give her love » james potter

6

I go to Hogwarts with everyone (even though I know they only asked me to be polite because Hufflepuffs are horribly that way).

We all end up at Honey Dukes, and everyone splits up going to different aisles. I end up all alone staring at 176 flavors of chocolate.

For a second I'm at the grocery store with mum. She's looking through herbs and mumbling about how this stuff isn't the good stuff, I never got to ask her what the good stuff is. I'd imagine it would be the ones from her hometown, the ones in nonna's kitchen.

After a few moments of staring endlessly at the different kinds, I realize that today is not a chocolate day.

I walk over to the next aisle, planning on getting some--

Will is standing there. My little brother is standing beside his favorite candy, forever flavor gum.

He looks at me and his blue eyes look so empty and all I can do is stare. He's wearing his star wars pajamas, the ones I gave him for his birthday. In his hands, he holds one of his comics, the ones Mamma always reads to him, with her voice making each character different. There's chocolate smudged on his lips from the packets he always sneaks from the bottom drawer, I move to him to wipe it but before I can get there he's gone. And it feels like I've lost him all over again.

It feels like my body has been submerged in arctic waters, I feel so cold and so sad. The sadness stings and thickens my blood, making everything feel like jelly and everything is so strange and it's not fair and god, this isn't fair.

I shouldn't have came. I should've just stayed in my room and just done what I had done the past month. Wallowed in the sadness of my existence.

So I do the thing I seem to always do nowadays.

Run.

I run until my lungs have crumpled up and oxygen doesn't know how to get into them. I feel like I might throw up. I try to breathe in but everything hurts, everything hurts so much. My legs give up and I stumble into a little alleyway.

I curl my legs towards me and become a small ball. Then it happens, I feel the hot tears pour out of my eyes. It's like I've opened a faucet that's never going to stop. I feel strangled sob escape my mouth, and clamp my hand over my mouth, trying to muffle the sound but instead, it just gets worse.

I sit on the cold damp cobblestone, crying. For what feels like hours.

"Lina," a voice says, it's soft and familiar yet foreign at the same time. "Let's get up if you sit here for another second your gonna get pneumonia."

I want to tell them that's not how pneumonia works but instead, I look over to see who it is.

O'Connor's light eyes stare at me, she seems terribly calm. Her arms gently tug me upwards, and I let her. She hands me a handkerchief, and embarrassment rushes through me and I hastily wipe my face which feels disgusting.

After I get a grip on myself, she grabs my arm and starts to lead me somewhere.

I look anywhere but at her, because I feel so see-through. In my seven years at Hogwarts not a single person has seen me cry, or even that upset. But O'Connor, who over the years I've only had these unfulfilling conversations and occasional jokes has just witnessed my break down first hand.

My eyes dart to her, I want to say something. Thank you or why are you doing this, but not nothing comes out. All I can do is look at her.

Then I nearly fall over as we stop.

"No one comes here," she says, leading me into a small restaurant. The sign says Loraine's Diner, and it reminds me of the ones back home, with the brightly colored walls and checkered floors.

We settle down in a little booth near the corner, and she finally seems to relax, her tense shoulders drooping down.

"You really didn't have to do--"

"I know," she intterupts, shrugging, "but, that's the thing. You don't have to do anything. I don't have to do aything. We don't owe each other, even if you were bleeding out, I wouldn't have to save you, but that's kinda horrible, isn't it?"

I bite my lip. Horribly confused by her wordss, because they still don't make sense. Tears aren't the same as blood, even though sometimes it feels like tears hurt more.

I fiddly with sleeve. "Thank you."

The words put back a little wall between us.

My father used to say that was one of my talents and downfalls. How easily I can cut connections, how easily I can block thoughts, how easily I can ignore others. The professor in him would jump through him at the moment, he'd start going on about wars, about how miscomunication was the pitfall of humanity. Sometimes after out fights he'd ask if we could sign an agreement where I'd stop using my talent, I'd always say no, then he'd say, "It comes from my mother, that women haunts my bloodline even after her death. "

The late Rosemary Pierce, would float into my dreams those nights. I'd see her sharp blue eyes, the ones Will and Father have, but unlike theirs, her's were always souless pits. Always scary and cold. Just like her house. Just like her personality. She's open her mouth and would utter a simple, you are a disspointment, and then disspear.

I'd agree with him at the moment after, she did haunt the bloodline.

O'Connor is like my father, because she tries to break down the wall after moments of silence pass.

"The weathers quiete chilly."

I almost start to laugh. "I can't stand small talk, it's so boring."

A small crawls into her face. "At least I'm trying," she says, leaning back into her seat. "If it was upto you, we'd be here for a millenia of silence."

She's not wrong.

"What do you want to say," I ask, because I still don't know why. Why she brought me here. Why she's being so nice.

"You're going to explode, Angelina. People barely make it out of what's already happened to you, but when the explosion happens, they don't come back. Let it out, whether it's slow and takes months or years or rapidy in a few days, just don't keep it in." Her eyes are back to staring straight at me, my soull, my heart,my mind. I stare back at her this time, because I feel tired of backing away. "I know we've never been the best of pals, but you're my friend Angelina, in this whole school if I could call anyone a friend, it would be you. Even if you don't think the same."

O'Connor has a name. Her name's Siobhan. We all called her Siobhan first year, when nobody really knew each other, and everyone just wanted to be friends and a little less scared. But then by the next year everyone had become friends and had their people, Siobhan didn't--O'Connor didn't. She would hang out with this boy sometimes, he was older then us, by a year and in slytherin. I remember the whispers about them, I remember it all. Her suddenly getting cut out of every little thing. Her being an after thought.

We acted like she didn't exist. Not very hufflepuff of us at all.

But she was there. She was there when I lost my necklace and all the other girls said we could look for it later, she'd helped me look all over the dormitory until we found it in some cushions. She was there that day when I lost my virgnity and I was panicking, because how well do contraceptive spells even work? She'd gotten me a potion from pomfrey and slipped it to me at night. She'd always been my friend, especially when I'd needed it the most.

"Siobhan," I say for the first time in a million years. "Your my friend."