Glass
Again I sit behind you on the stands, the morning wind playing with your green scarf and turning my fingers blue. My cloak is too thin for this, and I'm hungry for skipping breakfast, but I don't question why we're here. You don't seem to feel the cold, but then, my body blocks most of the wind. We've been sitting here for an hour now - me, watching you watching the team soar ten feet above us; but now the practice has ended, the players have landed and it's time to go to class. I call your name but you don't register; your gaze still fixed on the red and gold team. I call your name but you don't answer.
Maybe it's the wind.
"...wind up the tail feathers of the cuckoo bird to ensure..."
I sit behind you in Potions the way I do every lesson. I don't pay attention knowing that I'm guaranteed a pass and watch your back instead. I always watch your back, I always make sure that everything is the way you want it, that no one can touch you. It's the way I've been taught, the way I've been brought up. I'll look after you, the way my father looks after yours, and when that day comes, you'll make sure we will emerge triumphant.
I'm not as dumb as you think I am. I merely know what I need to know.
Snape calls out the names of our partners and you've been paired up with him again. The class is silent as they watch to see the reaction. But there is no reaction from you or him and I wonder when things changed. I imagine Snapešs face fell when The Boy Who Should Have Died did not protest. The class begins to murmur again. I watch you carefully, as you pick up your knife to slice the armadillo livers. Your hand is shaking. He watches your hand too. Maybe he thinks that you are going to stab him. And maybe you are.
"I would have thought you'd know how to use a knife, with your upbringing," he says clearly.
"At least I had upbringing," you shoot back.
Your shoulders tense in wait for the reponse, but it doesn't come. You try again.
"Maybe I would know how to use a knife if I had spent my life chopping up vegetables for some muggle family because my parents were pathetic enough to..."
Suddenly you are on the floor and he is hovering over you and he is punching you - and you are letting him punch you. I don't know why and I'm confused and I wait to see if you have something special up your sleeve. When it becomes clear that you do not, I come and I pull him off by the the back of his collar and throw him against his chair careful not to hurt him. Much. He groans.
You get up and glance at him for a split second - your expression concerned.
Maybe it's just your bruised face.
"...Face-Replenishing Cream will help those awful bruises fade..."
We all escaped detention though Gryffindor had 30 points taken. Madame Pomfrey's constant clucking is even worse than a lecture from Snape.
We leave the hospital wing in silence. I know better than to talk to you now; I know that that look on your face means that you would not be touched. I've seen it many times in years gone by, when your father scolded you in front of me, when you fell off your broom for the first time, when you realised that the world is bigger than the manor you live in. But not much bigger.
It completely unnerves me when you stop talking. It means that something is wrong.
We meet him again and you practically spit in his face. Everything inside me knows that if you hate him, you would have asked me to hurt him by now. But you've never asked. Each time, you search him out and you taunt him, and you always wait just long enough to hear the retort before you leave. Sometimes you hurt the red head. The mudblood is beneath you. But never him.
This time you've taunted him enough to feel the wrath of the red head. I'm glad that you're back to normal again. I clench my fists and stand up straight in case I am called upon.
But he merely puts his hand on the angry boy's shoulder and looks directly as you. "Don't bother, Ron. He's not worth the trouble."
You're silent again. Your head droops almost imperceptibly to anyone but me.
And the three of them leave.
"Leave me alone." You're sitting on the grand leather couch and you don't even look up as you dismiss me. I don't know what to think. I don't dare to conjure theories to fill in all my "maybes" in case they should ever slip from my lips by accident. But I've watched you enough today to know a few things.
I know tonight, Pansy will be sneaked into our dorm. I know that as she moans your name you won't be thinking of her. That your pillow in the morning will be wet with tears.
Maybe they'll be hers.
But I don't think so.
And had I ever dared to bring it up with you I know that my father would curse me to my death. I know he would.
I know that Goyle sees the same things that I do. And tomorrow morning we'll get up to see it all again.