32
Evie
After the Battle and after things had finally settled down, many people, reporters or not, were wondering how Harry Potter had done it all. Despite his best efforts, it was impossible to avoid the constant questions and so everything came out.
One of the most shocking things he talked about was the organization he led in fifth year called Dumbledore's Army. The public didn't know about it and neither did the students surprisingly but when word got out, they were all highly impressed. Especially by the coins that the Golden Trio had created to get in touch with the rest of the DA. The method got passed around until it was being used for all kinds of things.
So when the Potter Generation started, coins were given out just as a precaution. Most meetings were planned and usually never had to be done on the spot, so the coin stayed on my bedside table or in my pocket acting as a normal coin.
But at 8 o'clock on a Friday night the coin finally started to burn. The girls in my dormitory didn't give me a second glance as I yelped a little bit and dropped the hot coin. It was still early but I never left my dorm this late. I never had reason to. I didn't even know where to go.
But the thought of ignoring it made my stomach churn so I ignored my nervousness and left my dorm, wrapping my cloak around my pajamas and taking my wand for good measure. I had no idea where Wes wanted me to go so I settled on the usual interview place. It was an abandoned classroom on one of the more quiet floors. I just hoped that this wasn't all some big joke.
Luckily the classroom was occupied when I walked in. There was a fire roaring in the huge fireplace at the far end of the room and in front of it sat four people. Well, that was unexpected. I recognized Wes first, who had his back to the fire and had a horrible look on his face. It was so quiet, I thought someone had died.
"Evie, good. Sit down." Wes said, his voice a monotone. There was a place set for me beside Wes and a shadowy figure. It wasn't until I sat down that I realized it was Ian, wearing fancy clothes and looking thoroughly confused. His eyes burned into mine but I made myself look away. It wasn't very hard though considering there were two other people I needed to investigate.
I recognized the girl on Ian's other side as Olivia, the girl I had watched at the Quidditch match with Draco Malfoy. She looked concerned now, evaluating Wes and the boy that sat between them. Now, he was something to look at.
He reminded me of a shadow. All dark angles and secrets. He looked cracked now, broken like something fragile fallen on the floor. He kept his eyes down but I could tell he was watching Wes. Watching Wes with a look that made me think that maybe he didn't have a little light in him.
"Now that we're all here, I suppose we can start." Wes continued, pulling at his hair. He refused to look at shadow boy and I started to wonder what I had been missing. Why were we in an abandoned classroom, sitting in a quiet circle as if we were attending a funeral? What did we all have in common?
"This is an intervention." Wes met everyone's eyes like he meant a different thing for every person. "I didn't really mean for this to happen but due to certain circumstances I thought it was the best option. You were all bound to find out anyway." We all stayed quiet but we all knew what he was about to say next.
"This is the Potter Generation. I've been interviewing all of you and asking you to keep it a secret which I didn't realize would be problematic but apparently you all seem to have some sort of connection. I apologize for that but we all know now, so that's out of the way.
"What I really wanted you here for is mental health basically. After getting to know all of you these past few months, I'm starting to realize that even without a battle raging, our generation sucks. It's impossible to just be happy, we always have some sort of problem that takes up all of our time and energy. Me being the great interviewer that I am, got all of you to share some sort of secret whether you knew it or not."
We all shared looks then and it was as if our secrets and problems and worries reflected on each other, making one huge mess. That huge mess was Wes, apparently. He didn't look very good.
"So, here I am holding all your secrets and wondering how I can help each of you and I'm finally realizing that I can't do this alone. We can't do this alone. We're all antisocial bastards that clog up our feelings because we think they're stupid and don't matter but they do. It's unhealthy.
"Moral of the story is, despite all of our differences, like houses for example, we need friends. We need trust and people we can count on even if they've made mistakes in the past." Shadow boy looked up then. "So here we are. Friends forever. I can even make matching bracelets if you like."
"You said this was an intervention." Olivia piped up. When I first saw her she looked intimidating as all Slytherins do, but in that fire lit classroom she looked like any other girl. She had a curious glint in her eyes and her face was flushed. She looked like she had been running or something.
Looking around it became obvious that we had been pulled from different corners of our own universes. We all were in the middle of whatever occupied us and suddenly we got brought back down by this bespectacled Ravenclaw and his magical coins. We were such different people.
"Ah yes, my next point. Now that we're bffs, we have to get to know each other and as you all know I'm not one for cliches. And despite what you may think, right now I'm not in the mood for games so you're all going to confess your secrets so that can have some mutual trust. I don't care how embarrassing it is, you told me, you can tell the rest of us. I want to be able to trust everyone in this room."
I felt like I was getting scolded. Wes had always been casual, maybe a little nervous at times but he never asked for much. He just wanted the truth and we gave him that. But maybe too much truth isn't good for one person. I understood that. The only problem was I didn't know these people. Ian was a stranger to me now, Olivia was a Slytherin, and this other boy looked like a bank robber. It was the most ragtag team of kids I had ever seen and I was very far from confessing my deep dark secrets. Especially considering they involved the boy sitting next to me, sending me weird looks every five seconds.
"My name is Wes Adkins. My secret is that I'm afraid of leaving school because I have no idea what I want to do with my life and by making this documentary I'm hoping to have some sort of back up plan but I know in the back of my head that I'll probably never finish this goddamn crap. Also, I'm afraid that my best friend has psychological issues and I can't seem to trust anyone." He didn't hide the way he looked at shadow boy when he said the last part. "Will, you go next."
"Pass." Shadow boy replied quietly.
"There's no passes in this game." I had never heard Wes sound so done.
"Please." The way he said it made me think Will was more than just an interviewee. There was something more between them.
"Fine, Olivia."
Olivia didn't look daunted, although she tapped her nails on the floor and chewed on her lip like she was trying to decide which secret would cause the most ruckus. This whole documentary had been about not judging by houses and not jumping to conclusions but boy was it hard. I forced myself to remember Draco Malfoy, the one person I never thought could change.
"My name is Olivia Tellson. My secret is that I have dreams about being a Death Eater almost every night and I'm dating Draco Malfoy. Sort of." I thought she would look proud by these things but I was surprised to see her blushing. She met my gaze and shrugged. "I'm not really a Death Eater. I never wanted to be one and neither did my family. We just got caught in the crossfire."
"Awesome." Wes said looking somewhat relieved that we were doing what he said. He looked at Ian next but Ian didn't seem to be there anymore. His head was hanging low and he was clasping his hands together so tight that the knuckles turned white.
"Evie, how about you?"
"My name is Evie Hale. My secret is..." I glanced at Ian. He still had his head down but I knew he was listening. He always was. "My secret is that I've been in love with Ian Valerio since I was 11. And when we were in fifth I stopped functioning and I haven't started living again until now. I'm doing better."
He finally looked up and met my eyes and this time I didn't look away. Brown eyes on blue eyes, like when we were kids. We used to be able to talk with just facial expressions and I thought it had gone away but I could tell by the way his eyebrow furrowed and his eyes widened that he was asking a question. I was afraid to figure out which question it was.
"Ian?" Wes looked like he was contemplating whether this was a good idea or not. I wasn't sure myself, but somehow it felt good to get that weight off my shoulders. For him to finally know out right how I feel. I felt free.
"My name is Ian Valerio." He swallowed hard. "My secret is that ever since Cedric died I've been pretending to be someone I'm not and I'm just know realizing how much I hate it. And now I want to get my old life back but it's a lot farther away than I thought it was. And the one thing I want the most seems to be much better without me."
"What's that thing?" Wes prodded. We all knew.
"Wes, come on-" Olivia started.
"Evie. I miss Evie so much it's like all these years have been one big nightmare and I'm about to wake to my best friend. But unfortunately I fucked up. I was too late to tell her that I love her too."
"Well fuck." I whispered. I didn't know if they heard me and I didn't particularly care. i didn't know how to feel or how to act. I just sat there feeling like five thousand voices were telling me what to do and none of them felt right. He loved me. Damn you, Wes.
"On that note, how about Will?" Wes said, his voice gentler this time. Will was fully aware now, reacting along with the rest of us but when it came to be his turn he couldn't just turn off. He met Wes' eyes and they seemed to be pleading. Whatever his secret was, it was worse then ours.
"I'm sorry." Wes whispered.
"My name is Wilhelm Eliade but I prefer Will Elliot. My secret is that I was originally born in Romania. I attended Durmstrang until I was 14 and was in Karkaroff's inner circle, mostly due to my mother's family. I came to Hogwarts for the Triwizard Tournament and realized how fucked up everything was, especially after Diggory got killed.
"I wanted out but they aren't as caring at Durmstrang. My only choice was to run away so I did. I packed up my stuff and headed to Scotland to live with my father's parents. They never approved of my mother and Durmstrang so they were happy so help me. That summer I made a completely new identity, new name, new accent, new look.
"The past few years I've been keeping my head down. All I wanted was a good education. To be safe. I never asked for friends or to be accepted, but I knew that if I came like I was then I would have screwed. I didn't want to be pegged as evil anymore. I couldn't do it."
The silence that followed was the worst of them all. It was like a fog, full of everyone's thoughts and feelings and sorrows. It was hard to believe that such a thing could be true but hearing the story come from Will made it hard not to believe. He had so many shadows and now I knew why.
"This is supposed to build trust?" Ian asked suddenly. I couldn't tell how he was feeling but somehow I felt the same way. None of this made sense anymore.
"Well maybe not this, but now there's no secrets between us. We know everything, or at least the important things. It's a clean slate. Now we just have to be friends." Wes explained.
"Simple." Olivia said and it seemed to break the tension just a little bit.
We all sat for a while, not really knowing what to do. No one wanted to go back to whatever they were doing before and we definitely didn't want to talk about what we had just confessed. Eventually we started talking about normal things like Quidditch and exams. The Potter Generation may have been screwed over but we were really good at pretending that we weren't.