Fiction Friday: Invisibility Cloak Not Necessary

Harry Potter has no idea who I am. Why should I care if he lives or dies? We’ve had the same classes for years, but he’s never once sat next to me, asked me about my day, or given me any indication that he even knows my name. I wonder if he does. I wonder if he’ll ever know how much I love him.

I watch him every day, walking through hallways, oblivious to my presence. Always locked in some intense conversation or another with those two friends of his. Everyone says the Dark Lord wants to kill him, and he acts as if the rumors are real. He’s so serious all the time. I wonder what makes him happy. I often stare at the back of his head during Potions. His dark hair, soft and messy, makes me want to reach out and touch him on the shoulder. I want to make him smile. I want him to smile at me. Recognize me. See me.

We’re the same, you know. Different, special, unique. Except he has friends and I have none. I’ll ask him about that someday. How he came to this school with so much fame and learned how to have what most people would call a normal life. Friends, sports, more fame. How did he do it?

I came to this school with nothing. My parents are dead (just like Harry’s!) so I was raised by my Aunt Livvy. She wasn’t the most brilliant wizard by any means. She’d been a good student at Hogwarts, but life simply had other plans for her. When I was growing up, she worked at the Three Broomsticks as a barmaid, coming home well into the evening, dropping her daily tips into a jar by her bed. “Someday,” she’d always say as she delivered each coin, one by one. “Someday I’m going to buy a broom and leave this place. There are wizards all over the world, you know. I’ll go someplace and be somebody.”

Aunt Livvy was always sad. Unfulfilled might be a better word. She never talked about what happened, where her wizard life had turned toward the ordinary, but she wore her sadness like a cape. She always looked so weighed down.

She never did buy a broom. She sent me to Hogwarts instead. I study hard, knowing she sacrificed her dream so I could have mine. Though I would throw it all away if Harry Potter would only take my hands into his and say, “I’ll take care of you.”

Click here to read Invisibility Cloak Not Necessary, Part 2