Simple

By Antenora

       

Simply put, we fuck.

Not every night, not even on set occasions. Sometimes I don't see him for weeks on end. I don't miss him when he's gone. I never ask where he goes. I have my lovers and he has his and that's the  way things have are between us. I still hate him, mind you, but there is this as well.

It was during our school days that we first learned the heady, violent joy that could be found in the forbidden pleasure of fucking one's sworn enemy. I'd hated him in those days and it was that hate which brought it all out into the open.

My own questionable sexuality.

My insatiable desire for him despite my hate, or maybe because of it.

I couldn't get enough of him. The taste of his skin. The small crooked scar on his forearm. The curve of his hip. The way he smelt after Quidditch practice. His stupid hair which no amount of grease could possibly smooth. The way he would bite my collarbone just hard enough to mark my ridiculously pale skin with a neat set of bruises. The way he kissed me that first time, beneath the bleachers during a match between Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw. And the fact that his infamous courage carried through to sexual matters as well and we fucked for the first time beneath those bleachers with half the school cheering above us.

And I wanted him.

Desperately, anxiously at times.

And I hated him.

And that's how things were between us.

One week he'd be sneaking down to my room in the dungeons and I'd cast silence wards and charms around the bed to keep our cries from awakening Goyle or Crabbe or one of the others. The next week we'd be back to sniping at each other across classrooms and hallways. A month later I'd be up in his room fucking him inches away from where the Weasel snored.

Those were my favorite nights.

The Weasel might have had his friendship, but I was the one he moaned for. The one he held, the one inside him. Always inside him. I asked him once, only once, how it was that we'd ended up like this. Fucking each other senseless and then falling into an exhausted sleep wrapped around each other so tightly that it was always a challenge to figure out whose limb was which. He smiled at my question in that stupid, enigmatic, infuriating way he had of smiling in those days.

"Don't you know?"

I still hate him.

And I was the only one of his many indiscretions who was allowed the privilege of sleeping with him in my arms. Of course, I didn't find that out till years later when we were twenty-two or twenty-three and he was lying beside me in my bed. He said it in the most off-handed way, as if it were nothing special at all.

"Did you know you are the only person I can sleep with?"

"Harry, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but your not exactly the blessed virgin."

"Funny. You know that's not what I mean."

"How do I know that?  Why don't you just say what you mean?"

"You're the only person I've ever slept beside. The only person whose shared my bed for more than just a quick fuck. Do you have any cigarettes left?"

"No. What is that supposed to mean?"

"What's what supposed to mean?"

"You telling me that."

"Don't you know?  I'm going to get a new pack from the kitchen. Do you still hide them in the cookie jar?"

And that's how things are with us and had always been.

I still hate him.

We're old now. Too old perhaps for sex to bind us as it did once. Sex is too much effort for lungs worn heavy of use and age. Too much work for bodies no longer strong or sure of limb. I use a cane now and have a pronounced limp when the weather has gone bad.

I live alone which has always been my fashion. I've found no steady purpose, no endless love to see me through the days and nights of my last years. So I find myself, more often than not, sitting on the porch with Harry. He's going deaf so he's not quite the conversationalist he once was. Not that I'd ever spent time his company purely for the joy of his conversation. That was the Weasel's lot in life. Mine was the lot of lover and now that we no longer have that I am lost for a reason why we are sitting on this porch together.

I tried asking him once, shouting my question to his failing ears and he simply smiled and replied, "Don't you know?"

I still hate him.

I buried him here on my own property. His stone is near an oak tree. It's a nice sort of place though it had no particular meaning for him or for me. It's just a place to keep him so that I can visit him more easily. No one else was left to argue with me.. To tell me that I was selfish for burying him in near anonymity in the countryside. I think it is what he would have wanted. I realized long ago that fame was never what Harry had desired from his life. What Harry desired...

"Don't you know?"

And so he is buried out here in the countryside where I can visit his grave every morning at sunset and tell him my own truth.

I still hate him.

I've made the last arrangements. They weren't so difficult as I thought they would be. I'm ready, I suppose. I think I've been ready for years. Since he fell asleep for the last time with his head in my lap as the sun dipped below the horizon. I might have simply gone underground with him then, but perhaps I didn't deserve that. Perhaps this is the price of foolish pride. To be the last one standing. The one left behind. I wonder if he'll be waiting for me in whatever comes after this life. If he'll be waiting to smile and ask me the same old question.

"Don't you know?"

Because I do.

I think I've known all along.

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