give her love » james potter

12

I don't think I'll forgive you for letting certain things happen, I tell God, late at night, but I hope you let this all be over soon. My pain is enough, don't let others experience what I've had to.

There are people who've had it worse than me, I know that.

But, my mom always said, just because someone's pain is seen as worse, it doesn't make yours any less valid. You are entitled to grieve and deal with your struggles how you want to, everyone is different and has their own limits. You have to understand that.

"Smile," James orders me, during Muggle Studies.

I blink.

He kicks me in the foot. "Smile, for fucks sake."

"I am a strong women," I say, frowning as hard as I can, almost trying to make him frustrated. "I do not take threats from Gryffindor boys who can't even tie their own tie."

Some incomprehensible sound comes out of him and he starts leaning towards me. His hand's fumble on undoing the horrible knot he's made his tie into, then he's slipping it off, then he's putting it in my hands, then suddenly we touch.

It all happens a little too fast.

My hands brush over his collarbone, his neck, a curl of his hair, the bob of his Adam's apple. They shake slightly trying to a decent job, but I can't, all I can feel is James. The smell of some cologne that's foresty and nice, the warmth of his skin radiating, his eyes on me. It feels strangely intimate, something as mundane as this, I feel like a third-year getting her first kiss. But this isn't like that at all.

Yet it feels like so much more.

I lean away, quickly. Trying to blink away whatever just happened, confusion drenching me like cold water.

"You're really good," he says quietly, his voice raspy and dry. "Like, at, tying."

I shrug. "Well, it's one of my only skills."

James frowns at what I've said. "You don't think that, do you," he asks.

"Sometimes." Please don't think I'm pathetic.

Nowadays, I'm scared a lot. I'm of being alone. I'm scared of having no one.

He's become one of my friends over the past little bit, for some reason I am unaware of, I seem to enjoy his company. I don't want him to realize how terrible I really am and not talk to me again, a part of me knows he nicer than I used to think he was, that he's very emotional and intellectual. James is more than what people believe of him, that's what keeps me near him.

"You're a good talker," he says, after I finally take a break from my internal monologue to look at him. "Sometimes I say dumb stuff, I know that, but then you'll usually put up with it and stuff along. I really like that. Also, your really funny," James starts to chuckle, "like when you're sarcastic. You're also smart, but in the way, that you know about all these things about the world. Not like textbook stuff. But the real human stuff."

His words are fast and jumbled up, but they're kind and he looks so honest saying them, that my heart squeezes. It's so kind, and I feel like I don't deserve something as nice as this, but I want. The way he looks me makes feel like I should.

I smile at him, and I give him something big and real. Something worth putting in our film.

All the girls are bustling around, braiding each other's hair, trying out makeup looks, throwing clothes around our room, and talking about some new boy or how some girl got a terrible haircut. It's a little bit chaotic, but it's also really nice, because what's more like being a teenager then this.

Siobhan sits with me on our bed and she reads through one of my magazines.

"What color describes you," she asks me. "A-Pink, B-Green, C-Red, D-Black."

I ponder about it for a moment. "Hm," I say. "I must say, sometimes I feel my soul is terribly black. With my teenage angst and all. But, I'm starting to really like that colour red."

She nods along and starts counting up my score. Her fingers flipping pages. "It looks like, your next hair cut should be chin-length hair with a perm. You seem as if you are changing and with that, your hair must too. Go to page thirty five on tips to style that perm."

"No perm," I shake my head, but I run my hands through my hair. "But, I am kind of tired of all this hair."

Since I was eight, my hair cut has been the same. Pin-straight-brown hair that reaches my waist. The most I changed it, was when I was fourteen and the barber accidentally trimmed off five inches rather than my usual two.

My hairs like some sort of baggage that I carry around. With memories and feelings entangled in it. I know I'm still growing and moving on, but maybe if I cut it off everything will be a little bit faster.

"My cousin taught me a spell," a voice adds.

I turn to see Rachel, smiling at me a little nervously. 

Siobhan's head turns to me asking me a silent question, I smile and nod at her and then at Rachel.

"I'm trusting you with my most valuable asset," I say.

She frowns. "I thought that was your boobs.

"Second, then."

Me and her dissolve into laughter, and I feel like my old self again. But not at all. I feel a little bit better, more improved, a little bit like my real self. Whoever that is.

After a few moments of chaos, we decide that we'll spread some newspapers on the floor and I'll just sit there. Even though going to the bathroom would definitely be wiser, because everyone finds out about it and insists that they'll help clean it up and we're a bit too lazy, we stay.

Rachel's wand bumps into my neck and I hold my breath.

"Ready," she asks. 

"Yeah," I lie. Closing my eyes and almost hoping this is some weird dream, that I will soon wake up to.

All the girls stand around in a circle, their fear larger than mine. I hear Rachel say the spell, and someone lets out a little scream. All the girls suddenly start talking very loudly, saying it should be shorter or how I should really do that perm.

I think at this moment if someone walked, they might believe we were doing some cult-like sacrificing of my hair. Maybe we were, actually.

My hands run through my hair, and it feels so nice and soft, and way more healthy. I slowly open my eyes, everyone stares me as I get handed a mirror.

It's just a little bit longer than the chin-length cut, the magazine had suggested. But I like it. 

The way it frames my face. How it makes me look like a different, though I'm still me. I feel like some women who has her life together.

Some women I want to be one day.