give her love » james potter

27

It's not highly infectious, the mysterious flu I've managed to contract and even if it was there's spells that visitors can use to prevent transmition. Yet, I make Madame deny any person who tries to enter, I tell her I just need some peace and quiet.

To some extent it's true but it's mainly to hide this self-loathing monster that I've started to form into. Guilt bleeds from every part of me and I hate myself, so much, that it's become unbearable. I'm so scared that if someone comes and sees me sitting here, with dirty hair and eyes that are permanently red from the crying and allergies, they'll start seeing it too.

I'm so scared of losing any more people.

Madame's nice company. The infirmary has been fairly quiet since people are trying to get back into school and still on the holiday high, leaving them too busy to get into fights and sustain major injuries. So, she dedicates her time to me. We both read articles in the morning while eating breakfast, then she sends out letters to her friends at hospitals at noon, we eat lunch separately usually but we talk about literature right after, and then she gets a patient in the afternoon and I take a nap to pass time.

The sun's already set when I open my eyes from my daily nap. I stare at the tray in front of me and frown.

"Mangiare in bianco," I tell Madame Pomfrey. Then push the soup away from me, the tomato smell making me feel queasy. "In Italy when someones sick they eat very blandly. My mum always makes me pasta with a little bit of butter, olive oil, and parmesan. This is really nice but--"

She shakes her head and cuts me off, "I understand, something familiar would make you feel better. I'll go tell a house-elf to make that for you."

"Thank you."

"Don't even worry about it."

It's my fourth day of hiding and I've had seven bowls of soup. We switch it up with chicken noodle, cream of broccoli, and tomato (also tried this lentil recipe, she got from a South Asian friend but I couldn't stand the taste, we later found out it tastes better with rice but it didn't matter because I was over it). I love soup, a very big fan really, but I think I've had enough for the next few months.

So, I pick up a poetry book by some famous wizard writer that I don't know at all, my disconnect to wizarding culture grows more apparent when Poppy says this is considered a classic by many.

I don't like all of it and some parts drag on for too much and the structure isn't that good, but then I finally read the last line. 

All I do is feel too much. This is a terrible story, all these pages. But it's my life and terrible it has been. So I write them down on these pages hoping a happy ending will be the last thing I write, yet, it's been ten years, and death holds my other hand and continues to remind me, it's time. All I do is feel too much and maybe that's it for me.

It makes me feel sad. I turn the page and it's something wrote by her daughter, she talks about how her mother had been a ghost for years before she'd even died. She talks about postpartum depression and how her father had never been there when they needed him. She talks about pain and that people call her mother someone influential and loved, yet they never cared when she was alive.

I carry the pain because it's what she's left behind for me, Anabel Carrow writes, I don't resent her for it. She loved me in the way she could and that love will always outshine the pain that rests on my chest. Forgiveness is a choice, it's something you give yourself.

Poppy puts a plate of pasta in front of me, she sees the I'm on the last page and smiles. "I love the ending," she says, then takes a seat beside me. "I first read it after I had a miscarriage. I spent months angry at myself and especially my uterus. This book didn't make everything suddenly better, but it helped me a lot. It's the book that makes me say, if I hadn't read this I'd be a completely different person."