In Love But Not At Peace

His flat in London is in the Earl's Court area and not in a good area either. It's a quick walk from the tube station, and late into the night the street is lit, with dog walkers and restaurant goers passing by occasionally. It isn't safe, he tells her too many times for her to listen, because of the location, because of the darkness, because of the city. She knows greater dangers, and that doesn't include the city of London. But he tells her anyway, just because he can, and she half listens once and a while, regardless of what she pretends.

There's one of those shops where muggles can get their clothing cleaned, a place that exchanges currency, and a small boutique on his street. She's never been to any of them, only the Chinese restaurant nearby and the Blackbird occasionally, when there's nothing to eat in his house. He gives her this feeling about his neighborhood, like he leads the double life, and he knows more about the area than he lets her realize. It's some big secret she isn't let in on.

She refers to it as the Walk up of Doom; four flights of stairs with little light and hard steps. She knows because her knees have made unavoidable contact with the unmerciful stairs more times than should be necessary. But she continues the journey, sometimes at odd hours, just because, well, he is an unavoidable person himself, without a doubt.

Once she reaches the flat, with its plain wooden door and gold lettering, she knocks about five times, sharply and a little too frantically. She waits in the ordinary hallway, impersonal and all too public. It reminds her subconsciously why she sometimes hates living in a city with so many people in such close conditions. Something that is occupied by so many people every day shouldn't be so boring and simple. She lived her entire life in London, except when she was at Hogwarts, and she's known nothing else but what her school friends have told her about the country. Is her continuous stay worth it? She tells herself, as she stands in the vacant corridor, that it is.

When he opens the door, she is reminded why she has stayed so long in the city. She goes from one extreme to the other: the boring hallway to his small but intensely fascinating flat. There are books and papers everywhere. Some of them are journals, mostly traveling journals. Others are books used for research, mostly for the Order. Some of them are muggle. The chairs -mismatched- are salvaged pieces thrown away by strangers, and the couch is older than her. She's not quite sure what color the walls are, because they're heavily covered with selected pieces of art, paintings she never bothered to ask where from, because the story didn't seem to matter.

And yet, the room isn't messy. In his mind, she is certain it is quite organized. The space is so small, and there isn't enough room to fit multiple book cases so the books are placed around the room, logical in a way only he knows. Everything else -the records, the miscellaneous yet fairly interesting objects, articles of clothing- is scattered about as if picked up and thrown down repeatedly and subconsciously. She is very much aware of how haphazard yet, in more than one way, brilliant his mind is, even if it is unappreciated by some.

When she thinks of him, she finds him sitting amongst the ordered chaos, content as if he knew nothing about anything. That's the way she wants to be, even though he isn't at all like that. He might be smoking, or drinking coffee that is usually mixed with something of his fancy. He's always like that these days, like the world isn't going on around him, and that there isn't betrayal, death, war, or sorrow. She wonders what he thinks about so he doesn't have to think about other things.

She thinks about him, instead of everything else. She did for two years.

But he might think about her. That is, when he isn't too busy pretending to not notice how often she visits him, how many times they laugh, all of their mutual looks and friendly touches, like the world around them is turning in the other direction to pretend not to notice.

They have little but themselves. He calls himself poor. She calls him humble (in which he laughs at). She stays over and wears one of his shirts to work the next morning, and they share shampoo. He pretends to not notice the way she keeps his shirt and wears it more than she wears her own clothing.

She pretends that it's normal too, but sometimes she gives him that look, late at night when the only noise outside the open window is the lonely walker clicking their boots against the pavement. That looks says all, she tells her self, but he pretends to not notice.

But he lets her stay the night, and sleep in his bed. And she lives for the words that remain unsaid, so she returns again. And again.

And if he doesn't open the door because he's buying ice cream at the corner store, she lets herself in. When he returns, they share the ice cream, eating out of the container with one spoon while reading the paper together. He reads a lot faster than her, so he waits.

Just like she waits, for those words unspoken to form sounds, to finally be said.