The God of Small Things

She sat there in the dark. A young single woman looking out the window of her dorm listening to the music of the wind. To a voice from far away. Like a voice crying in the distance. Wafting into the night. Sailing over the Black Lake and the Forbidden Forest. Above the treetops of the Forbidden Forest. Over the valley from Hogsmeade. Past the gates. Past Hagrid's hut. Up from the grounds below to the top of the tower. Back to her.

She was not really listening to music, it just flowed around her. She watched the frenzy of insects floating around the light, fighting to burn their wings.

She remembered an old song whose words and music seemed to explode in her head.

There's no time to lose

I heard her say

Catch your dreams before

They slip away

Dying all the time

Lose your dreams and you

Will lose your mind.

She drew her knees together and hugged them. She could not believe it. Such a cheap coincidence of words. She stared furiously out of the window onto the grounds and forest below. A grand duke flew past the window on a silent night patrol.

She remained sitting for a while. Long after the end of the song. Then suddenly she rose from the window ledge she was perched on and walked out of her world. To a better, happier place.

She moved quickly through the darkness, like an insect following a chemical trail. She knew the path to the lake and could have found her way there blind-folded. She did not know what caused her to hurry into the grove separating the lake from the college. Her walk turned into a run. Which led her to the bank of the lake breathless. Sobbing. As though she was late for something. As though her life depended on getting there in time. As though she knew he would be there. Waiting. As though he knew she would come.

He did.

Know.

That knowledge had slid into him that afternoon. Cleanly. Like the sharp edge of a knife. When history had slipped up. When her eyes had told him she had gifts to give him. That she would trade her deep dimples when she smiled for his gifts. Her smooth porcelain skin. Those beautiful shoulders and curves. Her eyes that shone with happiness when she was with others, but which seemed to him that she had eyes only for him, when he chanced a glance in her direction.

He wasn't there.

She sat on the stone steps leading down to the water. She buried her head in her arms, feeling foolish for being so sure.

So certain.

Further in the middle of the lake, he floated on his back, looking up at the stars. He was free to do what he wanted and drift slowly with the flow. A tree trunk. A serene crocodile. The trees bent towards the lake and watched him float by. Small fish took some liberties with him. Pecked him.

He flipped over and began to swim. To the shore. Against the flow. He turned towards the shore for one last look, treading water, felling foolish for having been so sure.

So certain.

When he saw her the shock almost drowned him. It took all of his strength to stay afloat. He trod water, standing in the middle of a dark lake.

She had not s-een the top of his head protruding from the black water of the lake. He could have been anything. A tree trunk. A serene crocodile. In any case she wasn't looking. Her head was buried in his arms.

He watched her. He took his time.

Had he known that he was about to enter a tunnel whose only egress was his own annihilation, would he have turned away?

Perhaps.

Perhaps not.

Who could tell?

He began to swim toward her. Quietly. Silently. Cutting through the water with no fuss. He had almost reached the shore when she looked up and saw him. His feet touched the muddy bank. As he rose from the dark water and walked up the stone steps towards her, she saw that the world they stood in was his. That he belonged to it. That it belonged to him. The water. The mud. The trees. The fish. The stars. He moved so easily through it. As she watched him she understood the quality of his beauty. How his sport had shaped him. How each practice had fashioned him. Each practice he planned, each training he endured, each thing he did, had moulded him. Had left its mark. Had left its stamp on him. Had given him his strength, his supple grace.

He had only his uniform pants on him. He shook the water from his hair. She could see his smile in the dark. His white, sudden smile that he had carried from boyhood into manhood.

They looked at each other. They did nothing more. They weren't thinking any more. The time for that had come and gone. Smashed smiles lay ahead of them. But that would be later.

Later.

He stood before her with the lake dripping from him. She stayed sitting on the steps, watching him. Her face pale in the moonlight. A sudden chill crept over her. His heart hammered against his ribcage. It was all a terrible mistake. He had misunderstood her. The whole thing had only been a figment of his imagination. It was a trap. There were people in the bushes. Watching. Waiting. And she was the delectable bait. How could it be otherwise? He tried to make his voice casual. Normal. It came out in a croak.

"Er ... are you okay?"

She went to him and pressed the length of her body against his. He just stood there. He didn't touch her. He was shivering. Partly with cold. Partly terror. Partly aching desire. Despite his fear his body was prepared to take the bait. It wanted her. Urgently. His wetness wet her. She put her hands around him.

He tried to be reasonable and rational: 'What is the worst thing that can happen to me?

I may lose everything. My family. My fortune. My life. Everything!'

She could hear the wild hammering of his heart.

She held him till it calmed down. Somewhat.

She unbuttoned her shirt. They stood there. Skin to skin. Her paleness against his slight tan. Her delicate softness against his rugged hardness. Her beautiful breasts against his smooth pale chest. She smelled the lake on him. He could smell her perfume, a scent of forbidden to which he would offer no resistance. She put out her tongue and tasted it, in the hollow of his throat. On the lobe of his ear. She pulled his head down towards her and kissed his mouth. A cloudy kiss. A kiss that demanded a kiss-back. He kissed her back. First cautiously. Then with a sence of urgency. Slowly his arms came up behind her. He stroked her back. Very gently. She could feel the skin on his palms. Roughened. Hardened. Calloused. He was careful not to hurt her. She could feel how soft she felt to him. She could feel herself through him. Her skin. The way her body existed only where he touched her. The rest of her was smoke. Illusion. She felt him shudder against her. His hands were on her hips, pulling her hips against his, to let her know how he much he wanted her. How much his body desired hers.

Biology designed the dance. Terror timed it. Dictated the rhythm with which their bodies answered each other. As though they knew already that for each tremor of pleasure they would pay with an equal measure of pain. As though they knew that how far they went would be measured against how far they would be taken. So they held back. Tormented each other. Gave off each other slowly. But that only made the situation worse. It only raised the stakes. It only cost them more. Because it smoothed the wrinkles, the fumble and rush of unfamiliar love and roused them to fever pitch.

Behind them the lake pulsed through the darkness, shimmering like wild silk. Night's elbows rested on the water and watched them, as though it knew the inevitable outcome.

They lay under an old tree, near a fallen tree that had already lost its cause to an army of mobile pests.

The ants were already on their way to work.

The ladybirds were already on their way home.

The beetles burrowing away from the light.

The grasshoppers with their white-wood violins playing the sad white music.

All gone.

On the earth dry and bare, cleaned and ready for love. As if everything had been prepared for them. Willed this to happen.

She, now naked, crouched over him, her mouth on his. He drew her hair around them like a tent. As though to exclude the outside world. She slid further down, introducing herself to the rest of his body. His neck. His nipples. His pale flat stomach. She sipped the rest of the lake from the hollow of his navel. She pressed the heat of his erection against her lips. She tasted him, salty, in her mouth. He sat up and drew her body back to him. She felt his belly tighten under her, hard as a board. She felt her wetness slipping on his skin. He took her nipple in his mouth and cradled the other breast in his calloused palm. Velvet gloved in sandpaper.

At the moment that she guided him into her, she had a brief glimpse of happiness, the wonder in his eyes at the secret that he had unearthed and she smiled down at him as though he was a child discovering his Christmas gifts.

Once he was inside her, the fear flew away and biology took over. The cost of living sky-rocketed to unaffordable heights even though, some would later say that it was a Small Price to Pay.

Was it really?

Two lives. Two adolescents' lives.

And a history lesson for future offenders.

Clouded eyes held clouded eyes in a steady gaze as a luminous young woman opened herself to luminous young man. She was as wide and deep as a river in spate. He sailed on her waters. She could feel him moving deeper and deeper into her. Frantic. Frenzied. Asking to be let in further. Further. Even further. Stopped only by the shape of her. The shape of him. And when he was refused, when he had touched the deepest depths of her, with a sobbing, shuddering sigh, he drowned.

She lay against him. Their bodies slick with sweat. She felt his body drop away from her. His breath became more regular. She could see his eyes clearly. Deep ocean burning with lust and desire. For her. He stroked her hair, sensing that the knot that had eased in him was still tight and quivering in her. Gently he turned her over on her back. He wiped the sweat and dirt on her with his wet pants. He lay over her, careful not to put his weight on her. Small stones pressed into the skin of his forearms. He kissed her eyes. His ears. Her breasts. Her belly. The line that ran down from her navel to her dark triangle, that told him where she wanted him to go. The inside of her legs, where her skin was softest. And his hands lifted her hips and the tongue of a pure-blood touched the most intimate part of her. Drank long and deep from the bowl of her.

She lived, felt free.

At least for now.

He held her against him, resting his back against the old tree, while she cried and laughed altogether. Then, for what seemed like an eternity, but was really no more than five minutes, she slept leaning against him, her back against his chest. Six years of hatred lifted off her and flew into the shadows on weighty, quaking wings. On her Road (to age and death) a small, sunny meadow appeared. Beyond that meadow, an abyss lay waiting.

Slowly the fear seeped back into him. Of what he had done. At what he knew he would do again. And again. And again.

She woke to the sound of his heart knocking against his chest. As though it was searching for a way out. For that movable rib. Some secret sliding-folding panel. His arms were still around her, she could feel his muscles move while he played with the fringe of hair across her eyes. She smiled to herself in the dark, thinking of how much she loved his arms - the shape and strength of them, how safe she felt resting in them when it was probably the most dangerous place she could be.

He forgot his fear and fashioned it into a perfect rose with the help of his wand. He held it out in the palm of his hand. She took it from him and put it in her hair.

She moved closer, wanting to be within him, to touch more of his body. He took her in his arms. A breeze lifted of the lake and cooled their warm bodies.

It was a little cold. A little wet. A little quiet. The Air.

But what was there to say?

An hour later she gently disengaged herself.

"I have to go."

He said nothing, didn't move. He watched her dress.

Only one thing mattered now. They knew it was all they could ask of each other. The only thing. Ever. They both knew that.

Even later, on the thirteenth of the nights that followed this one, instinctively they stuck to the Small Things. The Big Things remained lurking in the shadows. They knew that there was nowhere for them to go. They had nothing. No possible future for them to even consider. Nothing to contemplate. The War was already destroying lives far away beyond the horizon. But was inexorably approaching. So they confined stuck to the small things.

They laughed at ant-bites on each other's bottoms At clumsy caterpillars sliding off the end of leaves, at overturned beetles that couldn't right themselves. At the pair of small fish that always sought him out in the lake and bit him. At a particularly devout praying mantis. At the minute spider that lived in a crack in a crack in the dark bark of the tree which hosted and camouflaged their love with its large hanging branches. The spider camouflaged his body with bits of rubbish - a sliver of wasp wing, part of a cobweb, dust, a half-rotten leaf and the empty thorax of a dead bee. Lord Rubbish, they dubbed him. One night they contributed to improve his wardrobe - an orange peel - and were deeply offended when he rejected it along with the rest of his armour from which he emerged - disgruntled, naked, snot-coloured. As though he deplored their taste in clothes. For several days he remained in this suicidal state of disdainful undress. The rejected shell of garbage stayed standing, like an outmoded world-view. An antiquated philosophy. Then it crumbled. Gradually Lord Rubbish acquired a new ensemble.

Without admitting it to each other or themselves, they linked their fates, their futures (their Joy, their Madness, their Hope, their Infinite Joy) to his. They checked on him every night (with a growing panic as time went by) to see if he had survived the day. They fretted over his frailty. His smallness. The inadequacy of his camouflage. His seemingly self-destructive pride. They grew to love his eclectic taste. His shambling dignity.

They chose him because they knew they had put their faith in fragility. Stick to Smallness. Every time they parted, they made only one small promise to each other.

"Tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow."

They knew that things could change in a day. They were right about that.

They were wrong for Lord Rubbish, however. It outlived him. Lord Rubbish fathered future generations.

He died of natural causes.

That first night, he watched his lover dress. When she was ready she squatted facing him. She lightly touched with her fingers and left a trail of goosebumps on his skin. Like chalk on a blackboard. Like the breeze in a grass-field. Like jet-streaks in a blue church sky. He took her face in her hands and drew it towards his. He closed his eyes and smelled her skin. She laughed.

She kissed his closed eyes and stood up. He with his back against the old tree watched her walk away.

She had a dry rose in her hair.

Hermione turned to say it one again to Draco: "Tomorrow."

Tomorrow.

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