Irresistible Desire

Irresistible Desire

I'm watching him again.

I'm always watching him.

Not that he'd notice. He's too wrapped up in his own thoughts to ever bother looking up, and half the time he wouldn't be able to see me behind the lens anyway.

Most of them never see me at all. I followed Harry around for three years and all he ever saw was the camera. And I admit it; the camera has a fascination. For Harry, he never wanted to be on film and so it represented something to shy away from, run from. And since he never wanted to see the camera at all, how could I have expected him to see me behind it.

Others are thrilled to see the camera pointed at them. They fix their robes, pat their hair, smile big. But they're smiling for the camera, not for me.

He never smiles for either of us.

There he sits, grasping his charcoal pencil lightly, staring off into the crowd and occasionally sliding the black stick across the sketchbook sitting in his lap. The amazing thing about him is this incredible stillness he gets while he's sitting and thinking. Even when I develop the pictures using magic he still sits there perfectly still.

But once, just once, he was taken with some muse the moment I pressed the shutter closed. That picture of him is filled with an almost manic energy.

I never did find out what it was he was drawing.

Sometimes I try and talk to him, convince him that photography is art, convince him that we have something in common, that he should talk to me, see me, notice me noticing him. But he never quite looks past the lens, never sees the bright eyes shining just for him, the small smile which dies a little more every time he dismisses me. Never hears the faint click of the shutter as I lodge another memory of his quiet non-caring.

Robert Frost once said, "Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired." Irresistible desire - a longing that can not be successfully resisted. I must be in love with Dean Thomas, for I've tried to resist it, to defeat the longing his dark eyes and serious manner drive me to. And I can't.

I need him some days. I simply need him.

And I long to have him long for me.

But he doesn't. Maybe he never will.

It's not that he's beautiful. I mean, he is beautiful - with that smooth, chocolate-dark skin and those deep, expressive eyes. But that's not why I love him; not why I desire him.

Desire - craving, lust, passion, hunger, longing, pining, yearning.

I've seen his art - snuck glances at it over his shoulder, taken a few, careful snap shots to have copies to keep. His art lives, even without enchantment. My still frames have no sparkle to them; the only motion in a photograph I take comes from the magic I impart afterwards. But Dean …

Dean disdains wizard art. He wants the life in his paintings to come from his skill with a brush; the mystique of his drawings laid out in charcoal, not smudged through enchantment. And he manages it. The painting of Seamus practically breaths along with you; his sketches of Ginny manage to convey her bright colors and darkening personality; the series he did of his roommates showing their individual torments and pains while highlighting the joys they find anyway.

Amazing. Beautiful. Distant. Untouchable. Thoughtful. Perfect.

Not mine.

Another shutter click. Another stolen moment.