Confessions: A Tale of Locked Doors and Deception

Confessions:

A Tale of Locked Doors and Deception

By Katarine-Marie

CHAPTER THE FIRST

Since we came to Hogwarts, Padma always kept a journal. Her diary, it was black leather bound with brass letters that spelled Padma. I had an identical one, but labeled Parvati, and it is in this that I write. I always scoffed at her journal writing. Tiring, boring, cumbersome, but she always said it was good to get your emotions down on parchment; it relieved your soul.

Well, relief isn't what I need. I need something to confide in, something that can't and won't judge me for what I did. For what I will do and what I am now doing. So much has happened, but in order to understand, you need to know about me.

My name is Parvati Nathalie Patil, born of a British witch and an Indian wizard. Raised in Oxford, England, I always had two very close friends: Lavender Brown, my next door neighbor, and Padma, my identical twin. Before Hogwarts, Lavender and I amused ourselves with dolls, toy broomsticks and our mothers' dress robes while Padma read. But we were still the closest of friends, for we were intellectual equals who could carry on hour long discussions, whereas Lavender never had much intelligent to say. It wasn't that I was not as prone to learning, it was that it wasn't what I cared to devote myself to. Padma was simply more scholarly. At Hogwarts, Lavender and I graduated to greater things, makeup, clothes, and ultimately, boys. Padma still had her books, and we soon grew apart. Now, I cannot let even her know my secret.

I before mentioned my interests, but it is the latter that lead to my downfall. Boys. From first year, Lavender and I had infatuations with every boy in the school, changing them as often as most people change their socks. This ended by the end of fourth year, where Lavender became Dean Thomas' steady girlfriend and I had a brief fling with a boy from Beauxbatons, visiting for the Triwizard Tournament. It didn't last, but my fifth year had much more in store.

Mind you, I pray you won't think badly of me for saying so (how could you? You're a book!) , But I did find love in my fifth and current year at Hogwarts. But no, it was not to be a childhood romance, full of flirting, gossip and social clamorings, but of secrets, denial, and shed tears. A loss of innocence.

My year was going normally until I entered my Defense class, and met a changed, yet vaguely familiar face. Familiar in the sense that I had seen him before, but this was not the sickly, ancient man in his early thirties that I was accustomed to, but he was now tall and bronzed. His head was covered in short brown hair, slowly turning gray. But it did not make him seem weak or aging, but gave him a certain dignity. His body, formerly thin and frail was now muscular and lithe. And though his thin lips, beak nose, and square jaw line showed sternness, his clear, blue eyes revealed his compassion and tenderness. From the moment he greeted me in his baritone voice, I was addicted to his mere being.

Remus Lupin has since held my heart.

* * * * *

Even then I knew I could not reveal my emotions. While a small crush on a celebrity such as Gilderoy Lockhart was acceptable, strong feelings for this man would be frowned upon by all. But I kept my ears open, and for the first month acquired all the knowledge I could about him, as a sponge absorbs water. I learned he was thirty-six, an Aquarius born on January seventeenth. He had been a werewolf, but as soon as he'd resigned from the same position two years before, he had found a 'witch-doctor' in Venezuela who had performed an exorcism of sorts. He no longer suffered the curse. His favorite food was chocolate, he took his gin and tonic with lime and two ice cubes, and he called his barn owl Lupine, an name after his own, and for the flora. But there was one piece of information that I took to heart as I would a poisonous viper: he was married to Medugorje Abbott, and had a seven-month-old son, Patrick.

This family lived in Cornwall, the other side of the earth in my mind, but he owled them every Monday, Thursday, and Sunday. With his long, graceful fingers, he would attach an envelope to the leg of his magnificent bird, which flew with a burden of love on its foot. How I envied that bird! But his wife and child seldom occurred to me, only the messenger of the love that I coveted so much.

In his office, I once glanced at a picture of his happy trio of a family, and frankly, I was disappointed. She was of average height, average build and average looks. Mousy colored hair, hazel eyes, thin lips; it was a face that resembled a pixie. She had a pretty way, but by no means was a beauty. Still, it struck me that one so average held the heart of the sensual man I loved. His son was a cherubic angel with gray eyes, but fairy-like in the manner of his mother. But his eyes were those of Remus', so I could not deny his existence, that he was the bastard son of my love's harlot wife. In my dreams, Remus had married this woodland spirit out of pity but the gray eyes told me it was not so.

* * * * *

But my obsession continued; I longed for those Defense classes. There it would become that only he and I were in that classroom, that he was revealing his secrets of the world to me alone. I would haunt his office with overly planned, ridiculous questions about homework and class. But though my twin was a Ravenclaw, and I a lion, I am just as intelligent, and soon I applied for private Defense training as an extra-curricular.

It was possible, you see, to apply for these such programs if you had a 90 percent or above in the mentioned class. Due to my newfound love for the subject, I had accumulated a quarterly average of ninety-six, one point and a half below Hermione.

My request was granted and I soon had tri-weekly two-hour appointments at 6:45 in his classroom. They began innocently enough, but I found myself yearning for more than dangerous beasts and unfriendly incantations. I would fantasize how, not this time, but perhaps the next, we would proclaim our passion for each other and make love there and then. And I noticed trivial things, like when he followed me with his eyes or held my glance too long. Or when his hand would brush mine. Simple things that would make half of me think that these subtle gestures had meaning, a desire for romance, while the other half ridiculed the first at reading into silly little things. So my lessons continued until that fateful day in December when everything changed. But whether it was for the better or for the worse, I still cannot tell.