by Kim Zarins
But everyone ignores him, as usual.
“Someone obsessed with Harry Potter . . . and poetry,” Reiko muses, and she glances at me. She’s seen my bedroom, my shelves. She’s read the love poems I’d written her freshman year.
“Someone who likes writing insecure male main characters,” Mari adds, which makes me feel like my style is utterly predictable. She shakes her head, “Oh no, not that damn writing business. Well? Aren’t you going to say anything?” She looks at me expectantly.
I’d love to claim it as mine. To publish it, share it. But I can’t. I sold it, and it’s one of those things where you’re not even allowed to say you were the seller. Franklin’s glare warns me to keep quiet. I so hate confrontation. I’m a coward. Everyone’s looking at me. I should say something. I clear my throat.
“It’s. My. Story.”
Franklin’s words are so forceful that everyone pauses, and I shrink in my seat.
“But not the poem,” Pard says quietly. “You didn’t get the poem.”
Pard looks at me.
Pard looks at me, and all their eyes stop mattering, and I tune out Franklin’s retort, whatever it is. I lean toward him.
“Say it,” Pard says. Our eyes stay locked. To say he’s rooting for me would be simplifying the intense look on his face after everything that’s happened. I can’t summon the words with his eyes flooding my insides, so I tap my thigh to count the syllables that come rushing back, and I aim my poem at his collarbone, hoping he’ll hear an apology that is meant for him.
So this is what it’s like to lose your love.
I thought I couldn’t lose what I never had.
No matter how I reached, you soared above,
Yet we were friends, before it all turned bad.
My weak apologies are all too late,
You’re right to call me out and make an end
Of us. I don’t deserve to be your friend.
Coercing you to stay, I earned your hate.
Obsessed with words, my self-inflicted fate,
I almost trapped you, with nowhere to move.
Believe me when I say I share your hate.
So this is what it’s like to lose your love.
How fitting I have nothing left but words,
How fitting too that I must speak them unheard.
In truth, it isn’t very good, the poem, even though I worked on it over and over. But at the time, I couldn’t sell that, too, on top of the story. I needed one thing to keep, and this was it. It’s like I needed that one thing to be mine so I could give it over to Pard today. One poem of apology and heartbreak.
“When did you write this?” Pard says, and it’s as if he’s cast a Levicorpus spell that hooks my insides roughly and flips them upside down, just at the sight of him leaning toward me. Mari’s asking me something, and it’s coming from too far off. All I can process is that face. With difficulty I mumble, “December, sophomore year,” that horrible year of longing for the friend I abandoned. I pull my eyes away, because I will cry if I look at him one more moment.
So this is what it’s like . . .
Mari waves like she’s been trying to get through. “Yoo-hoo, Earth to Jeff! So what is Franklin doing with your story?”
I can’t answer a question like that without confronting Franklin, though I guess I’ve already stuck my neck out. “I don’t know. I made a mistake.”
I look at Franklin and manage to squeak, “I’ll pay you back,” which I meant as a kind of atonement but realize too late that I’ve just further implicated him.
Franklin rolls his eyes. “Look, everyone, I’m done hashing out my affairs publicly. I’ll say ‘the end’ if you don’t mind.”
“Wait,” Mari snaps, “you can’t just stop. We have to hear the rest.” But Franklin is too pissed to read aloud a story that everyone knows he bought but didn’t write. Not as fun, reading it in that context.
Mari turns to me. “Do you mind, Jeff?”
I look at Pard, and he gives a little nod.
I don’t mind at all.
“It’s pretty much the end, and it’s been a while, but this is roughly it.” And I finish my story.
To Aurelius, it took ages for his professor to finish reading his miserable poem. Finally, Snape looked up from the page. “What should I do with you? What do you want?”
Aurelius shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I’ve given up.”
“On this?” Snape tapped the paper lightly with his fingertips.
Aurelius barked a bitter laugh. “Oh, especially that.”
Snape narrowed his eyes. “You said writing is a kind of power, to make others feel what you feel. To connect over our deepest experiences. Personally, I find such broadcasting of private passions to be foolishly transparent. Who needs to be a skilled Legilimens if one need only read such things? And yet . . .” His eyes flicked to the paper on his desk. “In your case . . . I accept your pursuit of this art, if you wish to resume it.”
Aurelius blinked at the word “art” coming from his Head of House to describe writing poems, but the momentary bloom of pride soon withered. “Unfortunately, I’m not fit to resume writing, sir. I . . . my poem . . . it’s crap.”
“Is it? I cannot make a technical judgment.” He picked up the paper and considered it while Aurelius longed to Disapparate. “It seems alarmingly private, but that’s what you intended, am I correct? You wanted to recount a moment of rejection and self-loathing. It seems dangerous to reveal so much. It seems dangerous even to read into another person like this.” He put the poem in a drawer and shut it. He paused with a furious and confused expression on his face, like he couldn’t decide whether to speak his mind or not. Then he snapped, “I’ve saved them, you know. You’re getting better—if that is the right word.”
The boy’s mouth hung open. He thought of all the poems confiscated in classrooms, in hallways, and never returned. Saved. “You did? I am?”
The professor made an impatient gesture with his hand. “Didn’t I just say so? Now, assuming you aren’t a coward and haven’t given up on your art, where do you need to be to refine it?”
The boy sat up straight like a plant eager for the sun. “In the Muggle world. Out there.”
His face a mask of irritation, Snape rose and flicked his wand and put away bottles with a loud clink of glass. “Oh, very well. Here is my decision. I see no reason to hold you to your promise, not when you released the girl from hers. I don’t need your house—why would I want a useless Muggle house? Nor do I need your mother’s money. You ought to remain at Hogwarts, but if you won’t listen, I won’t bother exerting myself to retain you. I will expect some information as to your whereabouts, just to know you haven’t foolishly died from some Muggle contraption. Is that clear? And I might not be averse to seeing your, what is the word, literature. So. I await your owl to hear progress on your goals, unless you dare to slight me in preference for your new mentor.” At these last words his voice sank with menace.
Aurelius shot out of his seat. Snape was setting him free.
And after some profuse thanks and a promise to send news and a very awkward handshake, and the even more awkward moment when Snape called him back from the hallway to get these unwanted Galleons off his desk, which Aurelius did and then had to say farewell all over again to an even more tetchy professor, Snape’s heavy door closed. Aurelius swung his suitcase over his shoulder and rushed to the trains. His reprieve reminded him of his poem. He lost Dori, surely forever. He had nothing left but words. But they wouldn’t go unheard. She’d never hear them, but writing meant someone would hear them. Professor Snape, if no one else. To be heard by anyone at all and to know his professor had kept his scribbles and would read more of his writing made a powerful impression on the boy.
Years later he was contacted by Professor Slughorn. “It took me a long time to figure out the person these belonged to . . . at least, I think they’re yours. Professor Snape wouldn’t have wanted anything on them pointing to you, because
of You-Know-Who. Well, I suppose we can say his name now.”
Apparently Aurelius’s poems—the handwriting so young, so childish and urgent—were found neatly stacked, filed with student work, including reams of Dark Arts essays that Snape had never had time to return to his last students. Slughorn added that Aurelius’s were the only papers without scathing remarks covering them. Aurelius thumbed through the stack and could see they had been marked with commentary. Words beyond the grave that he would treasure.
“Thank you so much, Professor.” Aurelius gave Slughorn a copy of a Muggle-published book of poems, Really, Really Good Sonnets, plus an extra copy for Hogwarts’s library. Aurelius pointed out Severus Snape’s name on the dedication page.
The end.
“Well, that was disgusting,” Cece says. “I’m at least relieved that Dori didn’t have to put out for that nasty boy.”
“I’m glad she didn’t too,” I say.
Mari says that Snape was the story’s magic ingredient, and she gives me a little nod from one writer to another, and it feels good to be acknowledged by her.
Everyone else is silent. Obviously, no one wants to weigh in on such a compromised story. Franklin sits right there with his jaw set. I don’t know whether I’ve done the right thing or not, taking back the story, but I don’t much care. Pard wanted to hear the poem.
I don’t think I’ll ever get invited to Franklin’s parties after this, but I think if I write Mari in college, she’ll write back. And that sounds pretty good to me. But Pard? I’m grateful he spoke to me, but I can’t hope for something I don’t deserve.
The tension breaks when people, mostly from the front half of the bus, start talking about which of the four Hogwarts Houses they each belong to. They all know exactly how they’d be Sorted—mostly Gryffindors, of course—though Mari, Marcus, and Reiko say they’re Ravenclaw. Scribbling, Reeve nods and grumbles happily that he’s in Ravenclaw, and, as with the discussion of Mouse’s four gifts, I realize he’s writing on the clipboard not to tattle on us but to organize our responses. In his own way, Reeve is a writer.
“So you’re a Slytherin like me!” Lupe tells me, eyebrow arched conspiratorially.
I laugh, but it sounds self-deprecating. “No. I’m a Muggle.”
Pard silently looks on, and I wish I could be interesting, so he’d keep looking. He has his sketchbook, and I’m praying that he’s drawing me.
Alison gives an exasperated, horsey sigh. She’s the only really popular person to speak to me after I pissed off Franklin. “You can’t read Harry Potter or watch the movies and think of yourself as a Muggle.”
I look at her, so confident, and I know if she went to Hogwarts, Hogwarts would be even more amazing and unstoppable. How can I explain to someone like that what it’s like to be an outsider?
“Think of the Evans sisters,” I say. “Lily has magic, Petunia doesn’t. It’s just the way it is. Harry has the stuff, Dudley’s a dud—same thing. If I were either of the Granger parents, I’d drop my dentistry practice and follow my eleven-year-old daughter to wizarding school, if they’d let me. But that’s not how it works. Muggles don’t get to go. I’d love to get invited to Hogwarts, but I always made the distinction between wanting and belonging. Reading the books always felt like a peek into a world that would never in a million years include me.” I shrug like it doesn’t matter but add, “They’re painful books that way.”
“Oh, Jeff,” Mari says, with a kind of wise, Hermione-type expression that makes me feel comforted and lost at the same time. And Alison says something about words being my magic, which I don’t buy into. But it’s Pard whose sad, open stare is too painful to return. If anyone knows I’m a worthless Muggle to the bone, it’s him.
PARSON’S TALE
Mr. Bailey isn’t as harsh to Franklin as he could be. “You realize if the Harry Potter story wins, the prize goes to Jeff, right?”
Franklin shrugs, like he’s cool with it. He doesn’t need the guaranteed A. His path in life is assured.
But Reeve flails his arms. “Unfair! Jeff’s rigged the whole system and told three, I repeat, three stories. And might I add that the third is not even a new story.”
Mr. Bailey sighs. “True. Too bad, because I’m a sucker for teacher-student stories. Well, that leaves you, Parson! Last, but not least.”
Parson thanks Mr. Bailey and gazes at us with a sweet, dopey expression.
“Before I begin, I just wanted to say how awesome all your stories were!” He looks around the bus and puffs out his Jesus-labeled chest with loving pride. “I think I’m going to have my youth group start this tradition. I love the idea of everyone getting a turn to speak. And I hope you won’t mind if I use my turn a little differently.”
A grin freezes on my face. I feel a sermon coming on.
Everyone else must feel it too, because from the back row, Rooster pipes up with desperate pleading in his voice. “Dude, give us a sexy story!”
“I’d like to talk about love,” Parson begins. “But not that kind.”
Deep male voices groan.
Nature works its urges inside us, especially at our age. If you add to that the erotic love in all our books and movies and advertisements, we can’t help but think a lot about sex. But there’s so much more to know about love than the sexual bond between a man and a woman.
Rooster says, “Or a man and a man—right, Pard?”
“Love accepts no limitations.”
I get a catch in my throat, seeing him flaunt a self-assured sexuality that doesn’t quite match the vulnerability I saw in the parking lot. I’m the first person he’s ever told, and I ruined it. Like he said, I trash every gift he’s ever given me.
He never texted me back.
According to the Greeks, there are four different kinds of love. Eros, erotic love. Philia, the love between friends. Storge, the love of familiar things, like what Mr. Bailey feels for his coffee and what I feel for the smell of crayons and the sound of my dog’s thumping tail. And then there’s agape, unconditional love. The Latin word is caritas, which is where we get our weaker word, charity. You probably think of charity auctions and stuff like that because, at their root, acts of charity are supposed to spring from deep love. When you give a homeless guy a buck just to keep him at bay, you might call it charity, but it’s not caritas. There’s no unconditional love there. You’d act differently toward the guy if you felt that love. You might try to talk to him and connect in some way, and that would matter to him more than the money.
I guess there’s nothing sexy about talking to homeless people and whatnot. But, as a Christian, I don’t treasure erotic love the most. I treasure this unconditional love. It’s the love of Christ dying to save all of us from our sins. And we can share that highest form of love as well. Think of Lily Potter saving Harry from Voldemort. That sacrifice shows the lengths we’ll go to for those we love, but we can also show that love in smaller but equally life-affirming ways.
Love brings hope, trust, and forgiveness to others. You can sit down next to someone who looks like he needs a friend. You can forgive your friends and family who have flaws you don’t have or temptations that don’t tempt you. You can have faith that God is listening, even though you can’t see or feel him in the room or in your life. You can believe that God is listening through the eyes and ears on this bus at this very moment.
He looks around at all of us and says something he has said at school before, to anyone who’d listen.
God is with us right now, because you’re here. And if you look closely, you’ll see God sitting right next to you. You’ve heard him all day through the stories, told by children of God.
I’ve always shirked away from this kind of talk. There’s nothing godlike about me. It’s like wizards and Muggles all over again, and the invitation to Godhood feels gilded and false. But the others can hear stuff like that more comfortably than I can.
“What does it even mean to be a child of God?” Alison asks.
“It mean
s you’re a goddess,” Rooster says, smiling, but Alison is concentrating.
“No, a goddess stands alone on her marble pillar,” Parson says. “A child of God is alive and connected to her family—her God and her brothers and sisters. See how it’s different from eros? Erotic love is between two people. With unconditional love, you get this whole family, as big as your heart can hold. Bigger, even. No one is excluded. Isn’t that amazing?”
“Does that mean you think there’s some God fellow in you too, then?” Reeve asks. “That seems really presumptuous.”
Parson flushes. “I see where you’re coming from. I guess I’ll answer it this way. I started talking to homeless people, for example. For years I was too uncomfortable to try. I was scared, to be honest. I knew it’s our duty to feed and clothe them, so I’d give them money or volunteer in a soup kitchen, but I didn’t give them eye contact, didn’t engage. But I prayed about it, and I started doing it. I was so nervous, but I knew it was what God wanted me to do, and I did it. That’s God acting through me. He’s helping me do something I thought was beyond me. And I’ve met the most amazing people thanks to that nudge from God.”
“Aw, Parson,” Alison says. “You’re as gorgeous on the outside as you are on the inside.”
Again, he does it, that deep, dark red blush. “I . . . wow.”
You can feel the female energy in the bus observing Parson’s stammering beauty. Only Cece seems immune, which is a shameful waste of her front row seat in the Parson Show.
“Thanks for sharing that. I’m really, really honored.” Then he sits up and tries to look into all our faces at once. “Do you guys want to know a secret? I feel like I want to give you something of myself. It’s a pretty big secret. I haven’t even told my youth group yet.”
The whole bus leans in. I mean, what kind of secret would Parson have? He could open his mouth and say he actually slept with ninety-two different women, or he masturbated at a porn shop, or who knows? Maybe he just wanted to say he lied to his Sunday school teacher about feeding his cat with sustainable, humanely-raised pet food when he actually used over-farmed tuna. Whatever it is, I want to know Parson’s secret.