Disclaimer: J.K Rowling is the marvelous mind behind the miracle that is Harry Potter, not I.

Excerpt/Summary: Your hand is poised over the last of the items, a Nose Biting Teacup, when he finally finishes not gloating and moves to exit the elevator. His pointy white shoe—its owner in miniature—poises over your hand, casting a threatening shadow over it as if he'd dare to grind his heel down. He's too much of a coward. He steps over it.

Warnings: Second person point of view (and you, Harry, are in major denial), implied AU (from epilogue), language—sprinkled swears and slang, hinted double negatives, abundance of alliteration and ambiguity

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You're so busy not noticing him, courteously but determinedly refusing to acknowledge his malevolent presence, that you don't miss a thing.

His self-satisfied smirk, reflected three times over by the glass interior of the Ministry elevator.

His flax-fair hair isn't even close to brushing his impeccable collar, unlike your own crazy cowlicks.

His evidently expensive robes are the same cold, fishy grey of his eyes, with greeny flecks woven in, probably as some kind of nod to his origins in the vipers' den, as if it were anything to be proud of. You're fairly vanilla in your rumpled black robes, but it is tradition and this tradition is good and right, tried and tested, unlike him and his refined bad taste.

His blemish-free briefcase doesn't even have the grace to show work ethic, not displaying gluey sticker remnants or even fluffy frayed edges like your own.

Perfect. Ponce.

You don't stare or glare or smile uncomfortably. You don't. You maintain your distance, and it's been years so it's easy enough to do.

He stands only a foot from you but he is miles and miles from where you are.

You think it'd be best for both of you if he stayed there, because it isn't good for you to be close to him. Literally, not figuratively. You get twitchy and things. Too much history together isn't good for coworkers.

You're so busy not noticing him still that you can't be bothered to look ahead, either. The cool female voice rolls out and you're pulled out the sliding doors into the Atrium by force of habit. The slick of tile beneath your feet, regular, the dull roar of people at work, normal, cries of "Look out, Mr. Potter!" perfectly routine.

THUNK.

Your head now dully ringing, you pull back to look at your assailant, who did indeed warn you—a hapless assistant worker, hair fuzzy as your mind, who had, until seconds ago, been balancing a tottering pile of artifacts in her thin arms.

Her eyes flick to your scar, now helpfully highlighted by an egg-sized lump growing over it on your forehead.

You wince, half-apologetic and half pained, drop into a crouch, and hurry to help gather the artifacts. You're somewhat in the way, but the area is empty enough and you will observe polite behavior, unlike him, brazen bastard.

You don't look for his reaction. You don't wait for his jibe that doesn't come. You don't strain your ears to hear his snicker.

Your hand is poised over the last of the items, a Nose Biting Teacup, when he finally finishes not gloating and moves to exit the elevator. His pointy white shoe—its owner in miniature—poises over your hand, casting a threatening shadow over it as if he'd dare to grind his heel down. He's too much of a coward. He steps over it.

"Haven't lost it, Potter," he says with a sneer that you feel, zinging through your body, rather than see because you are not looking.

He hasn't lost it, either. That is, whatever he had up his arse when he was eleven is still there.

But he's a stain you can't afford to scrub at, because you'd risk rubbing out even more vibrancy from everything else, vibrancy that you must preserve, vibrancy that holds all importance over a stupid splotch, no matter how lurid. So he remains, as abominable an anomaly as spilled unicorn's blood, wrong, wrong, wrong. Or perhaps he is not-pretty poison, quicksilver.

He is not a constant. He is not cleansing, no matter how pleasant the whiff you don't catch of his citrusy soap is, but slippery, greasy.

He is a catalyst, a disrupter, and he is neither wanted nor needed.

You don't watch him go. You don't follow the geometry of his squared shoulders under his tailored robes. You don't center your gaze between his shoulder-blades where the fabric stretches taut.

Your opinion of him is firmly situated on neutral ground. You have mixed pasts but clear futures and you don't need to have an opinion. Your reason for remaining in the middle isn't because you're pulled equally by two extremes.

You don't look or think, then. You don't debate jabbing a knife there between his haughty-not-hot shoulders. You don't contemplate running behind him and brushing a kiss there in that one vulnerable hollow.

You don't stare after him as he rounds a corner, not to see the arrow-like dimples that bookend his etched smirk. You don't wonder what his disdain might taste like. You don't wonder whether your nonexistent desires have the same astringent flavor.

You don't cry the words into the crowd or when you are back home, alone.

You don't voice words that are not there, not filling your mouth with urgency and not pushing your lips for release.

There are no words there, none, no words that lurk behind familiar slander, no words like knives cutting at your tongue the longer they remain held in.

That night, you don't arch off the mattress and muffle your misery in your dream-damp pillow. You don't wipe trembling, sullied fingers on the twisted sheets. You don't clench your hands in fists around uncertainty, because you are very sure of everything. You don't still ache with need, not after being sated twice.

Your heart does not thrum like a string, not plucked by raw memory of his angled body and angled words.

You never have, you never will, you never do. Surely you possess more common sense, more sense of self-preservation than that. Surely. You don't.

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Author's Note: Yes, uploading three drabbles at once. Crazy, no? It makes me feel accomplished, though.

Anyway, this piece basically just wrote itself. I'm quite proud of it, frankly.

Penny for your thoughts? I'd like to hear what you think (readers, not Harry—although if he would like to give input, that's quite alright, too).