***
Disclaimer: First of all, I don’t own any of the characters
and situations mentioned below. They’ve been created by Johanne Kathleen Rowling,
and therefore are her property. I wrote this to – I don’t know the exact reason
why I wrote it, but I just wanted to lay it down. Now, make what you want with
it.
*~*~*~*
If all of this had been real…
If all of this had actually happened…
It would have been twenty years today. Well, tonight, to be exact.
I’ve left my university in quite a good mood, despite the big bad cold which
has been killing me since yesterday, after a long talk with two of my friends
and classmates, mainly about the Hallowe’en party that is set up for tonight
– "Fancy dressed Hallowe’en party". Promising, eh? I except all my
friends will be dressed up as vampires, Frankenstein’s creatures, witches, ghosts,
evil psychotic youth killers wearing the now trademark white mask… I’ll be a
witch tonight. I have a cloak, a pointed hat, some make up and a broom. I only
wish it could fly… but let’s face it, there’s not much magic in Bordeaux, save
perhaps in the libraries and the movie theatres.
So my mind was full of Hallowe’en just now in the bus. My little student’s
room is a long way from university – twenty-six bus stops – and it always seems
farther to everyone stuck in the middle of the traditional end-of-day traffic
jam. When I rushed into the bus in order to be one of the first to get an empty
seat, I knew I was in for at least an hour-long ride. I did find one, sat, and
stared out the window near me, absent-mindedly clutching my school bag as I
always do.
It was only 5.45 PM, and the sky was still glowing where the sun was hanging,
but I knew it wasn’t going to last a long time. Indeed, when I shifted on my
seat to peer at the opposite point to the sun across the city’s landscape, I
could see that characteristic deep blue colour stretching from east to west,
about to overtake the whole sky in its dark cloak. But the daylight wasn’t going
to give in that easily. It lit up the clouds in pinks and purples and goldens,
inviting them to join in the struggle against the oncoming dark. It was a wonderful
sight, the patch of sky the sun was slowly leaving shining gold, surrendered
– as if protected – by stretched clouds, all in different forms and sizes, shapes
and colours. Totally cliché, but wonderful all the same.
Have you noticed that your perception of your surroundings varies along with
your mood of the moment? When I’m sad, or tired, Bordeaux seems a tree-less
city, dark and grey and dull with its stone buildings blackened by the city
pollution and its cold, damp, dirty pavements. But I felt good sitting on that
bus today, content to let my gaze follow the houses and shop window fronts flying
past me, slowing down as the bus came to a stop light. I could see two trees
out the window. One was still mainly green, its leaves still holding on thanks
to the nice weather we’ve enjoyed for half a month. The other’s leaves held
many colours, like a traditional representation of a tree at the falling-leaves
season; these leaves were green, yellow, red, brown – and every single shade
of those colours was present. I could only gaze at it for a minute before the
bus moved off again, but long enough for a thought to sneak into my head and
settle down so I couldn’t shake it off.
Twenty years ago… what had it been like? Was the weather this nice on the
evening of October 31st, 1981? Had the sky offered so beautiful colours
to the pairs of eyes that had gazed at it that night, wondering about what the
future would be like just like I’m here, gazing at the sky and wondering about
the past? How did James and Lily Potter live their last sunset?
Maybe James pointed out a tree to Lily, remarking with a chuckle that this
very leaf, right here, was exactly the same colour as her hair. Maybe she rolled
her eyes at the corny line and laughed, softly not to interrupt Harry’s nap,
and told James to shut that window over there – his hair was unkempt enough
without the early evening wind to ruffle and tousle it more. I thought of the
thousands questions that must have crossed their minds, and were left unasked
– the unsaid words that flew between them at that moment, of fear, of comfort,
of love, of trust. Fear for each other, for little Harry who was but a baby,
helpless and innocent, totally ignorant of the danger he was in just by being
there, breathing, laughing, sleeping. Comfort, because whatever happened, they’d
always have each other. Love. And trust toward their friends, who’d never, for
all in the world, betray them.
What is it like, having to fear for your own life and for the lives of the
ones you love, every day and every second? I for one have never known that,
and hope with all my heart that I will never know. But this evening, as the
colours faded from pale pink and purple to blue in the sky above the city I’ve
adopted as my second home, I realised what it must have been like to have every
Hallowe’en reminding you of the friends you have lost, of the bitter tears you
have cried alone while everybody was rejoicing and celebrating, to have all
the orange and black decorations in the shop windows and elsewhere, thinking
– as you gaze along all the innocent paper and plastic bats, pumpkins, death’s
heads – about what could surely have been avoided and yet couldn’t have been
because it was part of the past now. And nothing on Earth can ever bring it
back to you.
I actually felt sad myself; you can’t be in the middle of writing a fanfiction
about Hogwarts’ "old generation", get fond of the characters as they
emerge from your pencil and piece of paper to head straight into your and the
reader’s mind, without after-effects. James and Lily Potter, those two names
so often mentioned in the Harry Potter series but who really aren’t more than
shadows of characters we’ll never see live, laugh, cry, curse, joke,
play chess or Exploding Snap. Those names have grown a particular echo in my
heart; they now crack a light each time I hear them, like a sort of veiled message
to myself. They’ve become familiar, "real" characters with emotions,
feelings, qualities, and faults, each one having a life before, during, and
after Hogwarts, that I admit we know hardly anything of but which we can build
up from our imagination. From that moment on, a tiny part of them belongs not
to you, but with you – and you can’t think ab out their deaths without
feeling a bit sad, as if they were long-left friends, once part of your life
but now far away.
I don’t know how to express that very well, it sounds awfully awkward – but
I know one thing, which is that last time I read Harry Potter and the Prisoner
of Azkaban, I felt an anger toward Aunt Marge I didn’t feel before, when
she tries (and manages) to infuriate Harry by taunting him about his parents.
I hated Aunt Marge for saying such things, because at that point they felt –
and still feel, by the way – like friends to me. We have become close, as I
can imagine their feelings and thoughts, though sometimes I’m not sure whether
I’m the one writing the story and directing them, leading them to do what I
want them to do…
I love writing. It’s now part of my life, such as reading, or drawing, or
doing homework or essays – it comes naturally. And I don’t have to force myself
to think about these characters. I just have to let my mind float for a moment,
sit on a seat in the bus, and the thoughts of them come to me, their laughter
and their fears, their jokes and their pains, their secrets and their smiles.
I’ll be miserable when my little series reaches its end – ending, I think to
myself on that night that right now seems so close to us and yet so far. Just
twenty years ago.
Happy Hallowe’en to all of you, and may you keep on dreaming.
