DETENTION
“Malfoy, Potter, for detention today you’ll be cleaning my classroom. I’ve acquired cleaning supplies, and I trust you can figure out how to use them. Now, if you excuse me, I’ll be in my study,” Professor Snape says briskly. He leaves, which means it’s just me and him. Me and Potter, in the same room together for an hour. Well, this is sure to be fun.
“Um,” Harry starts, looking oddly flustered, “You take the left side, I’ll take the right?”
I nod in assent and grab a sponge.
Although I am perfectly content to work in silence, Harry seems to feel otherwise.
“So…” he starts.
“Yes?” I reply dryly.
“What, uh… What are you hoping to do next year? I mean like for classes”
That’s odd, I think, why does he care about that? Just making conversation, I suppose.
“I’m thinking I’ll go into alchemy or potion-making, so arithmancy, potions, alchemy, transfiguration. My mother wants me to continue taking charms, so I might as well do that too.”
“Oh, cool”
A moment passes by.
“What are you going to do?” I ask, humoring him.
“Yeah, uh, well, definitely defense against the dark arts, although I’m not sure what else. I guess I’ll just take what McGonagall thinks I should”
“Well, what are you hoping to become when you graduate?”
“Oh, the thing is,” he says, looking unsure, “I don’t really know. I don’t know if I’ll live ‘till then”
“That’s macabre”
“Well, you know, with the whole Voldemort thing, I don’t think it’s that unrealistic”
“I suppose”
A lull passes, during which I am happy to clean in silence, but Harry seems determined to fill the air.
“So, uh, what kind of music do you like?”
“I don’t know. I don’t really listen to music.”
That was a lie. While my music collection is limited, I do listen to it often. Music is a nice escape, although a lot of times I feel worse afterwards. It’s a good hurt, though.
“C’mon, everyone listens to music”
“Uh,” I stutter out, desperately trying to remember the name of an artist I like that isn’t super depressing. This proves an impossible task. Everything I like is unbearably slow and depressing, like Cry by Cigarettes after sex, or cringey AND sad, like I Don’t Love You by My Chemical Romance.
“Okay, I’ll go first,” Harry offers, “I like 80’s pop, like Wham! and Madonna”
Despite my best efforts, I fail in stifling a laugh.
“Oh, come on,” he says, laughing, “It’s good!”
“No way dude!” I exclaim, laughing more, “80’s was, like, the worst decade for music!”
“Not the worst”
“Yeah, the worst. Name a song worse than The Safety Dance!”
“Uhh…”
“See! You can’t!”
“No, uhm, just gimme a sec”
“Oh, I can think of one: Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”
“No, c’mon, that song kind of bops”
“No way!” I protest.
“Okay, if you’re so great, what music do you like?”
“Not Madonna!”
“Then what?”
“Um…”
“See, yours is worse!”
“Okay, fine, I’ll drop it”
“No, dude, I wanna hear!”
I sigh. “Okay, yeah. I like My Chemical Romance”
“My Chemical Romance?”
“Shut it”
“Oh my god no way! There is no way I will ever shut it again,” he says, laughing. I can’t really be mad, because I’m laughing too, and I wish I could make this moment last forever. Despite everything, despite the years of hatred and jealousy and torment, despite the fact that my father is a Death Eater eagerly awaiting the return of the man this boy killed, I have hope. Maybe things can change. We could be friends, him and I. We could get out of here and never look back, Dark Lord be damned.
It seems it does last forever, the laughing and the teasing. All throughout the detention, we talk about movies and games and music and whatever else people talk about, and I can feel my shoulders start to loosen, my words start to flow more freely, my smiles start to show more easily. Something about him disarms me, as if my cold mask is a sheet of ice and he’s an inferno. Even his magic feels hot, in stark contrast to mine, which has been described as feeling like frostbite. At one point, he casts a cleaning charm on the desk next to me, and I could swear the spell raises the temperature in the room. Later, it feels as if he casts a silent spell on me as he looks into my eyes, because I’m melting and I’m melting and I’m melting.
For once, my heart isn’t a ten pound dumbbell in my chest, it’s a real heart, warm and beating and bursting. For once, I’m alive.