(3)
She was always trailing after you, much like your henchmen-type 'friends' did, only she wanted very much to be more than that.
The first time I properly met her was during one of our very first fights. We must have made a record-only two days in, and already serving detention for 'intolerable childish disputes'. Anyway, I'd sent a sort of flash of light at you, and you sent another equally wimpy spell back (first years, remember), when she jumped out from behind you, rules be damned, and threw herself onto me.
She never got a punch in, because my friends, being boys, were faster and stronger, and peeled her off me, and I knew a little about kicking too, but what struck me that time was the way you let yourself be defended by a girl.
That was what made me truly hate you.
She stood, her lip bleeding because of her own blind punching and pinching, and you just stood there, looking so bored, not even helping her to her feet, or offering to go with her to the Hospital Wing. While I looked on, completely unharmed, but with my own friends fawning over me like a delicate flower (yes, I lectured them about that later, you know me so well) I felt a feeling akin to pity for her.
But that all went to waste when she snarled, "Stupid mudblood bitch," and cast a bat boogey hex which hurt, damn it! And also made me feel like a complete failure because she had mastered this complicated hex and I had not, and also, at that point, the extent of my abilities only stretched from fixing glasses to shooting light and making my quill wiggle on my desk. It was one of the most humiliating things I've ever been through.
(What a pretentious brat I was.)
It was that hex, more than the insult or the attempt at beating me up, which solidified my hatred for her, and for you, and for all the people whom you associated with. It was from then on, on our second day at Hogwarts, when class hadn't even started, that there became three sides to our war. Me and my friends, you and your friends, and the spectators who loved to goad us into action.
Idiots, all of us. Fools.
But then, wasn't it that kind of innocence which marked the extent of our childhood? Before the understanding of shades between black and white, between friends and traitors, and enemies and allies, before all this adult consideration and teenage angst- before all this, we were all children once, running into oblivion, blissfully free, with our robes flying with the wind, our bare feet flying over the grass, where a small kiss on a scratch made everything okay.
I was restrained, only just, from flying back at her with a repertoire of carefully planned witty insults, by-who else? Professor McGonagall. She took one look at the situation, and the spectators all dispersed, blending in with the suits of armor and cheeky walls that decorated the ancient castle, and then she said the two words which still send shivers down my spine even as I'm writing it down.
"Office. Now."
The final verdict for our first fight was: one hour of copying lines for me and my friends, and polishing trophies without magic for you and her. Separated to prevent any more skirmishes. Our animosity encouraged, unknowingly, by the same Professor who tried to put a stop to it.
That spark of dislike flared into hatred, and it was because of her, because of your uncaring behavior, because she dared to like you when no others would. Because she trampled on my pity and was better than me.
Looking back, I realize even then, she was smarter than me. She grew up faster than any of us. She understood. Did she even have a proper childhood?
To my surprise, I think I miss her.
(Stop laughing. Yes-you're right. Yes, I'm quick to judge character. Stop it.)