Chapter 3
"If I were you,
Then I'd stop talking
'Cause soon you'll be
A dead man walking
I don't care what momma says
You'll wind me up
Or wind up dead."
-- Absinthe, I Don't Know How But They Found Me
..XoX..
Katherine’s Portraits is a novella Harry wrote, second year. It’s about a woman -- Katherine -- who paints women in various poses and forms, things from nature to fires surrounding them. The King proposes a deal; each month, she paints a new woman and gives it to the King. In exchange, she will take part in the end of the year annual feast, made and enjoyed in her honor.
Katherine is rightfully doubtful. “Just twelve paintings?” she asks.
“As long as each woman painted is beautiful,” he tells her, and so the deal is struck.
This will come easy to Katherine, she is sure. She knows beauty and paints it well. But there is just a slight problem; Katherine has an eating disorder. (Harry thinks it is tacky to do a self insert like this, but do not they say ‘write what you know’? And this, Harry knows well. So he pushes on, tacky and all.) She originally just restricted her intake but, with the promise of a great, end of the year annual feast (made and enjoyed in her honor!), she started purging, too.
It is her version, however warped, of preparedness. How else is she to reap the rewards of her labor?
Time passes. Each month, she paints a new gorgeous woman and gives it to the King. Each month, her eating disorder worsens -- as the combination of purging and restriction muddle her mind, her ‘goals’ of thinness become muddled, too. The concept of beauty, which she had formerly had some sort of grasp on, skirts out of her control.
On the twelfth month, she delivers the final painting to the King.
He narrows his eyes at it and asks, furious, “What is this?”
She blinks. “A blond woman, sir. Clad in a white dress, that of sil--”
“Not that!” he bellows. “Her body -- what is that?”
“Um. Beauty, sir?”
He shakes his head. “She is a skeleton! She looks like the poorest of peasants, with a build like that.”
“But can’t all body sizes be beautiful?” tries Katherine.
“They can. But it is life that is attractive and the woman you’ve brought to me today… she is dying.” He motions to the guards and says, “You have broken your part of the deal. You will not be invited to the feast tonight.”
The book ends with Katherine sobbing over the grotesqueness of her own body -- because it is revealed she used herself as reference for the final painting. If life is beautiful, she is disgusting. The feast was the very reason she started purging and because of it, she did not get to attend the feast.
Harry was not particularly proud of the work. It was too self-indulgent, too predictable, borderline juvenile. (He is not a writer, never is, never will be. Why did he ever think that anything he wrote could ever be good?)
When Professor McGonagall announces she’s hosting a writing competition -- in which the winner will get 5 Gallons and their submitted work published in The Prophet -- Harry considers not competing. His work will only be mocked, ridiculed, torn apart, every insecurity he holds proven to be entirely founded. He will not win. So why bother trying?
But for whatever reason, he hands McGonagall a copy of Katherine’s Portraits. Maybe it is because of the belief no one will really see it, maybe it is in spite of. Whatever it is, by the end of the week, he’d entirely forgotten he’d even entered the competition in the first place.
The end date for entry passes and after two, maybe three, weeks, the results are announced. Harry is convinced that he had not even been considered. Katherine’s Portraits wasn’t even read.
So imagine his surprise. Professor McGonagall, with a fond smile and an unreadable look in her eyes, hands him five Gallons and tells him to expect something special in the news tomorrow.
Success. Foreign, wonderful success and he starts writing a letter, bragging to his parents, before reminding himself he doesn’t do that anymore and burning it. He wonders if Luna Lovegood would mind a letter and thinks that, if its only purpose is selfish, she probably would. That wouldn’t be fair to her.
He sits on his bed with five Gallons in his hand and realizes that his success seems fickle with no one to share it with, no one else to relish in it. What is the worth of his talent if it’s just his?
The Ravenclaws seem equally unimpressed for the most part. As a whole, Harry’s noticed they have little use for fiction. Harry finds he has little use for academic books and thinks it a tragedy he was ever sorted into Ravenclaw. Also a mystery. He’d be better in Hufflepuff. Truthfully, he’d be better anywhere. The day he understands the Sorting Hat’s decision will be a miracle.
When his story is released, no longer just wisps of rumors amongst disinterested Ravens and the other participants in the writing contest, the consequences come in waves.
It marks the first time he meets his fellow disordered peers.
He’s sitting down alone, as always, to binge after a strong period of restriction when two Gryffindors sit in front of him.
They say nothing and Harry decides if they don’t want to address their princess here, then neither does he. He begins filling his plate. After loading on the third cinnamon bun, the girl Lion giggles.
Harry blinks at her. “Oh,” she says. “I was just wondering if you were actually going to eat all that.”
“Do you purge?” asks the other one.
Harry suddenly does not want to be here anymore. “No,” he says, forcefully. “No, I don’t purge.”
“Oh,” says the girl again. “So how do you… get rid of it? Laxatives? I’ve heard some people over-exercise--”
Why are they asking him this? Okay, fine, it’s not like his behaviors aren’t obvious. But he doesn’t have friends so anyone who notices, doesn’t care. Why now? Why is he just now being confronted? Harry does not take well to change. “Don’t psychoanalyze me, bitch,” he snaps. It’s not nice but when has Harry ever been nice? “I have no idea what in the world you are talking about.”
Her brows furrow and she takes out a newspaper, reads something over, then looks back at him. “Your name is Harry Potter, right?”
Harry huffs up, shoving a pastry in his mouth. “So what?” he says, muffled.
“So you should know exactly what I’m talking about.” She flips the newspaper toward him and there it is. The beacon that’s drawn them here. Katherine’s Portraits.
He chokes on his food. Holy shit. He’s been stupid, hasn’t he? He hadn’t even considered winning. Why would he have considered the consequences if he did?
Well. Now it is evident that he should have. Whether it was his intention or not, making an eating disorder centric story in the fashion he did? It’s basically telling whoever the reader is that the author struggles like this, too. Something in the words tattles on him.
He is sure the whole wizarding world knows he has an eating disorder now. What does he do with that?
… And his parents, too. They’re avid readers of The Prophet.
They know now, too. And that he doesn’t know what to do with.
Of course, it is not like they probably hadn’t known before. When you are so blatant with your behaviors, the only way it goes overlooked is purposeful. But he’s never said the words “eating disorder” in their presence. “EDNOS” and “OSFED” and every thought related stays close to his chest.
Katherine’s Portraits is a borderline confession. The idea that he’s talked about his problems to an audience before his own parents… it hurts. For James and Lily, it must hurt like hell. Harry almost feels bad but then he remembers he’s done feeling bad for Lily and James.
Before the Lions leave his table, the girl notes, looking at his body, that he really isn’t anything like Katherine. It’s meant to be an insult and Harry can tell, because it works.
The Lions do not visit him again and Harry convinces himself that it’s over. The effects of poor old Katherine are over and everything can go back to normal.
That is, until the letters arrive.
They come in trickles then in hordes. Some are not lined with a butterfly crest but most are. The unity is terrifying. In it, girls and guys (of all ages, but most seem pretty young, perhaps just a bit older than he) praise him for Katherine’s Portraits. It is not the scathing reviews every author wants to hear. Rather, they praise all aspects of the book meant to be demonized.
They’d… all missed the points completely. Intentionally or not, Harry has given the Butterflies their own personal Bible.
His motives while writing -- they were just. He wanted to deter and educate people on the reality -- the sore, ugly reality of eating disorders. This is not on him, this misconstrusion of his work.
But…
But maybe that’s not true. Did he really need to describe the jut of her bones so clearly? Her habits need only be explained to the point where they are grasped, not put in the focus. He includes too much deluded monologue without acknowledging it is deluded.
Somewhere along the line Katherine’s Portraits became motivation for him, too.
His work is making sick people sicker. In the letters, there are brags about how long they are into their newest burst of restriction. There is envy for Katherine, who Harry tried and failed not to make enviable.
A few weeks pass. Sooner or later, Harry keeps telling himself, his novella will fade into obscurity. It is one accidentally pro-ed book of thousands. It will pass.
A month now, since it's been published. Two. Then three.
And the letters… they keep coming. He gets one that says she has a very special gift for him, from Beauxbatons. It’ll help him on his weight loss goals, it says. As it turns out, Harry isn’t the only one helping sick people get sicker.
Harry feels the rush of a spell run over him, but he can’t tell its effects. Is he cursed? Blessed? Is he going to die in 72 hours? He doesn’t know. But he does note from then on that he is a little more durable.
He tries to write to the sender and figure out what it is they inflicted upon him, but when he checks the letter again, there’s no return address.
Harry snaps and writes The Prophet. He begs them to remove his book from the edition of The Prophet it was published -- to make that edition no longer available to the public, something, anything. He has hurt people when he never meant to do anything. He doesn’t want to hurt anyone else. He recognizes his mistake and he wants to undo it and The Prophet?
The Prophet tells him no. It’d be bad for profit. Apparently, his short story sells really well.
The letters eventually dwindled until they ceased to be sent entirely. It is the guilt that never leaves him. It is like Luna Lovegood all over again.
..xox..
The Tournament is not safe, Harry writes in the journal. The post came today. There was an attack. The largest number of Muggle slaughters at once to date. It is impossible to tell if they are Gellert’s forces or Voldemort’s or a mix of the two.
The Ministry still keeps its stance of neutrality. I am somewhat grateful. If they acted, it would be with the lives of its citizens. I am like my mother and father in that regard; I do not want to fight in a war, even if I agree it needs to be fought.
But I am also upset at their cowardness. When they prioritize wizard lives, Muggle ones become second class.
The Muggle world is dying. And we’re having a multinational competition in exchange for Gallons. I keep asking myself if we are idiots, but I don’t like that’s quite right.
I think the wizarding world is like me. We are apathetic. We are careless. And so, people get hurt. It’s just on a wider scale, sometimes it’s a bit more than hurt.
..xox..
Most writers are also readers. Harry used to be. His favorite book series was the Muggle The Hunger Games. It is a Gryffindor favorite. Surprisingly, it is also popular in Ravenclaw.
“Dystopian fiction,” explains one eager first year, “is more than tales made up; they are a comment on the present, or what may happen in the future. They speak on the importance of certain social issues to government control.”
During parties, where everyone is a little too loose, sometimes a little too drunk, someone will quietly make a connection to the Trifecta War. Harry remembers vividly the Headboy, red in the face, unable to remember his words come morning, saying that to kill Muggleborn and half blood wizards to remove Muggle influence is not a calculated decision, but a dumb one. “When we kill enough of our men, we will have no one. What is the point of segregation and superiority if the ‘better’ side is dead? When they burn, we burn with them.”
A first year whispers that they know that quote, even if it is altered a little bit -- and the Headboy promptly throws up in the fireplace. There's laughs and cheers but for Harry, that quote sticks. He asks the first year where they know it from and they blush deeply but answer, “The Hunger Games.”
With all the fuss, Harry cannot resist checking it out. But when he checks the Muggle fiction bookshelves, he cannot for the life of him locate it. He brings the first year to the library and asks them to find it for him, since they’d know where it would be.
They furrow their brows and tell them it is gone.
As it turns out, that first year can talk. By the end of the week, over two hundred and sixty students had questioned the librarian where the books were -- and some did more than question. Some sent howlers and threw hands.
Dumbledore stands in the Great Hall and clears his throat, saying loudly, “Good evening students. Given the recent inquiries about the location of some of Hogwarts’ books, I feel compelled to tell you that many of our books have been banned. So sorry. And please enjoy your meal.”
There is of course outrage. Harry doesn't fall to rage but suspicion. Why did Dumbledore not say who it was who said the books must be banned? Why did he not say why?
And then there is that twinkle in his eyes. It gives away the fact that something is amiss here but not what.
Harry figures it out on his own, though. He sees many Ravenclaws with The Hunger Games -- and other, dystopian Muggle novels he recognizes by title though not by content. “Hey. You. How’d you get a hold of that?” he asks one of his Housemates.
They tilt their head toward a Muggleborn third year curled up in an armchair. “Marcy. She’s trading them for whatever. You’re the weirdo into tarot cards, right? She’s been asking around for a deck. Get yourself a copy.”
Harry ignores the insult. “But how’d she get them?”
“Her parents are Muggle. They just send them to her, I think.”
Harry nods and laughs to himself. He’s learned two things: Entrepreneurship is innovative and banned books always find a way.
But…
But the Ravens aren’t being subtle. They are practically flaunting their disobedience -- and the staff is doing nothing about it. Is it because it is a Ministry regulation and they don’t care? Harry checks the records and sees that no. The Ministry hasn’t done shit to Hogwarts books.
So…
So why? Harry assumes from here that the only place powerful enough to trump Hogwarts’ book selection other than the Ministry is Hogwarts itself. They have banned their books and yet do not enforce it? What is the purpose of that?
Harry sees Huffs circulate the banned books -- and soon enough the Slytherins. It is perhaps the grandest display of house unity in centuries.
Harry makes a list of each banned book -- and this one takes a while because Dumbledore had just said “some books” and only the staff actually had a comprehensive list, none of them keen on sharing.
But he got his list and got a summary of each book, and that is when Harry puts it together.
The Hunger Games. 1984. The Giver. Fahrenheit 451. All Muggle. All dystopian. All banned. Harry is looking at what Dumbledore considers the newest generation of revolutionary texts.
Forbidden fruit is the sweetest. He’s made popular book series infamous.
Harry trades an old deck of tarot cards for The Hunger Games. He reads it and he loves it but all the while he is thinking solemnly that Dumbledore is training his army young.
..xox..
Harry lies with his head on his mother’s lap, back when he still talks to his mother. Before they told him he is in an arranged marriage to a girl that would’ve been his friend otherwise. Before the nights of alternating starving and indulgence.
Before. Before, he lies with his mother and they both watch as James snores, his head on her shoulder.
Harry wrinkles his nose. “He’s loud.”
Lily smiles fondly. “Of course he is. He’s your father. He can’t even sleep quietly. That’s why I get to know everything, Harry. Take that one to heart.” She runs gently fingers through his hair.
“You know everything? Really? What kind of everything?”
“Oh, loads.”
Harry whispers, conspiratorial, “You know any… secrets?”
Lily laughs. “Do I know any secrets? Harry, I know so many secrets, you wouldn’t even believe.”
“Tell me one!”
“Okay,” she says, grinning. “I’ll tell you one. As a treat, okay? And… and when you’re older, I’ll tell you more.” Harry nods rapidly. “In the year 1985, the year me and your father graduated, we were approached by Headmaster Albus Dumbledore--”
Harry clapped. “Dumbledore! I know that name. I know him!”
“Yes,” says Lily endearingly. “You’ve heard his name, right? He’s the leader of the army against the bad guys.”
“A gen-er-al,” Harry says, pronouncing each letter very carefully.
“Mhm. That’s quite right. Albus Dumbledore is a general.” There is a dark tone in her words that is then too young to notice. “But to me and your father, he was a Headmaster.”
“What’d he want?”
“He wanted us to fight, too. Well, he wanted your father to fight and me to strategize. He saw the good parts of each of us and put ‘em together. ‘We’ve got some good people out there,’ he said. ‘We would like some more, if you’d join us.’”
“Did you?”
“No.”
“What?” Harry yelps. “Why?”
Lily twirls his hair in her fingers. “We were children. Seventeen, fresh out of school--”
“Seventeen’s old.”
Lily chuckles. “It sure is, kiddo. But it doesn’t feel like it. You feel young when you’re seventeen. The wizarding world tells you that now you’re an adult and it’s time to get on with things -- get a job, raise a child. Most families start when the wife is of age 19 nowdays. But me and your father… we didn’t feel like starting a family, not just yet. And we didn’t feel like fighting a war.”
“So… what’d you tell him?”
“We told him that, although his cause is noble,” she rolls her eyes a little bit, “and that we would always be supporting him on the sidelines, the cause wasn’t ours.”
Harry stares at her, expecting her to say more. When she doesn’t, Harry frowns. “Anddd?”
“And, nothing. That’s it. We took our time to raise a family and we enjoyed the lives we preserved.”
“But that’s..!” Harry huffed. “That’s not much of a secret!”
Lily sighed lightly. “Yes. You’re right. I got cold feet, I guess.”
“So! Come on! Tell me!”
“Alright, mister. Alright.” She looks at James and says nothing. After a moment, she continues, “We told Dumbledore we wouldn’t be fighting for him. He took it well. Didn’t take it personally, I mean. We exchanged mail and kept each other in the know. Throughout the years, he drops tips here and there. To keep us safe.”
“Tips about what?”
“Voldemort,” she says. “The Weepers. He gave me many secrets to keep.”
“Can I keep them with you?”
“...Yes,” she says. “I’ve got to keep you safe, too. And ignorance is dangerous. But one at a time. When you’re older, you can have them all.”
“Okay. When I’m older. But right now?”
“Right now,” she leans down, presses a kiss to his forehead and says, quietly, “you can know that Voldemort’s real name is Tom Marvolo Riddle. Now go to bed. It’s time to sleep.”
..XoX..
“What other people think of you IS your business
You must be loved,
Mocked,
Insane!
All fallacy
Unconditional
For the capacity for holding contradictory emotions,
For complexly alloyed affections,
For bottomless malice--
All the things anyone had ever said,
Both good and bad,
There is no way I would ever understand.”
-- Harry Potter, “The Tower.”