I Don't Know How to Love Him

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I´ve watched him for so long that it seems that one day simply blurs into the next. He is my only constant, the one clear image in a world with no focus. I hear him laugh, I see him smile, and it makes me want more. I don't know what to do--I feel like I'm breaking inside, little by little, transforming into something new and brittle that should not--does not--have the right to exist. I've changed so much because of him that I don´t even recognize myself in the mirror anymore.

He's only a boy, regardless of what everyone else says about him. He's not a legend. He's lucky. He isn't a savior. He bites his nails and cheats on his homework and lies about the small things just like any other person in the school. For crying out loud, his scar isn't even a good fashion accessory! And yet... he moves me like no other. Every time we meet in the corridors and he gives me that look that seems reserved only for me, like I'm the one beneath him--I don't know how to take this. Father never taught me how to deal with love.

I want him to save me.

More than that, I want to save him.

How do I do it? Should I be like the Mudblood, who talks him into staying behind with her to work on their studies together, gentle and soft in candlelight with the musty smell of ancient books the backdrop to the confession that I don´t speak of in words but instead in small touches and longer looks? No, I couldn´t do that. We´re too far from each other to have that temperate affection.

Should I be like Weasel, who shouts how he feels with every move? Didn´t he cause quite a scene in the Gryffindor Tower when he confessed to Harry how he felt? Should I be possessive and easily jealous, clinging with the intensity of a thousand children to a favored toy? No, I couldn't do that either. My entire nature is too subtle to take that approach, and I think I would end up humiliating myself rather than freeing myself from this invisible prison I find around me.

Perhaps the youngest Weasley understood it best of all, when she looked up at him and whispered a confession of innocent longing that detailed how he made her feel. She looked at him so earnestly, so openly-and out of them all, he´s kindest to her. Yet, if I were to follow her footsteps, I doubt that I would be as easily forgiven for my attempt to claim his heart.

I´ve never even loved anyone before. I don't understand how he can affect me so. Why I'm always crossing his path with angry words for the simple knowledge that at that moment, for one second, his attention is mine and mine alone, where everyone else fades around us and it´s just him and I in our constant fence of words. Have I come to live for those conflicts? I never thought I´d come to this. Is this what devotion is all about? Passion and anger? Is tenderness a mask on the true nature of emotion? How have I become this-this weak? Why do I have to clutch at my walls and rebuild them as they crumble?

Maybe it´s me. Maybe I´m the one who can´t comprehend delicate emotions. Vincent and Greg love-I know that. They love me, and they love each other, but their sensitivity is reserved for one another, although I know if I but asked, they would envelope me in their fragile emotion without another word.

But I know that I would break them, and they deserve all the happiness they can get.

And yet... if he said he loved me, I´d be lost. I´d be in shock--how can one accept and return a feeling of which they have no comprehension? I know that he would look at me with those bright eyes, and I know I would turn and walk away from him and everything he offered.

He frightens me in a way that my Father doesn´t understand. I understand fear-I fear my father; I fear Voldemort. But he reaches inside of me and unearths something that I have never felt before, and I´m petrified of it.

Hope?

Every time he brushes past me and his fingers linger on my hand just a little longer than necessary. Every time he glances at me from across the room without his facade of annoyance. Every time he congratulates me on a well-played game of Quidditch. Every time I lash out and hurt lances from his eyes like a beacon.

Every time...

He burns me. I'm branded inside. But I-I will remain the loathed one, and I will hurt him even while my own heart is breaking inside.

I don´t know how to love him.

And that's why I have to hate him instead.

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