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She tells me everything-- how self conscious she feels when people talk about muggles around her, how disgusted she is by the idea of pumpkin juice, how her sister still hasn't written back yet, how a boy winked at her in charms class yesterday.
I tell her everything, too-- at least, I tell her things I could never tell anyone else. I tell her about being too scared to try fire whiskey, I tell her about watching the headmaster converse with another professor using only his eyes, I don't tell her that she's the first person I've talked to since I woke up this morning-- but then, I barely acknowledge that to myself, anyway.
After my third episode Tireton suggested I imagine myself in a safe place whenever I start to feel angry and he asked me if there was anywhere I liked to go to relax. I lied and said I liked to go down to the lake by myself sometimes.
I know it's silly to lie to a mind healer but I just can't bring myself to spill my guts to someone who hasn't even told me their favourite colour-- it's not that I think he would blackmail me or anything, but I hate that feeling of one-sidedness-- it feels like I'm sitting high up on a see-saw and my partner's about to step off and leave me to fall crashing to the ground.
It's unbalanced and vulnerable and I don't like it.
That's what's so great about our friendship, Lily. I give you all the little bits of me and you give me all the little bits of you-- not as a trade, just because we can. Because we're special to each other that way.
I think maybe you're my safe place, because when something embarrassing happens to me, I picture myself telling you the situation later on. Like today when Professor Sprout told us to get into groups of three and I ended up sitting awkwardly by myself at the edge of a table of loud Gryffindors- I pretended to tell you all about it-- imagined how we'd laugh dismissively at their childish nicknames and how you'd remind me that what they think of me doesn't matter.
I wish she were here so I could tell her-- but I don't think I'd be able to anyway. Maybe it is better that I put all this into paper instead- I'd hate to interrupt her third retelling of how that kid from charms class asked her out by folding a note into a paper crane and then levitated it across the room to her.
Last night she told me she was in love. She said it with excited green eyes and a small, thoughtful grin.
I felt honored she would reveal something like that to me-- and in such uncensored words--
"I'm in love with him" she'd said. "Me, Sev. I'm actually in love."
I wanted to sort through Lily's thoughts and feelings with her, find out exactly who this guy was and if he was worthy of my best friend-- but Lily wouldn't tell me anything beyond the hazel of his eyes and his absent-minded ability to transfigure quills into lillies.
She wouldn't tell me what happened when I asked her why she'd been so upset about a letter she'd received that morning.
"I've already talked it over with... You know," she'd replied, and I suddenly felt as if I'd overstepped my bounderies-- but there isn't supposed to be any limit to what we can tell each other, and I told her so.
But she still wouldn't tell me anything. She wouldn't even tell me his name.
And how can I tell her anything if she doesn't tell me everything? How can I trust her to be there for me when she barely even smiles when I wave to her across the hall?
So I talk to you, the index section of my potions book.
It 's not the same, because of course you can't speak back to me, but at least I can't ever be rejected by a textbook.