
"Right."
"Eh, Malfoy?" I say finally. "I appear to have lost them."
Malfoy laughs like a maniac at my misfortune for a solid minute while I stand, shivering. What a charming boy. Eventually he takes off his Slytherin robes and throws them over his shoulder to me. I catch them and slip them gratefully on.
"Thanks," I say and he takes this as a sign that he can face me again.
The robes only come up to halfway up my thighs and I immediately blush as Malfoy takes in my appearance. Why am I blushing? This is Malfoy we're talking about right now.
"Why are your robes so short," I grumble. "I feel like one of those scarlet women."
Malfoy laughs again, "You're mental, Weasley. Like full on danger to society crazy."
"What makes you say that?" I ask innocently.
"Oh I don't know, it relatively frequently that I find girls skinny-dipping and cackling to themselves at ten o'clock in October. Completely casual," he laughs and shakes his head disbelievingly at me again.
"Blame my mother and her horrible drug habit," I deadpan. "Anyway, I guess I'll bring your robes to you sometime tomorrow."
"Why not just give them back to me in potions?" he grins back.
I hit him. "Because I'd rather not give the entire student body the impression that we're sleeping together."
"You managed to hurt me inside and out, Weasley."
I roll my eyes, "Mission accomplished. See you around, Malfoy."
"Right, see you around, Weasley."
Ignoring whatever emotion that was I just heard in Malfoy's voice, I turn to head back up to the castle when suddenly I feel a heavy raindrop hit my arm. It's one of those storms where it takes less than five seconds for the rain to be hammering down. I know I'll never make it back up to the castle without getting fully drenched and possibly slipping over a few times, steep slopes and wet mud make for bad outcomes, and I resolve myself to turning back to Malfoy.
"Shrieking shack?" he says and I nod. We run round the lake to the Whomping Willow where Malfoy hastily prods the knot on the thick trunk and we hurry in from the rain. We slide down the tunnel, Malfoy goes first and I follow. We used to always come here for birthdays and the like, now we tend to use either the common rooms or the room of requirement; the initial novelty of the Shack has worn off, a lot. At the end of the slide, Malfoy hasn't moved quickly enough and, try as I might, I don't manage to stop myself from falling directly on top of him.
"Shit, sorry," I say and I start to crawl off him desperately trying to avoid the entire crotch area. In my haste the robes come apart at the front, leaving me on top of Malfoy with the front of my body completely exposed.
Well this is one to tell the grandchildren.
"Damn, Weasley," Malfoy says raising an eyebrow. I smack him again, partly for looking and partly for the eyebrow raise. "I didn't know you were into that kind of thing," he laughs again. "What's our codeword to stop?"
"Ew, Malfoy, stop," I splutter finally rolling off him. "You're vile, you know that?"
He just laughs again. We're both still lying on the ground of the Shack and looking up back through the tunnel; the night sky is still clearly visible. We lie in silence for a few minutes, listening to the steady rain, which shows no sign of easing up. Through the stench of must and rotting wood, which lingers permanently in the Shrieking Shack, I can smell Malfoy on both the robes I'm wearing and the scent being emanated from him. It's like vanilla but not the type you'd buy as a scent. He smells like an empty tub of vanilla ice cream in the best possible way.
"Weasley?" he says softly.
"Mm?"
"I'm hardly going to deny that I saw what happened earlier, with your brother. Are you alright?"
"I told you, I'm spiffing."
"Alright."
"Malfoy?"
"Mm?"
"How did you know that was my brother?"
He laughs softly, the kind of laugh where there's not actually a sound; the one where you just breathe more air out than usual.
"You're part of the Weasley clan, everyone knows who's who in the Weasley clan."
"Alright."
"The stars are pretty tonight."
"Mm."
"You know, I always find that looking at the stars always makes me feel better. There's over a hundred billion stars in the Milky Way, there's over a hundred and twenty five galaxies. Yet here we are."
"That doesn't really make my problems any smaller."
"It wasn't supposed to, it just adds a bit of perspective."
I see him roll over onto his side to face me out of the corner of my eye but I don't do the same. I keep my eyes fixed on a few of the stars.
"You think you know things about who you are and who other people are. In reality we're all just chemicals and compounds with the ability to feel pain too strongly."
"You know lots of things, Rose."
I let out a single laugh. "I don't even know my own brother."
"Everyone has their secrets."
I can feel his warm breath on the side of my face and I suddenly become aware of how close together we are. I'm not sure why, he's Malfoy so why am I not moving further away. I see Hugo again in my mind when he was little, his body got broken, now that he's older, it's his heart being broken. Maybe that's the thing about growing up, you realise that the worst kind of breaks are the ones you can't actually see.
"It's funny how day by day it feels like nothing changes but when you look back, everything feels different."
"Days adapt: adaption over time leads to change."
"I keep trying to please people and making people proud and all I get is shit thrown back in my face."
"I know how you feel, Rose."
For a second I take my eyes off the stars I can see and look at Malfoy. His dark grey eyes meet my blue ones and in an impossibly short yet terribly long time period, the air chokes in the back of my throat but then he blinks.
"The rain stopped," he says, sitting up.
"I didn't notice," I reply.
"I should go."
"I need to find Hugo."
"I need to go to sleep."
"Thank you for, you know…"
"Giving you my robes?"
"Something like that," I breathe watching Malfoy climb back up out of the tunnel.
I go back to my dormitory and slip off Malfoy's robes catching one last whiff of vanilla as I shove them into a plastic bag to give to him tomorrow. Cara and Tori tell me that the last they knew, Hugo was in an empty charms classroom with James and Theo.
I hurry to the charms corridor, mentally planning what I'm going to say to him but when I see him there, in a dark classroom sitting against the wall with his head in his hands all I want to do is hug him.
"Hugh," I say as I run to him. I throw my arms around him and hold him tightly as I feel him begin to shake in my arms.
"I'm sorry, Rosie," he says, his voice cracking slightly.
"Shut up, you idiot," I smile, suppressing a sob that rises to my throat. I'm stupid. "No matter what you have or haven't told me, no matter who you want to shag you're my baby brother and I love you so much alright?"
"Alright."
A/N: Hey guys, so this took me so much longer to write than the others, I really wanted to do it (Hugo) justice but I really hope that you like it, I'd love to know what you think
-Alice x
