A/N: Written for Fanfiction Tournaments at the HPFC. This is for November – round 1 – Third Year.
Many thanks to mew-tsubaki for her, as always, exceptional beta-reading.
Dedicated to BlueEyes444.
The Forgotten Art of the Moment
Second year was all laughing and joking and shoving each other into walls and still trying to figure out all of Hogwarts' secrets, so that the two of you could be ruling Hogwarts (even though you both knew that was something that would never happen, it was just more fun that way). Now it's third year, though, and it might be the same between the two of you, since you're still laughing together and joking, but there also are differences.
Dean is drawing a lot more, for example. He's having these moments where he says nothing at all for days, even, and instead just draws and draws, and his eyes are a bit glazed when he's not; when he does all of those normal things like going to class and having dinner (and it's solely your responsibility getting him to those places, you're the one who has to drag him there, and sure, he complies and follows without complaining), but when he is drawing, then his eyes burn and burn and you can sit staring at him and his eyes and the way his hand dances across the sheet for hours.
And whenever he's like that, whenever he loses himself in that way that you can see that he is drawing in his mind even when he's not doing it for real, like when he's sitting in the Potions classroom and his potion slowly is getting burnt because you can't manage to watch over two cauldrons at once…you're much closer to him, as though you have a need to assure yourself that you're still there, you're still his best friend even though he, in his own way, neglects you. Or maybe you want to assure him—assure his unconsciousness—that you will be there, no matter what. No matter if he ignores you, you will be just where he left you.
You're sitting on the other side of a table in the common room when you're thinking of all this. His eyes are fastened on the paper in front of him, and they're skittering about at the same pace as his hand is hovering over the paper, so as not to smudge the charcoal. He told you that once, when you asked if his arm wouldn't get tired from hanging in the air like that instead of resting against the paper.
His feet are stretched out under the table, and your left foot is pressed against his and hasn't moved ever since the both of you sat down after dinner. You're trying to do an essay McGonagall gave you, and you're almost finished with yours. Now you just have to write it all over again, but with other words, words that sound like Dean's. And making them sound like Dean's isn't that hard, not when you know each other so well. The most difficult part is, when you're finished, getting Dean to copy it all so that it's his own handwriting (because that is something you just can't copy, not with the way his penmanship as artistic as his drawing, all curvy and with those strange little slashes through the t's), because Dean always argues that it's cheating, that Seamus shouldn't have, that he'll stay up all night finishing it, because "I can't believe I forgot."
However, you know you'll win him over in the end, because you always do, and Dean will always smile upside-down-ed-ly at you as he becomes too tired to argue anymore, and then you'll decide it's time to go to bed and Dean will whisper "Thank you" just before he closes the curtains to his bed and you'll fall asleep with a smile on your lips.
But right now, you're comfortable just sitting there working and looking up every now and then to watch him draw, with the fire crackling next to you, and you press your foot a little bit harder against his ankle, and he smiles without looking up from his paper.