Twenty-Twenty Hindsight

Chapter Two

Everything really began in fifth year, on the train to school. I got a compartment to myself because I was really early to King's Cross for once and I was saving the compartment for Cynna and, maybe, Alexis. The only problem was that I had brought so much stuff with me that it was all I could do to pull my trunk along, let alone lift it into the luggage rack. I was also quite short, which made things even more difficult. I was struggling and struggling when he came along, spotted me, and came into the compartment.

"Need a hand?" he asked, always polite. It kind of shocked me, really. He'd always been extremely rude to me before.

"Oh, uh...yeah, if you wouldn't mind..." I stammered, not really sure of myself, or the situation. I didn't really know what to do because he'd never once said a kind word to me.

He came into the compartment, brushing past me, and easily lifted the trunk up into the luggage rack. If I was surprised before, it was nothing to the surprise I felt then. He was wiry and thin, but I realized that he must just be solid, uncluttered muscle, making him appear very lean while still being extremely strong. At the time, I'd had no idea how that fact would affect my life.

"Thank you," I said to him, darting glances at his pale grey eyes.

"No problem," he answered before turning around and heading back into the corridor. At the door he turned around and actually smiled at me. It made me get tingles up and down my spine and I felt like my knees had turned into jelly. I didn't really know why, at the time. After all, it was just a smile.

Cynna arrived about ten minutes later, towing her trunk along with relative ease. She said a cheerful hello to me, gave me a hug, and put her trunk into the luggage compartment before sitting down opposite me. She started jabbering on about her summer and some boy she'd met on vacation somewhere in Ireland, and that's when I began tuning her out.

I didn't do it on purpose; it's just that I didn't want to start feeling sorry for myself. And it reminded me of him...I don't know why I found him so attractive back then. I could always use the classic excuses: I was young and stupid; It was love at first sight; He just knew how to wrap me around his little finger; He put a spell on me! But I know that they would all be lies. It wasn't love at first sight, and while I might have been young and stupid, that didn't affect who I found attractive. He was just very good looking, is the closest I can come to a logical reason why I'd pine after him like I did. He hadn't exactly wrapped me around his finger, per se, but there was something about him that was like a giant earth magnet, sucking all other magnetic things towards him, whether they wanted to be pulled or not.

In a way I wanted to be pulled to him. He was a new experience, and he started smiling at me when we passed in the halls, occasionally saying hello or asking how I was. Of course, we had no classes together because he was a year ahead of me, but our paths seemed to cross more often as fall turned into winter.

Cynna and Alexis definitely noticed my attraction to him. They tried to warn me - dropping hints now and then, like he just used girls and never spoke to them again, or they heard he was a Death Eater. But it all just went in one ear and out the other. I wasn't interested in their rumors or bits of gossip from the third floor girl's washroom. All I was interested in was the way he smiled at me, like I was the only person in the world.

I had no idea how often I'd feel that sense of isolation in a few months' time.