The Difference Between Crying and Laughing

The Difference Between Crying and Laughing

How long can you love someone? A week? A month? A year? A decade?

I suppose it's different for everyone. I can love for a decade. I have loved for a decade.

I didn't mean to. He's my friend. My best friend. I never meant to love him. He just... I don't know. I couldn't help it.

The train to Hogwarts; that's where I met him. He and his brother were sitting in a compartment and I was looking for someone to keep me company. I was the little lost boy and they took me in.

I don't know why they did it. I didn't really deserve them. They were funny, I was not. They were cool, I was not. They were creative, inventive, daring, bold, adventurous, and proud. I wasn't any of those things. At least, I didn't think I was.

When the hat put me in Gryffindor, I was pleased. He told me his whole family had been Gryffindors. When it came to his turn, I crossed my fingers and wished hard. His brother had made Gryffindor, but it wouldn't be the same without both of them. When the hat shouted 'Gryffindor' and he proudly sauntered over to the table, I cheered the loudest.

After that, I tried hard to be good enough, cool enough, fun enough for them. I think to some extent I succeeded. I helped with pranks. I became the announcer for their Quidditch games. I even got a pet tarantula.

It was in our sixth year that I realized something was different about them. I mean, I had usually been able to tell them apart before, but then I realized I knew more about him than his brother. I knew his moods, his habits, and the secret spots he went to when he wanted time alone. I knew his fears, his insecurities, and his self-doubts. I knew his hopes, his dreams and his wishes. It hurt me that I wasn't really a part of them.

He always had a smile and a joke for everyone. I had a smile and a joke for him, and a mask of confidence for everyone else. He didn't notice how I felt.

All I wanted in those school days was to be around him. To help him in whatever prank he was trying to pull that week. Usually, I got in trouble. He and his brother seemed so much more skilled at avoiding detention than I did. I didn't really mind. I'd done it for him, hadn't I?

I think the crux of my realization came with the Yule Ball in sixth year. His brother was taking one of the chasers on the Quidditch team, but I hadn't heard that he had a date. I guess I assumed that we would both go stag. Assumptions never lead to good things, I've realized.

I hadn't asked anyone. I knew that I didn't like girls. It would be unfair to ask one and the only boy I wanted was him. When I went down to the common room the night of the dance one of the girls, another Chaser on the team, asked me where he was.

'Still upstairs,' I answered. 'Why?'

'He's my date and he was supposed to be here five minutes ago.'

Her answer struck me to the core. Her date? He got a date? I didn't even know. I hadn't even noticed. He... he hadn't told me.

I suppose I had been holding out a hope that maybe he was like me. Maybe he didn't like girls either. Maybe, just maybe, he liked me. But that's all it was. A hope.

A tiny insignificant hope that could never be realized.

I spent the entirety of that Ball watching him. Watching him dance slowly with her. Watching him dance quickly with her. Watching him dance with someone that wasn't me.

Some of the other girls asked me to dance, but I couldn't. I couldn't play that game, that charade. It wouldn't be fair. Not to me, not to them, not to anyone. Some of the innate Gryffindor in me, I suppose. I couldn't lie.

Lying, I've found, is not the same as concealing the truth. And I concealed it well, I think. At least, no one confronted me on it. No one called my bluff. Least of all, him.

That night, the night of the Yule Ball, was the first time I'd ever cast silencing spells on my bed before going to sleep. It was the first time I'd ever cried myself to sleep. Not that I'd ever admit it to anyone.

But I can admit it to myself. I cried myself to sleep that night, and for many nights since then. The worst time was the night after he left me.

Seventh year, school was almost over and that witch of a Defence teacher was making our lives horrible. He and his brother had been given a lifetime ban from Quidditch and he was really itching for payback. There has never been a time when he's not had his revenge when he wanted it.

He got it and more. One corridor, a swamp. Fireworks everywhere. He and his brother riding off out of school on their brooms. He'd really made a splash and probably made his way into the next edition of Hogwarts: A History. But they'd forgotten one thing. Me.

That had been the first time in six years that I'd been really alone at Hogwarts. Sure, I'd spent time by myself, but he had always been a heartbeat away. Just upstairs or down the hall when I needed him. But when they left I was alone. I didn't have any other really close friends. They were my two best ones. And they were gone.

What made it worse were the letters. He sent letters to that girl he'd taken to the Yule Ball and very few to me. When she got them, she'd sigh or blush or giggle, usually all three, and say how much she missed him. I missed him too, but I wasn't allowed to say. I didn't have that right. She did.

I cried myself to sleep a lot in those final months.

When I graduated, I didn't really know what to do. The only thing I'd really been good at was announcing and that wasn't really an option. My parents couldn't get me a job or anything. Dad was a Muggle and Mum didn't work. I had no connections, no money, and no future. In the end, I ended up in a backwater job at the Ministry. Shuffling papers about something I don't altogether understand. That's still where I am today. Three years later.

He and his brother run a fabulous joke shop with branches in Diagon Alley, Hogsmeade and one in Paris. They make new generations of Hogwarts students laugh. I'm doing a job I don't comprehend. They're successful. I'm lucky if I have enough to get from one month to the next. One set of bills to next.

Today, I realized something crucial. I hadn't really laughed in a long time. I mean, really laughed. Laughed so hard my sides hurt and my eyes watered. I hadn't laughed like that in ages. Not since I last saw him.

It wasn't the kind of revelation that came on it's own. No, as always, there was a catalyst, something that precipitated the change. It came in the form of an owl. Well, a card delivered by an owl, actually. The words were simple but they cut deep.

Michael and Laura Spinnet

Cordially invite you to attend the wedding of

Their daughter Alicia Jocelyn Spinnet

to George Richard Weasley

on the 15^th of July.

Please R.S.V.P as soon as possible

He was getting married. To the girl he'd asked to the ball in sixth year. He didn't care about me after all. That hope, that tiny spark of hope that I'd been carrying around with me since I started school, left me today. And that's when the realizations came. I hadn't really laughed without him. I had wrapped my whole world around someone who didn't exist.

I love my perception of him, the imaginary him that only existed in my head. He couldn't love me. He loved her. He could never love me. After all, Lee Jordan isn't good enough for George Weasley.

As I'm lying here in my bed, I finally come to some decision. It won't give me closure and it's not very conclusive but it's all I've got.

When you cry more than you laugh it's time to move on.