Alert the presses! J. K. Rowling has switched identities with an insignificant girl! "So unfair," claims a fan! "It should have been ME!"

...Er, no. Sorry, I don't own what you recognise. L'sigh.

Mum says that I should stop my stalker-like tendencies. Dad says that, as long as I'm not scarred for life, I can do whatever I want. Sally, of course, remains silent and Art just giggles when I bring up the topic. But we've all seen Them, and there's no denying that they're intriguing. A redhead and a mop of black hair… after seeing photos of His forefather and their wives, it's not that much of a shocker that He fell for a redhead.

It is shocking that He fell for that particular one, though, after Their history.

Whenever the topic is brought up by anyone but me, Sally will gleefully point out that I'm jealous. I'm not, by the way. It's a lie. I mean, yes, I liked Him once upon a time… oh, lord have mercy. It was, what, two weeks ago now? Must've been… anyway, we went to the same school. I fell once, you know, scraped my knee. He helped me up, smiled, and fled back to his lunch.

It's a silly thing, Art claims; that I don't care now. I'm not the Girl-With-The-Red-Hair that He ended up dating. I was the obvious choice, he likes to think. But then again, he never knew Him. When we went to different schools… well, I attended the average school, and off he trotted to some boarding school in Scotland.

Where He met Her. Her, with the perfect dark red mane of hair that I would never be able to attain – me, the strawberry blonde with the bushy hair, ever grab hold of hair of that amount of beauty? Only in my wildest dreams… and even then, it was a Dream-in-a-Dream. I get those frequently when it regards my hair… and Hers, admittedly.

When He came back for that first summer after our first year of school, I tended to follow Him around at a distance. He turned around and saw me seven times one day… and that's when, I suppose, He figured it out. But He only smiled that heart-wrenching smile of His that lured any talentless girl into poetry, and asked me if I had seen Him at all that day. As if He was asking about another person. In fact, He only laughed good-naturedly when I blushed (I hate red hair, even if I have one of the… kinder shades) and asked me if I would like to join Him on his hunt for Something to Do.

So I did. I spent the day with Him; spent the day cringing lightly any time he mentioned Her. Because Her name was unavoidable. He told me all about his friends, and then His school (though He offered miniscule amounts of information on it), and then He reached Her. He had paused his ramblings long enough for us to grab our bathing suits and scamper to the local pool, but as soon as we resurfaced to the top of the water, He was off again, explaining Her perfect personality and, in short, perfect everything.

Though I did not admit it, it made my blood boil.

But I lived through it. I lived through the summer and His rantings of how She would never like Him, because He was too imperfect for Her. How He had tried so much to get Her to notice Him, only to trip or do some other utterly embarrassing thing and have Her laugh along with everyone else (save His friends, though one in particular tended to chuckle along with the crowd), how the one time He had managed an un-embarrassing conversation with Her it had been cut short because His professor had asked Him a question that He did not know the answer to. The class had laughed. She had laughed. The portraits had laughed (of course, He said, this was only figurative). He had not.

When He came back the next summer, He only continued to rant. This time, though, it was about that fact that He had tried to change for Her but She had taken to notice. "She told me that if I wanted to be a clown, then my school was not a place to learn the particular talent from," He had sighed one afternoon as we lazed around under the boiling sun. I had sighed sympathetically, though my heart was pounding, ramming furiously against my ribcage. Trying to escape so that it could strangle Her for making Him feel that way.

That was the first summer that I met His friend, though – the one that tended to chortle. He was good-looking… unnaturally so. Thus, I ditched my fancy for Him, and developed a new obsession… of course, that wasted away once I found out from Him that His friend was notorious for being Unnaturally Good-Looking, and at the age of thirteen, had a fan club that consisted of females four years older than him.

Well, I had told myself, I am not going to be One of Many. So I wasn't: I abandoned my giddiness whenever I saw him, and instead focused on not growling whenever He mentioned Her name. He did so often… and it hurt. I think His friend could see that I felt that way… I don't know. He always claimed that His friend was a 'bloody miracle worker'.

But I digress. The tales that summer left me steaming through the entire year and, ergo, I turned down the one boy to ask me out on a date. He was handsome, I have to admit… but, as I said, I was steaming over the knowledge that even after two years and a bucketful of torment; He had not given up on Her.

That summer was the worst, though, that I had experienced yet. He came home moody, and when I enquired about His change of attitude, He scowled and began his annual rant: He, Her, professors, pranks, embarrassing moments… but then He hit a topic that made me visibly wince. He asked me if I was ill, but I merely smiled and shook my head. I should have told Him then, I suppose. I should have told Him that, had He hounded me the way that He chased after Her so desperately, I would not have been so cruel. However, He would have taken that in a platonic way… a way that it would not have been meant as.

Instead, I settled with a tactful, "You really like her, don't you?" His reply was a disbelieving snort, and a statement that of course He liked her if He had suffered two years for it. When I reminded Him of the last year, He had frowned and thanked me for reminding Him… to which I blushed profusely and refused to say another word unless asked.

The following year, I wound myself up in knots over the fact that He had liked Her for three years now – one year spent moping around, one trying to impress, one (foolishly) trying to woo Her into agreeing on a date…

That summer I learnt that Their relationship, though never friendly, had taken a turn for the worst. They argued regularly, He had sighed to me. Over petty things. She disapproved of the things that He and His friends did to pay back on people… people that had hurt them in some way or another. "She calls it cruel," He had muttered into my shoulder one afternoon (a purely platonic gesture, much to my irritation), "I call it justice."

Perhaps His vision of justice was faulty. I didn't care, however. His Faulty Visions of Justice were one of the things that made Him… Him.

So when He came home that summer with plenty more rants to tell, I grew frustrated. I snapped at Him that, if He ever wanted Her to like Him the way that He liked Her, perhaps He should stop being such a git… I regretted that. Oh, how I regretted that.

Unfortunately, I only cooled down a month afterwards, and by then it was September third. He was off at that school of His, likely trying to woo Her again. God forbid He uses the advice of someone that 'hated' Him – I knew Him better than that. And, to be honest, God forbid I ever hated Him. Or ever will.

That summer, He and the Friend That Chuckles (although I later learnt that he had a dog-like bark, not a chuckle) stayed at my place. Usually I would have whooped for joy over this startling development – in private, of course. But I didn't. Not in private, and certainly not in public. My reasoning for this, of course, was quite sensible: His parents were dead. Murdered. Right across the park from me… and I didn't even notice.

It was safe to say that things were more than a tad awkward that summer. I don't think that He had quite forgiven me for my Stress Breakdown, I was trying my best to cure that, and Dog Boy was stuck in the middle, making lame jokes that failed to help the situation.

The night before they went back for their last year at school, I located them in their substitute bedroom and surprised them with a bearhug. Eventually, though, they hugged back… and my stomach flip-flopped at His touch. But it was purely platonic. Everything between us was.

I guess, in the end, that's what brought Them together. He no longer had to worry about his dignity: He could follow my advice without following the enemy's orders. And that He did. He calmed down, He cooled off, He stopped trying to impress Her. He was the guy that I had always known… and She fell for him. Just like I did, but six years later.

So here I sit, in the window of His substitute room. He and Dog Boy have both moved out, found their own homes. But His stuff is still in here; nothing has moved. I have an inkling that He knew… knows that I like him. Because no matter what, it still hurts. God, it hurts. Just watching them stroll leisurely though the park that we used to sit in hurts. I watch them laugh on the bench that we used to laugh on. Sit under our tree.

I continue to watch them: the red-haired wonder and the raven-haired heart-throb. What I'd do to be her…

Sorry, did I say that I was over him two weeks ago?

Mum does say that I have a soft spot for white lies.

I'll never get over James Potter.

Never.