Passing Notes

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The note she passes him during class is exactly the kind of thing you would expect: Do you like me? Check yes or no.

He looks down - reads the note - doesn't return it.

Her face burns, and she resolves not to speak to him ever again.

She grows up, of course, and the classroom fades away into a sidewalk and an elevator and an office, but he never goes away, he stays in that town and grows up right alongside her, and she ignores him with a passion. The only kinds of notes she passes him now are things like Reply ASAP scrawled at the top of a memo, which she slips under his door without even knocking to see if he's in.

She doesn't know if he actually replies ASAP, because he never returns those notes, either.

Then suddenly there's someone else, and she's swept off her feet - still in the same town - still in the same building, ten feet away from him, the same way she's always been. In six months she's engaged; in a year she's married.

She sends his wedding invitation along with everyone else's, but the RSVP never comes, not even to say "No."

(It's exactly what she expected, so she can't figure out why it bothers her.)

She hates her new last name. It doesn't suit her. There are too many syllables, too many letters, and she doesn't know how to pronounce "McKinnon" without tripping over her own tongue.

(She knows he came to the wedding. She saw him hiding in the back.)

Two babies: one is Lily's, one is Alice's, and the office throws a party for them both, and he stands beside James Potter and grins as if the boy is his own son.

She sits at her desk and pens a thousand different memos, each with a different excuse, and some of them are believable like, Owl Arthur Weasley back or Moody wants a word when you get a mo, but some of them are honest, like Why do you act like we're strangers and Why did you come to my wedding and Do you like me? Check yes or no.

The divorce is finalized less than a year after she says I Do.

He stops at her desk to offer his sympathies.

(It's the first time he's spoken to her in over ten years.)

She cries herself to sleep that night.

She's just getting used to her old last name, and the absence of the ring on her left hand, when the note comes sliding under her door.

Do you want to have dinner with me?

There is no signature.

He hasn't left an option of checking yes or no, so she draws her own boxes and pushes the memo into his office the very next time she passes it.

No reply comes back, but she doesn't mind, and he's waiting for her by the front doors when the clock strikes five.

It's three dinners later when he shows her the glass jar.

"I kept them," he says, dumping its contents out across the table. It's every note she's ever passed him. At the very bottom, faded and slightly torn, is the very first one.

(The box for yes is checked off.)

"I wanted to tell you," he says. "You froze me out."

(It's checked off twice.)

"I was going to give you the note back after class, away from teachers and everything, but you seemed angry, and you wouldn't look at me."

(She remembers writing that note as if it were yesterday.)

"And then, you know, after that the right moment never presented itself."

(She doesn't hear. All she can think is that "Black" sounds a whole lot better than "McKinnon.")

She gets to kiss him one glorious time before she goes out like a firework.

(And nobody who was there that night could figure out why she died smiling.)

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