It feels like one of those “What’s Wrong With This Picture” cartoons in a child’s magazine. There is something just so horribly, sickeningly wrong with seeing myself in Death Eater robes. From the shoulders down, they aren’t so different from my usual Hogwarts robes”a plain, stark black. But my Hogwarts robes don’t have a hood that falls low over much of my face; nor do they come with a mask that covers the rest of it, leaving me with slits for eyes and a slash for a mouth. I’ve seen these robes before, on my father, and thinking about him murdering people makes me ill enough as it is. I can’t even begin to contemplate the image of myself killing, or of myself groveling before, worshipping , really, the man that my father had called the Dark Lord.
My father… although I loved him, I’ve never been able to bring myself to respect him. I can’t say I’ve respected too many people in my life, actually. I’ve never respected anyone who was weak-minded enough to go against their own wishes, to let others make their choices”gangs, organizations, mobs, institutions, they’re all the same thing, really, in my opinion. And I can’t respect people who are narrow-minded and shallow enough to discriminate against people based on heritage, Hogwarts house, age, gender, or appearance.
So why am I becoming what I loathe the most? A Death Eater? A mindless follower of the masses who lives to serve a fascist freak? I try to argue with myself that I have no choice”that Lord Voldemort himself (Why should I be afraid to say his name just because he’s horrible? I’m not afraid to say Adolph Hitler or Jack the Ripper or Aaron Carter) summoned me to his forces due to the fact that my father’s in Azkaban, and I’m his replacement. But the truth is, I do have a choice”join or die. If I really believed in my own ideals, I’d let myself be killed.
But the truth is”the truth that I can hardly believe I’m admitting”is, I’m scared. I don’t want to die. I, Theodore Aldric Nott, cynical iconoclast and apathetic prodigy, the one who always smirked at life as it passed me by, am scared of death. Before now, I’ve always twisted ‘self-absorbed’ into a compliment, using euphemisms like ‘self-motivated’ and ‘self-aware.’ But I’m not proud of being a coward whose only ambition is to save his own zitty hide.
I take one last look in the mirror, taking in my weedy, gangly frame; my thin, pimply face; my front teeth that have always stuck out slightly; and the thick brown hair that falls over my face, obscuring one of my eyes. Then I pull the mask and hood over that face”not an attractive face, perhaps, but my own”covering up my identity as a person. I take a step back from the mirror and Apparate away with the funny feeling that I’ve forgotten something. I think it was myself.
Father always spoke about how it was impossible to describe “The Dark Lord,” that he instilled an overwhelming sense of fear and awe. He neglected to mention that Voldemort lacks a nose, has bright red eyes, and is so skeletal that a scrawny boy like myself looks almost muscular in comparison. He resembles an alien from some vapid cartoon, and I, for some inexplicable reason, find myself less intimidated by Voldemort in the flesh than the concept of Voldemort.
He stands imposingly amidst a circle of men and women, all dressed like I am, all indistinguishable from one another, except for height and build. Their masked, hooded faces turn toward me as one (“Herd mentality,” I think, though my pulse is racing hundreds of miles an hour) as I walk straight-backed and tall toward Voldemort himself.
I kneel before him, hating myself and what I’m doing. Why am I kneeling at the feet of this horrible… person? Creature? Whatever he is, he isn’t worth it. And then he speaks. “Theodore Nott,” he proclaims in a carrying, ringing stage whisper. He has a high, piercingly cold voice, not what I’d expected from an evil genius. Although his tone sends spiderlike chills up my spine, I can’t help but notice that his voice sounds uncannily like Draco Malfoy’s had before it changed. “Theodore Nott has come to us tonight to replace his father, Erasmus”a loyal, if unexceptional, servant.” His flat, snakelike face glances toward me, crimson eyes gleaming appraisingly. “Nott, do you solemnly swear that you will accept the title ‘Death Eater,’ serve your master unfailingly, and be a loyal and obedient servant?”
My tongue feels like a chalkboard eraser. “I do,” I croak, though every fibre of my body is screaming “NO!”
“Do you swear to assist in the evisceration of Muggles and the Mudblood scum who dare to call themselves wizards?”
My closest friend is Muggle-born. “I do,” I reply, feeling quite ill and hoping this is nothing but a terrifying nightmare.
“And do you take the Dark Mark with pride?” he finishes, his voice rising to a hushed crescendo.
No. I don’t want that monstrosity leering up at me from my arm. I would never be able to sleep knowing that it was a part of me. “I do,” I say, my voice betraying the slightest hint of defiance.
With that, Voldemort rolls up my sleeve, revealing my thin, pale forearm. I notice vaguely that the hairs on my arm are standing on end as he grips it, pressing it with a long, spindly finger. He waves his wand above my arm as he presses it, and an excruciating pain shoots through my skin, like hundreds of tiny needles. My teeth grind together in their efforts to keep me from crying out, and my eyes water. Then, just as suddenly as it began, the pain is over.
Gleaming in the moonlight is the Dark Mark, permanently etched onto my own skin. I know I’m not good-looking, but this hateful tattoo is uglier than all of my other bad features combined.
And I think to myself as I stare at the disgusting image, that there’s now no going back. Before, I was convinced I was unique, someone who marched to the beat of his own drum. There was only one of me. But now, I am one of them.
Tonight is my second meeting with Voldemort, and this time, I’m on my own. The night of my initiation, the other Death Eaters (not generally nice people, to be sure, but at least other humans) stood around me, but tonight’s meeting is just between my master and myself.
“My master,” I intone, kneeling before him. I spit the hateful words out like a dirt-and-worm flavoured soufflé, not that that’s a concept with which I’m particularly familiar. I never thought I would ever refer to anyone as ‘my master,’ or even as ‘my boss’”I’ve always been strictly self-sufficient, even as a small child. Up until tonight, ‘my master’ has always been synonymous with ‘myself.’
Voldemort is seated in a chair that’s ornately yet unattractively carved; the motif seems to consist largely of skulls and snakes. His clawlike hands grip the arms of the chair commandingly, his fingers caressing the smooth wood carving of a particularly hideous snake. His posture would make any charm school teacher weep with joy, and he nods at me imperiously. “Nott,” he says in his high, cold voice. I notice that although he rarely speaks above a whisper, he manages to make every syllable positively reek with power. “Would you care for a drink?”
I blink confusedly. I’d expected to go through a session of interrogation, not to have a cozy little chat over drinks. “Er… no thank you, master,” I reply. “I’m not thirsty.”
“Be seated,” he instructs, gesturing toward a chair in front of his. This one is blood-red velvet, and I rather hope that the fabric was originally this colour.
I suddenly realize that Voldemort is staring directly into my eyes with his inhuman red ones, his catlike pupils dilating slightly. The intensity of his stare is truly unnerving, and it feels as if he’s trying to burn holes directly through my irises. “You are not as… worshipful as the others,” he tells me, his slitted nostrils flaring.
“I am, my lord,” I tell him. But not to you, I think.
Voldemort laughs, a cold and completely mirthless sound. “Theodore Nott, you cannot lie to me. I can hear your thoughts, and I can taste your emotions.” I’m guessing my emotions taste bad. “Tell me, Nott,” he says, his voice dangerously playful, like a cat batting around a mouse before biting its head off. “Why do you not pay your lord the respect that he deserves?” I struggle to keep my rebellious thoughts at bay, but controlling my thoughts is about as easy as controlling my acne. “Is it my personality to which you object?” he asks in a dangerously soft voice.
“No, master,” I reply. It takes a person to have a bad personality, and he’s not even human.
His eyes gleam. I never would have thought that the Dark Lord would have a sense of humour, but in some sick, twisted way, he seemed to be enjoying this.
“Do you resent, perhaps, that your father was sent to Azkaban because of me?”
“No, master,” I say. I loved my father, but the truth is he got what he deserved.
“Then is it my policies?” he asks, his voice rising dramatically. “Could it be, then, that you are a Slytherin who loves Muggles, and is under the false impression that Mudbloods belong in the wizarding world?”
Unbidden, the image of my friend November Gibbs pops into my head. I can see her as clearly as I can see my own feet, her fists planted on her hips as she says in her calm voice, “I’ll bleed mud the day you cry porridge.” I almost smile, before I realise that Voldemort is seeing this image, too. Don’t think about November! I urge myself. Don’t think about November, Don’t-think-about-November, DON’T-THINK-ABOUT-NOVEMBER!
Voldemort’s face is inches away from mine, his fanglike teeth gleaming before my eyes. His breath tastes about as bad as my emotions. “Ahhh,” he says, smiling like a shark about to feast. “It seems young Master Nott has himself a Mudblood lady friend.”
“Tell me, Nott,” hisses Voldemort. “Why have you joined me? True, I did summon you to my forces, but you needn’t have answered my call. You hold me in contempt. You socialise with Mudbloods. I have branded you as a Death Eater, but that does not mean that I trust you as one-- what special knowledge or service do you hope to offer the Dark Lord for giving you the honor of being among his followers? Why should I accept you?”
For once in my life, I’m speechless. I do not, even mentally, have a single snide comment selected from my arsenal. I think of all of the other Death Eaters and their reasons to have joined Voldemort’s ranks. Peter Pettigrew is weak and joined for protection, Lucius Malfoy is a power-hungry bigot, Draco Malfoy was brainwashed by his father and isn’t independent enough to imagine a career outside of Death Eating, Crabbe and Goyle are too thick to tell one end of a wand from another and were probably happy to have found a profitable way to use brute force, and Bellatrix Lestrange is a certified psychopath who actually enjoys torturing others. As for Snape, who’d been my teacher and the head of my house for six years, I can’t seem to figure him out… but then, nobody can, really….
To me, none of those sound like sensible reasons to join a horrible organisation like the Death Eaters. But the horrible thing is that even those are better reasons than my own. I can just see myself at Death Eater parties-- “Hello, I’m Theo Nott, and I joined because I didn’t want to die as quickly as I would have otherwise. Lovely weather we’re having, isn’t it?”
I suddenly realise that Voldemort is still looking at me expectantly, the places where his eyebrows should have been raised theatrically.
I have to sputter out a response. “You need me as a Death Eater because… because it’s safer for you than having me on the other side!” I proclaim, trying to make my voice as deep and impressive as possible. I think I sound like an eel might if eels could talk and this particular one has its tail stuck in a rusty door hinge.
Voldemort’s nonexistent eyebrows shoot up even further, and I feel certain that a hint of a cruel smile would play around his lips, had he had lips. “Elaborate,” he says slowly, savouring each syllable with almost obscene pleasure.
I force myself to look into his terrible, inhuman red eyes. “Slytherins aren’t the best choice for loyal followers,” I tell him in a low voice, swallowing a cold lump in my throat not unlike mustard flavoured ice cream. “If you want loyalty, you should recruit Hufflepuffs. A true Slytherin respects only himself and manages to get whatever he desires, and I believe that I exemplify these traits.” I choose my words as carefully as one would Bertie Botts Every Flavour Beans. “I’ve been called arrogant and self-absorbed, but those traits can be used as assets, and I happen to be very intelligent. Although I was never on your side before, I’ve never worked against you. If you killed me now, you’d never know exactly how I would have helped you.”
There is an extremely long silence. A tree falls in the forest, but nobody hears it. Across the world, babies are born and old men die. A cat cries out in the distance. Voldemort’s eyes narrow, and I suddenly think, “I may have just said my last words…”
Voldemort breaks the silence, and it shatters in glass-like splinters. “Nott… you need to learn to respect your betters,” he hisses quietly. I brace myself. “And yet, there’s something almost refreshing about you… I have never had a servant whose mind works the way yours does, and it is true that your intelligence and your youth could be useful.” I can hardly believe my ears-- Voldemort is as unpredictable as they come. He strokes his chin with his long, bone-white fingers, his eyes drifting up to focus on absolutely nothing, and for once, he looks almost human. Then, his head snaps back around, and his piercing eyes seem even brighter and more intense than usual. His face splits into the kind of dangerous grin that you tend to see on the face of a tiger when it’s mere centimetres away from your own. “Consider this a trial period, Nott,” he says softly. “A test of your loyalty. And it begins now.”
Voldemort eases himself out of his armchair and strides across the room with a catlike grace. He stops at the door, his fingers caressing the doorknob. “Make yourself comfortable,” he says in a low voice. It’s amazing how he can manage to make even these innocuous words sound sinister, I think to myself as he turns the doorknob and slips out of the room.
But the second the end of his cloak swirls out of sight, something strange happens, something that causes me to rethink that his previous statement was, in fact, innocuous. The walls shiver and wipe themselves clean, all paintings, windows, and doors vanishing as if they never existed. The floor shakes itself like a dog trying to dislodge fleas from its fur, and all furniture disappears in the blink of an eye.
Before I can say ‘pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconeiosis,’ I find myself in the centre of a completely white box. There are no ways out, nobody to hear my cries, and nothing but blinding white all around me. Although I’m normally quite a calm person, someone who doesn’t normally get worked up about things, I’m seriously freaked out. I don’t like small, enclosed spaces, especially when there’s no way out, and it feels as if I’ve just stumbled into one of my nightmares. But this isn’t a dream. It’s real. I know this because I just prodded myself in the eye with my wand to see if I could feel it, and believe me, I certainly can.
Suddenly, the walls aren’t pure white anymore. Thick black smoke, completely opaque, is covering everything, appearing out of nowhere and everywhere at the same time. The smoke slowly makes its way around the room, then circles around me like a terrible snake. My muscles tense and my eyes widen, and I wonder if all of the Death Eaters have had to go through this, and, if so, how many of them didn’t survive through it. After the worm is through exploring the room, they form themselves into large, loopy black letters. The letters form words, the words form phrases, the phrases form sentences, and the sentences form… a poem. It reads:
“Your task begins on Halloween
And ends in a bright beam of green.
End the muddied family line--
Of eleventh named for nine.
The proof deliver back to me
And you’ll rest in security
But if I find you’ve gone astray
You’ll rest in quite a different way.”
I can see why Voldemort is more famous for his methods of torture than his poetry; it’s not exactly Shakespeare. But he must have a good reason for wanting me to read this, unless he’s so desperate for an audience that he’s reduced to trapping innocent young boys in doorless rooms in order to force them to read his literary works.
As I somehow doubt that is was his motive, I squint at the poem and reread it, one line at a time this time. Your task begins on Halloween… Well, that’s obvious enough. Voldemort is using this poem to give me directions for the ‘test of loyalty’ that I’m supposed to undergo. Personally, I think it would be a lot more efficient if he just told me what he wanted me to do instead of making me figure it out like this, especially since Halloween’s tomorrow, and I don’t exactly have unlimited time. And why does the poem have to be so cryptic? Riddle by name, riddler by nature, I suppose.
And ends in a bright beam of green… I assume that this means a wand beam, the result of a spell being properly cast. And I can only think of one spell that causes the caster’s wand to emit a bright green beam: Avada Kedavra, the killing curse.
My mouth goes dry and I gulp audibly. This poem doesn’t seem like such a joke anymore. Someone will have to die. It’s unclear whether I’m to be on the giving or receiving end of the curse, but it doesn’t make much sense for my death to be included in the task I’m supposed to perform. Dead people don’t usually make very good servants.
So I’m to be a killer. I know I won’t be able to do it-- the truth is, I’m not a tough person. I do tend to have a big mouth, which has gotten me into trouble more than once, but I’m all talk and no action. Wimps do not thrive in Slytherin, and I’ve managed to survive by defending myself with my razor-sharp words. But I don’t think that that’s good enough anymore.
End the muddied family line… It doesn’t take a genius to figure this line out. (Though, technically speaking, I am actually a genius, but this is hardly the point.) I’m supposed to murder a muggle-born family. The mere thought makes me ill-- judging by the way that my abdomen feels, I deduce that my intestines have challenged each other to a wrestling match, and the butterflies in my stomach have mutated into pterodactyls.
And the next line of the poem is the most confusing of all: Of eleventh named for nine. The eleventh what? Named for nine? Was Voldemort drunk when he wrote this or something? I think as hard as I can with my nervousness-addled brain. Think… think… think… Novem … it means ‘nine’ in Latin, and November used to be the ninth month until the Romans changed April from being the first month to the fourth. So now November’s the eleventh month… NOVEMBER! That’s it! The eleventh month, named for nine!
But my elation freezes into horror when the true meaning of this riddle sinks in.
I have to kill November Gibbs.
For those of you who have never committed homicide, I’ll give you a few details about how it feels to walk up to a house and ring the doorbell, knowing fully well that you’re about to murder the person who answers it.
It feels bad. More specifically, it feels like I’m wearing an iron coat as I slowly walk up the driveway, a coat that gets heavier with each step that I take. It feels like my stomach aches of an acute indigestion that’s been achieved from consuming a basket full of puppies. It feels like I’m hiking alone in a desert, with the path before me made of needles, and the path behind me made of flaming coals.
Basically, pretty darn bad.
“Ding-dong!” The doorbells seems inappropriately perky in this dark setting. My finger slips off the button after pressing it once-- I feel like I’ve contaminated it somehow with my touch.
The door flies open. A girl is standing there, dressed in a Muggle clothing-- a blue tank top and Eeyore pajama bottoms. She’s short with very pale skin and a mane of wildly curly hair in that elusive shade somewhere between dark blonde, light brown, and pale auburn-- hair that contrasts oddly with her dark eyebrows and eyelashes. Her round face breaks into a smile, despite the fact that my own expression is rock-hard and stone cold. “Hi, Theo!” November exclaims, hugging me without seeming to notice that my shoulders are hunched and my position is rigid. “Umm, isn’t it a little late to be trick-or-treating?”
“I’m not trick-or-treating,” I reply gravely. “And I think I’m a bit old for such things anyway.” Understatement of the century. Right now, I feel about a hundred and twenty six years old.
November raises her dark eyebrows. “Well, come on in,” she tells me, holding the door open for me and making a goofy little bow.
I take her up on her offer and cross the threshold. Being the rather melodramatic bloke that I am, I can’t help but feel like I’m making a transformation as I do so-- changing from a more-or-less innocent boy into a cold-blooded murderer.
The second November closes the door, I whip my wand out of my cloak and point it between her eyes. Everything feels slow, heavy, and oddly dreamlike, as though I’m walking on the bottom of a swimming pool full of Jell-O. My friend’s expression shows no fear, only amused confusion-- apparently, she really trusts me, as untrustworthy as I am. “What are you doing?” she asks me with a hint of a giggle.
I simply stand there on the spot, my wand pointed directly at her, but no words managing to escape my mouth. It is a completely surreal and utterly terrifying situation, and then something completely unexpected happens.
Hot, stinging tears spring to my eyes. You have to understand that I do not cry. I didn’t cry when my mother died, or when my father was put in Azkaban. As an infant, my mother was worried about me because I never cried (not to mention the fact that the Healers at St. Mungo’s so kindly told her that I was the ugliest, scrawniest baby they’d ever seen.) So why, after seventeen ears without tears, am I losing my grip?
Speaking of losing my grip, my wand clatters to the ground, my shaking hand no longer able to hold it.
November looks worried now. “Theo, what’s wrong?” she asks.
I collapse completely. “I… I’ve done a horrible thing,” I tell her. “And I was about to do a worse one.”
“English, please?” my friend requests.
But words are too much to handle right now, and actions speak louder. So I simply roll up my sleeve to reveal the terrible, leering Dark Mark burned into my flesh, just as repugnant as I remembered it.
November’s deep brown eyes widen with hurt, betrayal, and disbelief. “Wha-- why--how--”
“Voldemort summoned me to take my father’s place,” I whisper. “And I was too much of a coward to stand up to him. And now, I’m supposed to… I have to…” my voice won’t cooperate, and it’s as if I’ve returned to my preadolescent days of voice fluctuation. “Voldemort wanted me to kill you… but I can’t do it.”
November stares at me wordlessly, her mouth agape.
“I am such an idiot,” I snarl. I grip the tattoo with my other hand, pressing my fingers onto the inked skull, as if trying to crush it. “I can’t believe myself. After he kills me for not killing you, he’ll go and kill you himself. And then, thanks to my stupidity, we’ll both be dead. I'm so sorry.” I’m not used to being wrong-- it’s just not something that happens to me. Naturally, my first mistake is such an enormous one that innocent lives will be taken.
But somehow, by some stroke of insanity, a spark appears in November’s eyes. Somehow, through her fear, she’s found hope in my hopelessness. “That’s it! We’ll both be dead! I have a plan,” she breathes, then jumps to her feet and races out of the room.
This is the absolute last reaction I’d expected. November had discovered that I was a Death Eater and had been assigned to kill her, so why was she helping me? Why hadn’t she summoned the Auror forces at once and had me dragged off to Azkaban, where I’d be safe with my father and the other pathetic Death Eaters?
“What was your boggart back in third year?” she calls from the opposite room, as predictably unpredictable as always.
“Myself. Dead,” I answer hollowly. “But that’s hardly impor--” Before I can even complete the thought, she zips back into the room, carrying a small wooden cabinet and a camera. “November, what--”
“There’s a boggart in this cabinet.”
I blink. “But your parents are Muggles.”
“Yeah, but they get a kick out of buying wizarding stuff. Anyway, that’s not the point. If You-Know-Who has proof that we’re both dead, we might get a chance to live,” she tells me.
I stare at her. When photographed, boggarts assume the identity of the photographer’s worst fear-- it’s just too perfect. “November, for a Hufflepuff, you’re brilliant.”
She almost smiles. “For a Death Eater, you’re fairly nice.” November sets down the cabinet, steps back, and opens the door.
But what emerges is definitely not what I’d expected. “Unless I’m very mistaken, that’s not me,” I say, the sight before me nauseating me.
November’s dead body lies on the floor. Her already pale skin appears ghostly white, her usually expressive eyes are blank and glazed, her mouth is open in a silent scream, and her unruly hair fans out beneath her. I tear my eyes away from the boggart and glance at the real November. When had this happened? When had my boggart changed from my own corpse to November’s? I am a Slytherin, self-serving and self-centred. While November’s always been one of the few people for whom I have respect, someone who listens to my ideas and stands up for her own, it just doesn’t seem normal that I prize her life above my own.
“That’s me,” says my friend, stating the obvious. Her eyes are alternately transfixed by the boggart and me, and I can tell she’s just as surprised as I am.
I take the camera, my hands still shaking, and focus on the horrific image of the boggart. The flash goes off, and I hand the camera back to my friend, deliberately looking away from the boggart. When I look back, I wish I hadn’t. The boggart is no longer an image of November-- it’s someone entirely different lying dead on the ground.
It’s me.
My dead face is set in an expression of utmost horror, and in my fear, I look young, almost childish… innocent. That’s probably the last word I would ever use to describe myself. There’s a trickle of blood running from my forehead, and the sleeve of my robes is burned away, revealing two festering puncture wounds through the middle of my Dark Mark-- clearly where two fangs had sunk deep into my skin. My limp left hand held a wand snapped cleanly in two, and there were muddy tread marks across my cheek, as though someone wearing running spikes had stomped on my face. The aforementioned pair of spikes appeared to have burst several of my pimples, and the ensuing rivulets of blood and pus added to the grotesqueness of the scene.
But that isn’t what truly shocks me. It’s the fact that November’s boggart is my corpse. The fact that somebody actually cares enough about me, of all people, that their worst fear is my death. True, we spend a lot of time together, talking about school and politics, and whatever random thoughts pop into our heads, but I’ve always assumed that I was just a convenient outlet for November’s sharp wit and loquacious nature. But apparently, all those years when I’ve only looked out for myself, there’s been someone else looking out for me as well. I realise suddenly that I’ve never really had friends before, and I’m surprised by how much it means to me to truly have a friend. What’s happening to me, the cynical loner who staunchly believes that dependence on others is the way to downfall?
“Riddikulus!” November shouts after snapping a photo, and the bizarre sight before me lifts me from my reverie. My jaw drops like a broken elevator. The boggart, under the influence of November’s spell, is still me, but I’m no longer dead. I’m wearing a pink string bikini and singing, “I Feel Pretty” in a powerful, operatic baritone.
November and I exchange glances. “You have a sick and twisted mind,” I inform her.
She eyes my scantily-dressed image sheepishly, then quickly looks away. “Euurgh,” she says. “That’s scarier than the dead version of you… no offence.”
Changing the subject as quickly as possible, I pick up the photographs of our deceased selves. “If we leave these where someone will see them, someone will call the Prophet, and our obituaries will be published. Once everyone thinks we’re dead, we won’t have to worry about Voldemort finding us. We just need to leave your house as soon as possible, and find somewhere to hide,” I say.
November looks up, her expression uncharacteristically serious. “I know you hate groups and organizations and things like that, but I think the only way to really hide from the Dark Side is to go to the Light Side. Ever since this whole stupid war started, I’ve been worried about you. It’s not safe to be neutral anymore.”
“I can’t help it; I had ancestors from Switzerland,” I say, then realise that this is not the time to be flippant. I look my friend in the eye. “You know as well as I do that I find this extremely hard to admit, but… you’re right. I’ve worked for Voldemort, and I loathed it, so logically speaking, it would be better for me to work for the other side… if they’ll let me.”
November smiles. “They will. They’re the good guys, after all.” She starts jogging up the stairs. “Besides, we’re of age-- we’ll be able to manage on our own,” she says. “We should get going if we’re ever going to.”
I know she’s not as confident as she’s letting on. We both know how upset her parents will be when they think she’s died. (As for me, my mum is too dead and my father is too imprisoned to know or care what I’m up to.) But I don’t say anything, except for, “I’ll help you pack.”
“What about you?” asks November. “Aren’t you going to Apparate home to get your things together?”
I shake my head. “There’s nothing I want to bring,” I tell her. I want to start over from scratch.
We pack November’s trunk in silence. I am shocked, awed, and slightly sickened by her closet. I don’t know very many girls, so I don’t know if it’s normal to have an entire shelf full of shoes, but November certainly does. I do know, however, that I only have two pairs total, and I’m somewhat wealthier than she is. I’m also surprised by the playbills and theatre posters plastering her room-- I never knew that she was interested in musical theatre. There are stuffed animals everywhere, clothes and books scattered all over the floor, and sketches of people and unicorns stacked high on every available surface. (I glimpse a caricature of my own face peeking out from between the covers of a book entitled “The Complete Loony’s Guide to Crackpot Theorizing.” I notice that oddly enough, she’s emphasized my eyes, making them big, shiny, and Bambi-ish; my nose, giving me a fine Roman profile; and my chin, making it square and strong. If I had drawn the picture myself, I’d have emphasized my sticking-out teeth and ears, my bad skin, and my bony face.) November’s bedspread depicts the Beatles’ Abbey Road album cover, and her calendar proudly displays “The Warped Words of Wisdom of the Week.”
The room practically screams “November Gibbs,” and you can learn anything and everything about her just by looking at it. My room at home looks more like an empty hotel room, or a funeral parlor’s reception room, with a bed instead of a casket.
After November finally decides which four pairs of shoes to bring, I break the silence that’s been hovering over us. “November,” I say in a low voice, “I don’t understand you. How come you’re still helping me? I joined the Death Eaters. I came here to kill you. If it weren’t for me. You’d still be safe here-- you wouldn’t have to leave your family to hide. You should hate me.”
“And you should hate me,” November replies. “You’re a pure-blooded Slytherin, and I’m a Muggle-born Hufflepuff. But you know, we’re always doing things that we’re not socially supposed to do. What else is new?”
“That’s not what I meant,” I say stiffly.
“Listen,” November orders me, standing on her toes to take my unattractive face in her hands. “You did something incredibly stupid, but you apologized, and I accepted it, like that time I accidentally called Snape ‘Daddy,’ and you laughed, so I didn’t talk to you for a week. After I said I was sorry for shunning you, we were friends again.” She smiles. “Besides, I like you too much to hate you.”
I like you too much to hate you… It’s strange, but no one’s ever told me that they liked me before. I’ve been told several times that I’m brilliant, but never that I’m interesting or funny or sweet (though I doubt I’ll ever hear the third item on the list.) I can’t even remember my parents ever saying that they loved me, to be honest.
“I’m so lucky to have you as a friend,” I blurt out. What? Where did that come from? And what on earth is wrong with me lately? This isn’t like me at all.
November’s face breaks into a wide, astonished smile, but it quickly changes to a nauseated expression. She clutches her stomach theatrically. “Please, Theo, don’t get mushy. I ate far too much Halloween candy, and I don’t want to vomit.” I’m not offended-- I know she’s faking her disgust. She, like I, can’t take compliments well.
Role reversal, anyone? I’ve never talked about emotions before. I’m a man, after all, and an anti-social one, at that. November’s usually the enthusiastic one, I’m the apathetic one. But I’m changing, more and faster than I’d ever expected. Who’d believe that joining the Death Eaters would make me a better person?
November sits on her trunk to close it, and we exchange glances. “Shall we?” she asks.
“Now that we’re both dead to the world and ready to go, I suppose it’s time,” I reply. We both sound more casual than we truly feel, and furthermore, we’re both aware of this fact.
As the clock strikes midnight, we step out together into the dying day, unsure of what lies before us. During the twelve chimes of the clock, time makes its subtle transition from October Thirty-First to November First. “It’s November,” says my friend, grinning up at me. “My month. That has to bode well.” She takes my cold, pale hand in her small, warm one, and although I normally can’t stand being touched by other people, I don’t let go-- as independent as I’ve been in the past, I need a a warm, friendly hand right now.
I don’t know what’s going to happen to me, whether I’ll live or die, what the light side of the war has to offer, what I’ll gain, or what I’ll lose. But, as sappy and trite as it sounds, I know that I’ll be able to face whatever blocks my path when my friend November is there with me.
We’re both ending a page in our lives and starting over on a clean sheet of paper. We’re just two dead people on the road together, and inexplicably, we’re happy.