Chapter 8: A path becomes clear, and for once I take it
I watch Iola’s face, waiting for her to speak. I don’t want to tell her to hurry up, but it’s driving me to insanity waiting. Am I really going to find out exactly what’s gone on in her life? Suddenly, she speaks, without any warning. I lean forwards.
“Okay. So, we start when I was about six. Well, yes, because I was six. It was the 27th of September, and my Mum left. Out of the blue. Or maybe it had been brewing for months. I wouldn’t know. My dad “ James’s uncle “ has always been big on tradition, I would never have been told anything about what was happening. I should be seen and not heard. I should only speak when spoken to; I wasn’t ignored back then, but I always had this feeling that they only liked me begrudgingly.”
“What about Potter’s parents?” I ask. She looks irritated at both my interruption, and my use of the last name.
“Well, I was just about to mention that it was a different story with James and his parents. Radically different. It doesn’t really make sense ... my uncle is the older brother by quite a bit, but he’s far more open minded. He travelled, see, and maybe it freed his ideas or something, because my grandparents were traditionalists too. Anyway, like I said, he travelled for a few years, came back, and started his own business. It took him quite a while to settle down and marry my aunt, purely because he never found the right person. Apparently, she “saved his life” from being dragged down by work. He was a bit of a workaholic, see, and she was able to ... well, save his life.
“This was a couple of years before my own parents were married. My aunt “ so James’s mum “ is great. She’s kind of batty and eccentric, but I think she puts it on a bit, because if you sit down with her and really talk, she’s possibly the most down to earth person I know. My own mum ... well, from what I remember, she was quite a bit younger than my dad, always out to parties, complaining about being tied down by her family. She probably went off with some other bloke, it wouldn’t surprise me. But I guess I’ll never know.
“So, are you with me so far? Two brothers. Older one, open minded, eventually finds the perfect wacky woman to settle down with. Totally happy. The much younger brother was as old fashioned as his grandparents, and married a bit of a party girl who was really too young to be tied down, and probably only did it for his money “ Merlin knows how someone could actually love him enough to marry him for any other reason.”
It’s weird to hear her say something like that about her own father, but I don’t tell her that. This also seems like a long winded story, but I suppose I should really get a feel of the family to understand better, so I just nod, and say, “Yes, I’m with you.”
“Good. So, they had me and James at around the same time, coincidentally, even though both the wives were miles apart in age “ he’s still older by about three months, though. While James was a miracle, just the thing to bless their aging years, I was more of an inconvenience to a young woman with better things to do than raise her child. I was round my aunt and uncle’s as much as possible, because I felt so much more at home there. James and I have always been close, because we’ve been together since we were born. But like I said, when I turned six, my Mum left. She probably went off with some guy, as I said, no one was in any hurry to explain it to me properly. But it was like Dad just closed in on himself. He couldn’t take the shame of a scandal. That was when he started to ignore me. I’d try and talk to him, and he’d just sit there, staring into space. I cooked meals for us both, but he didn’t even acknowledge them. If he’d have just looked at me, just once, I would have been so happy. But no.”
Iola pauses for a moment. It feels so strange to hear all this. I guess the only other person who knows the whole story is James. A wave of guilt washes over me, and I don’t even know why. “I’m really sorry,” I say, because I don’t know if there is anything else that I can say. She waves it off, but her eyes are full of emotion. It’s not something you would normally expect to see with her; she’s usually really guarded about her feelings.
“Anyway, it was like that for so long. I would go to James’s every weekend to give my Dad ‘a break’. Like I was tiring him out or something. One time, though, I was ill, so I stayed in bed. Dad didn’t even notice. It was nearing my seventh birthday, and I was worried that Dad would forget completely. And then there was this knock at the door. I was so surprised, because no one had rang our doorbell for about half a year “ James and his parents just walked straight in. Even though I was ill, I managed to jump out of bed, and creep onto the landing to look down into the Hall. At first I thought Dad would ignore it, but the person seemed to be pretty insistent, and eventually he opened the door.”
I am on the edge of my seat. “Who was it?” I breath, now completely enthralled. She laughs at my eagerness, but I am serious. “Iola! Was it your mum?”
Her smile fades rapidly, and she looks away. I know I must be right.
“Yeah,” she says, in confirmation. “She looked exactly the same. Probably still does. She had all these gift boxes in her arms ...
“‘Is Iola here?’ she asked, and Dad just grunted a no.
“So she said, ‘When will she be back?’ and Dad just shrugged at her.
“‘Can you let me know? I really want to see her.’ I tell you, I nearly ran straight down the stairs and into her arms, but something kept me rooted.
“‘For Merlin’s sake, woman, I’ve told you no! What makes you think she’d want to see you, anyway?’
“‘She’s my daughter! I have every right!’
“‘Oh, don’t start on your bloody rights again, you were the one who walked out on us!’
“‘No, I walked out on you! I told you from the beginning that I wanted to see her as much as possible, but you just couldn’t let me, could you? Always have to be right, don’t you? As if you’re a good father to her!’
“And then he just got so angry, he grabbed the gifts she’d got me, took out his wand, and set them on fire. Mum leaped at him, started scratching at his face, and he hit her. So hard that she fell down. Being who she is, she got straight back up again, and tried to fight him back, but of course it was no use. I ran down the stairs, screaming at them both. They looked up, and Mum saw me, and burst into tears. She ran off then, and I’ve not seen her since.
“I told myself I hated my father after that, and I did everything I could to avoid him. I wouldn’t look at him, I wouldn’t cooperate. I was only ever happy at my aunt and uncle’s, with James. Dad was so frustrated when he heard that I was a perfectly normal kid there, but this timid little shell at home. One day he got so mad at me, he hit me, too. I think that was around the time he started drinking “ not excessively, but still. It was only once, and he cried, and begged afterwards, spoiling me, buying me flowers, trying to make it up to me, and I was only seven, so I bought it. But it became a cycle. I annoyed him, I got hit. He would butter me up until we were happy again, I would annoy him, and the whole thing would go round again.
“As I got older, I realised how screwed up he was, and I stopped letting him win me over just before I began Hogwarts for the first time. He hit me, and instead of waiting for him to start showering me with apologies, I argued with him “ I told him just what I thought of him. And the next day I went to Hogwarts.
“I don’t know if you remember, but that first day, I was so happy. There’s something about James that makes me so much more confident. I think I was maybe a little over confident. I came in, laughing because James had made a prat of himself already, and you and your friends just stared at me like I was a freak. Before then, I don’t think I really knew how bitchy girls can be, but that really brought it home. I was so determined to be a whole new person that I joined in with the bitchiness a bit, didn’t I? Me, you, and your friends, we could never get along, could we?”
I smile, because it’s true. But I’m also mortified at myself, at my friends. After everything she told me so far, and knowing that we had made her feel worse, how could she even consider socialising with me? How could she consider not ripping me to shreds “ even if I was the one who tried to be nice to her at first? Ripping me to shreds would be letting me off lightly, in my opinion. She begins to speak, so I concentrate, and stop letting my thoughts wander.
“So, during Hogwarts, I was having the time of my life. I made friends with Remus, Peter, and“” she coughs a little, ““and Sirius. Only James knew what life was like at home, and he would never tell a soul. Eventually, the other three found out too, but it was only ever James I would talk to about it.”
I think back to when I stalked the Marauders in Hogsmeade to try and get this very information from him. I guess I’m kind of glad he didn’t tell me.
“As you know, we loved causing havoc. After so many years of being emotionally locked up, it felt so wonderful to be free. Maybe I took it a little too far, but I don’t regret it a bit, some brilliant times were had. The Potter Cousins vs. Authority. No matter how horrible it is at home, at least I can say I’ve had a great school life.”
“What happened when you got home? In the summers, I mean,” I say. The life brought to her eyes by memories of chaos, vanishes suddenly.
“At first it was okay, Dad always felt like buttering me up. But every time he went to hit me, I dodged, and that made him worse. He’d end up chasing me around the house, until I could escape out of a window.”
I almost laugh at this image, but then I realise how terrified she must have been. I imagine being in the same situation, and shudder. It’s nowhere near funny.
“I’d grab my broomstick, and fly to James. He doesn’t live very far away, you see. Pretty much the whole of the Potter family lives in one town, along with all the Muggles there. And anyway, the flight would calm me down. Eventually I started getting up at six in the morning, and then coming back at about eleven at night, so I barely saw him after a while. He’d always be asleep by the time I got in. Either that, or he’d passed out he was so drunk, but that wasn’t a daily thing. He wasn’t a constant alcoholic, don’t get that idea.”
“What did you do all day? Go to James’s?” I ask, wondering how on earth you could while away seventeen hours of every day.
“Not all the time. My aunt and uncle don’t know about my dad’s ‘behaviour’, and they’d get suspicious if I was with them every waking moment of the day. Sometimes I’d visit James, of course, or even the other Marauders. Other times I’d walk for miles, just for the hell of it. Sometimes I’d take my broomstick and just fly around. I’d go to the local Muggle Library, and do homework in the quietest, most isolated corner. It got really boring at times, but anything was better than being at home.
“So that’s how it went on. Remember I told you that I was most afraid of going home? Well, now you know why. Maybe it doesn’t sound absolutely dire, it’s not like I’m forced to work like a house elf everyday, and get every kind of abuse along with it, but you try and imagine living it, constantly. I get so depressed at home, that I live to the absolute limit at Hogwarts to make up for it. And there you have it.”
I have two more questions. “So why leave now? What makes today different from every other day you’ve had to live with it?”
She smiles widely, and spreads her arms out wide, “Today is my seventeenth birthday. I’m officially of age, and so Dad can’t do a thing to stop me leaving.”
Fair enough. Time for question number two. “Then why not go to James?”
Iola shrugs. “They’re on holiday. Him, Sirius, his parents. They’ve gone to Greece. But I wasn’t going to wait for them to come back, so I thought that maybe I could take a chance and stay with you until they do?”
“Well, I’m in the dog house a bit with my parents, but they could never refuse a teenage girl in need. Which reminds me, why me? I thought that you didn’t like me any more?”
She grins. “Well I’m not going to stay with Remus or Peter, am I? They’re great and everything, but I doubt their families would approve of a teenage girl living with their sons. But I thought, you being a girl, so there’s no worries in that department for your parents ... and I do like you, a lot. You’re the first girl who’s ever been a real friend to me. And I know we had that big argument, but I do that a lot, Lily. Living life to the full can work to release your crushed spirit, but sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes I just need to have a good old row with someone. James knows this very well, I can assure you. But I never stopped wanting to be your friend. I thought it was you who didn’t like me!”
I grin back, relieved at her words. “I thought the opposite! But I understand why you need to argue, I do. So next time, I won’t take it personally, okay?”
“Thanks, Lily.”
When my parents and sister return, they are completely shocked at having a stranger in the house. But once I explain to them that Iola really needs a place to stay, they’re fine. They ask why she had left home in the first place if she had nowhere to go, but I just raise my eyebrows and say, “Family troubles.” It shuts them all right up, and they don’t say a thing about it after that. Petunia isn’t too happy, but then, she never is, is she?
So, what’s the next step, I wonder? I can’t abandon Iola again for L.O.V.E, not ever. But there’s no way I can ever be friends with all of them, either “ that much has been apparent in recent months, if nothing else. I need to do something about them, but I have no idea what. I consult Iola.
“I don’t know why you need advice, Lily. Just write them a letter to say that they’re bitches, you hate them, you’re leaving their pathetic group, and you have a real friend now. I’m sure they won’t mind.”
I laugh. And I know she’s right; they are pathetic, and I’ll be glad to leave them behind. I’ve been blind since first year, but now, I know what they’re really like. It was obvious all along, really.
However, they can be vicious. I don’t want to tell it to their faces any time in the next ... ever.
Maybe a letter is the perfect solution ...
AN: There you have it. If Iola’s horrible home life seems lame and not that dramatic to you, I want you to really imagine what it would be like to live like that. I couldn’t have it too brutal, because then her personality wouldn’t fit. This is the first of three summer chapters, by the way. So, tell me what you think, I love, love, love to hear from you! Where do you think they should all go from here?