Deconstruct, a Memoir by Solarism

Deconstruct, a Memoir

By Solarism

Chapter One – Dashboard Confessionals

{This chapter's song is "There She Goes" by Sixpence None The Richer.}

I, of all people, certainly have a lot of things to confess.

If I ever believed in God like my sometimes Catholic mother did, He must not have liked me very much, which is probably the reason that I don’t believe anymore. Many things I may have been—unearthly magical, God damned, and positively witchy, to name several—but one thing I could never be was like her with her tiny, sainted rosary beads. She was quite a religious woman, no matter how broken or deranged she progressively became over the years of sorrow and liquor, up until her death. She would always go and confess her sins to the priest at her church on Sundays, and when she left to do that she wouldn’t come back for hours. When I was younger, I would sometimes wish that I could confess everything to a priest or someone like that, too. It would be nice, I would always think, to dump all of my problems on another person like that. However, unlike my mother, I never deemed it necessary or polite to let someone else carry the weight of my own dilemmas--not even a priest, not even Jesus Christ, and certainly not even God.

I am a witch through and through, but unless my father was a wizard (and what are the chances of that?), I am a Muggle-born. The legal driving age for Muggles is sixteen, but I owned my own automobile at age fourteen. It was a gift from an old dead neighbor who pitied me my flaming red hair and lack of a father figure. Because I was at school for nine months out of the year, I rarely got a chance to drive it, but when I did I would always start to talk to myself. I would confess all of my problems, no matter how petty, to the dashboard. I would scream and cry and curse and laugh at it, and I would pound my fist on it, trying my hardest to beat the living shit out of it. The good thing about that kind of catharsis was that I got to say what I wanted without the guilt of dumping it on another conscious being, but the bad part was that dashboards only bounced all of my words straight back.

Really, the only person in the car was me, so in turn I was the only one listening to myself. The words that came from my mouth echoed in my ears and drilled themselves into my brain. I could hide them that way, even if I was secretly in agony for keeping it all inside. When I was at Hogwarts, however, I couldn’t just drive off in my car when something was bothering me. There are no dashboards in the wizarding world, you see--just broom handles and a lot of black cats.

It gets lonely, you know?

During my fourth year at Hogwarts, I had a lot of confessing to do. I consciously knew that I was growing up too quickly, becoming a girl with a tongue and a mind far too sharp and wry for my own good. My chest was beginning to complement my intelligence as well, and I admittedly used that to my advantage at times with boys in older years. I was the kind of girl who appeared completely flawless to those who needed to see me as flawless, yet I was also the kind of girl who was a complete badass to those who would open their eyes wide enough to see it. Although I had exceptionally good marks in all of my classes, I also traded in a few extremely illicit undertakings, such as illegal gambling matches in the Room of Requirement every weekend. Those were the times of my life, with music so loud it seemed more prevalent than a heartbeat, liquor so plentiful that everyone in the room became a poet, and the prolific kisses of men that I should have never been with…

I had very little remorse for the things I did. That was the year that other things started nagging at my heart and pecking at the back of my mind, and those things, those worries, just always seemed more important to me. I remember how I would often descend to breakfast, eyes dry and red from rubbing, because I’d spent yet another sleepless night wondering why my mother hated me so much, or why my father never tried to contact Petunia and me. (Perhaps he wasn’t aware of my existence, I often tried to rationalize, which was just as well, but he most certainly knew that he had at least one daughter out there somewhere. He was there for Petunia’s first two years of life, something I was always privately very jealous of my sister over.)

But then… There was that one sunny September day when I was sitting directly in the middle of the deserted Quidditch field, trying to do my homework and eating a chocolate cupcake straight from the kitchens. For some reason, that day, my mind just wouldn’t cooperate with my intellectual intentions. My thoughts kept straying to my problems, my guilt, and my unanswered questions. Those questions burned to be answered, and I couldn’t do anything but imagine the truth. Finally I pulled out a new piece of parchment and started writing down all of my thoughts, abandoning the Transfiguration work for later. My hand quickly began to feel cramped and overused as it was often prone to doing, even though I hadn’t written a fraction of what I’d intended, so I restlessly packed up my things and decided to lay down on the soft, green grass and just think.

I remember very specifically that the sky had big cumulonimbus clouds draped everywhere across it. It was like something out of a fairy tale. I sighed softly, shut my eyes, and shoved the last bit of cupcake into my mouth.

I stayed like that for the longest time--silent, still, and with a mouth full of gooey chocolate. I started to lull into that kind of sleep where you aren’t really sleeping… you’re conscious of the things around you in a way, but in another way you’re dreaming and too groggy to realize your own existence. I’m not sure I can explain it. You just have to experience it. Anyway, I didn’t ‘wake up’ until my friend Arabella Figg grabbed hold of my nose and pulled on it as hard as she could. (Aria, as we sometimes called her, was like that. She had no qualms about touching you, no matter who you were. We were the kind of people who ran around giving fake little hugs to all of our friends and linking arms and all of that shit. Now I look back and realize that everything was pretty stupid, but it seemed really hip at the time.) Anyway, old Aria grabbed my nose (probably so I couldn’t breathe) and started laughing her head off about it.

My eyes snapped open and I was immediately blinded. You know how when you’ve been asleep or in the dark for a long time and then someone sticks a flashlight in your eye? That was how it was. My first thought was that someone was attacking me, so I tried my hardest to slug her, but she dodged my punch with a graceful ease no one in the world has ever since matched. I sat up, rubbed my eyes, realized who my ‘attacker’ was and waited for her to quit cackling. She finally did, after nearly turning red. (That was another thing about Arabella Figg—she was always a laugher. If anyone ever touched her side, near her belly, she would get to giggling like a hyena. The girl was fearfully ticklish—which is rather funny for about six months when you’re eleven, but after that, it just gets plain annoying.)

She stopped laughing long enough to try and gasp something out, then started laughing some more. "Lily--" she puffed, "--Lily, you’ve been sleeping out here for hours. I’ve been looking everywhere!" There was another spasm of laughter. (I began to thickly wonder what the hell was so funny.)

"What are you laughing about?" I snapped, grabbing some dried grass out of my long hair and tossing it down her cleavage. She clutched at her sizely chest and wheezed out a few more words that got lost in translation. "Aria!" I snapped again, "God, control yourself!" She just shook her head fiercely and kept on laughing. Finally, she seemed to get a grip.

"Lily! Lily, I want you to meet someone," she giggled, hugging herself. I smelled something on her breath and noticed her cheeks were more rosy than usual. I knew what that meant.

"Are you drunk?" I asked her, sniffing the air. Yep, she was.

"No!" she screeched. She then fell over, still hugging herself, and laughed her head off.

"Okay, Aria," I said, and shakily stood up. (When you’ve been lying down for a long time on the hard ground, your legs turn to green jello and it’s not very fun at all.) I reached down and grabbed my book bag. Arabella was almost twitching, positively delighted with herself. "Okay, Arabella,” I repeated. “Upsie-daisy girl."

She snorted loudly through her giggles, but let me help her up just the same. I wrapped her slim arm around my shoulders so she could walk steadily, but she tripped before we even got three feet. I wasn’t very steady myself from dozing for so long, but with her added weight and her drunkenness, it was no use. We both came tumbling down, cradle and all.

(That is one thing that I never did. I may gone pretty far with guys, I might’ve gambled and lied and all that, but I never drank. A lot of my friends did. Lucius Malfoy, an older boy in Slytherin and my sinister crush, was the king of alcohol at Hogwarts, for instance, and he’d been smuggling in Bacardi and gin since second year, mostly to aid my illicit gambling soirees.)

I suddenly realized, as I landed hard on my hip, that if Arabella was drunk, it meant that she’d been with Lucius. He used to have these rather exclusive little “club” meetings back then with his friends, all of whom were rich, pureblooded, and usually alcoholic. He’d sneak into deserted classrooms with his pals and drink until he was teary-eyed drunk, most days. It wasn’t until my fifth year that I ever went to one of them, so that day on the Quidditch pitch, as I blocked out the pain I felt in my hip, I realized with a fervent jolt that I was kind of jealous. Arabella had been with Lucius. Drinking. And doing God-knows-what, God-knows-where.

And there she lay, oblivious to the bruises we’d both have the next morning, giggling and thrashing beneath me. I kept trying to get up but my earrings seemed to be stuck in her hair. I couldn’t get myself untangled and it was not the most comfortable thing in the world. Arabella kept saying, "I want you to meet this guy. This guy is so nice, oh my God, you have to meet this guy, Lily, you just have to or I’ll die."

Then, all of a sudden, someone’s arms were around my waist. I tried to jerk my head to see who it was, but I let out a sharp cry of pain instead as my earrings tugged on my ear lobes. God, I got this huge blast of alcohol-breath from Arabella, too.

"Oy, stop thrashing," a boy’s voice said. "Arabella--no, come now, Arabella, stop thrashing."

"My name is Candy!" Arabella shrieked, laughing her head off.

I finally got my earring untangled from her dark black hair, and immediately the guy lifted me up into his arms. Curious to see who it was, I twisted my head around and, with a sickening crack, slammed noses with James Potter, my personal superhero of four years.

"Whoah shit," he said.

"Oh, fucking hell!" I yelled in his ear. He cringed at the loud sound and all of a sudden I was falling again, right back onto my damn hip. I hit the ground with a loud thud and Arabella rolled over onto me, cackling and slapping my chest lightly with her hands. (Oh yeah, joke of the century.) James bedroom-hair Potter was at my side in an instant, helping me up again, and all I could think of was how mortified I was that he was here, touching me, and that I’d probably just broken his nose. I grabbed my book bag right before Arabella could roll over it, and backed off a few steps.

I suddenly realized that James wasn’t the only boy there. I recognized Sirius Black and Remus Lupin trying to help Arabella up. Her hand flew up and knocked Remus’s glasses off, so he of course let her go and scrambled after them. Sirius dropped her, not being ready for the full force of her one hundred and twenty pounds, and her leg shot up and hit him in the crotch.

Suddenly everything was pretty funny. My nose felt numb from the first physical contact I’d ever had with James, and I was pretty sure he was bleeding. Finally Remus managed to grab Arabella amid the confusion, and a groaning Sirius got shakily to his feet. "We’ve got to get her to the Tower," James said to no one in particular, eyeing his own nose cross-eyed, and his friends immediately started walking in just that direction with Arabella draped over them. I picked up a shoe she’d kicked off, stuffed it in my bag, and started walking, in a blur, with James to the Gryffindor common room.

"Thanks," I said. "I guess she’s pretty drunk."

"Yeah, we noticed that,” he replied archly. “She was kind of bobbing and weaving and the like while she was walking near us, so we asked her if she was okay. She said she needed to lie down. I recognized her from class and everything, so Remus and Sirius and I were going to take her to the Tower. She must have seen you out here though, or something, because she started running like a dog off a leash and we had to chase her nearly half a mile," he said in one big rush as he wiped the blood from his nose.

"Oh," I replied astutely.

Immediately there was the sound of good old Aria throwing up on Remus and a very loud curse word to accompany it.

"Huh," James said, shaking his head at the sight. He paused a moment, then snuck a glance at me as we passed by a few trees. "Quite a nose you’ve got on you," he said.

"I’m so sorry about that…" I was probably brushing bright red. Redheads have that unfortunate tendency, you see. "My name’s Lily. Lily Evans." I awkwardly held out a hand, since we were both walking briskly.

"I know who you are," he said, ignoring the hand, though not unkindly, "and my name’s James. Nice to hear the Bad Girl of Gryffindor finally speak. An honor, I assure you."

"The Bad Girl of Gryffindor? You flatter me, Mr. Potter," I laughed to mask my further mortification, tucking my hair behind my ears and slinging my bag over my shoulder.

"Nah, you’ve accumulated quite the reputation. Thing is, you’ve been giving the Marauders a run for our money since first year when it comes to losing points for the house,” James smiled, wiping away another dribble of blood. (Ah, the infamous Marauders. James, Sirius, Remus, and a boy named Peter Pettigrew formed the spectacular foursome. They were always pulling pranks that got them uncountable detentions, and generally bringing a lot of humor to Hogwarts. James, Sirius, and Remus were on the Gryffindor house Quidditch team, as I mentioned before, and Peter was a stand in that rarely got to play. The first three were also terribly handsome, with half of the female population at their heels. In other words, the class clown ‘popular’ kids with amazing athletic techniques. My heroes.)

"Oh, do I now? The only thing I ever lose points for is when I get caught organizing illegal activities, such as those delicious little orgies you never seem to attend,” I retorted, doing my damned best to be charming and risqué.

"Hi, I don’t think we’ve met, my name is James and I will do anything if you invite me to your orgy," he grinned at me and tilted his head sideways, which only made his nose bleed more. I pulled a tissue out of my bag for him and let out a short laugh.

"We’ll see, cowboy." That’s right, Lily, play it smooth. You’re so cool. "When you prove you’re worthy, you might just get in."

"Arright," he laughed, just like that, not enunciating his ‘all’ at all. (I liked that about him.) We were quiet a minute while we hurried up to the door to the main building. James chivalrously held the door open for me. "You know, I’ve just thought… You’re one of those girls that hangs around with Lucius Malfoy, aren’t you?" he asked me as it swung open.

"I suppose you could say that, yes, if it’s any of your business," I smiled over my shoulder at him, stepping over the threshold.

"Hmmm," James said, sidling along behind me. "Well, Miss Lily, you might want to tell your friend here to cut down on the public drunkenness,” he said, changing the subject abruptly. “If McGonagall ever catches her like that… well, she might even get put up for expulsion, ties to the Malfoy family or not. You know McGonagall’s a bit of a snit about things like that."

"Yeah, I’ll tell her that." You could just tell by his question about Lucius he had me pegged as one of those sleazy boozehound girls. "And just so you don’t get the wrong idea now, I don’t drink like she does. I’ve never touched a drop in my life."

"Oh?" he said. "That’s funny. I thought every pretty girl in the school liked to go party with Malfoy on Saturday nights."

I smiled. He didn’t. His eyes were rather distant actually, and I wasn’t sure if he’d really meant what he’d said as a compliment. "Guess here’s one who doesn’t," I said, somewhat uneasily. We turned down a corridor. Aria was making a few cheeky comments at Sirius, who was laughing, and tripping all over Remus’s feet, who was scowling. "So…" I desperately reached for some more conversation. "Um, you play Quidditch. I’ve been watching you play since you made the team last year. You’re the best Chaser out there in my opinion."

"Thank you," James said.

There was an awkward pause and then I, idiot that I am, dove right into the most awkward topic I could think of. "Forgive me for being so abrupt here, but we’ve shared the same classes for three years prior to today, and you’ve never said a word to me, James. Do you… dislike me or something, for some reason?”

"No, of course not," he said. "I guess I just never got around to talking to you because… well. Hey, it goes both ways, you know. You never said anything to me either."

"Not true."

"Huh?"

"Once in second year I asked to borrow a quill from you."

"You actually remember something little like that?"

"Yeah…" Up the stairs, take a right, then a left…

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why do you remember things like that from two years ago? Do you have some kind of super-memory or something? Why?" He laughed.

"Why not?" I smiled.

"Huh. I never looked at it like that. But no, I don’t dislike you. I just--well, Malfoy and I haven’t been the greatest friends the past four years. I don’t like his crap and he doesn’t like mine. His kind of people tend to be kind of… not my type of people. Kind of pretentious, sort of--"

"--Slutty?"

"—Er, yes, I guess so. Slutty. Sort of a lot of airheads in that bunch if you know what I mean. I like girls that I can have a decent conversation with. Girls I can take down to the Three Broomsticks and have a Butterbeer or two with. You know, friends. I’m not one of those guys that are all about the physical attraction, no matter what anyone tells you… and I don’t know why I’m telling you all of this. I just met you, right?" He flashed me a brilliant grin.

"Actually, no, we’ve known each other for four years now,” I said.

"Well yeah… but come on, we’ve never talked before."

"Well,” I said, “I’m not an airhead, anyway. I know you’re supposed to be really smart or whatever, but I get good marks, too. I want to be an Auror, in fact."

"An Auror? Wow."

"What?" Through the tapestry, two lefts, an immediate right…

"I’ve never met a girl who wanted a hands-on job like that before."

"I want to help people, that’s all. Voldemort is rising,” I shrugged. “The Ministry can control him no doubt, but I mean, who’s going to be there to defend Innocents from the next Voldemort? I want to fight the dark side. I’ve always wanted to take a stand. I’ve always wanted to be a part of something big. I could do that as an Auror."

"That’s pretty cool Lily. I--yeah, I want to be an Auror, too."

"You do?"

"Yeah. I guess so." And then he smiled. I meant to smile back, but suddenly, I found that I couldn’t. His eyes are deep chocolate brown. They have no ending. They’re huge. You could dive in and never come up for air. Dizzy, dizzy, swirling brown, with tiny flecks of black and gold. His eyelashes are the longest I’ve ever seen on a boy, charcoal black and curled perfectly, angelically. Those eyes are controlling eyes. Laughing eyes dance beneath brows of soft ebony.

"James, what’s the password?" Remus’s aggravated voice called, awaking me from my thoughts.

"Higgledy-piggledy," James said, quirked a brow at me, and motioned his hand for me to go on ahead in front of him. I nodded, collected a slurring Arabella who was zealously waving bye-bye to Sirius from the other boys, and made my way toward the steps of the girl’s dorm.

"Thank you, all of you," I called over my shoulder. "You’ve been a big help." I helped Arabella up the first step. I heard a few chortles from Sirius, an indistinguishable grumble from Remus, who seemed to be trying to cast a spell to scour the front of his robes, and then--

"Er, Lily," James said, from behind my back. "I was wondering if you’d like to meet me later tonight for a Butterbeer. Make up for the lost years, maybe?"

"Um, this isn’t a Hogsmeade weekend," I said, blushing internally, but eyeing Arabella warily at the same time. She looked rather green, and her sporadic giggly shrieks were bound to draw a teacher of some sort sooner or later.

"I have my ways," he persisted. I tossed my long red hair over my shoulder and glanced back at him for a second. Sirius and Remus were already climbing up the steps to their common room, Remus in the process of taking off his soiled robes from where Arabella had thrown up, evidently having failed at whatever spell he’d tried. I was so tempted to take James up on his offer. He was my idol, and this was the chance of a lifetime for me, but I knew I had a date with Lucius later that evening, and there was Arabella to care for, besides...

"I’m sorry, I can’t tonight," I said, knowing that I would come to regret it later.

"Why not?" he asked. God, the boy had no shame.

"I have a date," I said, with a little grunt added at the end of it as I pushed Arabella up five more steps.

"Oh. Right, with Lucius," James said. Strangely, he sounded almost ready to laugh.

"Yes," I replied uneasily.

"Isn’t that ironic?" he suddenly murmured. "I meet a girl who seems impeccably different… but low and behold, you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. Malfoy one, Potter absolutely zero." Whatever that meant. "Maybe another time, then."

"Yeah, maybe." My clear voice was punctuated by a wail from Arabella.

"Have a good night, Lily."

"And you, James," I said.

And then he turned and walked up the stairs to his dorm, probably searching for Remus and Sirius. It’s not like he was serious about asking me out anyway. Or that’s what I told myself at least. He was probably just saying that to be nice. Hell, he’s probably thanking God I didn’t say yes, I thought. He probably has a thousand dates lined up for tonight anyway. No big deal.

After I put Arabella to bed (‘”I am not drunk, Lily Evans, so you let me up this instant or I’ll--whoa, you’re twins… no, no, no, wait, stop, don’t go, I’m sorry I’ll never ever ever ever ever ever get drunk again, I promise, oh Lily, come back I’m going to die!”), I had a lot of extra time on my hands before I had to get ready for my date. I decided to try to confess to the parchment again, since I didn’t have a dashboard handy. For lack of anything better to write, I wrote in my signature emerald ink:

"James Potter has beautiful brown eyes and I have too much pain in my life and

nothing’s fair and why can’t I be normal because I just want

beautiful eyes, too."

That seemed to sum up life pretty well for the moment, so I set down my ink well, parchment and quill.

It’s been a long time.