Quote Me if I'm Wrong

Chapter Ten: Vanity is Fair

I used to be vain, now I am perfect. -W.C. Fields

Me in two words: perfect and vain. I know myself well. There are some moments when the only things I am still completely certain of are those two self-attributes. Because sometimes stuff just works itself into a knot of life threads that have no desire to become untangled. Its at moments like this that I am aware of only two facts; that I am vain and I am perfect and that one could not happily exist without the presence of the other. Okay, maybe that's three facts.

Recently though I haven't felt so perfect because the occurrences when only three facts remain history have become more and more popular amongst the fibers of my timeline. The first time when I knew only a handful of things in my life would always be the same was when I became one of Dumbdlore's spies. I was so desperately confused, my father was sending daily owls updating me on the progress of his lord, Snape, the closest thing I have ever known to a father, was distant and more observant than usual, Ginny had left me and Mi had replaced her, and in all those consecutive days of whirl wind confusion I could only cling to a few pieces of information. I think it was a distinctive need for closure that I became a spy, perhaps it was so I could stop feeling like I was spliced between the underworld my father operates in and the frolicking sunshine Mi was in where she was dancing around a molding maypole. I told Snape what I wanted, I'd worked out his position long ago and respected him for it, he got me to Dumbdlore, and I became a spy, once again finding myself in the gray in between area.

But I think this gray is better than where I was before, now I have a purpose, a job to do, a reason to continue on with my perfect existence. It gave me a reason to be and a knife to carry should the opportunity arise when it could be easily jousted into my father's back.

I wish my spying and fiddling with the matters of the marl could have been to greater assistance in the matter of the songbird. I may have been a spy, but it did no good when Potter lead Mi into the Department of Mysteries. I was going to meet her that night, in the back of the library, but she hoped a top her high pony before I could stop her. It was as if I was in a dream the days she was silent in the hospital wing, I couldn't go see her without suspicion arising, so I just had to sit in my common room. Tapping my foot nervously, snapping when people asked me to stop, snarling when I had to leave my vigil before the fireplace to attend something as petty as a class. Those hours she spent in the infirmary left me empty, I knew only one thing then and it was that I was neither vain nor perfect without her, and that if anything more should happen to her delicate figure the possibility of my shattering was entirely plausible.

It was after she got out of the sick bay that I knew I had to watch her every move. I watched her at meals, making sure she ate enough. I followed her to her common room where there were always plenty of brave lions to guard her precious figure. If truth were told I would have felt much better had George been in that common room, but he and his brother had left for greater horizons. My eyes watched her as she exerted herself on final extra books before the holidays, keeping a careful hand over hers as she sat crumpled in her favorite library chair.

When she had finished a book we would sit there for a moment as she contemplated what text next to peruse, sometimes she would tell me what had happened. Other times, far more frequently, she would beg me to heft a larger book from a higher shelf she could not reach. I always did what she asked, on the last day of term she told me exactly what had happened.

I suppose I should be thankful that my godfather didn't fall through a ratty old bed sheet into a limbo between life and death. It would probably be more prudent if I were thankful I did not experience the memories that were not mine. But as she told me, listlessly, about the troubles of Potter and Weasley I began to pick up the strands of thought I was used to. I knew that my life was perfect.

That train of though came to a rude and screeching halt when I read the paper two weeks ago to see the headline, Daughter of Ministry Worker Takes her Own Life...the next day...Did She Spare Her Own Life...two days later...Innocence Lost; the Ginny Weasley Suicide. Every day for the last two weeks a new, fresh and morbid headline to take people's minds off of the Dark Lord. The populous will examine anything so long as it is not reality, because God forbid they live in a present and radical state of mind where the radical and outlandishly alarming have come to pass.

The day the first article ran Mi began with her tirade of letters. I can understand, she has only a few remaining confidantes. Everyday there is a new letter, written in her stressed and precise hand detailing her every emotion. But each day the writing becomes less crammed and less urgent and she tells me some extra little tidbit of happiness that sparked her happiness. She's healing, coming out of her shell bit by bit, seeing the glass half full more often than naught. Every time I get a new letter there is a little more to smile about, she's drawn a flower in the corner, added a new flourish to her signature, uses scented parchment. Every day one more of her letters builds up the walls of my perfect world, fortifying them with her empowering goodness and livelihood. It is time like the morning post that I know my vanity does not go amiss, and it is times like this that I know I may live in the most evil of shells, but I, and my world, are still perfect.