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34. Leanne
Dear Katie,
Quickly, she dashes off the postcard. She describes her holiday in Austria, asks about Katie's holiday in France, passes on messages from her parents, shares a few jokes. There is no room to be eloquent on a postcard, and that suits her just fine. She's never been good at letter-writing; she's always preferred to stick to the standard weather is good, wish you were here type of postcard.
Except at the moment it is pouring with rain, and she certainly doesn't wish Katie was here.
She's your best friend! protests part of her, but the rest of her knows that that is the problem.
Katie was her best friend, and they shared everything. They had no secrets from each other, so they knew everything about each other. And yet she had failed to notice when Katie was under the Imperius curse. She had merely dismissed it as Katie "acting oddly".
What sort of a best friend did that?
Sighing, she signs her name at the bottom of the postcard: Leanne.
Leanne. Lion woman. That was half the problem.
A lion woman would have thick, wavy blonde hair and hazel eyes, just like she did. Her mother was fond of saying how much the name suited her.
But it didn't. A lion woman would be brave, fierce, bold, passionate and loyal. She would be a fighter, standing up for what she believed. She would be a devoted friend to her friends and a ferocious enemy to her enemies. In short, she would be a true Gryffindor.
And Leanne isn't. She was not a good enough friend to notice when Katie was being controlled. She was not brave enough to try and help Katie when she touched the necklace. She was not passionate enough to try and find the people who had given Katie the necklace. She is not a lion woman.
If she wasn't Muggle-born, it would make no difference. Witches and wizards don't care about first names and their meanings. But Leanne had spent her primary school years hearing her mother tell friends proudly about her name and how it suited her, and receiving little gifts that said "Leanne: Lion woman. The female version of Leander, the Greek hero."
She can't help it. She is Leanne, the lion woman, red and gold. Except she isn't, and she can never be it. Only something deep down inside her tells her that she could be, that she is, but she knows that it is nonsense.
She turns the postcard over. It shows a view of the Austrian Alps at sunset. The sky is pink, the clouds tinted yellow. The snow on the mountaintops looks like fire in the light.
Red and gold, just like everything else.
She looks out of the window at the same view of the Austrian Alps. That was why she chose this card, because it was almost the view from the window of the chalet. At the moment the view is exactly the same as the postcard, except for one thing.
Instead of the beautiful red and gold sunset, a rainbow arches over the mountains. It is red and gold, but also every other colour as well.
She has to be red and gold, but not because of her name. She has to be red and gold because without it, she will never be complete. She has to be red and gold, and with it she has to be every other colour as well.
She is not just Leanne Hollis, she is Leanne Iris Hollis. It doesn't matter that her first name means Lion woman. It doesn't matter that she cannot live up to it.
She can live up to her middle name instead.
And her middle name means Rainbow.
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By Caitlin Kendricks