Name: Hannah-Freya

Email:

Rating: PG so far

Pairing: Will be DM/HrG

Summary: What happens when you're presented with an opportunity to have everything you ever wanted? Would you take it? (NOT SLASH!)

Summary for this part: The beginning, and the forming of an idea...

Part 1

I'll never forget the first time we met. The start of our first year, we were both eleven.

Two boys, the same age, starting the same school, both involved in the arduous task of being fitted for robes (a dreaded past-time for any male), both wizards.

So it doesn't take a genius to follow the equation and come up with the answer that we should've been friends... should've gotten along at the very least.

But we didn't.

Of course I didn't know who he was then. Didn't see the scar that marked him as surely as any sign could, that he was one chosen, above all others, to do something great. Didn't know that he possessed a Gryffindor heart (an ultimate failure as I had always been taught).

I only saw a boy. A boy my age. A boy, like me being fitted for school robes, who like me, didn't have doe-eyed parents standing by. Who, like me, seemed to have no one.

I will admit here, I was socially inept. The only company I'd ever been privy to were those my father deemed acceptable, who spent the whole time either fawning over me or stood terrified, agreeing to everything I said (no matter how wrong) terrified of causing me displeasure.

So it's fair to say, the only social interaction, the only experience I had of trying to please, were those who had already convinced themselves that because of my name, I was perfect. An ideal "friend".

Of course, I tried to please my father, but that's another task entirely. Nothing short of perfection was good enough for him... and yet, my whole life he taught me that anything and everything I would do was right because of who I was. Because of my name I would always be the best. Was the best. Was the one everyone wanted to be, or at least, the one everyone wanted to be near ("like moths to a flame", he had said). But everything I did was never 'quite' enough for Father. I always saw it in his eyes. Simply because I wasn't him, wasn't the very emulation of him, meant I would never be a perfect 10 in his eyes... but a 10 in the eyes of one of our namesake (as he always told me), was an 100 in everyone else's (he always spat the last part, as if they were dirt).

Simply because of who I was, I would automatically be a 100 to everyone else, but to my own father I would never even be a 10.

That eleven-year-old boy was the first one to truly shatter that.

Of course I had heard of him. Had admired him. He was a 100 in everyone's eyes; he was one worthy of my friendship. He wasn't a moth, he too was a flame. And together we would burn brightly.

But he refused me.

True I didn't go about the offer in the most... diplomatic way possible.

The arrogance and confidence in my voice wasn't felt at that moment... I wasn't nervous, I was certain of his acceptance, but I had opened myself up to him in a way I hadn't for anyone else.

I had been eager, and images of us as friends flashed through my mind as I held out my hand.

I had, in those arrogant words offered myself to him.

And he refused.

It had stung just as badly as if he had slapped me. The first thing I felt was shock.

He had turned me down. He refused me. Knew my name and still refused me.

But the thing that sent me reeling was the hurt. I had wanted his friendship. I had wanted him to be, not as all others were to me, not as Crabbe and Goyle were, but as a friend. I had seen us playing pranks on pathetic Hufflepuffs together, being team-mates on the Slytherin Quiddich team together. I had seen him as (almost) an equal...

He had refused.

And so went the shock, the hurt, replaced instead with bitterness, jealousy, rage.

I wanted to hate him. He and his freckled pauper and his know-it-all mudblood. He and his stupid scar, stupid broomstick.

But I didn't. I still don't.

Oh I don't like him, mind. To an outsider my feelings for Potter would appear to be hatred, loathing. But they're not. Just as before bitterness, jealousy and rage were my companions in his stead.

I was green with envy over him. I thought at first it was because he always saved the day (Saint Potter), or because he always won the Quiddich game (Perfect Potter), or because he could do ANYTHING and get away with it (Golden Gryffindor).

I thought that for years.

But at the end of fourth year, I began to understand I was envious, jealous, for an entirely different reason.

This great epiphany occurred on the very last day of our fourth year.
We were all on the train, on the way home. I had to see him, had to knock him down a peg or two.

And I did.

I saw it in his eyes at the mention of the Hufflepuff martyr.

But it wasn't that.

The moment occurred as I was dragged (or rather, thrown) from his compartment.

I envied Potter his friends. I was blinded with jealousy, that he had what I wanted, but could never had.

I spent the summer going over every memory I had of the Golden Trio.

And I wondered what it was like, to laugh, to be accepted, to be loved.

I wondered what it would be like to have people rush from the stands after a Quddich game as fast as their feet could carry them, to see that I was all right.

To have them argue with Madame Pomfrey because they didn't want to leave my side. To positively glow when they saw that I was all right.

I wondered what it was like to BE Potter.