Kevin Wilson
Harry Potter is a large part of who I am,
ask anyone who knows me, they will tell you I will quote the movies and the books
at the most random times.
Some of them might also tell you that I,
I am a Hufflepuff.
Don’t listen to them, they are wrong.
See I know what they mean,
I am compassionate, and extremely loyal, quirky and awkward at times.
But I am like Nevil Longbottom.
As a child, bravery was something I found hard to come by;
I remember the first time I went to a haunted house.
I was 11, we were just reaching the end and I still don’t know how I didn’t shit myself.
I thought it was over,
we were walking out toward a field with a fire the size of a small two-story building
and a chain saw revs behind me.
All I remember from there is running straight toward the inferno.
I must have stopped before it because, well I’m still here.
Now I look back and I laugh,
but then I also remember what it was like to be scared of everything.
I was scared of bees and sharks, even though the closest ocean was nine-hundred miles away.
I remember being scared of my dad
Of his voice that he would wield like a sledgehammer to beat the words from my lungs before I could even manage to think them.
“Don’t you dare cry” he’d add as he could see my eyes begin to water
and so I learned to hide myself in the darkness of my room
I crawled under the pillows and blankets and used them to muffle the splashes of my tears.
Sometimes I would drag the blankets with me into the bedroom closet.
It was another door to keep me safe because I was less scared of the monsters than the man who was supposed to protect me from them.
I felt powerless, I cowered in my corner hoping he’d overlook me as if he were legally blind and forgot his glasses but, he never needed glasses.
Still, I cowered, I learned to stay still, stay silent,
Avoid eye contact, never question, always nod and agree.
Fear became like a game of freeze tag and I was always the first one out,
So I had to pretend I was a statue until it was all over.
I vividly remember the first time my father’s fists became the sledgehammer,
The night he beat my mom to the sidewalk,
broke her nose as my sisters screamed for him to stop
I just stood there — in shock. Years of self-defense training and I didn’t protect my mom.
As my mom drove away with my sisters, holding a hand over her bleeding face,
I walked inside with him, too scared what he might do if I said no.
For several years after, I stayed frozen,
I watched and learned how he used his anger as a deadly weapon
meant to silence anyone around him.
He got used to seeing statues sitting around him, because
we didn’t dare stand and risk being taller than his ego.
We didn’t dare risk being the next demolition his sledgehammer sought.
But I watched, I absorbed his anger and made it my own
until one day, one day I stood.
Playing statue for so long I now knew what it meant to be firm
and he struck me, tried to pummel me to the ground.
But I didn’t bend, I didn’t break,
I took the hits as if his sledgehammer was a toy made from plastic and rubber,
and I was a statue carved from the strongest stone
I struck him back,
This time I was the concrete and he would be the one thrown against it.
We would later attend court ordered family counseling.
There I continued to speak against him
while he maintained confidence that I was brainwashed and could not think for myself.
It was to no avail,
we went three times before the counselor was too scared of him to allow us back.
I haven’t seen him consistently since counseling ended.
You see, I wish I was a Hufflepuff.
But the sorting hat doesn’t always take your opinion into consideration,
ask Nevil, he too asked to be in Hufflepuff.
But the hat looked at him, looked at me and said no.
The hat told us, “this — this is gonna hurt, and you’ll need to be brave.”