FIRST YEAR
Sometimes it is the ones we know that we really don't know at all.
We were all much younger then, he even more so than me…
I, of course had always been a rather precocious child. If not the loudest voice in the din of my childhood days, then still certainly the one most heard, and was used to people, both children my own age and younger, as well as many much older, following my lead and hanging off my every word, eager to just be seen as associated with me.
When I was very young my mother often told me I was the brightest star of my generation, and that I would one day grow to be a supernova, and it was all of course, undeniably true.
Like every other magical child in the wizarding world, I too had grown up hearing the name Harry Potter; stories of his tragic night, the suspicion of his mysterious leap into celebrity and the apparent untold wealth of power he possessed.
After all, power was everything.
I had assumed that once at Hogwarts, I would finally take up the mantle left to me by my forefathers, leading the student body as I grew, the brightest star in a sea of black, dragging worthy others into my light and engulfing those unworthy in inky blackness of my dismissal.
Harry Potter was of course, in my every imagining, always my number one, my wand hand; the power behind my name. I would suck him into my life and tether him there with charisma, and together we would take the world by storm.
I'd seen him that first year, in Diagon alley of course, and hardly recognised him for the force that he surely was, so brilliantly hidden was he. Then again on the station platform and the train itself, withdrawn and quiet, shy and unassuming, a brilliant mask, although not one I myself would or could ever utilise.
He was perfect. The dark shadow to my bright light and I knew only I would ever see or use the power within that darkness.
And then IT happened, Harry Potter's superbly created mask was revealed to be reality. A dull, darkened veneer of cold unworthiness, and I knew as surely as if he had told me himself, he would never be mine…and I told myself that I did not want him.
SECOND YEAR
Envy makes those who cannot see blind.
We did, unequivocally, not get along.
Of course, he wasn't my enemy or any such nonsense… he lacked any such threat. He was just an inconveniently placed thorn that dug into my side on occasion, an itch I was unable to scratch, lest my skin rash.
I avoided him when I could, taunted him when I could not. Sometimes I believe that my avoidance bothered him less than the taunts, and for some unfathomable reason, this bothered me.
He had many fooled, sucked in by his 'supposed heroics'. He had after all, by this stage, fought a cave troll, outwitted professors with decades more experience and faced down Voldemort himself. Even at 12 I was intelligent enough to realise what a load of dragon crap that was.
Dead is all Harry Potter would be if he had truly faced any one of these horrors.
Despite the constant fawning, undiluted awe and general sense of hero worship that followed him everywhere; he didn't even have the good sense to enjoy it.
So conceited and aloof that he treated his adoring public with extreme disdain, disregarding the limelight with such hate, and that, more so than anything else angered me. Why should Harry Potter loathe that which I yearned for?
I had known him a year and a half and I had him thoroughly categorised.
Boring, predictable and pathetically weak.
THIRD YEAR
There comes a time when everyone becomes someone, yet most don't recognise themselves until much later.
I was thirteen, the year of self discovery and awareness. Boys realised what girls were and girls realised that boys only want one thing. Specifically, it was the year I realised that girls held no appeal to me.
I was gay.
Of course, this broke many a girls' heart, and pleased me greatly as it meant I had an excuse to not engage their affections; other than I thought many of them looked like a pasty pug-faced mutts.
I only ever had one issue with my sexual awakening, and it involved the mudblood Hufflepuff who caught me practicing my snogging skills with a fifth year Ravenclaw.
Fifth year male Ravenclaw.
Apparently muggles aren't as accepting of same sex couples.
It was quickly explained by the gay and bisexual population of Hogwarts students, some 40%, as well as the majority of straight students, that same sex relationships are not to be tolerated, 'put up with' or in any way 'stomached'.
They just are.
As natural and acceptable as that between a man and a woman.
It seemed we got the message across, however; I still remain unsure what flowers have to do with it. I mean...pansies?
I will admit to having a 'thing' for my roommate for a few months, but he was absolutely enamoured of some girl. There was a fourth year Raven...Geoffrey or some such; I never approached him; he was older, half-blood and seemingly attached to the pretty blond always hanging of his arm and simpering annoyingly; but he was very good looking.
Thick dark hair, body to kill for and there was a certain something about him that I never could pinpoint, but whatever the case; he was hot.
And Harry Potter was undeniably NOT.
Beyond skinny, more like skin and bones, unhealthily pale, tiny; the smallest guy in our year in fact, selfish and egotistical and totally unattractive.
And no, I do not protest too much.
FOURTH YEAR
Jealousyis but love and hate at the same time.Yet love must be nurtured while hate grows unassisted.
I was dating my left hand at this stage, unable to find anyone who truly fascinated me, or was worthy of associating with me in that manner.
And then I heard that we would have visitors from other schools; powerful, dark visitors. Handsome visitors like Victor Krum.
The Triwizard Tournament; which Harry Potter inexplicitly yet undeniably high-jacked, another year in which we were the victims of his ever growing hubris and self interest.
He had grown from a thorn in my side to a tangled, snarled vine, trying to encompass and destroy me, yet I wouldn't give him the satisfaction.
He was everywhere, in everything I tried to do, everywhere I turned; there to gloat, taunt and just generally make my life miserable with his continued existent; his dull, false light still stealing my oxygen, that as weak as he was, he should not have been able to attain.
And then I watched the first task, against the dragon...a fucking Dragon for Merlins sake.
Harry Potter beat a fucking dragon.
And somewhere in the back of my head, my perceptions began to change, adjusting to the information that Harry Potter may truly have some, just a fraction of the power he was supposed to posses.
I will never tell a soul, not ever...but I should have realised something was changing when all I felt during the second task was an undeniable heart stopping feeling of pure jealous rage.
At the Weasel.
Third task still remains a mystery... rumours of everything from The Dark Lord to Harry Potter's dead parents spread like wildfire, but none were confirmed.
All we knew was that Harry Potter had touched the cup, disappeared and reappeared clutching Diggory's dead body.
There was terror, rage, sadness, horror, disbelief...even smatterings of happiness and exaltation...yet all I felt was empty, hollow.
And then he reappeared and I breathed again.
FIFTH YEAR
Burning brightly for the first time, and suddenly the world is alit with flame.
Children went home on the express and young men and woman had replaced them come our return, Fifth year.
The men taller, stronger, broader.
The woman, prettier, curvier, bustier.
The future we would become was visible in our maturing forms, I; grace and beauty in masculine form, perfection personified.
I'd grown taller, now finally topping most of the girls in the school, average among the boys. My hair was longer, face thinner and skin calmer...I was the man the boy had become.
I saw him from behind as we entered the great hall for the sorting feast, that mess of hair unmistakable.
He, unlike nearly every other fifth year had not shot up over the summer and stood at height with whichever of the Creevey Brats was heckling him, a good half foot shorter than myself.
For some reason I expected nothing else to have changed.
And then he turned.
The gauntness of his too thin baby face was gone, replaced with the still too lean adult angles, smooth and china pale. His hair was slightly shorter and swept to one side, presumably to cover his scar, yet it only enhanced his green, green eyes.
White teeth bit worryingly at the corner of his lower lip and I spun away at the sudden urge to free and sooth the tortured flesh.
Preferably with my own lips.
What in Merlins name was happening to me...I most certainly did not find Harry Potter cute, gorgeous or attractive in any way shape or form.
It took me a few day to readjust to his new altered appearance, and a further day to learn to ignore the unjustifiable rage when others also took notice of the changes, but I convinced myself that however much my traitorous body liked his older look, Harry Potter was still the most egotistical, self centred, spoilt, bigoted, dull, pathetically weak creature to walk the halls of Hogwarts.
It was almost cruel how brutally my whole concept of Harry Potter was swept aside with such little effort on his behalf.
It was my own fault...because I could not stop watching him.
And I began to notice the little things my hate filled mind had missed.
Those teeth worried at that lip whenever the spotlight was on him, and his hands fisted in his robes at the first sign of attention. It wasn't disdain of his fame, it was fear and discomfort.
He wasn't attention hungry, scornful of his admirers or condescending...he wasn't me. He was just shy.
Very shy in fact, and yet he put himself out of his comfort zone nearly every day, for the people who needed to see him, know he was there.
He wasn't self-centred, or selfish either. He almost always put others first. In my watching I often noticed that Weasel and Granger sometimes talked right over him, or disagreed with him and more often than not he bowed to their whims.
He was hardly egotistical. In fact, I came to doubt he even had an ego, and I also came to learn that mine was big enough for the two of us.
His weakness that I had assumed so easily, so early, both magically and of his character, was as mythical as the majority of his other vices I had made up.
He was completely and utterly balls up lucky, yet...
Magically he was undeniably powerful. I'd seen him cast a Patronus, not to mention how brilliant he had always been in DADA. I could now believe some of the previous adventures he was rumoured to have survived.
And characteristically? Dullness had suddenly become fascination and I couldn't get enough of who he was as a person. All the pressure heaped upon him, hunted by Dark Lords, hated by Slytherin, martyred by a whole world and he was a better person than I had ever known.
Certainly better than I, and yet, he made me want to be better, as nothing had ever inspired me before. Such power as my family couldn't conceive and I wanted him so much more than anything else I had ever wanted.
Yet, I knew to ever have any chance whatsoever, of having anything to do with Harry Potter, I would have to renounce my family, my whole way of life.
And for the first time ever, be myself, wholly and irrevocably my own individual, instead of my father's son…
SIXTH YEAR
He is the SUN to my Supernova.
Somehow I have fallen in love with Harry Potter.