Two chapters in two days? Unheard of! Not sure if all of them will be up this fast but I'll try. I don't own anything blah blah.

Chapter Two-Part of the Human Heart

I am awkward, even in this new world. I've never been what one would call social, and the gregarious nature of my fellow Gryffindors does not do much to bring me out of my shell. Some of them even hate me. For one reason or another, James Potter and his gang have made me their personal vendetta. I imagine that if I had been sorted in Slytherin, I would have lived in constant fear, and would have isolated myself tighter in my rage against them and my friendless world.

But here I have her. And she keeps me safe. They don't dare touch me for fear of angering her. She earns herself a bit of scorn for protecting me, the eternal outcast. But most just find her braver for it. Little by little, she brings me into this world of hers, this world of acceptance. She lets me grasp her hand for strength as she introduces me to her loud and enthusiastic friends. They probably think I am her boyfriend but she tells me she doesn't care what people think. I admire her strength. She makes me want to be a better man than I am. I try my hardest to live up to the way I know she sees me. The way I want to be seen. I am not always liked, but I am at least tolerated by most. And always she is there, giving me silent strength just when I think mine will fail…

Things improve with time. My anti-social tendencies fade into a sort of quiet friendliness. My outcast nature is all but forgotten, at least while I am at school. I have those I can count as friends. And she is at the center of it all. She is at the center of everything. I would be nothing without her. Sometimes I still feel the anger welling up inside me, when I see Potter picking on some first year Slytherin or (rather ashamedly) when I see some older boy flirting with her. But then she'll smile at me or touch my arm as she passes and it fades into nonexistence. I can't imagine how awful my existence would be without her to keep me grounded.

The stolen moments begin on the train ride of our fifth year. We have a car alone together, just like first year. I don't know where her friends (our friends, I have to remind myself) have gotten. Ever since second year her car has been so mobbed that I, who get on with her sometimes have trouble finding a spot. I comment on this fact, mildly as if it was the weather, but her smile (smirk, really) makes me wonder if I haven't said something dirty by mistake. I suddenly feel very warm and she seems much closer to me than she was moments before.

With a snap of her fingers (when did she learn wand less magic?) the blinds close and the door locks. I barely have time to gulp before she is mine. Despite her smirk, her first kiss is gentle, chaste, a question. I hope my answer is good enough. The way she crawls into my lap (straddles my lap!) makes me think that it probably was. She tastes of beauty and light and lilies. I don't even know what those things taste like but somehow I know that it is so. I don't remember much else of that train ride. Everything is blurry. The green countryside rushing by mixes with the soft green glow of her eyes. I hope to God that her future children (our future children, my foolish adolescent mind dares to hope) will share those luminescent orbs. Her hands set me on fire and I am glad to burn. A flash comes to me. Another sort of burning. Wand on flesh, branding a mark of darkness. I shake it away. The tattoo some of the older Slytherins have been sporting. Why in the world was I thinking of that at a time like this?

I explore parts of her I had never even dared to dream about before that day. Whatever else she is, she certainly is brave, and she most definitely does not take no for an answer. Any vestige of boyhood that had somehow survived my god-awful childhood is burned away in the cleansing fire of her awakened passion. For me. I profusely thank whatever gods or karma have somehow decided to bestow on me this gift.

After we are done (I am done, the damn vixen could have gone for hours), I hold her close and she whispers secrets to me, things she says she has never told anyone. How her parents shunned her, sometimes even beat her when she unwittingly showed her magic as a kid. How ruthlessly her sister had hated her and guilted her for being the special one. How hopelessly she had longed for acceptance and how happy she had felt the day she first found it in me. How long she had loved me. Longed for me. I feel somehow even more honored by this trust than I am by the gift of her passion moments before.

When the train finally pulls in and we are disentangled, we are, of course, greeted by the catcalls and backslapping of our group of friends who were, of course, waiting just outside our car (she planned it before hand, the little minx!). Normally, I would feel uncomfortable and awkward about the whole thing. I might even feel betrayed, and suspect that she had set the whole thing up as a prank. But when I look into her eyes, laughing and smiling, and see that they are only for me, I can't help but believe. So I throw my arm around her and laugh with all the rest. I wonder if this is what flying feels like. But they are lurking in the back, envious of my good fortune and happiness…

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