Once Upon a Miserable Girl's Plight...

Okay, still not as long as I had hoped for, but what can I say… Lily had nothing more to say. ; )

Disclaimer: Read this and weep, for I am not J.K. Rowling and thus have no secrets to give you about anything concerning Harry Potter. The plot is mere speculation on my part and the characters most definitely do not belong to me.

Chapter Two: The Depression of Mistletoe

December 25, Fourth Year Dormitories

This is quite sad, you know. Just sitting here on Christmas Day, wishing you were somewhere else.

I used to like Christmas. Honestly. It was a nice holiday filled with joy and happiness that could be seen around the world. The fresh pine tree smell of the Christmas tree, the brightly wrapped presents under its festive and cheery branches... The aroma of sweet smells and hot chocolate with marshmallows floating from the kitchen to tickle your senses... It all seemed so...perfect. Like nothing could ever be better than December twenty-fifth.

Hogwarts was no exception to the traditional loveliness of Christmas. I think that is part of what is making me so sick of Hogwarts at the moment, really. All of the mistletoe hanging from the entrance ways, courtesy of Potter and his friends, and the ghosts singing Christmas carols... It was too cheery and too cliché. Except for the fact that the only place where ghosts sing Christmas carols is at Hogwarts.

But the singing was bad enough.

Don't get me wrong, I act cheery at times and especially around Christmas. If I didn't, people might start to wonder. But when I was alone in my dormitory and staring blankly at the boring ceiling that's only interesting note was that it had a moving picture of my roommate's favorite singer, Stubby Boardman; I was free to feel however I liked.

Misery loved company and my company at the moment was Stubby Boardman, a stupid poster of a young man grinning cheekily at me. How utterly depressing, right?

Oh well... There is a feast going on at the moment, but I haven't much of an appetite. I feel incredibly stupid for being so depressed on such a nice holiday but I don't quite know how else to feel.

As I lay here on my bed, I keep thinking of all of the things the letter said. My sister didn't want me to come home for Christmas. 'Why bother,' the letter had stated, 'When you really are not welcome?'

Now I don't know about a normal person, because quite frankly I'm not all that normal, but if your mother disappeared, would you not want your sister home for Christmas? I know that right now my father is in a state. Why would Petunia not want help consoling him? She gave the excuse that she did not want 'one more annoyance that could throw her over the edge.'

I hardly think I'm an annoyance, but apparently, I'm just the thing to push Petunia over the edge.

God, it must be hell for my father at this point. Mom has been missing for weeks, and still, there's not a trace of her. I cannot imagine the pain he is going through. To be so deeply in love with someone and suddenly, you wake up to find that they have disappeared forever. And that there's not a trace that they actually left except the missing body and the depressing hole that lays in your heart, screaming out in agony...

If I ever disappear or... die (I can hardly utter the word in conjunction with my mother without having tears well up in my eyes), I want the whole world to shake. I want it to be known and discovered around the world that someone who means something to someone else has been lost. It sounds selfish, I know... But I truly believe that is the way it should be for everyone. Everyone has a role in someone's life, changes someone's life...and they don't even know it. So that is why everyone should have the honor of affected the world and let it be known that they changed the world in some small way...

I just hope my mother isn't dead. She had...has so much life and so much of it left to live...

It's just so horribly ironic. Christmas is supposed to be a time for happiness and family unity... What the hell happened? She just can't be gone... She just can't...

I know... I'll think of something happy.

The mistletoe Sirius Black hung on our dormitory doorway is still there. Bertha Jorkins came to talk to Marlene McKinnon yesterday in our dormitory and she caught him under it. I think he may have been trying to get Marlene under it, but instead, he got a snog from Bertha. It was quite amusing at the time.

My mother always liked mistletoe. She would put it up in our house and go on about how she had her first kiss under mistletoe. "You fall in love under it," she used to say. She was always one of those hopeless romantics. So was my father... Honestly, I think that's why they got along so well. Similar chemistry. That's where they had their first kiss together and ever since, Mom has always hung up mistletoe for Christmas. But now, I can't imagine my father putting up mistletoe this year in his current state.

I have to look away from the stupid plant. If I don't I'm going to start crying again. So I'll look at Stubby Boardman. Marlene fancies him quite a bit, but I don't really see the intrigue. In fact, she fancies just about any boy. If Sirius had gotten her under the idiotic plant I will not name for fear of screaming she would have kissed him. But I don't hold that against her... Boys can be interesting in both bad ways and good.

But I don't necessarily want to think about boys either.

I just want to go home, have a nice Christmas just like I used to have every year, and open presents while watching my parents share a loving kiss under the mistletoe.

Somehow, I don't think I'm going to get what I want this Christmas.