If He Were A Stranger

Harry wrote stories about people. Real people, people he saw at the stores in Diagon Alley, the things they wore, the way their eyes flew from side to side, from window to glass window. The purple robes that clung to their legs, the glasses that slid to the end of their nose. He began writing at nighttime, when all tossed and turned while the others in alongside beds were swept off to sleep. He would rise from the covers, throw them aside to walk over to the table that held papers strewn across the hard wood top, splinters hanging off at the very end. The end of the quill would prick his lips as he touched it with his mouth before he entered the realms of strangers. Strangers were the best type to write about; strangers that smiles, that looked fascinated by his very mark, at the forehead. Soon night after night became week after week, and strangers became people like Ron, Hermione and Hagrid.

He talked about the warmth of Hagrid. How his largeness may have well as have been small, like a child who found depth, who found strength. His raspy voice, so grand that it covered the walls of his hut with a dignified manner, incredulous as phrases when he spoke. Ron's freckles and the way they scattered his nose, the way the red reaches his ears and flooded them as he frowned an embarrassed frown, his eyes lit with that fierceness he could only ever see in Ron. The lanky form, the hanging arms, the way he stood so awkward against a wall, always leaning, always depending. It was rare that he see Ron alone, and when he did, he saw magic apart from the sparks of wands. He saw him walking, shoulders slumped slightly back, with hair just like Ginny's like a clover of fire flaring out from behind and setting him apart from his painted surroundings. His eyes were brown, not altogether reaching the definite pools of Harry's emeralds, but they were poured into him like honey around the dots of his pupils. When he laughed, he was actually snickering, and rarely did he ever chuckle. If he did, Harry liked the smile and wrote about it, the smile that ran his mouth and did a dance after he chuckled, his weight heaving, his knees bumping against his and sending a shiver through the end of his spine and the bridge of his teeth as his tongue rolled, unfurling its tip in the out of his mouth. He liked when Ron affected him that way, and wrote about how the tips of his fingers snatched quickly at things, but not so quickly that it escaped his hand. His hand could roll and grab as big as possible, as if greed were a privilege in this world he had finally won to have, and his mouth was usually stuffed, cheeks puffing out to create the notion that it was the most pleasant feeling in the world. His eyes closed and the eyelashes that struck out like eyeliner lines that Harry had seen on Cho's cheeks before he leaned forward--as he wrote, Cho became Ron and Harry became a boy Ron didn't feel was superior to him. He became just a boy, just a Harry, and soon his lips tucked with this, and those lanky arms were swung awkwardly around him as they rocked to the music that they never heard.