Hallways 2 for Alanis

[lunesque]

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If I somehow mysteriously, miraculously stumbled upon a genie’s bottle, (and with everything that’s happened since I’ve come to Hogwarts, I wouldn’t be surprised if I did) I wonder… actually, I know my friends would be surprised by my wishes.

Well, maybe not with my first—to defeat Voldemort.

But if I ever did that…

My second wish… I’d want to be deaf. Deaf to all of their shouts of how I’m their savior, their messiah, the legendary hero, when in reality all I am is a normal boy. I wish I could be deaf to their hypocrisy, deaf to how easily everyone turns against me, just because I can do something that they don’t understand, or even worse, because they think I did something that they know I would never do.

And maybe…

If I were deaf, maybe I could hear you. Maybe I could understand what you mean, instead of what you say. The things that you try to tell me with flashing gray eyes and a lithe body that flows ever closer to mine, instead of your mask of arched eyebrows and cold cultured sneers.

And maybe I’d have the courage to ask the genie to grant my most secret wish. The one desire I’ve hidden from everyone, even myself, at times.

I wish I had taken your hand that day, before the Sorting Ceremony. I thought that I was doing the right thing then, but now… I wish it so desperately that it leaves me breathless.

Ron once asked me what sense was the most important to me, and I said sight.

Because I can’t bear the thought of not looking at you.

There are nights when I sneak into your room and watch you glow in the moonlight. All that snowy skin reflecting the gentle light as it pours through your window. In those moments, you look so vulnerable, so young. You sleep deeper than the dead, deeper than I have in years, perfectly displayed in the night.

I’ve memorized each breath you take, how your arm always falls asleep after precisely two hours of you lying on it. How you wake up, blearily staring at your fingers in startled surprise that they’re still there. How you flop over, your hair a silken waterfall of stars over the black Slytherin sheets.

And yet, I don’t know how you feel. My fingers itch to touch your skin, to trace the map of your muscles bunching underneath my hands. Are you as chilly as everyone says you are? A prince made of ice and silvered stone? I don’t think so. You look so warm, lying underneath the moonlight with your cheeks flushed from dreams that hold no place for me.

I’m so close that I could just reach out and touch you. But if I did, would you wake up? Would your eyes narrow in derision as you insult my weakness, the weakness that brings me to your side every night?

Scratch my first wish. I can defeat Voldemort on my own.

I wish that you loved me.

But wishes are for children.

And we’re not children anymore.

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