Sometimes She Wonders

Sometimes she wonders

The woman with the long red hair walks out into the garden and sits down on the grass. The wind plays with her hair and the sun is shining. She lies down, letting the sun warm her. It is a sunny day at the end of July. The birds are singing.

It is so opposed to everything that happens in the world.

Her best friend is dead. Dorcas Meadowes. She died a week ago. To the woman with the red hair, it's an eternity.

She died a week ago. Died? No, she was killed, murdered. By the man who is currently making everyone's life hell. Lord Voldemort.

A lot of people don't want to say his name. They are afraid of him. Lord Voldemort probably likes that idea, the idea that he has so much power over people that they won't even say his name because they are so afraid.

"Voldemort!" the red-haired woman screams. A few birds fly away, frightened of the shout.

Don't you think you can scare me, the woman thinks savagely.

They used to make fun of him.

The two sixteen-year-old girls are sitting on the floor in a corridor, next to them a boy their age. He's not a Gryffindor like the two girls, he's a Ravenclaw, but they are good friends. He is called Benjy Fenwick. He winks at the girls and then says in a high-pitched voice, "Hello, girls. I'm Voldemort, Voldy for short."

The two Gryffindors laugh. "I'm sure that's what his followers call him when they are playing sex games with each other," the red-haired one snorts.

"Sex games?" Dorcas says. "Do you really think he can feel anything at all?"

The bell rings. The three teenagers get up and walk to their next lesson, convinced that Voldemort will never separate them.

The red-haired woman the only one who's still left. Benjy was killed at the beginning of the year. They never found his body, only pieces of him.

The woman sighs. She is still so young, a girl really. She became twenty-one in May, but she is already married and her first child will be born in the next few days.

The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies...

She shivers. First her friends, and now her child. Suddenly, she's feeling very sick. She retches violently, but she doesn't throw up. How? She hasn't eaten anything so far today. James will nag her about it when he comes home. No, she corrects herself, if he comes home.

Sometimes she wonders if she'll survive the war. She hasn't told James, but she's sure she won't. She told Sirius, though. She cringes at the memory. That had been a mistake. Sirius had been shocked, to say the least.

She thinks that even though people are dying everyday, he has never considered the possibility that she or James could die.

Sometimes she wonders if there's an Afterlife. She has never really believed in God, and she admires the people who do believe in God, who are convinced that their souls live on after death. And what if there is nothing after death? Only a big, black nothing? What would be worse, dying now or continue living in this horrible war?

The branches and leaves of the trees throw shadows over her. She rolls to the side where no shadow is, as though the sun could burn away the grief and the pain she is feeling inside.

She's lost her closest friends. She still has Alice, but that goddamn prophecy destroyed their friendship. It could either refer to her or Alice's child. The redhead is ashamed because she inwardly hopes that it's Alice's child, and she's sure that Alice is feeling the same way.

She doesn't know how Alice will regret this in a year and a bit more than three months, when she'll be at the Potters' funeral.

A baby is inside her, and she's afraid. Afraid that her child is born to be either a victim or a killer. It's not fair. She loathes Voldemort because it's all his fault.

Sometimes she wonders if this all is just a horrible nightmare and she will soon wake up to find that she's still a eleven-year-old girl, and a Muggle to boot.

Then she wonders if she'd prefer that.

She hasn't had any friends in the Muggle World...

Is not having any friends at all better than seeing them all die? Seeing them die is worse if you are left behind, the woman thinks, and I was left behind.

Tears spill from her eyes as she hugs her pregnant belly. Her baby won't be able to have a normal childhood. Oh no, it's not fair, not at all.

A little girl, about twelve years old, tells her parents about her school year.

"Oh, the Wizarding World is so wonderful! Everything's so exciting and different than it is in the Muggle World! It's perfect!"

A snort is heard. It comes from the corner. A tall, blonde girl who is about fifteen, frowns at the redhead.

"Nothing's perfect. You just haven't noticed yet."

The younger girl scowls at the blonde, and when their parents aren't looking, she makes an obscene hand gesture at her.

"Oh, yes, Petunia, you were right," the woman with the auburn hair says.

It's at the age of fifteen when she realizes that the Wizarding World isn't perfect.

Sometimes she wonders if her sister had still called her a freak if she had admitted that her new world-that neither her parents nor her sister could understand-wasn't as wonderful as it seemed to be at the beginning.

She misses her sister, and she always will. She sends her Christmas and Birthday cards, but never gets a response.

She blows her auburn locks out of her face. She'd love to send her sister a letter, to explain the terror that is going on in her world, but she fears that it's too late for that now. She's afraid and wants to confide in her sister, but her sister doesn't want to listen anymore.

She now knows that she loves her sister.

Sometimes she wonders if every Muggle-born feels like this-as if there is a wall between them and their muggle relatives.

Suddenly, somebody sits down next to her. It's James. He smiles weakly.

"How are you?" he asks.

She shrugs.

"Come on, let's go inside. I'll make you something to eat," he says. He gets up and offers her a hand. Together, they walk back to the house.

Sometimes she wonders if she'll survive the war. She thinks she won't, but she knows that James loves her more than anything in the world and that he would die to protect her and their child.

But sometimes she wonders if that will be enough.