In the mornings, when my books are alive. I swim up through seas of linen, from the deep slow bottom of my dreams to the light of early Saturday morning in the dorms. Breaking the surface, my books whisper, falling open under invisible fingers to my favourite spots. Crookshanks is next to my face, an overwhelming splash of red that fills my eyes, and he snores like old cats do: content, warm, spread out like only they can and still be comfortable. I've fallen asleep on my Friday book again, its pages warm and dry under my cheek. It rustles its good morning, and now my head is filled with soft colours and words that drift like clouds.
Ron would laugh if he knew what I read on Friday nights in bed, curled up in my nest of warmth.
He'd laugh, and then maybe he'd flush, reading the title again. Prying the book from my reading fingers, closing it, memorising the page I was on. (I taught him that, I suppose, yelling from the top of the stairs that you just can't close a book like that, not without marking it, because it ruined everything, and how was I ever supposed to know where to start without any support? His face was red and he screamed I was uptight and neurotic and other things that spilled from his flushed mouth, but since then he always memorises the page.) Memorising the page I was on, and then following the line of my jaw with one finger, saying how mental I am for reading mushy stuff like that. Kissing me, then, mouth flushed like when he's yelling at me, and somehow I don't mind that his teeth sometimes catch on my lips and he's not always sure what to do with his tongue. I guess I'm not always sure, either. Pulling back, his entire face is flushed, and he says how mental he must be, recognising all that mushy stuff when he's around me.
That's the point where Harry laughs, proclaims us worthy of each other in being mental, and pointedly takes Ron's Queen from the board, announcing check mate.
In the mornings when my books are alive, I realise some stories are worth telling more than others, and down the stairs waiting is the most beautiful one of all.