Another chapter.
By the way, this fic isn't beta'd, so I apologise for any mistakes. I proofread the chapters before uploading them but I still miss some mistakes.
Enjoy!
Hannah x
14
When I came back to Hogwarts for my fourth year, a lot of strange things happened.
First of all, Alecto was never around anymore. After three years of being best friends, this was probably the most noticeable change of all. She still came to lessons and to meals, but I hardly saw her apart from that, and it took me a shamefully long time to find out why.
She had a boyfriend.
Then I noticed that the other girls in our year were behaving strangely as well. The boys, too. Everyone seemed to be infected by this weird disease called love. And everywhere I looked, I seemed to see lovey dovey happy couples, snogging wildly in the corridors, holding hands, talking to each other in sweet and incredibly stupid voices, making up nicknames...
At that time, I had heard enough about love to last me a lifetime. My big sister was gone to marry someone she loved, which was a concept I didn't know. In my view at fourteen, you married someone who was chosen for you. Someone respectable and pureblood, and if you were lucky, someone who would treat you well. At that time I already knew I was going to marry Lucius Malfoy and when I suggested jokingly that we should go around holding hands and calling each other 'sweetheart', he looked like I had hit him over the head with a shovel.
I knew he had his fanclub of girls and probably more than one girlfriend. Good-looking as he was. Is. I never counted myself among his fanclub. I didn't regard Lucius as extraordinarily attractive.
Because this was the other thing strange about this year: everyone seemed to be affected by this strange disease called love - everyone but me.
This revelation struck me sometime in autumn and it took me a while to realise that I, indeed, wasn't the only one who slowly but gradually grew sick of her best friend running off with some guy I had never seen before. She was turning into a right slut, Alecto was, and she was only fourteen - but anyway, she's not the one I'm talking about.
The other one who wasn't affected was Emmeline.
So that year I spent more time than ever with her. I wasn't used to being lonely, but without Alecto around, the Slytherin common room felt empty. And even if she was around, she was usually in the company of some Thomas or John or Nick and I became a frequent guest to the Ravenclaw common room.
I have never admitted to anyone that I actually liked the Ravenclaw common room more than the Slytherin one. Our common room seems cold all the time, even when there's a fire burning, and it's made from stone and it's just... cold. The Ravenclaw common room always seemed warm, at least to me.
For a while, we would just sit together and do some homework or talk about something, and when the weather was good, we would take walks on the grounds. I remember one day in spring (it was unusually warm), we sat down in the shadow of a tree and talked about this love fever which seemed to have increased as spring came.
Because now, we weren't safe from it even outside. Only about ten feet from us were two people who I didn't know, lying in the grass and snogging as if there was no tomorrow.
"I mean, look at them", Emmeline said. She'd seen them too. "That's just disgusting, don't you think?"
I nodded my agreement and, despite my disgust, continued watching the couple. They looked like sixth or seventh years, a boy with untidy black hair and glasses and a girl with long red hair. Maybe I did know the boy. Wasn't he the Gryffindor seeker?
Then they were approached - oh the horror! - by my cousin, Sirius, that insuffer... wait. I liked Sirius. Had liked him back when we still talked. Which was about ten years ago now.
Sirius was accompanied by another young man with light brown hair and scars on his face.
"Oi, James, get up, we've got better things to do than watching you snog Evans!", Sirius laughed. He dropped into the grass next to James and continued to whisper to him. At the same time, something stirred in my memory. Evans.., Lily Evans? That girl Severus was so mad about?
He had told me about her earlier that year. I had promised not to tell anyone, so I wouldn't. But seeing Lily with another boy - a Gryffindor, even - made me feel really, really sorry for Sev. It must be so hard to see the girl you love with someone else...
Emmeline nudged me. "Look how close they're sitting."
Who? For a second I thought she meant Lily and James, but she wasn't looking at them.
"Who?", I asked.
"Sirius and Remus."
Remus being, I deduced, the scarred boy. How on earth did Emmeline know his name? But she was right. They were sitting really close together. I couldn't see clearly from where we were sitting, but it looked like they might be holding hands.
That particular thought made me want to gag and I quickly shook my head. "Ew."
Emmeline frowned for some reason, then suddenly stood up.
"Come", she said to me. Her voice sounded strange. Colder than usual and a little thick. I glanced up to her questioningly, but when she didn't say anything else, I simply gathered my things and followed her.
Minutes later, we were close to the Forbidden Forest and there was no student in sight. We were alone. Nobody could see us. In hindsight, I suppose it should have made me uneasy, but I felt completely safe with Emmeline.
"So?", I asked. She hadn't said another word.
Slowly, she turned and looked at me.
"Don't you think it's possible to love someone of your own gender?"
That question really came as a shock. For some reason, I hadn't expected it at all.
"Well", I said slowly. "We were told that it's unnatural, and an abnormality. And that people like that should just be like the others and be, well, normal."
"You were also told", Emmeline answered coldly, "that it's an abnormality to marry muggle-borns, and yet your own sister did so just two years ago."
"So what?", I snapped at her.
"I'm just saying that your family's prejudices shouldn't affect your judgement! You're an independent person, Cissy, you can decide for yourself what's right and what's wrong!"
She sounded so much like Andromeda that it hurt me. I closed my eyes for a second, then turned to Emmeline and said sharply, "I don't see why this is so important all of a sudden."
Because Emmeline had never really commented on my family's views before. I could always tell that she disapproved of Bella and her views, but she had never, like now, tried to convince me to think differently. Well, mostly because it wasn't really necessary. I usually pretended to be the good Slytherin girl when I was with Bella, Alecto and the others, but I thought differently. I had told Emmeline that I didn't mind Andromeda marrying Ted and that I wanted to see her again. I had asked her not to tell anyone. Emmeline, it seemed, was the only person where I could be myself, and I valued her very much for that.
But now, I didn't know what to think. Why was this so important to her? Faggots, that's what my mother called people like Sirius and Remus - that is, if Emmeline was correct in assuming that they were together. It was something that our family regarded as disgusting, unnatural, and wrong. I had never really thought about it until now.
"Why is it so important?", I asked again as Emmeline hadn't answered.
She had blushed deep crimson and wasn't looking at me. I was getting a little impatient (why, why didn't I see? It is so obvious, now that I'm looking back at it) and put a hand on her shoulder.
"You can tell me, Emmy. We're friends, right?" I think it was the first time I ever consciously used that nickname for her, and it seemed to encourage her. She looked up, still blushing. It made her look really pretty, actually.
"Are you still my friend if I tell you..." She took a deep breath and fixed her gaze on the ground. "If I tell you that - that I'm like that? I... I like girls."
I could tell that she had wanted to tell me, but not like this. Myself, I was shocked of course, but I forced myself not to run away, or show her that I was shocked, and I'm very good at maintaining masks. Emmeline knew me well enough to see I had a mask on, but I could tell that she didn't know what I felt underneath it.
Truth to be told, I was slightly disgusted, but not as much as my family would have liked me to be. Because I somehow thought that well, it was unnatural, but Emmeline was my friend. And she didn't do it to hurt anyone and I was pretty sure she wasn't going to harass me or anything. I knew her and I knew she wasn't disgusting and she hadn't changed just because she said it, she was still the same person.
"Why, though?", I asked, a little stupidly. I couldn't think of a reason why people would decide to be gay. And as far as I knew at that time, it was something you chose. It was natural to be straight, wasn't it? After all, that was what the word said. Straight. Both the right way and the easy way, no complicated detours of fancy decisions.
Emmeline, however, looked very offended by this and scowled at me.
"Do you think it's a choice?"
"Well", I said carefully, knowing that I didn't want to offend her further. "It's... that's what we were told. Is - I mean, is it not?"
Emmeline now closed her eyes and I could see that she was working hard to keep calm. Eventually, she said quietly, without opening her eyes:
"Do you think someone would choose this? It makes everything difficult. Having to deal with all these conflicts inside - do you know how hard it is to accept yourself when you're like this? And then you can't tell anyone because they'll hate you - you have to deal with all these prejudices - and then..." She finally opened her eyes and stared at me so intently that I took a small step backwards.
"Then you get a crush on someone", she continued. Her voice sounded odd, as if disconnected from her emotions, and I realised it was her way of building a mask... so her voice wouldn't betray her feelings.
"And that someone will probably never be interested in you. Maybe you don't know her or maybe you're friends with her, but it's not easy either way, seeing her all the time and thinking that you want her to know you like her, and at the same time knowing she can never know - living with something like that - thinking you'll never find anyone because of what you are..."
Her voice was shaking now from the effort of suppressing her emotions, and without really knowing what I was doing, I put my arms around her. Just in a friendly way, of course. I didn't know. Oh, how naive I was.
"I'm sorry, Emmy", I said. "I never thought about it... but you're still my friend, you're a good person, and if my family thinks you're any worse because of this, they're wrong. Just like they're wrong about Andromeda and Ted."
I could feel her relax in my arms, and - after realising how close we were - quickly released her. I wasn't scared, but didn't want to give her any ideas... despite of everything I said and thought, her confession still made her a little of a freak to me and I just didn't really understand. I wanted to, though, she was my friend, after all, and she was the only one apart from me who didn't seem affected by the love fever.
And now it seemed I knew why.
"Is there someone, then?", I asked without thinking.
She smiled, for the first time since she dragged me away from the lake, and it seemed the day got a lot sunnier all at once.
"You really don't want to know", she said cheerfully.
I returned her grin and agreed, "I suppose I don't. That was enough of a shock for one day."
Of course, I burned with curiosity and didn't see that the answer was right in front of me. I didn't see what was so incredibly obvious.
"I'll tell you one day", Emmeline promised with a smile.
And she did.
x - x - x - x - x - x - x
About three months later, actually. Just as we were about to get off the Hogwarts Express for the summer holidays. We hadn't been sitting together for the journey, I'd been with Alecto and her boyfriend, Bella, Lucius and Severus, and had no idea where Emmy was. I missed her - Alecto and her boyfriend didn't really count as company at all, and Lucius and Bella were talking about their ideologies, almost completely ignoring me. The only one I was talking to was Severus and we were talking about school and carefully avoided the subject of dark magic and our families' values. I resisted the urge to go and find Emmy, because even with Severus, I felt uncomfortable, but Bella didn't approve of Emmy and after she told me of her secret, I had been keeping away from her a little.
So when the Hogwarts Express arrived in London, I got out of our compartment last and very slowly, watching through the windows as Bella and Lucius were greeted by my parents.
"Cissy!"
There she was, just behind me. I turned and smiled.
"I've only got another two minutes until they come looking for me", I said, almost apologetic. Emmy knew that I didn't want to be seen in her company and had long accepted it.
"I just wanted to tell you", she said quickly, quietly, blushing. "You know."
I nodded, looking at her questioningly. "Who is it, then?"
She blushed some more. (It was blindingly obvious and I didn't see. I was so unbelievably blind.) "Well, she's... it's... well -" She hesitated, her cheeks burning, for a moment that seemed to last an eternity.
"You", she then whispered, sounding terrified.
And I was completely startled, completely surprised. As if it hadn't been obvious. I was so blind.
"Why?", I said stupidly. "I don't understand - I ignored you for half our first year and I'm bitchy and a coward and -"
"You were also the one who came to me and said, 'I'm sorry, it was stupid of me to hate you'", she said, her voice sounding stronger. "And you're braver than you think, Cissy."
She leaned forward and kissed my cheek and then ran away and I was totally dumbfounded and only got off the train when I heard my family calling for me.
