Choice.

Based on the poem Choice, by Angela Morgan, from a poetry challenge issued by LilyAyl.

Disclaimer: Nothing that you recognise is mine, it belongs to J.K Rowling. Also, the poem at the end is by Angela Morgan.

People wonder why I am alone; all of a sudden I stopped my barrage of worthless relationships that were barely long enough to constitute the title. I only even bothered to keep them if they looked like you, and then came the crushing but inevitable disappointment that they were not you, and eventually I became so desperate that I would sleep with anyone who even resembled you. If they had your eye-colour or hair colour then they would be mine, but I should have known that no other could quite capture the hue of either of those, as if you had a patent on the colours. Their hair was never quite that white blond that would glow in the moonlight, haloing you in soft light and showing people that you truly are an angel, their eyes were always a dull grey or a misty blue, never your piercing silver, molten metal barely contained in your eyes.

These lovers were all found lacking and so I gave up. The press believe me to have a secret lover and that amuses me to no end, if only they knew how I longed for that to be true, but I have no secret lover, only a secret love and a need and longing that was going unfulfilled outside of my dreams.

There is no lack of people who want me, no draught of both males and females who are more than willing to do anything to be with me, even for one night. I found that out in the desperate stages, all I had to do was leave my house and choose the one that looked most like you from the crowd that mobbed me. But it was all an illusion, you would never bow to fan worship, you would never whisper about my greatness as we kissed, no one could ever look like you, but so many were willing to try. I suppose that is what fame does to you, leaves you with trails of people gagging for you, begging you for a meagre kiss, to just give them a chance to show you how much they want you.

But they only want me for my fame, for my power and my money, the only thing that they talk about is how strong I was to win the war, how amazing I was, they skip over the fact that I wasn't strong enough to stop him before thousands died, they don't care about that. You would never do that, you wouldn't be some fawning idiot, you were there beside me as we battled, you saw people fall, you know what it is really like, you know what I am really like. Then again, you are not there and my worshippers are.

But they all pale in comparison to you, everything does.

It is rare for me to be able to gaze upon you any longer, we are in school and forced together no more, we are in the war sharing a barracks no more. It is such a physical change from those days that I could stand and watch everything that you do, I studied your movements and absorbed everything that you gave me, I knew so much about you, I know that whenever you used to get annoyed with someone that you could not mouth off to, you would twist some fabric of your robes between your fingers as though you wanted to tear a hole in them, your battle robes had slight worn patches at the sides from constant use of them. I know that whenever you used to be happy about something then you would flare your nostrils slightly, but the rest of you would stay exactly the same, as though you were afraid of showing your joy. I know so much about how you used to be, but those days are gone and I don't even know if my details are accurate any longer. People change, and I know you have, it scares me because I don't know this new you, but I so dearly want to.

But whenever your countenance does shine through the blur of faces that constantly surround me, it is a beacon of light and everything is so wonderfully clear. It no longer matters that I am the Boy-Who-Lived, it doesn't matter that I am the Man-Who-Won, those silly titles become nothing to me, even all the losses in the war, the deaths of so many of my loved ones are chased to the back of my mind. Then I can watch you and try to discover you again, but it is never for long enough, you always slip away.

But you can still slip away, you lived, you are still here unlike so many who can just lie in their coffins to wait until they have become dust again and that is the only thing that matters. Had you any titles then I would cherish them with all my heart, I may not deserve them but you so sorely do, and it would give me something to bring me closer to you, I could own a part of you simply by relishing anything of yours. There is your name, of course, but you barely claim to that anymore, it is the name of the person you used to be, not the name of who you are now, a title would be yours in a way that a name never could.

But none were awarded to you, the fools in the media overlooking all the wonders that you did to only focus on my superfluous glory and win. They scarcely mention you in all their accounts, and not as they should when they do, they call you a turncoat. They don't say how you turned at the very beginnings of the war, they don't mention how you were one of the greatest assets to our side, how you killed the death eaters that were guarding Voldemort to let me get to him. They don't tell of how you were forced to kill your parents to do so and you did not even pause once they had raised their wands to me, almost as though you loved me. But they are of no consequence, for they are not you.

My feelings for them are much like the apathetic feelings I had for my old lovers, the ones I took after my remaining friends had hounded me enough about being alone and about how it was immoral to sleep with a person and then leave them the next day, until I finally gave and took one, hating myself as I did it. I doubt that they could be called lovers really, they were just passing moments, I barely even registered what sex they were or what they actually looked like as a person rather than just someone who could easily have your face slipped over theirs, I only knew that they were not you, they were just a warm touch, an almost distracting anchor back into the real world.

They were thrown off soon enough, my disgust at them not being you overcoming any feeling of duty to stop others from worrying. Then I spent days washing and hating myself for sullying myself with them, for not being pure for you, for touching anyone other than you. It hurts me so much to see others all over you, fawning over you and hanging off you, and yet I had those shameful flings. I hated myself then. I hated the fact that I had not yet realised my own feelings, I was chasing what little happiness that I thought I could gain from the touch of another, but I hadn't learnt that merely the idea of you could give me more joy than they ever could.

I began to learn soon enough.

Then I moved onto the happiness of the dreams, the happiness that could never come of any of those others, real though they may have been. I cast off any of those corporeal touches just so that I can feel the whisper of your ghost touches in my subconscious, the perfect gasps and declarations of love that you give me as I slip off towards the stars. It is better than any aphrodisiac, better than anyone who would come and give me solid pleasure, one phantom to visit me in the dark, an apparition that is truly you more than anything else. That is what can lift me off the earth, that is what can transport me to the moon that you so dearly resemble. My only worry is that is becoming less of a metaphor every day.

I can ignore all the queries to my health, the comments that I am always sleeping or half dead as I wander around, the trifling worries of the others in the world are nothing that can come between me and you, nothing that would cast you out of my mind. My love for you is safe there, locked inside me where it belongs, where I can relish in your touch, where I can bathe in your whispers and float away on your touch. It stopped mattering that it was all dreams a long time ago, dreams or not, every second with you is undiluted bliss, I have found my nirvana and if it is in my head then so be it.

The only time that I will ever truly connect back to the ground is when I am in your true presence where nobody can call me a dreamer as I watch you, and I do watch you and need you, I desire you from afar, hiding my stares, hiding my truth and want, they don't need to know, you don't need to know. I can just bask in my love of you and admire everything about you from the shadows, brushing off any of those who strove to pull me away from my darkness, I don't need them, all I need is my need. Need that fuels the dreams, fuels the phantoms that will keep my head from slipping under the surface, the need is almost all that I could ever imagine wanting, the need and you, you and the need, entwining and morphing in my mind.

And that way, even when your physical presence is gone, I feel only a muted pain at the loss, because as your truth sinks there is always the need that surfaces, the want and the dreaming, you can arrive back into my subconscious, always there and always wanting me, just like I know that you never really could. But the picture in my mind is more than anyone else could give me, it brings me closer to ecstasy than any of the previous breaths of warmth ever have, all I need is my dreams and the eternal hope that one day you will fall out of my mind and appear in my room, in my bed, in my arms where you belong. The hope drives me almost as much as the need, the want, the spirit that flows through me and pulls me through this life, but in the end they are all the same thing, the hope is the need is the want is the dreams, it all comes together and leaves me with you, always you.

You will not be coming to me anytime soon, the newspapers, the same ones that ran foolish stories for so long about theories of my withdrawal from the usual run of the world, stopping going to any functions unless you were there, not that they picked up on that little detail. But what they did pick up on, what they did hit on that was finally true was a story on your relationship with that person who is not me, your engagement to said person. And yet they didn't cast it in the light of how wrong it was that this person is not me, but putting some spin about redemption and happiness for someone who may have been so easily slipped into a world of shame and alienation for what you had done.

So more adds to the heady mix of you, the anger and resentment, all being stirred up and confused until I don't understand what I want anymore, I don't know what I feel, but feelings are nothing, they are not you, feelings will all go away eventually, they are not you.

But I soon learn that this is another delusion, the feelings wont go away and I don't want them to, they have become you, I cannot live without the love, without the need I simply cannot be. You can, you have found another that could look over your past to see the true you, but if you had wanted that earlier then you could just have looked to me. But you didn't and now you never will. The hope dies out but I barely notice it, it was getting so much harder to tell one feeling from the other, who needed to concentrate on that when I had my apparition? Lost hope was no dent in my dreams, it only encouraged the desperation, which increased the need, multiplied the want. The loss of hope only made you more vivid, more mine.

As the anger rears its head on your wedding day, finally something identifiable that rises from the broth of my mind a brief idea that I should too get engaged, just to show you that I could, to see if I could hurt you too, flashes through my head, but it is gone as soon as I acknowledge it, slipping back under the waves and submitting to the current of everything that I have become. Anyway, why lie to myself? Nobody will ever be you, nobody could ever be a replacement for you and I don't want anyone but you to touch me.

Not to mention that I wouldn't be hurting you, it is all a dream of mine, a beautiful, perfect dream, but only a dream all the same.

As soon I realise that, I also realise that I don't care, any dream of you is worth more than life itself to me. My life had slowly drowned itself in the face of this tide and I did nothing to prevent it, I didn't even watch as its head slipped between the waves, after all, it was only my head, not yours, never yours. Those dreams are all that I am now, all that I would ever want to be. I will touch no other in retribution, or even to fill the void. I need nothing to fill the emptiness, my want for you fills it more than anyone who was not you could.

I will be alone, as long as I still need you.

I will be alone for an eternity.

I'd rather have the thought of you

To hold against my heart,

My spirit to be taught of you

With west winds blowing,

Than all the warm caresses

Of another love's bestowing,

Or all the glories of the world

In which you had no part.

I'd rather have the theme of you

To thread my nights and days,

I'd rather have the dream of you

With faint stars glowing,

I'd rather have the want of you,

The rich, elusive taunt of you

Forever and forever and forever unconfessed

Than claim the alien comfort

Of any other's breast.

O lover! O my lover,

That this should come to me!

I'd rather have the hope for you,

Ah, Love, I'd rather grope for you

Within the great abyss

Than claim another's kiss—

Alone I'd rather go my way

Throughout eternity.