Deconstruct, a Memoir by Solarism

Deconstruct, a Memoir

By Solarism

Prologue

I was conceived, now, down south and somewhat east of the Mississippi River in a state the Americans like to call Georgia. My mother was this petite little British thing, very dainty with auburn curls and sweet blue eyes, so my father, an American, fell straight away in love with her when she came to town, visiting her sick cousin like she did. The trouble was, my mother’s parents would have nothing to do with her marrying outside of her home country, England. (They were probably afraid they’d lose her to the slow-talking Southerner that was her beau, to tell the truth, and really rightly so.) Mother was a very nice little Catholic girl, pleated plaid skirt and all, so of course up until that point she always did everything her parents told her to do.

Father, however, was quite the catch. He was an heir to a huge fortune it seems, with suave and debonair looks that absolutely enamored my mother. He continued to court her against her parents’ wishes and soon she was very much in love with him and his handsome, masculine agenda. By that point, she had a choice to make, see, between everything she had ever known and this new, excruciating love. Sweet as she was, indecisiveness seemed to be quite a major part of her early personality as well, and Mother spent the night with my father, eventually bearing my sister, and then spent the night with him again before deciding that it was a terrible sin to be in love as much as she was. She flew back to England the following Saturday, full of repentance, sin, and terrible inner-turmoil, my older sister in tow. What she didn’t know, of course, was that she was pregnant by that time with little old me. The rest, as they say, is history.

When I was a very little girl, I used to imagine my father as some fancy millionaire who always swaggered around in a romantic tuxedo, but as I grew older, that fantasy was replaced with the realization that my mother’s mistake was bringing me into existence, and the absence of my father’s presence only proved that he considered it his mistake, too.

It wasn’t that my mother was ever really downright cruel to me, however; she didn’t have to be. Her actions and everyone else’s words spoke loudly enough to confirm all of my worst and most shameful fears. For instance, before I was old enough to realize what was going on, she used to shove me off on a governess for weeks upon weeks so that she wouldn’t have to deal with the fact that she, Margaret Evans, had disgraced our elite, London social sphere by going off to America and… yes, well, that was such a pity, wasn’t it? Eventually, it got so bad that whenever I did something wrong, she would lock herself in her room and cry for days, convinced that God had cursed her through me for her sinning.

Oddly enough, when I was grown--oh, when I was eighteen or so, and already happily engaged to a tuxedo-swaggering man of my own--she took to drinking her woes away, as if that didn’t constitute being a bad Catholic. Ultimately I was her demise, because she did all that she did because of me, and because drinking was what she did and because drinking was what ruptured her liver, I killed her, I suppose you could say. And, to be honest with you, I’ve never really gotten over that.

Oh, how dead that house was, the little two-story with the no-good-brown-grass and the horrific-smell-in-the-attic! I don’t believe, for all my naïveté, that I completely started living until I turned eleven years old and was finally able to escape to Hogwarts and into a world my mother couldn’t touch. That house and those people stifled me, made me into something only half-real and a person only existing, half-alive. It took me a long time to forgive them for it. I still haven’t been back, after all of this time, to visit the staircases and the rose bushes, the polished wood floorboards and the scrubbed bathroom mirrors. I’ve always been afraid of what I’d find there--strands of my old hair, maybe, still clinging to the linen that we left to sit stagnant in the cabinets after my mother’s passing. I don’t know. I’ve never known.

I still remember the day that everything fell truly apart. When she read my Hogwarts letter, so prestigiously written in green ink as to match my eyes (my father’s eyes), my mother burst into hysterics and locked herself in her bedroom for days. Petunia, left awkwardly alone with me, someone she had hardly ever had cause to speak to, was dumbstruck. I’ll never forget the ominous, revelatory look that appeared on her face as she first realized that I, little wretch of an urchin that I was, was an actual witch. Perhaps she finally took a page out of my mother’s book during that second, because from that day forward, she regarded me as something disgusting one of her cats had nipped in after a hunt.

The stories I could tell…

But none of this is the point.

What I’m trying to write about here is my true away from that false life, the golden years in which I attended Hogwarts and finally took my first living, dreaming, glorious breath.

I met a young boy called James Potter my very first year there, and, my God, was he a firecracker if there ever was one! The boy had been living life eleven years longer than I had, and therefore was to be marveled at with a sort of silent awe, regardless if I would ever admit that to him or not. His eyes danced practically as much as his feet did, and he babbled on endlessly about these close-shaves and near-deaths that I could never even begin to fathom. He was my idol, I suppose you could say, no matter how envious I was of all the love he seemed to always have in his life.

James was in my house, Gryffindor, so I naturally saw a lot of him around the castle. We shared the same classes in those early years, though we almost never sat on the same side of the classroom. As a pureblood, he wasn’t nearly so interested in magic as me, and always preferred the back of the room. I made sure to sit in the front row; it was just what I always did, had always done. He had his friends and I had mine, anyway—none of it would have mixed properly (or at least that was what I always told myself privately).

Those kind of circumstances, however, meant that we were never formerly introduced until our fourth year.

My other idol was Arabella Figg. Although completely unlike James, I knew her much better than him and had been intimate friends with her since the first day of our first year when we were both sorted into Gryffindor, one right after the other. I admired her because not only was she beautiful, she was also a positively brilliant witch. I have never met anyone who could brew a potion as well as she could, to this day, besides perhaps James’s friend, Sirius Black. Arabella was indeed a perfectionist, and infinitely more worldly than I was, but still a wilting little flower, set in her ways. I guess you could say she was everything I wanted to be, but doubted I could ever achieve.

These two people molded me, even if they never knew it, and I am the way that I am today because of them--not because of any mother, or any non-father, or any stubborn, bull-headed and cruel sister. I have them to thank for my success, my good fortune, and my joy in life. From Arabella I learned beauty, intelligence, and perfection--the richer side of life, you could call it. James gave me the flip side, the freaky-deeky wild one, in which the entire world is a giant prank waiting to be pulled. You only live once, so why not make your one chance at breath count? That was what he preached, that was what he taught, and that was what James Potter lived.

Perhaps one of the best things about James was that he played Quidditch.

Although I was always too afraid of provoking my mother by trying out to be on our House team, my apprehension didn’t prevent me from showing up religiously for every match with Arabella at my side, cheering on James and Sirius and Remus Lupin. (Sirius and Remus were, along with another boy named Peter Pettigrew, James’s best friends in the world.) I loved Quidditch equally as much as they did, even if I couldn’t be out there slamming bludgers around with them, but knowing that my passion was James’s passion too was enough for me. Throughout my years at Hogwarts, first year on up to seventh, that old Quidditch field was a big part of my life. I kissed on it, I had my first real laugh on it, I almost got killed on it, and I, naturally, spit on it once or twice. This is where my story begins, out on the Quidditch field, perfectly in the center of it, doing my homework and eating a cupcake.

It was a bright September afternoon that I was first formerly introduced to James Potter, and that was it--the turning point of entire my life. Welcome to my fourth year at Hogwarts, and welcome to my world.

My name is Lily and I kick ass.

& & & & & & & & & & & &

Author's Note: Most of the writing in this new, revived version of Deconstruct is the same, original prose that I created as a 12-year-old student back in September 2002. Five years later, I am dedicating myself to only lightly brushing up the diction, syntax, and punctuation. When I abandoned the story, I had completed 29 full chapters and had planned a full 50, including an epilogue. As of today, it is my pleasure to announce that once the 29 chapters are remastered, I will pick up where I left off and finish this story once and for all. Friends new and old, thank you for your patience, your kindness, and your support. Please enjoy.