Turning to Gray

Turning to Gray

He was known as The Boy Who Lived. Always, from the first chapter of his life, that was his title, that was more than his title - it was who he was.

Sometimes his name was garbled a bit, of course - the first time he managed an entire conversation with Fleur Delacour without garnering a single haughty look, she told him almost airily that in France he was known as "Le survivor." The survivor. And in Bulgaria - well, of course in the papers they called him the Seeker, the Hogwarts Triwizard Champion, but Viktor Krum told Hermione once, rather gruffly, that her friend "vas known as '_____.'" The hero.

But even heroes must grow up, and the not-so-simple honor of being a hero does not prevent one from falling in love.

Being a hero was unlucky in many ways. He was made a hero, not born, and in that fatal act of sacrifice, he lost the two people who would have guided his hand and his baby feet and the first eighteen years of his path through life, and Godric's Hollow, and love. As a result, he never had anyone to wring her hands and wonder what would happen when he discovered girls for the first time, or someone who would clap him on the back and tell him that he was becoming a man, or the foggiest idea of who would approve, or disapprove, of the person he fell in love with.

He stumbled blindly through his first crush as easily as a deaf person tries to grasp the tones of music. He looked up the word "crush" in the gigantic dictionary scroll in the library and found that it was not very helpful. "/krush/, verb, 1. to compress, crease, grind, mash, squish, or squash someone or something, such as a food or a flower. He crushed the bezoars for the potion. 2. to overwhelm, squash, humiliate, or quell someone or something, often people. The better Quidditch team crushed the other. 3. to crowd, group, and in close proximity to something, usually as a crowd of people. They crushed together to make room for the Minister of Magic." Below, a second notation read "/krush/, noun, informal. 1. something sweet. Derived from the Muggle definition of a fruit drink such as an orange crush, a strawberry crush. That scent of flowery perfume is a crush."

The Muggle dictionary, which took Irma Pince half an hour to track down (she finally found it at the bottom of a pile of Muggle Studies books on sexual health and reproduction), was no more help, though the second definition read "/krush/, noun, slang. 1. a person who is the object of somebody's romantic infatuation."

Well then, he decided, he had a crush. The dictionaries, though, were not much help in figuring out what to do with that crush. He didn't know whom to talk to. Ron and Hermione were not likely to be much help, since their depiction of a crush seemed to be leaping at each other's throats every second Thursday. And Sirius, who had always told him to write with any question, any problem - well, he felt silly writing and asking what you did when you had a crush on someone, when his last letters had been about scars and prisons and caves.

He tried to do the things he assumed were expected of him. He watched her in the halls, observing the way her almond-shaped brown eyes crinkled a little at the corners and at her eyelids when she laughed. Her long black hair was pin-straight and thick and glossy and he wondered how she kept it so neat and smooth during Quidditch games, satisfied that that was the kind of thought that constituted "crush-like feelings." He asked her to the Yule Ball because he assumed that was what you did when you had a crush, you wanted to get to know the person you had a crush on.

Sometimes he dreamed, too, and he woke in the mornings feeling relieved, if not happy, relieved that that seemed like a normal part of having a crush too.

But sometimes, on the mornings after those dreams, he would catch another glimpse of her in the stone halls, giggling and laughing with her friends so those eyes scrunched up merrily, and Harry wondered why the eyes in his dream were gray, not brown.

finis