SWAN SONG
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"…For those who are afraid of the Night, can never live to see the Day."
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I
There was once a little girl who didn't like the rain.
Perhaps she didn't like the wail of thunder or the crackle of lightening; perhaps she didn't like the alien wetness of water seeping into her warm skin. Or perhaps, it was because the raindrops seemed like the sad tears of a broken old lady…
Her elder sister laughed at her.
"You just don't like wearing mackintoshes, that's all," she said. "They make you feel clammy, don't they?"
The little girl wasn't sure—she was barely eight years old—and when had her dear Sis ever been wrong?
II
The little girl hated her school, where the boys teased her mercilessly, the girls snubbed her all the time, and the teachers called her 'Evil's Spawn'.
"Inferno, Inferno," they used to jeer at her, forming a ring around her and going round and round in circles, with their mocking cruel faces and derisive little sneers. She didn't have any friends, no, she was just this little oddball who always made weird things happen around her and brought disgrace upon her school and family.
"They'll be sorry one day," her father used to console her. "Just you be patient."
But patience had never been the little girl's forte, and she spent her summer holidays talking to frogs of the neighbourhood pond.
III
She used to look in the mirror and study her face.
"Nothing special here," she whispered to herself, disappointed, even though she had learnt to expect the worst.
How would she ever get that cute new boy Finnegan to like her?
"Why am I so short?" she asked her grandfather one April morning.
"Our women have never been very tall," said Grandpa, pretending to ponder the question.
"Sis is," said the little girl.
"Your Sis is an anomaly, Little Girl," said her Grandpa, snorting.
I will always be little, thought the girl. 'Little' girl—insignificant and ordinary.
Grandpa probably saw the dismay in her eyes, for he yanked her ponytail gently, and said," Little people often cast giant shadows."
The next day, she got her letter to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Turns out, Sis wasn't the 'Anomaly' after all.
IV
The little girl was growing up.
And she didn't like it one bit.
"All the boys at Hogwarts stare at me," she told her mother, during the Christmas holidays of her third year. "It really bugs me; I mean, it's not as if I'm a creature from outer space, is it? It's not as if I've sprouted a tail and horns! There's one boy whom I dislike especially, he's always pulling pranks on me and--"
She didn't understand her mother's enigmatic smile, because she was too hurt by her sister's contemptuous expression as she passed them by.
"Freak," Sis had hissed at her.
Dinner that night was the unfurling of a shock.
"I've found a lovely little house for us in Seven Oaks," announced her father, putting an arm around her mother.
"Change is inevitable," her Grandpa told her wisely, when she petulantly asked him why they were shifting to a new house.
But that didn't make her like the new villa any better.
V
"Why don't you ever choose a different flavour of ice cream?" asked Rosamerta of the pretty little girl one day. She was the daughter of the owner of Three Broomsticks, and she was the amiable sort. "You always have the Vanilla scoop; why not try a new variety? How about something more exotic, like Cocoa Fairies?"
The girl made a face. "I don't like experimenting with food; it always ends up wrong for me."
Rosamerta laughed and walked back to the ice cream counter, but the girl's friend—the one with the bounteous brown curls and soft blue eyes—shook her head.
You don't like experimenting with anything, thought the friend. For hadn't she used the same kind of ink and the same kind of quill throughout the year? Hadn't she worn the same smart muffler every winter, and the same black pumps on every outing?
VI
She was fifteen without realizing it, and was sitting with her Sis in the verandah.
"How come you've never dated before?" asked Sis, a strange glee in her cold voice. "Hasn't anybody asked you out yet?"
"I don't believe in dating," said the girl. "None of the boys in my year are serious about commitment, and I'm not interested in flings."
"Mr. Right may take a long time in coming," warned her sister.
The girl pursed up her lips thoughtfully.
"There is that annoying boy in school, you know, the one with the messy black hair? He keeps asking me out, but I think he just does it to annoy me. I mean, I've refused him and insulted him far too many times for him to still be interested in me."
Sis didn't say anything, but the girl didn't like the way her eyebrows had shot up.
The girl didn't question her sister. Sis was not the same Sis anymore.
VII
The boy with the messy black hair and gold-rimmed spectacles had a charm of his own, she had to concede. But every time she caught him staring at her in class, every time he asked her to go out with him, every time his bottomless hazel eyes tracked her down in the hallways-- she was struck with an unidentifiable fear.
But why was she afraid of him? She was a Gryffindor, she was a soldier's daughter. It was remarkable that even though she had shouted at him innumerous times, she was also actually afraid of him!
She had never known a more intense person in all her life. There were very few things he was passionate about (such as Quidditch, prank-fests, asking her out, his friends), but his kind of fervour was a brand of its own. Whatever he did, he did it with every fibre of his being, and he was not afraid to show the world his impetuosity, his joie de vivre, or his heart that he carried on his sleeve.
She no longer doubted his sincerity; who could? She now knew that Romeo and Juliet could not have sprung merely from imagination; there must have been some inspiration too.
He had told her that he loved her, in a deserted Common Room. He had told her that his love for her was a reality that transcended the understanding of men. She had laughed heartily at that, and had snubbed him most cruelly, hoping secretly that the hurt on his face was just an act. And she was afraid.
He stopped asking her out after that, and she pretended she didn't care a Knut. But her castle of shams was a tottering ruin, and for the first time in her life, she experienced something akin to regret.
The regret might have lived on, but her parents didn't, and her entire world came tumbling down over a letter from the Ministry of Magic.
VIII
Then one fateful night, when she was on one of her hall patrols, she stumbled across him, and their lips met for the first time.
She could not ignore the thousands of sparks that shot down her spine, like a comet across space, like a blizzard among the sand dunes, like ice upon the ashes. She could not deny the electricity that buzzed down her veins, yet she knew it was unacceptable and insane, so she tried to protest, and failed.
It probably wasn't enough for him, for he kissed her again, outside the Greenhouse, and her doubt and her fear exploded into anger at him.
She saw the pain on his face when she told him not to love her, she saw the bitterness in his eyes, and she saw the tremor in his rigid jaw.
But she still wasn't ready to give in to Fate; she still wasn't ready to succumb.
Sixteen, after all, is hardly an age to fall in love.
IX
She knew he was watching her, drinking her every move like a thirsty Bedouin at the edge of a brook. She knew that his only desire was to pick her up in his arms, and lock her away in a world where only the two of them could dwell.
She had once heard him say to Remus, that she was his highest reverence, that he had put her not on the pedestal, but in the heaven above it. It was nothing but torture.
She saw it in his eyes, the mysterious powder of love etched upon them. She saw how listless and meaningless his life had become, for did he not lapse into fatigue as soon as she was in sight? All his ambitions seemed to have nucleated into the possibility of watching her.
She was no longer afraid of him, but she was afraid that she would never be able to return those feelings that had become the essence of his existence. He loved her too much; she could not love as much.
That was all he lived for…. To gaze at her endlessly, as if her image was the only thing that kept him alive.
They made her feel naked, his eyes. She hated his beautiful hazel eyes, she hated them with a zeal that left her weak.
He set her on a bed of prickles, every time he looked at her like that. It was not irritation; it was not anger that streamed through her veins, whenever he gazed at her through his transparent eyes. ….Yet she wanted to yell at him, and shake him. She wanted to lash out at him, that she would NEVER love him. NEVER. She wanted to scream at him that they belonged to two different worlds; worlds that could reside together, but never live together.
But each time she told herself that they were too different to be one, each time she tried to tell herself that he was too dangerously intense and she was too easy-going and peace-loving, a song came flying to her mind unbidden, a song that her mother used to sing on their family piano…
Dew drops and rose petals, Bread and wine,
Symphony and verse…. So separate, so unlike
But when Spring comes by, they merge, they combine
And a thousand dreams are born into the night….
And are they too different to ever unite?
X
There is a butterfly on the window panes, looking out to the grounds below, wistfully fluttering its golden-pink wings. But the window is barred, the glass is sealed, and there isn't a way out for it.
The little girl is a woman now. She has been a woman for quite some time; she never knew when the child in her vanished, and womanhood slipped in stealthily to fill its place. She holds a hand to her beating heart, and she touches the lips that he had kissed. And now, she looks at the butterfly and smiles.
She gets up to unlatch the window.
The butterfly hesitates for a moment, as if unsure whether this is a hallucination too, just like the glass was. Then it spreads out its shimmering wings, and leaps into the night.
Lily Evans is finally ready... and a certain boy with messy black hair looks up to her window, and sees her clinquant smile...
"Lily," he whispers, when she bumps into him the next morning, and she whispers back, into his collar, into his ear.
"James".
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FOOTER NOTES:
As you can see, this chapter has a different writing-style from the previous ones. Does it work?
I tried to include Symbolisms in the story… I don't know if they are far too absurd to be noticed, or completely harebrained… Anyway, tell me if you didn't like them.
I think just one more chapter is needed, and I'll finally have the crappy story off my back. Phew!
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To Marianna (Anonymous) and GoddessoftheMaan: There was no way for me to reply to your Review, but I just want you to know that your lovely words of encouragement really, really motivated me. So, Thank You!