This Is Your Fault
Inside my room, I tiptoe to the toilet. Mary stirs when I pass her and I hold my breath, thinking, not for the first or last time, that prefects should sleep in separate rooms to avoid this weekly occurrence.
After casting a Muffling Charm, I brush my teeth quickly and splash some water on my face to cool it down. In the mirror, my skin is pink under my freckles and hot to the touch. I always get red when I’m tired, one of the many perks of being so ridiculously pale. It’s par for the redheaded course, but I sometimes wish it was a cross I didn’t have to bear.
Nobody else in my family is likewise afflicted except for my great grandma Meryl, and she died when I was three. I’d dye my hair if Mum would let me, but she’s always going on about how precious and unique it is.
People pay to have your hair, she says.
Yes, I say, but they can also pay to have it removed.
Petunia’s hair is brown and flawlessly wavy, but it’s always halfway into or out of a neat bun. She puts it up so tight for ballet that I’m convinced she’ll be bald by 50.
That’s something I don’t miss about dance, but the others are few and far between. Sometimes I’ll catch a whiff of something vaguely similar to the musty old studio down the block and the nostalgia hits me like a flying car, even though it’s been more than five years since I stopped.
I was in class with Petunia right up until I got my Hogwarts letter, and all muggle extracurriculars basically went out the window. Dance is just another thing I’ve given up to be here.
I tiptoe back out of the toilet and change into pyjamas. When I get into bed, I’m still unreasonably warm, and despite my earlier exhaustion, I toss and turn. My body is melting into the mattress, but my mind is going a kilometre a minute. Mostly, I can’t stop thinking about Black running away from his family, and Potter taking him in. It’s a pebble thrown into the well of things I know about him, and the disturbance is rippling out in heavy rings, shaking my foundations.
The Potter I’ve known for the last five years has been largely an arse—arrogant, condescending, somehow both idiotic and frustratingly smart. I’ve been perfectly comfortable hating him, even if the rest of the world is willing to fall at his feet with so much as a winning smile. But now I’m forced to consider a horrifying prospect—he’s changed. He’s matured. He’s a good friend, I meant that. Trust me, I’m astounded too.
But it’s true. Things have been different between us this year. Not that things ever really were between us at all—I’ve never voluntarily spent time with him, but it’s a small school. This year, though, he’s not his usual sent-from-hell-to-annoy-me self. I think he might have grown up a little.
The winding road of my thoughts eventually ends up at the seventh floor corridor, the unicorn tapestry, and the doors noticeably absent across from it. The train doesn’t stop there long before rounding the bend and finding Tommy. The canopy above my bed flashes with images of his long fingers on the piano keys, his leg nearly but not quite brushing mine on the bench. My chest flutters at the mere memory of it.
I roll over restlessly, filled with resolve. (How convenient that I’m always so determined to change my life at 2 am when I don’t actually have to follow through with it.)
But it’ll be different this time, I swear. Next time I see Tommy, I’ll... I don’t know. Ask him to teach me a song, for a start. I will.
With that final thought, I find sleep at last.
Waking up is hell. The night rounds out to about five hours of sleep, which is Not Enough. I get ready groggily, then we head to breakfast.
Outside, the corridor is buzzing, a frantic energy ricocheting off the walls.
“What’s going on?” Mary asks, glancing around.
“I don’t know,” I say.
In the Great Hall, we’re greeted by Remus. “Did you see it?” he asks.
“See what?” I say.
His lips are thin, his face grim. “In the courtyard.”
We make our way there, the tension in the corridor intensifying as we get closer.
“It’s miserable,” somebody’s saying from behind us.
“What the hell is happening?” Marlene mutters.
The courtyard is crowded, but most people are pushed up against one wall looking at something. There are a few professors attempting to disperse the crowd with little luck.
I see Potter in the back and come up next to him.
“What’s going on?”
He glances at me but doesn’t say anything.
I stand on my tiptoes and crane my neck to see better. On the stone wall, in thick black letters, it reads NO MUDBLOODS AT HOGWARTS.
I feel sick to my stomach. “Fuck,” I whisper. And then the second blow hits, like an anvil to my heart. “This is our fault.”
Potter looks down at me. “Evans—”
I’m already walking away. Instinct takes over like lightning, and the only thought flashing through my head is go. I have to be anywhere but here.
“Evans, wait!” Potter is chasing after me. “You don’t know that it was our—”
“Of course it was,” I interrupt, whirling on him. “God, we had a responsibility! I can’t believe I let you distract me like that when I knew—”
“You couldn’t have known,” he argues. “It’s not your fault.”
Yes it is. My temples ache like I’m going to start crying, and all I can think is that I need to get away from here, away from him, before that happens.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” he says.
My voice comes out thick and wet. “No, Potter, you don’t understand. It’s me they’re talking about.”
He cracks right down the middle, I can see it. “Evans...”
I don’t wait around to hear the end of it. I take off, snaking through the corridors until I’m back at Gryffindor Tower, the hurricane in my brain not easing up until I’m back in my room. The stone floor is solid and cool beneath me and I collapse into it, wiping my tears on my sleeve.
My stomach boils with nausea and anger and guilt and other things I can’t name. My hands are shaky.
There’s a knock on the door. “Lily?” Marlene’s voice.
“Yeah,” I say.
Then the door is opening and both of them are rushing in, and I’m picked up off the floor and wrapped in two pairs of arms.
A sob breaks through me. “It’s my fault,” I say into Mary’s shoulder.
Her hand combs my hair. “What is?”
I pull away and look at them, their faces brimming with concern. “I was on rounds,” I say.
Marlene hands me a tissue. “Come on, let’s sit down.”
We sit on my bed and I explain the whole thing to them. Potter and my stomach and the kitchens and the eclairs.
“Lily,” Mary says softly. “That doesn’t mean it’s your fault.”
I sniffle. “The one time we skip rounds,” I say. “I don’t think that’s a coincidence.”
“Doesn’t it only go until one?” Marlene asks. “Whoever it was could have done it anytime after that.”
“I guess,” I say.
“And it’s in the courtyard, which you don’t even patrol,” Mary adds. “Right?”
I nod.
“So it wouldn’t have mattered.”
The anvil on top of my heart lifts a little bit. “I guess,” I say again.
Still, I think. This is your fault. This is your punishment for taking your eye off the ball. No ascension to that fleeting heaven comes without swift retribution to pull you back down.
“Classes are cancelled today,” Marlene says. “Dumbledore came and announced it after you left.”
The seriousness of what’s just happened dawns on me for a second time. We’ve had assemblies and lectures, but they’ve never cancelled class before.
Mary rubs my shoulder. “Do you wanna get breakfast?”
I swallow. “Sure.”
On Tuesday, classes are back on. The words are removed from the wall, but their imprint is lasting in the whispers and wariness that fill the corridors. Everybody is on edge, and everybody can feel it.
We have an assembly at the end of the day on Tuesday, and Dumbledore gives a speech on unity and respect in wartime and other such bullshit. They say they don’t know who did it, but that they’ll be found and apprehended.
On Wednesday, I’m sitting with Remus at breakfast when Tommy comes by.
“Hey guys,” he says, hovering but not sitting down. “Here, I wanted to give you these.” He hands us each a piece of paper from a tall stack in his fist. “Lily, you’re muggle-born, right?”
I nod.
He gestures to the slip of paper in my hand. “You should come.”
I look down at it. It’s a flyer advertising a meeting for muggle-borns. At the top, in block letters, it reads NO PREJUDICE AT HOGWARTS. Underneath a time and location, it says in small print, Half-bloods and purebloods welcome to listen.
When I look up, Tommy has moved down the table to hand out more flyers.
“That’s cool,” Remus says, watching as he talks to a group of fifth years, nodding fervently at something one of them says.
I look at the flyer again. “Yeah.”
The meeting is on Thursday afternoon in a classroom on the fourth floor. Remus and I go without knowing what to expect.
Inside, the chairs are arranged in a circle, about half of them filled with students of all ages in uniforms of all colours. Even a few Slytherins are there, which, perhaps unfairly, surprises me.
A few groups of people stand in the circle talking, among them Tommy and Eric Hodge, engaged in conversation with a few Ravenclaws. Remus and I take two seats on the opposite side of the circle.
“Alright, if everyone could sit down,” Tommy says loudly. The conversations peter out and the chairs all fill. Two girls in Hufflepuff robes stand on the outside of the circle—overflow.
“Wow, thank you all for coming,” Tommy says, looking around with a smile. “Both of my parents are no-majs—or, muggles, right. That’s what we call them in America. Anyway, in light of recent events, Eric and I thought that it’d be good to have somewhere to talk about what’s happened, because I don’t think it really makes anyone feel better just to get talked to. So we’re gonna have an open discussion, anyone can talk, and just share how you’re feeling, what’s on your mind. Groovy.” He smiles again and sits back.
It’s silent for a few moments until a youngish girl in Ravenclaw robes raises her hand.
“Oh, no hands,” Tommy says. “Just go ahead.”
She clears her throat. “I’m muggle-born,” she starts meekly. “And... I think what happened on Monday was really upsetting to me, because I feel like I’ve worked really hard to get here. I feel like I still have to work hard to prove that I deserve to be here, and I’m afraid that everybody else is thinking that I don’t, because they’re born into it, and what do I know? So just... what happened on Monday, I guess it’s like a confirmation that some people really do think that way.”
Tommy is nodding earnestly. “Good point, Tanya.”
A seventh year boy in Hufflepuff speaks next. “I agree with that. I think they just don’t really appreciate what we have to go through, and what we have to give up. If you’re born into a wizarding family, there’s not really any question, you know, you’re only ever given one world. But I feel like, for muggle-borns, we have to walk this line between two, and we’re not fully accepted in either. I always felt like I can never really be what my parents thought I would, and they’re never really going to understand what I am.”
Around the circle, there are a few nods of agreement.
“You should say something,” Remus whispers to me. He’s not muggle-born, he only came to listen.
“Like what?” I say.
He shrugs. “Speak from the heart. Groovy, man.”
I roll my eyes.
I don’t say anything, but I listen closely for the rest of the meeting. A boy in green robes talks about being muggle-born in Slytherin, and a second year Gryffindor says how scared she was after Monday. It’s a bit strange—I would’ve thought all these people are so different from me, but somehow it’s as if they’re reading my thoughts. All these things I’ve always felt and never said to anyone, never had anyone say to me. Never even bothered to put them into words. All along, other people were feeling them too.
When it’s over, Eric thanks everyone for coming and announces that they’re thinking about further action. I don’t know what that means.
Everyone stands around chatting for a bit afterwards, so I steel myself and walk up to Tommy.
“Hey,” he says. “I’m glad you came.”
“Me too,” I say, “really. Thank you for organising it.”
He shrugs. “Someone had to.”
“Hi,” Remus says, coming up next to me.
“Hey, Remus,” Tommy says, smiling. “What did you think?”
“It was really interesting,” he says, nodding. “I think it’s great you’re doing this.”
“Yeah, I don’t know why the school can’t host something like this,” Tommy says with a shake of his head. “I think it’s pretty important we get to speak up, and...”
“Hey, Tom,” Eric calls from across the room. “Can you come here a second?”
“Duty calls,” Tommy says with a grin. “See you guys later.”
“See you,” I say after him. I watch as he walks over to Eric Hodge and a Gryffindor fourth year, shaking her hand and answering her question enthusiastically. It’s kind of ridiculous how charming he is.
“Ready to go?” Remus says.
I nod. “Let’s.”