The Explanations

The Bedroom Explanation

It is behind curtains on a bed that he can finally speak to her. He can see her, small and slim and slender and with skin as soft and slippery as the satin spreads, in the grainy black and white of a vision impaired by a dormitory with no windows, only thin beams of light from magical fires, and very slight myopia. She is smiling; he sees that her full soft cupid's bow lips are curving wider, more enticingly, more realistically as he looks at her through closed eyes, the image of her now in full colour, with her radiant pale and scarlet and gold, as he leans forward from his position lying sideways on his bed, and then --

It is behind curtains on a bed that he can finally beat him. He can see him, as he himself feels the aching emptiness the eroding strong winds leaves in his lungs, leaning forward, upper body crouched low over his Firebolt, Quidditch robes billowing out behind him, and he can see how his long fingers familiarly smudged from his frequent mucking up with his chemicals over the table-top during Potions reaches yearningly towards the Snitch, how his shoulder is reaching forward so it almost seems as if he were attempting to dislocate it, how his legs are pulling hard under him to prevent him from falling over, but he knows that he is faster, and in a breath of a second, behind closed eyes, he sees his own tapered fingers clutch the struggling gold ball, the wings of which beating furiously against his squirming and cutting the underside in its effort, so that he knows that it will become imprinted with red filigree marks that he will leave for weeks on end for remembrance's sake, and he feels the other boy's cold touched fingertips graze the back of his left hand, his catching hand.

Behind closed eyes, he sees a world of green and silver, white hands on his white body, soft lips with soft words, eyes light and dark with defeat and admiration --

It is not surprising that he always takes his time before his mind fades into receiving darkness behind closed eyes. He kicks and shifts around a little between the bed sheets, pulling them higher over his fine-boned shoulders, because down here it is too warm and closed and suffocating for the thick blankets of dark green, which he throws over the nearby armchair, but it is also too cold and empty and drafty for the thin black sheets. There is a small ball of warmth down at his abdomen, but his fingers and toes and cold and stiff. The sheets smell familiarly sanitized, and he cannot smell any kind of smell in them that could remind him of starched shirts and grass and murky confined classroom air. He breathes in deeply, eyes half-opening before fluttering shut again, seeing.

In the morning he wakes, mind spluttering painfully as it finally breaks through subconsciousness to connect the ringing sound of his alarm clock to the living, and he pulls his white body contained in his bottle-green pajamas, which make his white skin, in the light of opened eyes and morning, even more ghoulish and pale. That very same morning, when at the Great Hall for breakfast, he scowls as he knows afresh, seeing the other boy, with his long fingers familiarly smudged from his frequent mucking up with his chemicals over the table-top during Potions, that Slytherin has yet again lost to his House.

He taps his cold-tipped fingers against the hard green table-clothed table-top without a scruple of want as he sees her in her radiant pale and scarlet and gold and her full soft cupid's bow lips curve wider to smile at another boy.

He knows, after all, that he can seek his reality behind his closed eyes, behind curtains on a bed.