After the wedding, at least ten people I had known at Hogwarts came up to me and said, “Congratulations, mate. I knew you’d win her someday.” For the first couple of people, I imagine my smile seemed genuine as we shook hands and they continued down the receiving line.
By about Number Six, though, I was unable to restrain myself”but at least I managed to laugh as I said, “You always knew? Well, I wish you’d mentioned it to me!” And by the time the tenth person claimed he’d known from the minute he met Lily and me that we’d get married, my handshake had become a little too firm and my smile a little too forced. It was like hearing the same bad joke over and over”there’s only so many times you can laugh.
It’s so easy to judge events in retrospect; ex post facto predictions are hardly difficult and so are fairly common. But the most irksome thing to me was that”with the exception of Sirius, who insists he has some Seer blood in him”nobody did know. All those times while Lily was rejecting me, insulting me to my face and hurling epithets I know I deserved, no one knew that we would end up married not five years later, more in love than anyone would have expected had they seen our fifteen-year-old selves. You knew? I thought while shaking the hands of my Hogwarts friends. You knew, even before I did, or Lily did, or before either of us (well, me, anyway) had become people who knew how to love and trust another person with our whole selves?
Seriously, though, you have no idea how many people at Hogwarts saw my pursuit of one Lily Evans as nothing more than an amusing spectacle. To be perfectly honest, I was amused too. I enjoyed our banter…once her rejections contained more wit than spite. Lily Evans, prefect and Head Girl, is the only person in the world who can be so charmingly sarcastic. It meant she noticed me, cared what I thought enough to think up a clever response; if I made her laugh, I considered that success. Not that I didn’t hope for greater success one day, but when the girl you’re in love with won’t go out with you, you take what you can get.
Sure, Sirius always claimed he saw “true love in my future”. But then again, he also predicted that my Animagus form would be a flamingo. (I think he’s always wanted one as a pet…)
Apart from the Marauders, though most of my friends were pretty clear: they thought I was wasting my time. Once, though, a Slytherin said as he passed me, “Keep trying, mate.” My spirits rose a little as he walked down the hall. He looked over his shoulder and shouted back at me: “I like watching you look like an idiot.”
So I guess Lily’s lucky I’m someone who persists despite the odds, without regard to what other people say…and with complete unconcern for whether I’m making a fool of myself.
I’m not entirely sure why it bothered me so much, these friends who amidst their naïveté and good intentions claimed to have known the future. But sometimes I think back to 5th and 6th year, how Lily’s words stung me and cut me to the core. We can look backwards from here to then, but I had no knowledge of the future to lessen my hurt. Uncertainty defined those moments: the possibility was very real to me that Lily would never love me, that she would fall in love with someone else and never think of me as more than an arrogant toerag. Later, of course, we became friends”but even then I felt that constant nagging that we could never be more than that. It’s a leap, to be sure, from hating me to befriending me, but the leap is even bigger from there to going out with me. After all, Lily has dozens of friends”but I only wanted one girlfriend. And to say you knew all along that Lily and I would fall in love is to discount the uncertainty of those years. After all, during Voldemort’s astounding increase in power while we were at Hogwarts, when he murdered every other evening and sometimes twice before tea, I wonder how much any of us really knew about the future. Our hold on life was”and remains, I suppose”so tenuous.
I swear, there must have been twenty people at my wedding like this: giving me a playful shove, they lean in conspiratorially and whisper in my ear, “Congratulations, Lil…I knew you’d give in to him eventually!””only when it’s an older person talking the playful shove becomes a pinch of the cheek, and I am invariably referred to as “dearie”.
This drives me crazy. Honestly, am I the only one who can see the ways James and I have both changed since the days when he asked me out at every turn? He was infuriatingly arrogant”I suppose I was too, in my own way”and never stopped hexing people, or messing up his hair, or playing with the Snitch. And apparently over twenty guests at my wedding could “save the date” years in advance”because they knew we’d end up together. They knew I’d give in and let him marry me. They assumed, I suppose, that because he’s perfect for me now, he was perfect for me all those years ago. Well, perhaps they knew we’d get married”but to me our story seems as improbable as the Chudley Cannons winning the division. That we would change in ways that would lead us to each other, to this moment? I can’t think of anything less likely to happen…but I can’t think of anything that I’m happier has.
I didn’t say yes to him because I’d grown tired of his asking. I didn’t say yes because he’d convinced me of his superiority over the rest of the world or charmed me with that adorable smile.
Somehow, though, he became a generous, loyal, thoughtful person. Somehow I learned to respect him. And somehow we found a way to be in the same room together without bickering.
I didn’t give in to him. I fell in love with him.
And now that I love him, he seems ten times more intelligent and inquisitive and hilarious and handsome than I thought he was when I hated him. It’s funny how loving someone can just make you love him more.
And I think, what if I’d known the ending before I’d begun? What if I’d known that I would fall in love with James”and that he would be worth loving? I had no idea when I began the story of our lives that it would turn into a fairy tale. I had no idea that I would find a “happily ever after””and, least of all, that it would be with James. How could I know that this story would have a happy ending”the best ending?
The front door creaked; Lily heard James’ urgent shout. She held her baby in one arm as she flung shut the bedroom door and barricaded chairs and boxes in front of it. The baby cried out softly, making a small, fearful noise at the high-pitched laughter downstairs…but smiled again at his mother’s kiss.
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
Uncertainty Defined Those Moments by Nymphea
Chapter Notes: The final quote is from T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men".