Sometimes I say to myself “I had a pretty normal and boring childhood” but then I remember that 11-year-old me may have accidentally convinced some other kids that I was kidnapped by a shady government agency.
Care to elaborate?
WELL, SINCE YOU ASKED
2006 was the year that I
discovered the internet. I spent most of this time doing nothing but watch
Harry Potter fanvids and tracking down so much Harry/Ginny fanfiction that it’s
probably the reason I hated that ship for so long, kind of like when you were
in fourth grade and you realized that bologna was actually Really Bad and you
started aggressively avoiding it? Yeah, it was like that. Harry/Ginny was the
bologna of my formative fandom years.
So I’m eleven years old and
for the last two months or so I’ve been just shoving my brain full of all kinda
of mature narratives that I really, probably, should not have been putting my mind
to at the time. My parents knew that this was how I was occupying my time but I
think that they thought, since Harry Potter was a kids’ book series, the people
who were writing the fics were…kids. And they eventually did wise up to
the fact that I was reading Really Very Adult Things and put kid blocks on the
computer for all of five minutes. But, y’know, that’s another story.
It wasn’t really porn that I was reading, per say, as
much as writing that just…wasn’t meant to be consumed by an eleven-year-old.
For instance, stories about government espionage and criminal crime. Things that
the HP books touched on, sure, but in a way that was consumable by the very
young and very naïve. These fics weren’t for the uninitiated. And I take full
responsibility for exposing myself to those things. I very purposefully did a
few things that I should not have in order to access this content. One of those
things was making myself an email, without my parents’ permission, at an age
two years younger than the Yahoo terms of service allowed at the time. I listed
my age as eighteen on the email account because that was the age you needed to be to get into some of the archives
I wanted access to and I had no idea that the administrators had literally no
way of checking if my email was registered to an eighteen year old person or
not.
So, I don’t know if it was because
of being registered as an adult or because of the forums I was visiting, but I
got a lot of very weird spam. And since I was eleven and I had no idea how any
of that stuff worked, I thought it was real people…sending me emails.
Thankfully my parents had only raised a little
fool, not a big fool, so I never clicked any of the links or anything. I was
just quietly upset that people thought I cared about car insurance and online gambling
when all I wanted was to read the Marked Mature Chapter Of That Harry/Ginny
Wedding Fic. A fic in which ‘glass of water’ was used as a euphemism for orgasm,
which was something that I did not pick
up on until I suddenly remembered that line when I was sitting in a lecture
hall ten literal years later.
Yes, I know.
So one day I’m looking through
my email to see if I have any new reviews on my Harry Potter/Hannah Montana crossover
fic (Yes, I know) when I come across an email the subject line of which is just
“Confidential.”
“Cool,” says little Maggie,
who maybe at that point didn’t really know what confidential meant, and clicked
on it.
This was a very long time ago
so I really don’t remember the content of the email, let alone the exact warning,
but the gist of it was something like:
WE KNOW WHAT YOU DID SEND 10,000
DOLLARS TO THIS BANK ACCOUNT OR THE GOVERNMENT WILL BE NOTIFIED.
This is very obviously
recognizable as a scam to somebody who isn’t eleven years old. It’s not even a
very good scam. It’s the kind of
thing that only children and elderly people with dementia would react to.
Unfortunately, I was a child.
A child with a guilty conscience because I had been reading Things I was not
supposed to for several months now, and had also lied about my age by some
SEVEN YEARS to access the very email account by which I had been sent this ominous
message.
Predictably, because I was both
an overreactive child and apparently an idiot
child, I freaked out. I deleted the email and panicked, very quietly, in
the corner of my dad’s home office for a good ten minutes. Then, for reasons
that are completely unknown EVEN TO ME, I retrieved the email from the trash
bin and printed it out. I then slipped
it into my backpack and brought it to
school the next day.
Even worse, the first thing I
did was drag my two friends into the situation.
“Meet me in the bathroom,” I said
to them, because some part of me seemed to think that my life had now become a
Cool Spy Movie. We huddled into a stall in the bathroom and stared at the
paper.
“I don’t have ten thousand
dollars,” I told them.
“What did you do?” asked one
of my friends.
“That’s none of your concern,”
I said.
“Do you think it’s the FBI?
Or the CSI?” (Not a typo—she said CSI)
“Yes,” I said, and did not
elaborate.
“What happens if you don’t pay
it.”
“I’ll be kidnapped,” I said,
with utmost conviction. “That’s what happens when the government doesn’t like you.
They make you disappear.”
We eventually returned to
class. I was pretty jazzed at being the center of our friend group’s attention
for the day. It was a Friday, and the height of my concern for the actual situation
had waned and, by the time I got home later that day, I had mostly forgotten
about my fear of being violently kidnapped by the CSI.
Something that I’ve not mentioned
to any of you—and something that I had not mentioned to my friends at the time,
either—was that this was my last day at
that school. I was due to start at a new school that coming Monday. I hadn’t
told anybody because I was switching to a public school from a private school
and I thought that telling people would make them think I was dumb? I don’t
know, but I hadn’t told literally anybody
that I was switching schools. Not even my teachers. I assume that my parents
informed them at some point but I still have the middle school-level math book
hanging out in my closet that I never returned because I never told anybody I was leaving.
I had no way of contacting
any of my friends from the other school. I wouldn’t get my first cell phone for
probably another six or seven months. I also
stopped going to the Youth Group that I was in with one of them because my dad
got spooked when I dropped some Knowledge About Christ on him at one point and
decided that the group was way too fundamentalist. (It was, but I was very
upset about being pulled out at the time.)
So please imagine. Friend
comes to school with ominous email from ~the government~. Friend stops coming
to school. Friend stops coming to unrelated
activity. Friend doesn’t ever contact you again. You’re eleven years old.
I’m not saying that there are
two girls out there who still remember me as “That girl who might have been kidnapped
by the government.” I like to think that they probably came up with a more
reasonable explanation as they got older. But it’s a possibility that, for a little
while sometime in 2006/2007, I accidentally convinced my friends that I had
been kidnapped by a shady government agency.
the whole yule ball thing in goblet of fire was so dumb and heteronormative
ok but real talk i am in full support of harry just asking ron to the dance with him and being each others “date” and having that be an ok thing instead of asking and then ignoring the poor patil twins who deserved better than that also i would have killed to see a yule ball scene where hermione’s talking with krum and turns around and sees her two best friends trying to do the tango (ron has a rose in his mouth and everything) and fucking tearing up the dance floor
“So,” Harry says. “I need a date to the Yule Ball.”
“Like. A mandatory date?”
“A mandatory date.”
“That’s kinda messed up.”
“Yeah. Any ideas?”
Ron rubs his chin. “Cho didn’t work out, then.”
“Nope. She’s with Cedric.”
“Right, right.” He’s stroking an imaginary beard now. “And Hermione is going with some mystery guy.”
Both boys scowl in unison.
Then, slowly, they turn to look at each other.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Harry asks.
“If you’re thinking we go to the ball together, then yes,” Ron affirms.
Harry has his game face on. So does Ron. “Let’s do this.” They shake on it.
Ron suddenly frowns.
“What?”
“My dress robes are hideous. You think…”
“I can buy—”
“What? No! I mean, isn’t Parvati Patil really good at clothing charms?”
“Oh yeah,” Harry realizes. “She wears those cool dresses on the weekends sometimes—uh, saris? Or something.”
“Yeah, yeah, but she and her sister make them. I heard Lavender talking to her about it. They make loads of their own clothes, think it’s fun or whatever.”
Harry makes a face. “Girls.” He’s mended enough of Dudley’s old clothes to know sewing is not fun. Girls are weird.
“Girls,” Ron agrees.
“…it’s a really good thing we’re going together.”
“Seconded.”
——and that’s how Harry and Ron befriend Lavender Brown and the Patil sisters. The three are actually pretty alright, for girls. (Hermione doesn’t count, clearly, as she’s their best friend.) It takes a while to fix Ron’s robes into something resembling modern fashion, but by then Dean Thomas has Had Enough of Their Dithering and makes the two of them wear three-piece muggle suits under their robes (which also took some creative charmwork, and the jackets were a total loss, but it came out better than the robes overall). Lavender is entirely taken with the idea and the two spend a good few hours discussing fashion.
Harry and Ron are Not Touching That.
Naturally, the two lord the anonymity of their dates over Hermione just like she’s taken to doing to the two of them, and it morphs into a great circle of fun, no hard feelings anywhere by the time the Ball comes around, and basically the whole of Gryffindor (plus Padma of Ravenclaw) is in on one side or the other.
Fred and George have decided it’s a great idea and have invited Lee Jordan to go with the two of them. Not to be outdone, Angelina Johnson and Alicia Spinnet are bringing Katie Bell. Rumor has it that Oliver Wood is bringing quidditch gear. Which piece of gear he’s bringing, broom, quaffle, bludger, or goal hoop (don’t ask) is a hot topic of debate.
(He actually ends up bringing a whole host of underclassmen and spends the whole night giving out piggyback rides, dad-dances with them standing on his feet, and lessons about the magic used to decorate the hall, alongside Percy Weasley and Penelope Clearwater, because they gave him the puppy eyes and he is Weak to the puppy eyes.)
——and when Hermione sees Harry and Ron come into the antechamber for champions, she hits them both on the arm for laughing at her all this time. They exchange compliments, and the boys show off their suits and Ron’s modified robes. Then she asks the real question, namely:
“Which of you will be dancing which part?”
and the two just kind of go quiet and stare first at each other, because they hadn’t even thought of that, and then back at Hermione with big pleading eyes begging for help.
McGonagall, amused but on a tight schedule, chivvies the champions and their dates out before Hermione can say more than a joking, “This is what you get for keeping it a secret from me! Do, hahaha, do the tango or something!”
Harry and Ron exchange smirks and all Hermione can bring herself to do is smother giggles in Viktor’s shoulder and conjure them a few roses.
She should’ve known better than to think that the end of it. They drag her into no few ridiculous three-way dances before the night is up. It’s a good night, and they share the next bleary morning with the rest of the dorm, as a big, wild, Gryffindor family.
——and that is how Harry Potter and Ron Weasley made the front page of the Daily Prophet, in muggle suits (vests but no jackets, sleeves rolled up) with roses in their mouths, aggressively doing the tango. The photographer has captured Harry dipping the significantly-taller Ron and waggling his eyebrows suggestively before they both lose their balance and collapse in a tangle of adolescent limbs, laughing like loons.
BOYS IN LOVE? the headline asks.
——certain people are getting really, really sick of people commenting on Harry’s love life.
——"BEST FRIENDS FOREVER" Harry, Ron, and Hermione are quoted later in an exclusive interview with Rita Skeeter, massive grins on their photographed faces, and joy in their hearts.
Let’s talk about the times Robin survives Marian, when she is the fair memory who haunts him all his days, the wild eyes he learns to live without, the part of his heart he teaches to heal;
And the times Marian survives Robin, when she stands at the firelight’s edge and looks over these brave men, these few and merry men, and says with the even, carrying voice that she did not learn from Robin, this is not the end of us.
There are a hundred ways to fall in love and Marian and Robin have fallen into each of them. A shepherdess and a yeoman, a feisty noble daughter and an estranged noble son—she has fallen for his wit, his bravery, his chin; he for her skill, her beauty, her kindnesses. No matter how many arrows she loses or witticisms she drops at the audience’s feet, Marian will always be a lover.
Marian the shepherdess, with her loyal sheep dog and her loyal Robin, a Marian who understands being hungry, who understands patience and how to find a lost ewe, who knows the hills of Nottingham better than the sheriff or the outlaw and delights in outwitting them both.
Marian the archer, the way she held competition between her teeth til it begged for mercy; or the single daughter of a destitute house, who took up poaching in the king’s wood and knows the meaning of silence but somehow, despite it all, falls for a brash youth with a big mouth and a bigger heart.
A Marian who fights; or a Marian who sews and listens and whispers and smuggles out who and what Robin needs; a Marian who gets lost in the woods, who gets held up on the road or who gets suspicious in the market when rough men trade silver for bread and cloth; a Marian who is the heart of their cause and the head of their crimes.
They call her a lover so let’s call her a lover.
Let’s tell stories about the first time Marian falls asleep on hard ground beside the wheezy snores of Sherwood’s outlaws and feels safe, feels wanted, feels like she’s come home. They build something out in those woods with deer hides that are theirs only by right of aim and speed and skill, with the gold of fat rich men, and with the thanks of poor farmers whose children will eat decently five days a week instead of two.
Let’s talk about her love. Let’s talk about how she falls in love with this.
The runaway daughters, the girls hidden in boys’ clothing, in boys’ names, in boys’ bodies—Marian takes them aside when she can and whittles them bows to suit each of their strengths.
When a youth with skinned knees and tightly bound breasts weeps with rage when she can’t keep up with Robin’s combat practices, Marian tells her here’s how you fight when your center lives in your belly and not under your breastbone. Trust your legs, child. Trust your center. Yours is a different strength, not a lesser one.
Soon enough the girl is flipping boys over her hip while she stands with slightly bent knees, and Marian is making money hand over fist, betting against her opponents.
Let’s talk about how many ways there are to fall in love. Let’s talk about how the love of one man as a life’s calling is not a story I am interested in telling.
The outlaws were her children, her flock, her brothers and her right-hand men. They held each others’ secrets and each others’ lives in their callused palms and kept them safe.
Let’s talk about getting lost in the woods: Marian the shopkeeper’s daughter getting lost at fifteen, the first time she ran away from home, getting lost in the dark, the creep and tangle of it, and making it back long after moonrise by way of her aunt’s old nursery rhyme about how moss grows on the north side of trees. (At the next full moon she runs away to the woods again. She is not afraid, or, if she is, it doesn’t matter; she is in love).
Lost: Marian, dyemaker’s daughter, walking out to the woods with all the men who came before Robin, not for them but for the woods: the trees snarling overhead, the way they make her feel like life is more than this, that there is mystery, there is depth, and there is distance.
Let’s talk about how she loved Robin, yes, the quiet ways she traced his jawbone with shaking fingers, the hard way they both looked at each other across the fire and knew neither of them could long survive this. Let’s talk about how she loved. Let’s call it being lost.
Robin saw her first in a market, a smithy, a crossroads, and she was beautiful, but it wasn’t until she raised her chin that he loved her (til she smiled, til she shot, til she vanished—there are a hundred ways they fell in love).
Let’s talk about how she fell in love with herself.
Because she did: arrows and whispers, cold nights and good liars, Robin’s hand and the men who made Sherwood their own– she fell for it all. She fell for herself most of all.
Maybe your name is not Marian and my name is not Marian and sometimes hers is not either.
But we are all sometimes lost in the woods. We all sometimes find ourselves there, and open our eyes, open our lungs, fall in love.
I hope you have had only lovely days since you sent this!
Matt puts on his best surprised face when he walks into their dorm freshman year and Foggy says, “Happy Birthday! I made you a cake!” and, then, five seconds later, “Shit, you smelled it, didn’t you?”
“While I was still in the elevator,” Matt says, apologetically.
Foggy sighs and walks closer so Matt gets a faceful of delicate smoke tendrils and the scent of sugary sweet icing.
“Well, blow out these completely unsurprising candles,” Foggy says, mostly joking.
They eat half the cake in one sitting. It might not be surprising, but it is delicious.
*
“That is the least surprised face that I’ve ever seen,” Foggy says, accusingly. “Everybody can come out.”
“I tried,” Matt says, lifting his hands in the air as people crawl out from behind furniture. “…I’m blind, why did you even bother hiding people?”
“Surprise,” Marci says, dryly, from where she’s perched on top of their tiny kitchen table.
“I’m trying to give you birthday traditions, Murdock,” Foggy says. “How did you know? Did you have an informant? I will find them.”
“I just had a feeling,” Matt says, smiling at him.
Really, he heard about fifteen different heartbeats all together and Foggy whispering, frantically, “Hide, he should be back soon,” while he was walking towards the door.
“Next year,” Foggy says. “I am pointing a finger at you.”
“I look forward to it,” Matt says, doing something he doesn’t normally do, stepping in to hug Foggy first.
*
It’s 8:00 PM on his birthday, junior year, and nothing has happened. Matt’s convinced himself that Foggy forgot–which is fine, it’s no big deal–when he suddenly bursts into their room.
“I got held up,” he says, thrusting something at Matt. “There’s, uhm, flowers. A few inches in front of you.”
Matt takes them curiously, lifting the bundle of flowers up to smell them then smiling at Foggy. He’s pretty sure that they’re roses.
“Is this my surprise?” Matt asks. Nobody’s ever gotten him roses before.
“No,” Foggy says. His voice is unsteady but–sure, like he’s about to say something really important. “It’s…well, it’s me.”
He steps in close to Matt, cupping one of his cheeks. Matt’s whole world stops, fingers clenching around the stems. The only thing he can think is that he’s thankful there aren’t any thorns as Foggy brushes their mouths together gently.
“Surprise?” he says, hesitantly, close to Matt’s lips.
“Yeah,” Matt breathes, genuinely shocked. Foggy starts to step away and Matt’s brain starts working just enough to know that it’s a bad idea, so he pulls him in to kiss him again, as many times as Foggy will let him.
OKAY BUT IF YOU DON’T WRITE MATT GETTING THE PRESENT AND KNOWING IT’S REALLY FROM FOGGY AND FEELING SOME KIND OF WAY ABOUT IT, I WILL
I MEAN, CLEARLY I HAD TO DO SOMETHING
“Matty,” Mrs. Nelson says, when Matt opens his front door,
the day after Christmas.
“Oh,” Matt says. “Hi.”
“We missed you at dinner,” she says. “Can I come
inside?”
She doesn’t wait for him to say yes, brushing past him
and dropping an armful of packages on Matt’s kitchen table. She still smells
like Christmas, like cinnamon and spices and fresh-baked bread, peppermint.
Matt didn’t even go to Mass.
“Do you have a good excuse for not coming?” she asks,
not unkindly.
Matt opens his mouth, shuts it, shrugs before he
finally says, “I didn’t think I’d be welcome.”
“You’re always welcome,” she says, walking forward to
lay a warm hand on his arm. “I tell you that every year, I would have thought
it would have sunk in by now.”
“I—I don’t know what Foggy told you,” Matt says.
“It doesn’t matter,” she says. “You’re part of the family.
You’re always welcome.”
Matt tries to say something and just manages to
stammer, ducking his head. She squeezes his arm gently.
“You eat every single cookie that I brought you,” she
says, “and I’m supposed to emphasize that the present is absolutely not from
Foggy.”
“Okay,” Matt says, faintly.
“He also didn’t ask me to give you this,” she says,
then wraps her arms around Matt. Matt goes stiff for a couple of seconds before
he breathes in deep and sinks against her, feeling something break inside of
him. Mrs. Nelson is small, but she still feels like she’s holding him up while
Matt shudders and tries to blink away tears.
“Sorry for missing dinner,” he says, when she lets go
of him.
“You can come over next Friday to make it up to me,”
she says, then waits until he nods to pat his cheek gently. “I’ll make your
favorites. See you soon.”
“See you,” Matt murmurs.
He stands there for awhile with his arms curled around
himself after she leaves before he goes to open the present and pull out the
softest sweater that he’s ever felt. He runs his fingers over it slowly before he brings it up to press his face into it, inhaling deeply. It smells like Christmas, too, and a little bit like Foggy.
Matt kind of feels like his heart is breaking all over again.
oh my god, they were roommates 