You Live Your Life

You live your life

You live like an island

Satisfied

You live for the moment

Your mouth, prefect in every way, opens and you laugh, a loud boisterous sound, totally uninhibited and free of any kind of taint. Your eyes twinkle and when you smile, you smile with your whole body.

I watch you, carefully from the corner of my eye, making sure nobody is watching me watch you, watching me love you. You don't know and nobody else knows but I look and see and ache. My heart thuds painfully in my chest and I almost can't breathe, my lips dry and cracked, my eyes simply driven by a pure drive to look at you and caress you with every glance and every gaze.

Nobody knows, who would guess, who would even suspect? I am perfect and yet imperfect in the eyes of everyone else, I am boring but interesting in the converse of others, I am intelligent and others scorn me for my stupidity. I could be anything if I tried, anything I wanted to be, which is perfect but I can't be the perfect one for you.

You, who is perfect with your simplicity and peace, your easy going ability to go almost anywhere and make friends, form connections and bonds with others. You are spontaneous, not planned out or dictated, cold and controlled. You're free and pure in that way, you can let yourself go without ever having to worry about the consequences.

Here you come

You make it look easy

I bet you smile in your sleep

Are you smiling at me

Your robes brush by me as you walk out, talking animatedly with others about Quidditch. Your voice is raised and hands are moving exasperatingly around in the air, half formed protests and shapes coming to life under your frenzied actions. I'm not looking, I can't see but I don't have to. It's always the same with you. You let your emotions show in everything you do or say until your whole life is like a painting, all your words and actions the vibrant paint that make up your landscape. I wish I could add my paint to it. Would you let me, I wonder, but no point in thinking about it because I'm perfect, Prefect, and controlled. I'm not free like you and I can't let go. I don't know how.

When you go and live your life like that, you can't spare thoughts for people like me. I am not below you, nor do you feel any contempt for me but that doesn't mean that you see me in anyway. You need paint from others as well and I've got none to give. I have no words and actions, only a dull grey and black left by admonishment of your behaviour.

Set an example for the younger ones, I chastise you, and everyone else rolls their eyes but you look at me with a kind of absent minded grin that says, sure whatever Percy, but you're not mocking which means the world to me. But I know that smile isn't really for me, it's simply for life and living, for the moment, and that hurts, millions of shards of razor sharp agony creating haemorrhages in me, my own love hurting.

You live your life

You live like an island

Surrounded by, water and silence

You are yourself in a world surrounded by those that matter, those that care. Like an island, you are surrounded by a deep blue of all your friends, bathed in the sunlight of the happiness and the fun that you have with them. I wish I had my own place to claim in that ocean or that sun, but I don't. But I sometimes I dream, would you let me be your ocean? Surround you totally and engulf you in my storms, lap your shores in the laziness of heat and languid pleasure, refreshing and sweet? Would I? Could I?

Mmmm there you go

You make it look easy

I bet you laugh at yourself

Are you laughing at me

Behind the stands, I watch surreptitiously, my eyes riveted upon your figure, this red and gold moving blur in the dusk, evening over taking the sun's descent. Everyone is laughing, flying high in the sky and they're all free, My hand grips the wood beneath my hand and I tighten my fingers, almost to the point of cutting off any circulation. I shouldn't be here, I should be studying, making sure that everyone is following the rules, doing the things that 'perfect' Prefects do and respectable Head Boys ensure. But I guess I'm not as perfect as I'd like to think and I'm not as predictable as everyone else believes.

Slowly I let go of the railing, my fingers first white and then red as the blood rushes through them, refilling my veins with blood cells deprived of passages. I still watch, uncaring as you sail through the air, like an arrow, deadly and beautiful in your speed and elegance. Everything you do shows your freedom and I wish I was up there too, up in the sky flying with you, diving and swooping and not giving a damn about what anybody thinks or what I should be doing. But I'm not like that. It wouldn't work anyway; I suck on a broomstick, it's too unpredictable, the possibilities endless and not in sight.

Cause sometimes anything goes

When you're looking at me

And sometimes everything goes

When you're looking at me

The professor asks me a question and shit! I wasn't listening, too busy giving a half glance over to you, watching you sketch some kind of Quidditch strategy on a scrap piece of parchment, your full lower lip tugged and bitten by your teeth as you worry, a little furrow appearing between your eyebrows. One second, two second. The silence is too long and everyone knows I'm not perfect now, I don't know how to answer, don't know what to say. You look up as you realise something is wrong, the silence isn't usual of Professor Vector's class and you see all of them staring at me. I see you, looking at me, a half questioning puzzled look on your face and I can't not say anything, not when you're looking, watching me.

I clear my throat and with a startlingly clear voice, answer the question correctly. The Professor nods and continues the lesson and everyone turns back to either writing notes of simply not paying attention. You turn your concentration back to the strategy but I don't mind because that means I can watch you a bit more and silently thank you, for saving me when I couldn't save myself.

So, come on, come on, everything goes

When you're looking at me

Come on, come on, everything goes

Sometimes when you're smiling at me

Come on, come on, everything goes

You're going to pull a prank, I know you are. I saw you and Fred and George, your heads huddled together and giving evil gleeful looks over at the Slytherin table. I want to leave it, watch what happens but I can't. I walk over and tell all of you sternly that you shouldn't be doing anything drastic that will lose us House points. Fred and George give me their usual raised eyebrow look that says, do we look like we care? They don't listen, they don't care because I'm their Prefect brother, the one who's boring and predictable, one who's so easy to tease.

But you give me a kind of playful conspirator's grin and I almost melt in a puddle at your feet, my pulse racing and my face about to blush into an embarrassing red brighter than my hair. You assure me that nothing was going to happen and we weren't going to lose House points. I want to tell you to go ahead, go with the plan, anything works with me when it has to do with you, I would let you do anything, especially when you smile like that. But I don't. I can't; I'm Head Body, I'm a Prefect, I'm Percy for god's sake.

You live your life

You live like an island

What is it like

I wish I could hold it

We're at the Gryffindor Table in the Great Hall and you're sitting there with Fred and George. Together, you've all mucked up the great prank and gotten into trouble and I told you off, using my full Head Body mode to tell you that you were an embarrassment, you had lost us fifty house points and I was really disappointed and that you would probably have to serve a form of detention later with Professor McGonagall. Fred and George glared at me, I could almost hear their thoughts. Prefect Percy, they'd say snidely, Bighead boy.

But you, do you hate me? Are you angry that I said what I did? I didn't mean the words, I had to, it's who I am, it's what I do and I don't know how to change, I don't know how to become you or take up anything of what you have. I can only go that far and with you I can't go anywhere. I need your help but you don't know or maybe you don't care.

Mmmm there you go

Making it look easy

I bet you like how it feels

But do you feel me

You look up suddenly, catch my eyes on you and my breath catches in my throat. You know now! You know, god, what am I going to say, to do? For a moment, our eyes meet and I see into your chocolate mousse eyes, the swirling rich colours with their little flecks of green. Hazel, your eyes are hazel, I think faintly, and in that moment, I search for something in your warm eyes. Understanding, a little bit of hope that maybe, just maybe, you could give me something, extend your hand and take me out of this perfect controlled world into the unpredictable, hold me up while I venture into the maelstrom of the unknown and free. I don't know how, but I know you could show me, you could guide me if only you felt the same way.

But you don't. Cocking your head to one side, you give me a puzzled look, asking me innocently what the Head Boy Percy is doing staring and I look down quickly, the moment lost but not forgotten. No, never forgotten. I realise now. I can never be free and you can never be the saviour I need to find my liberty. Just the same, I can never be the one for you and never be the one to soar the skies by your side, revelling in freedom.

You are Oliver Wood and I am Percy Weasley. You are the island in the ocean and I am in outer space, the distant star in the night sky that looks down benevolently to the island in the world, the blue orb that resides beside in the cold dark of space. I look down and you live on unknowingly.

I am the ruined canvas, the melange of bright paint mixed together so firmly that the pigments are now indistinguishable, dark and depressing in their lost colour and vibrancy. You are the painter, the one who cannot possibly paint on the ruined canvas and cannot use the old worn paint to create a new painting of joy, a painting of once again bright shades of life.

You don't know and you'll never know, never understand what it's like, what I'm like. But that's okay. I'll just watch from here and understand you.

Love you.