Chapter 7: It's Gonna Be Great

When I was a kid, I used to be afraid of mirrors. Not all the time—not even most of the time—but every once in a while, I'd read a horror novel or listen to too many of Uncle Harry's war stories, and I'd have this irrational fear that if I went in the bathroom and turned the light on, I was going to find something gruesome staring back at me, like the contents of my head would be reflected on the surface. It's kind of like how I feel now, crouching in the alley ten minutes from our house with my head on my knees, hoping that nobody tries to come and help me. At the end of the day, people are just mirrors, and I don't want to see the freak show of my mourning reflected on their faces.

A lady does come up to me at some point—I don't know how long after I sat down; I don't know anything anymore—and asks if I'm okay, and I'm tempted to throw a Relashio her way just to get her to leave me alone, but I figure that wouldn't look good on my moral scorecard, and anyway, I'm a few years old enough that I'd get into trouble with the Ministry for that. So I just ignore her until she goes away. It takes what feels like a long time before she goes away.

I also don't know how much longer I sit there after that before I get up. All this time, I've been a little afraid of Aunt Ginny or, god forbid, Molly tracking me here and giving me shit, but they don't, which means that for now I'm in the clear. The next hurdle, of course, will be dealing with whatever they have to say to me back home, but I'll deal with that when it comes.

I'm not far from home. I'm no runner by any stretch of imagination—I'm so out of shape, it's ridiculous—but I manage to run for maybe a minute from my place in the alley in the direction of home, and it makes me feel a little bit free, like finally I can do something unbridled without anyone around to stop me, as if I don't already live every aspect of my life that way, or at least try to. Maybe all this time I've been chasing after something that I can't understand that I already have, or maybe I'm full of shit and need to get off my soapbox, as usual.

At home, there's just Dad and Molly in the living room, and Molly huffs off and up to her bedroom the second I walk in. "I wanted us to go looking for you," says Dad, "but Aunt Ginny thought you probably just needed some space. Don't mind Molly. She just wanted to stay as long as it took to make sure you're okay."

I nod, stand there stupidly for a second, and then make to go up to my bedroom. But Dad adds, "Are you okay? It's okay if the answer is no."

I look at my father who can talk on and on about cauldron bottom thickness for hours and just—marvel at him for a second. "Do you think I'm a bad person?" I ask. God knows why I asked it, but I did.

"Lucy…"

"That's not an answer."

"No. No, I don't think you're a bad person."

"You only believe me because I'm your daughter." He doesn't answer. "I was horrible to her. To Mom. I mocked her. I mean—if you could add up all the good things you've done on one side, and all the bad on another, and weight them accordingly, where do you fall? Where do I fall?"

"Honey," says Dad, "I don't think anybody can ever tell you that."

"Really? I thought you believed in God. Wouldn't she have a say?"

Dad shrugs. "Maybe we all get told who we are and we get what we deserve when we die. Maybe we don't. In the meantime, all anybody can do is try to live the best life they can and do better when they've done wrong. Surely you've learned what you can do better from—from all this, haven't you?"

"Do you think she hated me? Did she hate me as much as I hated her?"

Something about Dad stiffens up. "We should get you girls back to Hogwarts. Go get Molly and grab your stuff."

"I thought we weren't leaving until later."

"Just go, okay?" He sounds tired.

"I loved her, too. I did. I'm not saying—"

"Go, Lucy."

So I go. Molly doesn't say a word to me when I go get her, just flounces off her bed and carries her trunk downstairs. Five minutes later, I join her. She says goodbye to Dad, kissing him on the cheek, and gives me this totally unwarranted look of betrayal before tossing her Floo powder into the fire.

And then it's just me and Dad. We look at each other, me and this man who tirelessly loved my mother even though she was too far away to really hear either of us, who never really did anything worse to me than love her, and I have no idea—no idea—what to say.

"I'll see you back here Friday night, then," says Dad.

"Yeah. See you Friday." And I let the Floo powder swallow me up.

x

When I arrive back in the Slytherin common room, it's practically empty. It's not dinnertime yet, and even though the weather is nice there are usually plenty of people who stay indoors to study on Sundays, so it surprises me that there are only a handful of people in there. McLaggen is one of them—he looks up from his work and smiles a little at me when I first make my way out of the fireplace—so I smile back and drag my stuff over to him in the far corner.

"Why so isolated?" I ask him, dumping my trunk next to the chair that I plop down into. "And where is everybody, anyway? This place is supposed to be packed."

"I'm not isolated. Isolated would be holing up in my dormitory without anybody around. How was your weekend? How was the funeral?"

"Fine," I say, and if I don't feel up to going into the details, well, bully for me. "But listen—my aunt and uncle are getting divorced."

"What? Are you talking about Weasley and Granger?"

"What? No. I know they row all the time, but no. Ginny and Harry."

"Shit. Guess she doesn't choose the Chosen One anymore."

"You're an ass. I feel like I shouldn't say anything, right? They've told Al and James and Lily, but they haven't told any of my other cousins, and I feel like they should hear it from one of them. Shouldn't they? But how am I supposed to not say anything?"

McLaggen shrugs. "Talk to one of those three about it, then. Hell, talk to your sister."

"I can't talk to my sister. You know I can't talk to my sister."

"Then talk to Potter."

I snicker in spite of myself. "You're going to have to be more specific than that."

"Al. Who do you think? Lily doesn't even go here, and I know you don't mind that James is a Gryffindor, but good luck getting him alone with his newfound, uh, popularity."

"McLaggen, what are you talking about?"

"What? Oh. He cracked it last night after he got back—or at least, that's when he announced it to everybody. Potter figured out how to get electricity working in the castle."

I carefully keep my jaw from dropping down like it wants to. No, James did not mention that at the funeral or at any of the meals we shared at the Burrow over the weekend, and neither did any of my other cousins. What, do they think that Molly and I are too fragile to hear about the world moving on even though our mum isn't here to move with it? Am I a leper now? Can't anybody talk to me like an actual human being anymore? Well—at least McLaggen, for one, is acting normal to me. Things were weird before I left, yeah, but this conversation is at least off to a promising start.

"So that's where everybody is? Checking Tumblr? You'd think they could do that in the common room."

"Yeah, well, everybody has to learn the spell that makes it possible to use electricity before they can actually use the spell on their phones, and it's a tricky one, apparently. For now, Potter has spelled the whole Great Hall so that anybody can use any electronics in there. That's where everybody went."

"What's the incantation?" I ask.

"Excludo Praecantatio. You know how spelling works—you don't really need to pick old Latin words for new spells—but I guess he's pretentious or wanted to feel more legit or something."

"But just getting electricity to work isn't enough, right? Hogwarts doesn't have any electrical outlets—how do you charge things up? And there's no cell signal here, I'm sure, so what about texting or trying to use the WiFi?"

McLaggen says, "A bunch of Muggle-born kids snuck out last night and stockpiled some lithium-ion batteries—plus actual cell phones for the purebloods who don't have one yet. They're selling the batteries for twenty Galleons a pop and the phones for a hundred, and people are actually buying them, can you believe that? For now, you can only call and text people who are using the same spell as you instead of a data or WiFi connection, and you can't connect to the Internet at all. I don't know what they're all even doing down there—playing games on their phones or what—I mean, it's not like they're going to be texting each other when you can't text outside the Great Hall yet—but I think getting all that stuff to work is Potter's next project."

"Wait a minute—why didn't you say anything about any of this in your letter?"

He shrugs again. "I sent that yesterday morning. Announcement didn't happen until last night."

"I bet the profs are over the moon delighted about all of this."

"People are going to be a nightmare sneaking looks at their phones in class once they get the spell working. It's gonna be great."

"Okay, so I won't try and track James down just now," I say. Honestly, I'm kind of surprised that James cracked the first part of the spell so quickly—he's only a third year, for god's sake—but whatever. If he wants to rain corruption down on Hogwarts's student body, that's cool with me. "Do you know where Al is?"

"Probably being the loner you think I am and avoiding everybody in his dorm. Either that, or he's off with Scorpius Malfoy."

I raise my eyebrows. "Al is making friends with who now?"

"I guess they're partners in Potions class? They were hanging out in the library late last night. I caught them down there when I was sneaking into the Restricted Section to return that book I stole to help me with—"

"I thought Al hated being a Slytherin."

"Malfoy isn't a Slytherin, Weasley."

"Yeah, but everybody knows that Ravenclaw is full of pansy kids of Death Eaters who are afraid the Gryffindors will torment them if they end up in Slytherin, and Malfoy is exactly one of those pansies. If Al doesn't want to associate himself with Slytherin House, you'd think he wouldn't want to associate himself with Ravenclaw House, either."

"Well, go ahead and go up to his dorm and judge him there yourself, then, after you're done talking about his parents' divorce."

But I suddenly don't feel like being around Al or any of the other Weasleys at all anymore. They're just going to treat me with kid gloves because of my mum, and it's so nice to be treated by McLaggen like a normal person that it makes me really, really not want to leave his side. "Come on," I say. "Get your phone out. Let's get our phones working so you can text me when I go back home next weekend."

"Won't you be using data at home so you can get on the Internet and junk?"

"Yes, but if I use Excludo Praecantatio just like you do, I should also be able to text you, right? Worst case scenario, we prove that you can't do both at the same time. But we can't prove anything unless we get the spell to work." McLaggen's lips twitch. "Come on," I repeat. "So that you can tell me right away next time there's a major development like James getting electricity to work inside the castle, Jesus."

It takes the better part of the rest of the day to get the spell working for both of us. To get our phones up and running by the end of the night, we have to skip dinner and blow off practicing for Flitwick's class in time for our next lesson the very next morning, a choice that I find myself sincerely regretting when it's two in the morning and McLaggen and I are still slaving away at it.

I find myself kind of side-eyeing McLaggen every few minutes, like, did I really get naked with this bloke just a few weeks ago? Like, do I think it's ever going to happen again? Do I want it to ever happen again? He doesn't seem to notice, though, so I get away with watching his eyebrows furrow and his fist shake with frustration as he grips his wand.

That's the thing—I'm asking myself if I want this when I know I shouldn't want it. Because it wasn't fun when I had to dump Chandni. I think I pulled it off to everybody else, but it wasn't fun, and I shouldn't get myself mixed up with somebody like that again if I want to avoid a repeat. Right? But we're talking about McLaggen, my best friend in not so many words, and he wouldn't cheat on me like that, would he? And anyway, I'm not in deep with him, am I? We banged, like, once, and there was that one time kissing on the train, and that barely counts. Right?

"Weasley," says McLaggen in a sort of suspicious voice, and I realize my latest glance has been more than just a glance. "What are you doing?"

Worrying, I want to say—that would be the honest answer—but instead, I say, "Because watching you try and cast a Bubble-Head Charm that doesn't trap your head inside a vacuum is funny."

"You try not being able to breathe until you figure out how to nonverbally take the thing off. Call it 'funny' then."

"We should go to bed. We're not getting anywhere anyway—we'll do better to practice in class tomorrow once we've gotten some sleep."

But McLaggen is looking at me funny. "Do you, uh…?"

"What?"

"Do you…?"

"Out with it, McLaggen."

"Do you want to come to bed with me?" he finally spills in this big rush.

I have no idea what to say, so I laugh a little and put my hand over my mouth. Come to bed with him? It was one thing when he tried to make a move on me because my mum had died and he didn't know what else to do. Banging before means we've opened up that particular floodgate, and I can deal with figuring out how I want to respond if he asks me to do it again, because it's familiar territory, and when you think about it, it's not really intimate. But sharing a bed? What century is this, and what does he think I mean to him?

"I'll see you at breakfast," I say when I get a grip on my stupid-ass giggling. "Honestly. 'Night."

"'Night," McLaggen echoes, looking lost. I get the feeling like he's going to tack on something stupid to the end of that statement, like I love you, so I pack up my stuff and flee before he has the chance.