Kat's Cradle
By Lily April Black
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I should have known what I was getting myself into. I mean—why didn't I realize that Kat had a life before us, before me, James and Gracie? That she had a past? It was right under my nose: Kat was the past—she lived for it. When she did something, she didn't consider the consequences of her actions upon her future: she was creating history. And every action she took was carefully document as history some archaeologist might dig up.
Kat must have worn off on me more than I thought at the time. After her death I went looking for buried past. I ended up finding answers to unrelated questions. Now I create answers for someone else. Answers come before the questions; Kat was full of quotable sayings.
But I digress. I should have started my sixth year of Hogwarts September 1st of that fall. But that was the day Kat died of a broken heart. At the time I wondered why? how? She had been like a mother to three of us children, helping raise us. She had a successful career, a job. For the life of me I could not understand why.
"Why do we have to go to school?" For once I thought I had found a why question that Kat wouldn't answer with the word 'history'. The answer to any 'why' question is history. She always said that. I should have known better. To learn history, she said, to learn why you are the way you are. That's the importance of history.
The next day I scourged for Kat's past in the Painted Lady—the house where my mother, Kat and Leanna raised me, my twin brother James, and Leanna's daughter Gracie.
~*~
April sifted and sorted through trunks in the attic. Tears ran streams down her face. She spent hours gathering evidence of Kat's past. Not all history is buried in the earth. The most valuable can be found in our own hearts under our own roofs. Oh but Kat, April thought, if your heart is buried in the earth…
April looked around the attic. How much history was up here! Journals and Periodicals concerning every area of Western magical history were packed tightly in large trunks. April's childhood toys were scattered amongst those of Gracie and James. They all had had such a happy, blissful, oblivious childhood. Other trunks were filled with dress robes of the highest fashion. But these clearly did not belong to Kat, for she had neither Leanna's height, nor Jessie's fitness. That is not to call Kat short and squat for she was not so. Short, yes, but she was of normal weight; it just didn't compare to the athletic form of April's mother.
Finally, in the back of the attic, April found what she was looking for. Trunks upon trunks filled with diaries, school notebooks, pictures, and notepads. Kat was a packrat; she could never bring herself to throw anything away.
~*~
Reading those memoirs, I knew that I would have to make my own. I would have to be a historian. Maybe my thoughts—like so many others—would disappear in time, never to be found. Maybe an ancestor would find it. An archaeologist would stumble upon it. Or I could publish it! Then there would be lots of copies to be found. More likely to be found sooner—harder to forget. Sure, eventually all will be forgotten eventually, but still…