Traditionally Speaking

The traditional opening to this sort of piece is, I suppose, "When I was a little girl..." but in my case such an opening would be rather absurd, since at the tender age of sixteen I am a little girl by most standards. Of course, one could always argue that little-girlhood is relative, and that by my own personal standards what happened at the start of my short existence does indeed qualify to be labeled as, "When I was a little girl..." to which the other side will no doubt argue that there has to be a limit to the designation and that we can't just throw around phrases like that, now can we? Which only goes to show how silly the whole thing is.

However.

My mother taught me to be polite, so to all you out there who will be horrified at my shocking lack of tradition, I humbly apologize. I also humbly request that you remove the stick from your collective arse long enough to hear what I have to say. Having once rather firmly flushed several opportunities at happiness down the Great Toilet of Existence, I believe that I can say with some authority that most traditions should be treated in much the same manner as you would treat a steaming pile of manure in the middle of your path: Avoid it/them as much as is humanly possible, and get on with your life.

But that's not really what I wanted to talk about. I mean, I'm sure that I could treat you to a fascinating discourse on freedom of choice versus tradition and so on and so forth until we've somehow managed to steer the topic to an in-depth exploration of the socioeconomic impact of Nigerian fishmongers during the nineteenth century, but since I have neither the time nor the inclination to discuss any of these things we'll just have to stick to the original topic. And if I ramble, or perpetrate any other such conversational evil, please forgive me because this is the first time in my life that I've ever discussed anything meaningful; I therefore think I'm entitled to ramble. Or go off-topic. Or say things that don't really fit my image, because I'm sick of my image. No, that's not true. It's not that I'm sick of my image, it's that my image has made me sick. That, I suppose, is why I'm writing this. It's my prescription for spiritual sickness: For once in my powder-puff, princess-in-the-bloody-tower existence, I will tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, to blatantly plagiarize a phrase from the American court system. I'm writing this for myself and myself alone. Not you, not your mother, not your estranged half-brother Bernie. Me. And if you don't like what I say, you have my permission to stop reading.

I suppose I'd better start off with my deepest, darkest secret: Despite the fact that I'm a sixteen-year-old girl whose boyfriend was brutally murdered last year, I'm neither depressed nor suicidal. I'm polite to my parents and teachers, get good marks, and I'm the Seeker for the Ravenclaw Quidditch team. I don't smoke, don't drink, don't do drugs, have never considered getting a tattoo or body piercing, have never had sex, and have never, ever indulged in self-mutilation.

Ah, I've shocked you. You came expecting to hear an angsty teenager's heartrending sob-fest, didn't you? Well, let me tell you something. You don't really want to hear it, but I'm going to say it anyway. I'm not sad, angst-ridden, or any other one of the melodramatic teenage emotional cliches mediocre writers use to give their characters "depth." I'm not suicidal, abused, or heartbroken.

I'm furious.

As I said before, I'm sixteen years old. In all that time, do you know how many meaningful conversations I've ever had?

None. Zilch. Nada.

Let me explain something here. We Ravenclaws exist in a curious limbo. On the one hand, we're the "smart ones," the star pupils to be praised and petted and admired; on the other hand, there's something about us, something intangible yet threatening, that makes people tend to hold us at arm's length. It's not the fact that we're intelligent which makes them uncomfortable, it's more of the way we are intelligent. Actually, when you get right down to it, our much-vaunted intelligence isn't so much intelligence as it is... appetite. Need. Hunger. Ravenclaws are the way we are because of our inherent, driving need to look deeper into absolutely everything, and I think that scares people a little and confuses them a lot. So you know what we do? We cover it up. We dress up and pretend. Yes, fine that we get good marks inside the classroom, but outside the classroom it's not good, it's not safe to be what we are. So outside of the classroom, even among ourselves, nobody looks - nobody dares look - at what we really want. And that's why I'm furious.

I know that I said before that I'm not going to talk about tradition, but that's not quite true. Because social tradition requires me to act like shattered glass about Cedric's death. Here's what I am in public: The bereft girlfriend who cried during the Leaving Feast last year. Here's what I am in private: Someone who's gotten over his death. No, his death is not like a huge, gaping hole inside my chest. No, I'm not in any danger of going mad with grief. No, I don't cry my eyes out every night. He died. I was sad. End of psychological analysis.

My relationship with Cedric was rather complex because despite the fact that he was my boyfriend, I was never really in love with him. I think the closest I ever came was loving the idea of him; I never once loved him. Yes, I liked him. Yes, I enjoyed his company. Yes, there were all the usual hormonal reactions. (I am a teenager, after all.) But I never was in love with him. He was sweet, handsome, brave, honorable, and the captain of the Hufflepuff Quidditch team to boot, but...

Remember what I said earlier about the overwhelming need to seek depth in everyone and everything? Cedric had none of that. There was no mystery to him, no wonderful, infuriatingly veiled nooks and crannies of his personalities to delve into, no area in which he was anything less than totally honest and forthright. His was the physical world: The rush of diving for the Snitch during a game of Quidditch, the scrape, scrape, scrape of a fork across a plate, the desperate moonlit groping of hormone-charged teenagers. He never did understand, and never particularly wanted to, the sheer physical thrill of unearthing a lost volume on some obscure subject, or talking for hours about whether or not fate is unchangeable, or mapping out new patterns in the stars. I'm not saying that he was stupid - far from it - but his mind simply didn't work that way. And though I hate to speak ill of the dead, he really became rather boring once the novelty of having a boyfriend wore off.

So why was I ever his girlfriend if I felt that way?

Because I was scared. Scared - and this is an adjective you rarely hear being used to describe a Ravenclaw, so enjoy it while you can - and stupid.

I was stupid.

Remember what I said earlier about tradition? Well, here's a popular one: It's always the boy who asks the girl to a dance. Never the other way around. Oh, I won't deny that this tradition is becoming more and more bent as time goes on, but I, trying to achieve the social Nirvana that is normalcy, adhered to the tradition. I waited to be asked. And after I had agreed to go to the Yule Ball with Cedric Diggory - handsome, popular, and so normal - I began to wonder if I wasn't making a huge mistake. Because when I turned down Harry Potter's stammered invitation, it occurred to me that I hadn't so much turned down an invitation to a ball as I had passed up the first opportunity in my life to not be normal.

No, I'm not talking about the distinction of being Famous Harry Potter's Famous Date. I'm talking about Harry himself. At first view, he's nothing special. Oh, he might have defeated You-Know-Who in the past, but now he's just your average scrawny, tousled-haired boy. Nothing to distinguish him besides the scar on his forehead.

Then you take another look at his face.

The first thing you notice are his eyes. Eyes colored a green so brilliant you have to wonder if they glow in the dark, yet somehow manage to hide more than the murkiest brown ever could. I can never be sure whether or not I can read him. It seems as though he never bothers to mask his emotions, but when you take a second look at his face it's like looking at a slammed door. You know there's something else there, but you also know that he'll never let you in. He's the quintessential fey child, and he doesn't even realize it. I've personally encountered him all of two times (three if you count a shouted encouragement before a Quidditch match) but even those two (three?) brief, impersonal events made me aware of him like an itch that I know is there and have to scratch but can't quite manage to find.

I think that I fell a little bit in love with him that day on the Quidditch pitch when we faced each other for the first time. I wasn't aware of it; it just sort of crept in. I wake up, take a shower, get dressed - and oh, yeah, I'm in love with Harry Potter. I'm still not sure why, exactly. Maybe it was the fact that he's the only person I've ever met who makes the blandest conversation seem like you're holding a tiny part of a ten thousand piece puzzle the size of Britain. I don't think he tries to be mysterious, he just is. In third year, when the Chamber of Secrets was opened, I don't think that anyone ever honestly believed that he was the Heir of Slytherin. (A Gryffindor, the Heir of Slytherin? Honestly.) What I do think is that we had finally found a convenient explanation for his... otherworldliness, I suppose you could say.

It fascinated me.

Fascinated me, and scared me a little. Well, a lot. Normally when we speak of desire, it's the desire for the body, a chemical reaction that is triggered by an attractive person of the appropriate gender. That's normal. Nothing all that special. But with Harry, the body was irrelevant. I wanted the mind. During that first Quidditch game, when in his enthusiasm for the game his eyes unveiled a little, I caught a tiny glimpse of what was hidden inside and I wanted. I wanted to know the rest of those brief glimpses so badly, it terrified me, because I knew that the minute I ever got to know him I would have to face all the parts of my mind that you don't talk about at sleepovers, and the thought terrified me more than anything.

So I went to the ball with Cedric. I kept Harry at arm's length. I never really ever talked to him, because I was too scared and confused and stupid to get rid of all the self-imposed constraints on my behavior and face my mind's desires. And by the time I actually woke up and figured things out, it was too late. While I was busy wallowing in social acceptability, he and Ginny Weasley had become an item. And I don't begrudge either of them their relationship, because I think that at a certain level I would always keep my distance, and he deserves better than to be treated like some kind of spiritual pantry.

But I also know that I'm going to change somehow. Do something different. Let my hair down, so to speak. I might never have Harry, but I'll always have the unspoken promise to myself that I'll never be locked away again, that I'll never let myself be walled off again, because everything I shut away had been quietly festering inside, and I never want to be sick inside again. I want to be able to sit under the stars with a boy and not be ashamed of the way I see new patterns in the sky before realizing what a romantic setting this is. I want to breathe dust off of ancient tomes and not regret my childish delight in the thick, musty smell of libraries. I want to know for a fact that relationships aren't just about holding hands and being in photographs together and snogging in rosebushes. I want to not be afraid of what I'm interested in, whether it's an interesting homework assignment or the unplumbed depths of brilliant green eyes.

It's time, I think, for this popular teenage girl to make some new choices.