At the time between wake and sleep, it’s like a state of arousal.  Your body is vibrating but you refuse to move and your mind is flinging around a million ideas at once.  If you were to give it form, it would be silver, pretty and shining in your eyes; just a layer of silk parchment, floating above your nose.  You look at it while lying on your back against the stiff cotton sheets of your bed, and it shows you images.  You believe everything you see, and you believe it all to be real, so yes, it is real, you can feel it.

So this is how it is: you are just an ordinary teenaged boy.  No, scrap that.  You are just an ordinary teenaged Wizard boy.  Yes, that’s right, you own a wand and you can do magic.

It has always been this way, you know no other.  You also have parents that smile at you and show their white teeth behind red and healthy lips.  You give them names, calling them Lily and James, and you are their soon.  You’re a sort of son to their friends too.  Their names are: Sirius, Remus and-

-No.  It was only those two.

You don’t have any siblings, but that’s alright; there are plenty of Weasleys to go around.  Their hair is sort of like your mothers, but a stronger red only special Wizarding breeding can deliver, like the colour of blood the second before it turns a few shades darker from gathering itself into a large puddle.  It reminds you of the warm feeling of fire against your skin: sharp, hot and magnificent.  Not that you have seen much blood, or felt any burns.  In fact, you haven’t even got a scar on your forehead, so what would you know?

Your best friend is Ron Weasley and you go to school together.  You are Quidditch captain, Head Boy and you study hard but have fun with your friends at appropriate intervals.  Retreating from the games, whether it be chess, exploding snap or football, is hard, but you do it, and Hermione Granger doesn’t nag you because you can do it on your own.  You’re good like that.

You’re perfect like that, even.  There are really just friends and grumpy teachers around; not arch-enemies stalking around like shadows, spending all days and nights planning out your doom.  There’s no suffocation, nor night terrors from the whispering.  No muttered words such as: Death, pain, portkey, potion, kill, rip, tear, crucio…

Avada… what? No, you’ve never heard your mother scream because she has never screamed like that ever anyway.  Not that you would know, because let’s face it, you’ve never met a Dementor and Sirius has never been in prison.  Maybe he’s married to a nice lady.

Maybe.  But one thing is for sure: you like Seamus and Dean and Neville and Ginny.  But you don’t like that boy, with hair and skin so silver like a Veela’s, and eyes sharp and bright that you can almost hear your soul screaming when he glares at you across the room during inter-house study sessions and meal times.  His name is Draco Malfoy and you don’t think that name is strange at all, but he’s not very nice so you appoint him your only enemy.  He’s mean to Hermione and Ron, and you hate him for that.  But then you think that he’s only like that because it was the way he was brought up: a rich snob who knows no other way to act, and by the time you’ve convinced yourself that his heart really isn’t that black, your hate has simmered and melted into pity instead.  He’s just… He’s just.  He’s just something.

Just annoying, really.  Yes, that’s it.  He’s even annoying after the last Slytherin verses Griffindor game you’re ever going to play and he comes into your House changing rooms and talks loudly to you while you’re still naked, and the two of you are standing with wet hair after your showers, both quite flushed.  But his cheeks aren’t red from embarrassment, he’s red from anger because apparently you hit his wrist causing the Snitch to fall from his hand or something a rather.  You’re not listening, and you pretend its because it’s Malfoy and you never listen to Malfoy, but its actually because you like the way his lips smack together when he talks and the way the water in his hair turns it sort of golden against the torch light and then you watch a drop of water dangling delicately from a strand of hair drop onto his neck and slide down until it disappears under his collar.

He’s stopped talking now, and his eyes are sliding down your body, and he would turn red if he wasn’t already, you suppose for some reason.  Then the scene changes because the half-wake window can’t hold for much longer and anyway, you’re sick of pitying Malfoy.  Or Something.

Or maybe you found that scene very wrong, as this is the Wizarding World and Wizards are different from Muggles in that some boy Muggles like boys, but Wizards don’t like Wizards.  This world is perfect like that, you’ve decided.  Some things are okay, like disenchanted canary creams or the strange buzz made from rain hitting a wet-protection shield or the way Mandy Brocklehurst sings the word ‘yes’ when you ask her to the Christmas Eve Ball.  You like it this way, it’s perfect.

Finally falling asleep is always a big let down, and you dream of a small boy with tears on his cheeks, and he’s sniffing and pounding on a door.  His relatives have locked him in a hall cupboard under the stairs to the second floor of their house, and you feel so sorry for this boy you almost cry yourself, but instead you drift into the half-wake again and you remind yourself that you are very happy and your life is good.

The window is shimmering silver, like the soft hair between your fingers, so soft like the lips lightly pressed against yours, and it shimmers and flicks out of focus like the tongue pressing into your mouth.  You suddenly feel very tired, and morning is drifting into your consciousness but you don’t want to see it, and Ron is waking up but you don’t want to hear him, and the special world you made up is disappearing but you don’t want it to go.

-fin-

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