Deconstruct, A Memoir

Deconstruct, A Memoir

By Solarism

Prologue

How does one begin to write a classic?

I know what my early life consisted of and how I came to be the person I am today, but I'm not exactly sure how to elucidate it to you, the reader. You see, my life is one of those lives that, if written about, will probably come to be glorified as a classic and I don't want that at all. I'm not really sure what that word actually means, classic, because it sounds both elegant and repressive (neither of which my life was or is), but my best friend Arabella Figg insists that this story is damned, or destined if you will, to become whatever it is a classic consists of, although that sounds terribly insalubrious to me.

Arabella says a lot of things that sometimes don't make sense to me so this is nothing new, mostly because her notion of the world far outstrips mine. She is very fastidious about certain things she believes in, things that she's known about forever that I'm only just now beginning to get a vague idea of, and she's almost always right about the things she talks about. Any time that she's ever taken a position on something, she's been widely acknowledged to have only done so for one reason. That reason is always because she fully recognizes the consequences of her stand and has found them well worth her troubles. Most people don't dispute what she says anymore because we've learned that Arabella, whom most of us dotingly called Aria back at Hogwarts, knows what she's talking about.

I've been friends with her for many reasons, not least of all because I can always hold conviction in the fact that she knows best. She possesses a distinguished sort of grace that endures throughout all situations, yet at the same time is similar to an injured animal in need help and consideration--two things that I've always been good at giving. Our in-jokes and comparable opinions drew us immediately together in to what would turn out as the friendship of a lifetime. Arabella is someone who knows what is going on in the world around her, and her acuity of everything is so levelheaded and comprehensive that it has always amazed me.

She says my life is a classic.

As a writer, this sticks me between the proverbial 'rock and hard place'. The idea of writing something that will go down in history as either a tale terribly revered or a tale terribly mocked frightens me. I've been frightened for a long time, I think, of many things--mostly of starting to come clean with myself about what happened back at school--and this new fear (or perhaps responsibility?) of writing a classic isn't helping. It's almost, but luckily not quite, enough to stop the ebb and flow of my words altogether.

It's finally time for me to take a deep breath and dive back into the world I have focused so hard on forgetting. It won't be easy to tell and doubtlessly won't be painless to read, but if you want to know the truth about James Potter, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, and everyone else, this is the only way to find out. I am the last remainder of a world vanished; no one else will talk about it. No one else remembers.

We're all adults now. Some of us have developed into stunning, tough human beings like Arabella, while others of us haven't changed a bit--and that's a good thing--like James, and while still others of us have descended so profoundly into desolation that there's no coming out again, like Narcissa Rocwell. This is more than just my story; this is more than just a romance. This is the honest truth about all of us, in one way or another, with no good or bad omitted. We were who we were.

If we're classic and revered, so be it. If we're classic and hated, that's tolerable too.

The point is that at least we lived, and that must count for something.

* * *

By the time that I was fourteen years old, I reigned as a formidable constituent of the 1970's underground adaptation of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry we alumni all knew so well. In a time when children no older than eleven were exposed to gruesome images of the powerful war that raged all around us, the battle against Lord Voldemort and all of his treacherous cohorts, we turned to dreadfully adult ways of handling our troubles. Lucius Malfoy, the Dark Prince of our year, carted in prohibited stores of alcohol by the barrelful. This eventually led to my involvement with him and inevitably to the gambling nights that Arabella and I began to orchestrate sometime during our first few years at school. Behind our professors' backs--who were all preoccupied with the war and much too busy to keep close tabs on guiltless looking students--we created a ghastly antiestablishment of sex, drugs and alcohol.

On Saturday nights in the lifeless blackness that seemed to permeate even the sunniest of days, teenagers of all ages flocked to the parties I threw. Arabella, Narcissa Rocwell, Lucius Malfoy and I ran the show for everyone and with our collective influence managed to control even the most dreadful seventh years. It was a lucrative operation for all four of us. Arabella was in charge of basic security; she was terrifying with a wand and could brew a mean potion. No one wanted to cross her, so she made sure that the only cheating that went on was in our favor. Lucius was the big advertiser of everything. He invested some of the legendary Malfoy fortune into the parties on good faith and in turn made money along with us. He sold his alcohol and drugs and pressured people into doing things they normally wouldn't.

Narcissa was our cocktail waitress. With a syrupy temperament and big, deep blue eyes, everyone adored her. She was good for business; when she urged a boy to have another martini or an additional shot of gin, he had another. The more drunk everyone got the more each blew his or her money, which was exactly what we wanted.

I performed the role of the harlot. I made a spectacle of my young body and wore entirely too much make up and batted my eyelashes at all the right times. When under the deadly influence of sex appeal, people will do almost anything you tell them to. If someone was down on his luck and was planning on leaving prematurely, I'd go and sit on his lap and give him a few wiggles and giggles to keep him happy and engrossed in gambling and drinking a little more. Maybe if he stayed a little longer this time he'd get a kiss--a kiss from me, a kiss from the girl everyone treasured but no one knew anything about. What was it that was so irresistible about the mysterious redhead who vowed to never again kiss anyone but Lucius Malfoy on the lips?

We all had our reasons. The people who came to Saturday gambling nights came because they had problems that they couldn't work out for themselves. In the midnight black of the war, this explanation fit most of our school. I guess they felt secure in our hands. They should have realized what a poisonous place to be that was, but no one ever figured it out.

Lucius had family problems. Not much was ever known about him, even to me, because even back in our teenage years he was tremendously good at hiding his feelings. Arabella and I habitually discussed late into the night Lucius's reasons for drinking so much, but the only conclusions we ever drew were about his family. The Malfoy surname was legendary for a reason. They were immense supporters of the Dark Arts and had some of the purest blood you could find in the wizarding world flowing through their veins. Their wealth was cosmic, and they had a manor that had been in the family for ages; Lucius was their heir, a true Slytherin.

With a father who thrashed him--though back then, whose father didn't?--and a mother who had taken permanently ill soon after Lucius had been born, he had no one to turn to except those of us he was close to at school. He was an angry boy who wore a scowl to mask his loneliness. I loved him very much and got the closest to him out of anyone. If Lucius ever trusted anyone, which I'm not saying he did because he probably didn't, it would have been me.

Arabella's parents beat her too. She, unlike Lucius, would admit it. She cut herself up with razors and knives and had attempted suicide twice by the time I met her at age eleven. She was everyone's affectionate mother. She took care of us and chastised us--though not so much Lucius, she was a bit wary of disciplining him--and always gave off an atmosphere of otherworldliness. It was as if she was Jesus (someone none of us believed in) and with every bruise or cut or drop of blood she bled, she became more angelic and more gorgeous. If there was ever an angel that walked amongst us, it was Aria.

I cherished her. She was so strong and yet so susceptible to pain that I fiercely took it upon myself from the very first day we met to shelter her. Arabella was my best friend and my closest confidante--we were two Gryffindors, one half of a celebrated Gryffindor and Slytherin team. We stuck together. It was one of the only things we were proficient at.

Narcissa's parents were huge Voldemort supporters and had been captured by Aurors. She insisted that she would never turn to the Dark Side like they had and it seemed to us that she internally tormented herself because of the pain of not having compassionate, loving parents. Her family wasn't her main quandary though. Her main problem was that she was clinically depressed. She was on more pills than we could count and none of them ever helped her much. The only times she seemed halfway happy was when she drank, and drink she did. I often wondered what her personality would have been like if I had ever seen her wholly sober, but I had a feeling that she wouldn't be nearly as sweet...

I could relate intensely to all three of them. My mother was an alcoholic--thus, I was the only one out of the four of us who didn't drink--who hated me. My sister was an unpleasantly vain girl who was viciously jealous of my magic. She didn't have a drop of magic in her, regrettably, and she had always been astringent because of it. My mother was Catholic and had been deserted by my slow-talking, quixotic American father, and she hated me because I had his eyes. I wasn't beaten like Lucius or Arabella, just loathed to such an excessive extent that it had been my only wish for years to die.

"Choose your poison," Lucius said with a malicious glint in his dark gray eyes.

"Alright," I said back without a qualm in my mind, "I choose you..."

However, there was something in my life that didn't fit in flawlessly with the darkness I thrived upon. It kept me from being consumed by hate and despondency, and it had a name. It was a boy my age called James Potter.

I didn't know him well. We knew of each other only because we were in the same house, Gryffindor, and because we were on contrary ends of the Hogwarts social spectrum. He was one of those pretty boys that everyone prized for his good looks and Quidditch abilities. I didn't dabble in the kind of things he dabbled in. Lucius thought he was absurd and couldn't stand James or his friends (they called themselves the Marauders and were indefatigably pulling pranks on people), so I stayed away from him. But I couldn't help but know who he was.

Everyone knew James, just like everyone knew me, except for hugely dissimilar reasons. He was sure to be Head Boy when we reached seventh year; everyone adored him. Girls baked him cookies, and boys wanted to be him. He was one of those unfairly lucky people who had been fundamentally unstained by the war. His family was well-known to be loose with their love, and they were pureblooded so he carried no stigma like I did (a Muggleborn). Handsome, athletic, funny, smart, and perfect--the famous James Potter.

I was known as Lucius Malfoy's girl, the beautiful one with the great body and gambling nights. Everyone clucked their tongues and said I should've been in Slytherin; I would have ruled there as Queen alongside Lucius. As it was, I was the black sheep of Gryffindor with so much opportunity. If I married into the Malfoy family I'd taint it because I was Muggleborn, but oh, wouldn't our children be beautiful?

Yes, they'd be beautiful. All pale and golden with my burning emerald eyes.

At the beginning of my fourth year, shortly after my fourteenth birthday, things in my life took a violent turn down a path I'd never expected. It all began one day on the Quidditch field. It was the day I ascended into heaven, and the day the lines were evermore drawn between houses--Gryffindor and Slytherin became cemented enemies--and the war against Voldemort took on a whole new significance.

I met James Potter officially for the first time on September 5^th, 1975 and I have no regrets.

* * *

It was the start of something incredible.

This chronicle, whether Arabella is right about it being a classic or not, is more than just a love story. When you read this it's vital to keep in mind that all the people you read about really lived... and this is what I remember.

Our summers were either lazy or despondent, our Christmases memorable, our classes inconsequential, and our romances imperfect, but we had substance. From the deepest depths of Lucius Malfoy to the darkest strand of hair on James Potter's head, this is something to remember. If writing a tale I'm terrified to tell is the only way to let our legacy live on, then I'm glad to do it. I will begin now with my head held high and only the stars in my eyes, and pray for your understanding.

We meant no harm.

My name is Lily Evans and this is my truth; this is my deconstruction.