The Scent of Him

You have always known, the ignorance of the way he feels for you that you pretend around him nearly as difficult to maintain as the façade of thinly disguised politeness and disgust that he greets you with. It is easier for him to hate you, hate Sirius and hate James and Harry, and so you play dumb and know the truth every time you see him. You breathe in his scent when you know that he will not notice and the truth comes to you in waves: he is in love with you.

You never thought his nose was as big or as crooked as Sirius and James always said it was, never thought his hair was as greasy or his skin as sallow. You breathe in the scent of him now, as he looks away from you to stare haughtily down at the meal that Molly has laid in front of him, and for a moment you are dizzy with the scent of approaching autumn, the end of a hot summer many years ago, when you saw him and he saw you and you sat together at the edge of the lake and talked of everything that mattered to two eleven-year old boys. You fooled yourself into thinking that you had met your first friend at Hogwarts, and every time your eyes met between the curses that your real first friends threw at him you wondered if he had thought the same thing.

You find that you can't remember if he ever hated Peter, ever despised Peter the way that he loathes Sirius and you and James and now Harry. You want to ask him if he did between the moments when you are alone with him in the kitchen, in the hallway where your voices drop to whispers. You want to tell him to leave Harry alone, that Harry is not his father despite what he and Sirius seem to believe. You want to tell him to leave Sirius be, but try not to flatter yourself when you spell your reasons out in your head: he does not hate Sirius because Sirius is where he wants to be. He does not hate Sirius because you are Sirius's instead of his.

And so you are content to study him from the corner of your eye as he eats with a delicate deliberation that makes you want to laugh. You are content to wonder if you are the only one who sees him from behind that snide façade, if even Dumbledore recognizes who he is. You breathe in his scent underneath the smell of the stew and Sirius's musk beside you and think of a pale and ghostly plant that has learned to grow in shadows, in the darkness. Then Sirius rumples your hair and you smile at Harry and Harry smiles back at you and he is forgotten in the play between the ones you love. And he looks up at you for just a second, and the scent of his jealousy overwhelms your senses just as his black eyes have done in the second before the sneer slips over his mouth. You wonder if anybody has ever rumpled his hair who did not hurt him after they were done with paltry affection.

You smell fall leaves before you see him at the door, when he comes to see you after Sirius passed through The Veil. The fragrance mixes with the perfume of early summer as you let him in. He almost shoves the Wolfsbane Potion at you in his haste to sit down, and you notice how white his knuckles are with distant amusement. You know why he is here. You expected him to come, and simply watch as he fumbles with words for the second time you've ever known him to. You watch and see the boy who sat with you on the edge of the lake at summer's end and fumbled with words to make friends with you, who gave you your first taste of friendship, given so freely that you didn't care if he ever knew your secret. You breathe him in and let him wash over you, the scent of dark places and fear and bitterness and cold. You breathe him in and let his love wash you clean.