Disclaimer: I wish I did, but I don't own any of these characters: they are the property of the one, the only, the creator of my childhood: J.K. Rowling.

Dreams and Memories

I remember it vividly, painfully, as clear as if I am eleven again and the boy with eyes which are the color of grass (if, the color of grass were beautiful and clear and glowing), which see through me like nothing else has; he refuses my hand, and I feel a piercing through my heart as though the eyes are daggers.

For years I do not know why it affects me that much, why that one gesture, that one person's (who shouldn't even matter, goddamnit) refusal to take my hand affects me so. But I keep wishing he would have taken it. I dream of him taking it. I dream of friendship, what could have been, and eventually, unconsciously, I dream of hands, of skin; of lips and teeth…

…and I want, I want it so, and in the morning after I get up, after I moan his name desperately in the confines of a Silencing Charm, after I have cleaned up and felt disgusted with myself and promised myself No, no, never again, I go downstairs and I taunt him, I torture him for what he does to me because even if he doesn't know it, he's killing me inside.

Slowly but oh, so surely, he's ripping me apart.

And I don't know what to do, because I can't ever tell him; he will look at me with embarrassing pity or heart-wrenching disgust and I can't tell which is worse, and I certainly am not about to find out.

Forgetting him, letting go, moving on? All out of the question, because God knows I've tried.

So I do nothing, only dream, and taunt, and dream some more.

~0~

In the first year, still smarting from the rejection, I challenge him to a duel, hoping he'll come alone, without that bloody weasel; so that I can talk to him, force him to be friends. But that weasel interferes, and spoilt brat as I am, I get angry, and upset, and I go to Filch.

I boast when the Chamber of Secrets is opened. I hope he'll notice, that he'll pay me some attention, and I flinch as I think about it at night, because God I sound like Ginny Weasley. And at least she has an excuse: a crush on him.

I do not have a crush on him. That is ridiculous.

It hurts, I moan in the third year, and all I'm wishing (and violently denying that I am wishing it) is that he will come and make it better, make it stop bleeding, but he doesn't.

It is also around this year that the dreams start evolving into something a bit more than the friendship I originally thought I craved only.

The following year rolls around, and his name rings out: all I can do is stare. Stare and watch and provoke and hope, hope he makes it through every stupid thing unscathed and when he does I'm so full with relief I insult him some more.

Of course, by the end of that year he'd exposed my father, the stupid annoying- not attractive, not attractive no matter how many dreams I was having by this point- git and now I hated him even more.

Which was why I joined that idiotic Inquisitorial Squad in fifth year. So I'd have a chance to express my hate. It was an extremely confusing year for me. What with the hate and the hormones and the guilt and the stupid, stupid dreams. Always the dreams.

In the sixth year I'm a bit busy, planning a death and all that, but he comes after me. And I've been waiting years, years for him, but he isn't coming for me, he's coming to accuse me and prove himself right and that makes me so bloody angry because I'd've stopped the whole assassination plot right there for him, if he'd just. If he'd just said my name.

But he doesn't. he nearly kills me, then he leaves.

I remember waiting, the year after that. I remember hating the insane lord I was supposed to worship. I remember walking out of the castle, so many times, to find him, but each time I thought of my mother.

Say what you want about Slytherins- we are loyal. Even more loyal to our own kind than Hufflepuffs are.

So I turned back.

I remember that Christmas. I remember being torn between him being tortured, or my parents. So like the coward I was, I said I didn't know. When of course I knew.

I know those achingly beautiful green eyes better than I know my own.

I remember the war of Hogwarts, of dueling and pain and running and where are you, where are you.

And there he was.

I wanted to run my hands through his hair, lick the clean line of his neck like I'd done so many times. In a dream.

I remember forcing myself to stay calm.

Then fire, then pain, and then resigning myself to the fact that I was going to die in this fiery hell. At least I saw you one more time.

~0~

I remember it vividly, your hand reaching out to me. I remember having a sudden flashback of us being eleven, you refusing mine. An insane thought flashes through my head: Maybe I won't take it, like you didn't mine, so my death will haunt you forever, Potter, you complete asshole.

But I take it, of course. Not just because not taking it would mean a certain and painful death. But because the eleven-year-old inside me has been waiting years for this moment, and as I clamber onto his broomstick, that kid cheers.

I hold on.

Fin

See if you could review, I would be terribly grateful.