All alone on a Sunday morning
Outside I see the rain is falling
Inside I'm slowly dying
But the rain will hide my crying, crying, crying
And you
Don't you know my tears will burn the pillow
Set this place on fire
--Allure
Chapter 5---
Mackenzie's POV
"Another Saturday night and I ain't got nobody! I got some money cuz I just got paid. Now how I wish I had someone to talk to. I'm in an awful way. Da Na Na Na Na na na!!!" Rose and I sing.
Rose and I sing quite well actually. Huh, maybe we should start a band. Just then Al interrupts my master plans "Um, you guys have a lot of people you could talk to, me, Scor, James, Fred, Lily, Hugo..."
I look down at Al and Scor who are playing Wizard's Chess. While Al's dad Mr. Potter, or Harry as he always tells me to call him, is terrible at chess, but Al's uncle Ron (and Rose's dad) is a very good player. Al seems to take after his uncle, and is playing really well. "Well, duh but that's not the point." I explain, "That song has the words Saturday night in it and its Saturday night!!"
"Congratulations, Kenzie you can count the days of the week!" I roll my eyes at him.
Suddenly, this annoying prick named Liam Prather came up to us, "Hey, Rose, hey Kenzie" he winks at me when he says this in his annoying prick-like manner.
I roll my eyes at him to show my disgust. "Don't call me Kenzie!" "Why not Kenzie, does it turn you on?" he laughs. "Haha you wish you could turn me on, Prather; only Al can call me Kenzie." At this Liam The Git turns and looks at Al. Al looks up at smiles at me. And totally ignores Liam. Whoo!! Go Al! You could totally kick Liam's butt…wait, they aren't fighting…and I'm cheering in my head…
I walk over to him and smile, "Whoo!! Go Al! You're gonna beat Scor at wizard's chess!!" Hopefully, The Prick gets the message and leaves. Al does beat Scor, check mate baby; I should bet on him sometime, I'd win a fortune! Luckily, The Great Prick leaves soon after that, hopefully getting the message that I DON'T FANCY HIM.
Then, Rose, Scor, Al and I spend some time wandering the Hogwarts corridors. Rose and Scor pretend to be on prefect duty and Al and I come along for the ride under the invisibility cloak.
We wander through the halls joking and laughing until one o clock in the morning, which, yes is way past curfew, which is at 10, and way past the time that Rose and Scor were supposed to be out doing "prefect duty".
I yawn. "Ok I think it's time to hit the hay." They all look at me like I'm crazy. Right, American expression they have no idea what the heck I'm saying. "I'm going to go to bed" I clarify. This, they understand and they all nod and grunt in agreement and we head back towards the Gryffindor dormitories. We say goodbye to the boys in the Gryffindor common room and use the invisibility cloak to sneak back into our dorm.
See, the boys roommates don't care if they come in late, but Sasha, Olivia, and Sophie would kill us if we came in after curfew. First, because they are jealous that we hang out with Scor and Al who are considered to be very attractive by the female population at Hogwarts, and second, because Sasha wants to take over Rose's role as a prefect and Olivia and Sophie would die (quite literally) to take my job as a beater on the Gryffindor Quidditch team. Wait, but then they wouldn't be able to play because they're dead…but that's not the point!
Our Quidditch team looks pretty good this year, with the Almighty James Potter as our Captain leading us to victory with his intense practices. The positions are as follows: Al plays Seeker, Fred and I are the beaters, and Luka Vane (son of Romilda Vane and a Muggle man who left her when he found out she was a witch), Brody Jordan (son of Lee Jordan and Alicia Spinnet), and James are our chasers. Luckily the practices seem to be paying off and we're flying together really fluently this year.
As I snuggled into my nice warm bed, I forget what day tomorrow is, and my dreams begin.
The next morning as I wake up, I realize what today is; the third Sunday of the month. It's 4:30 in the morning, pourig down rain, and I have slept around 3 hours. I begin to cry, bawl actually. Tears stream down my face and I know it's no use. I just sit there and cry and cry. At some point, I realize that Rose has woken up and has her arms around me, yet my crying continues.
"I'm going to take you to the Room of Requirement, then I'll run and get you some water, or else you'll run out of tears to cry." Rose whispers to me. I give a little nod to show I understand, and Rose runs to her trunk and grabs the invisibility cloak that she borrowed from Al. She must have remembered to muffliato my bed until Sasha, Olivia and Sophie had gone to breakfast. Merlin, I love her.
She performs a quick silencing spell on me and I cry silently, tears still streaming down my face. She throws the cloak over me so I am invisible and we walk down the stairs to the Common Room. Luckily it is empty when we get there, and we quickly exit through the portrait.
She leads me up the stairs and I follow along clumsily, still managing to cry. When we reach the seventh floor, she passes a certain place 3 times, silently asking for my sanctuary. Finally, a door appears and we both enter.
Inside the door, the Room has transformed itself into my room at my muggle home. The walls are painted turquoise and black and my queen sized bed with my red comforter is in the middle. The ceiling is painted a navy blue, with stick on glow in the dark stars in the shape of the Scorpio constellation (to remind me of my friends). Even my bookshelves filled with my favorite muggle books are in place.
But, I already know where everything is and I collapse on the bed, still silently crying, and remove the invisibility cloak. And this time I just let it out, I don't try to muffle my crying or wipe my snot. Rose hugs me quickly and says softly "I'm just going to get you water, I'll be right back." I give her my small nod and she takes off the silencing charm and disappears. These walls are soundproofed by magic anyway.
I remind the Room to only let people I trust to enter, and I curl up into the fetal position and cry. I cry about everything, missing my family, the earthquake in Haiti that killed many that my daddy recently told me about, my dead grandparents, saying goodbye to my family, unrequited love, Rose being so kind to me, the evil in the world, cancer, innocent victims of terrible things, anything. I let all my tears, all my emotions, everything out.
The door opens, and I look up as Rose enters with the water that she demands (though nicely) that I drink. But behind her, someone else is there. She doesn't seem to sense his presence. SoI sit up and point at the figure behind her.
Al is standing behind Rose, staring, horror struck, as I continue to bawl my eyes out. I realize that he has never seen me cry. This makes me cry even harder, no one should see me cry. Crying shows weakness.
It only takes a second for him to react, "Kenzie?" he questions. As I cry I gasp for breath to try and answer him. I remember how much I love that he calls me a name no one else can. Rose says words for me "Al," she says quietly "You should really leave. You don't want to see her like this." Al looks at her defiantly. I cry. I love him, he's my bestest friend, he shouldn't see me like this.
But Al strides towards me and wraps me up in his strong embrace and lays me back down on my bed. I put my face in his shirt and cry. This time I cry for Al, for him to see me like this, I cry for Rose, she will have to explain, I cannot speak. He holds me tighter and smoothes my hair. "Shh, shh it's alright" he whispers. But it's not alright. He cannot see me cry.
Yet I can't pull away. I cry into his shirt for a long while, I know my tears are making stains on his shirt. Finally, towards noon, I begin to calm down a little. I look up and realize Rose has left, but Al, of course, is still here holding me in his arms. He looks down at me and asks if I am ready for some water. I attempt a smile which probably ended up more like a grimace and nod.
He hands me the cup and I drink it all. Afterwards, I begin to drift into a dreamless sleep, still in his arms.
I awaken around an hour later with tears on my face. The crying begins again and Al stays through it all. Doesn't he have something better to do on his Sunday then watch me cry? Not even Rose stays all the time.
As I calm down again, he offers me more water. Rose must have come in while I was asleep to supply me with more.
This time, however, after I drink the water I say croakily "I'm sure you want to know why I'm crying." He shrugs, "I can wait." "No," I say determinedly, "You need to know. I should start at the beginning." I lie down on the bed and get comfortable on my side, so I was looking at him. Al mirrors me so we are both lying down on the bed, looking at each other.
"As you know, I come from a Muggle family." I softly begin my story. Al nods to show he understands. "The Muggle world has its own culture. As you know from Muggle Studies, every culture has its own 'perfect vision', that is to say, a vision of a perfect person. In my family, I have a mother, a father and two brothers, Alexander and Nathaniel, who are better known to me as Mama, Daddy, Alex, and Nate. My dad and my brothers truly accept people for who they are. My mother, on the other hand, has issues with this. When I got my acceptance letter to Hogwarts, my whole family was ecstatic. My mom knew I was special and my dad and brothers just thought it was cool that I could do magic.
Before I got my letter to Hogwarts, we were a happy family. But one letter, one letter, changed my life, my entire family's life, and my mother's perspective. She began to visualize how I should look, how I should act, my future, my present, my life. She wanted me to do ballet lessons when I enjoyed jazz, she wanted me to sing opera, when I can only sing pop and R&B, she wanted me to be skinny as a stick, when I wanted to eat what I wanted to and have curves like a real woman, and she wanted me to write novels, when I like to write poems and songs.
One time, when I was around 12 years old, we got into a fight. It was so bad, I started crying. She told me that crying was a sign of weakness and no one should ever see me cry. She made fun of me because I was weak. I learned my lesson. So, from then on, I didn't cry in front of people. I held it in until I could be by myself. When I got to Hogwarts again, in time for 3rd year, I found it very hard to be by myself as often as I needed to cry. So I made myself a 'Doom Day'. Every 3rd Sunday of a month I lock myself in here, the Room of Requirement, which takes the room of my old room at my Muggle home and I cry myself out. So that no one has to see me cry.
It didn't take Rose long to find out, obviously because she's in the dormitory with me all the time and she when she realized what was happening like the smart girl she is, I told her my story. She deals with it the best she can. She always helps me, she was the first person I ever cried in front of that wasn't family. She is family now, I guess. Sometimes, she reminds me of the mother I used to have, before I received that letter." I finish my story solemnly.
Al just stares at me tenderly and brushes some hair out of my face. "You know," he says, "You can cry in front of me." I smile lightly at him "I trust you." He smiles at this and says, "Why didn't you tell me before?"
My eyes tear up again, and one tear escapes, "Hey, hey," Al brushes the tear away with his thumb, "I'm not mad at you." "I know," I whisper, "I'm sorry, I should have told you but I didn't want to burden you with my problems."
He stares straight into my eyes, "Feel free to burden me any time." I start to cry again, but this time the tears are tears of joy. "Did I say something wrong?" Al asks quickly, hugging me again.
"No, you said everything right." And he did. So he holds me and I cry and at the end of my Doom Day, I feel a lot lighter then I ever felt before.
A/N: ok so I hope you like it, it shows a very different side of Z that I wanted to show you. Review and let me know what you thought! The next chap will prob be about Rose's POV through the Doom Day, just to show a little difference in perspective. This chap is dedicated to my reviewers!!! also, I'm thinking about naming a character after one of my dedicated readers…so start reviewing!
~wwccd