You'd be asking about Harry Potter, I know that. And I'd be the one to ask. I've spent more time following him around and snapping pictures of him than I can comfortably admit to a therapist. Anyway. Being short really helps with blending in with the woodwork. Thing is, up until maybe Fourth or Fifth Year in Hogwarts for me, I didn't get the big picture. I didn't really see Harry for Harry. Without the Potter, Boy-Who-Lived bit. Once I stopped and figured it out, Harry stopped freezing up around me, which meant that I could really capture some great stuff on him. Sounds obsessed, huh?
He's a strange person. Not off the wall, lock him up strange, just different. It's like he flips masks off and on. One mask I really didn't want to ever see directed at me is the "You Will Hurt Now". Draco Malfoy's seen this one plenty of times. On the subject of him, he's married to Ron Weasley, Harry's best friend. Weird, huh? But if it weren't for him and Ron getting involved, I probably wouldn't ever have gotten to see some other sides of Harry. Like for example, you know that if he's really trying to not laugh, his mouth sort of crawls up one side of his face? He did it a lot around Ron and Draco. A lot. Drove them nuts because whatever it was, they wouldn't be finding it funny. Hermione Granger's gotten exasperated at Harry plenty of times because of that twitch also. So Harry's got moods. One moody person all right. He could be all sunny and comfortable, and then he'd be hurling something against a wall. It got worse as the time to face Voldemort got closer, of course, but he's tough. How else could he have survived?
I'm getting off track. Suffice to say, a whole lot of weird happens around Harry Potter, so in the end, I had a lot of material to record. A lot. Some of it is violent and definitely not for the faint hearted. What I don't get about the Wizarding World is how they could just gloss over things. I mean, in my neighborhood's public library, I could get books on the Holocaust complete with pictures and everything! People just sort of blank out the war with Voldemort. I'm working with Hermione on a book about that. First conflict and everything. She's doing the writing, I'm doing the illustrations that go with the story. It's tough on the soul and sometimes, I break down and cry. So I'm telling a different sort of story.
Let's talk about love. Love, I think, is weird. Especially so when it comes to what I've seen. First, Harry. What can I say? People love him to pieces for what he's done, what he stands for. But I haven't seen anything that suggests him loving anyone romantic like. He wants it, I think. I've seen him. He watches Ron and Draco and yeah, he smiles like they are some strange and funny foreign life form from the planet of Coupledom, but there's a want there. You want to know what's really weird? He avoids situations that could mutate into him being labeled as part of a couple with all his might. Really. Can't make any sense of it.
Ron. Whoo boy, that's one weird love, I can tell you. I guess it makes complete sense if you knew the whole story, but I doubt anyone except Harry and Hermione do, because they're close like that. It's all sudden you know, Draco being Part-Veela and then springing a school year wedding on everyone. There have been rumors that Ron's under influence just beneath Imperio level bad, Veela magic. Well, I don't see it. I did the wedding photos, after all. Draco still teases Ron and Ron still throws a mean tantrum when he's angry, but it's so little compared to what they are like when they aren't bickering. And for those two, bickering's foreplay. As for that Veela magic? My advice was to leave the floor they were on if you knew they're heading for a bed. Or even when Draco got that glint in his eye. Because he loses a bit of control over that part of his magic when he gets excited, you know. Leaked all over the place in that drafty castle. It might make you just a bit flirtier than usual if you're a male. Or it could land you in serious detention and a note to your parents for unseemly conduct. I don't know how Ron handles being hit with that stuff when Draco's in the mood, I really don't.
Hermione. Umm. Currently doing some cautious, not definable thing with Blaise Zabini. Yeah. The Blaise Zabini. I can't say anything about that, because, well, have you seen The Godfather? Yeah. No, I'm not going to get whacked or anything. It's just that Zabini's not someone you piss off. Not that he'd get pissed off about me telling you that he's got this thing with Hermione. Which neither of them know what to call, exactly. Well, I know what he should do, and he's not so dangerous or unreasonable that he wouldn't hear me out. But he's a certain type of Slytherin, and I guess it's a touchy subject when it comes to said Slytherin habits and pushy love interests. Messy, messy. Oh, and don't even bother asking me how I know, okay? Zabini'll be after you if I told. After he's through with me. Man treasures his privacy.
Love? Okay. I admit it. I had a humongous, humongous crush on Harry. Turned me into a babbling idiot around him and a stalker. Also gave me a lot of conflicted soul-searching, questioning of my sexual preferences and whatnot. Anyway. Apparently I've got this pattern of getting myself infatuated with unavailable men, because right now, Zabini's got me feeling all squishy in my stomach. A bit of a problem, as I occasionally freelance for him, but bearable. I've thought about admitting this to him, usually when I'm a little drunk. Who knows? With Zabini, things get done. Maybe he's got a cute distant cousin back in Italy who likes their boyfriends babbly and hyper.
Yeah, tonight's a night for shocking confessions.
So it's Sixth Year for me. No one so much as raises an eyebrow when Draco zips through the Portrait and up to the Seventh Year Boys' Dormitories and doesn't come back down for a long while. Harry's become more serious and everything's tense. Which means somehow, the weird builds up and whacks him. Trend was usually a bad, depressing brand of weird, which really did nothing for him mood-wise. But this weird? Not so bad, you'd notice.
It was in winter when it happened, during the holiday. Me and Dennis stayed at Hogwarts that year. We'd talked with our parents, and the hard decision we took was to not be with them for Christmas or New Years'. The castle's pretty empty then, and me and Dennis just wandered around and talked about things that I can't remember now. I miss Dennis. Sorry. Ron and Draco were giving each other the eye, which should have warned me, but I was a bit groggy from the Feast. I left early and sort of planted myself in front of the fireplace in the Common Room and vegetated. Harry walked up a bit later and vegetated with me. I should have known by then, but you know, I was feeling all lazy and comfy. And then Ron and Draco arrived. Or rather, Draco had Ron by his tie and was dragging him along and giggling like an idiot. He was pink, too, like newborn baby. I still wonder where Ron managed to get liquor. Draco and Ron started their locking lips and rotating tongues and hips thing while moving toward the general direction of the Boys' Dorms bit, and then the Veela pheromones hit me. I sort of fell on top of Harry and well… I got my first kiss. Kisses. Hard to tell. It felt so good. And then, of course, just when I was really getting the hang of it, the last of the pheromones evaporated. Let me tell you something. It was the worst way to be embarrassed. And Harry was just lying there, looking at me. What was I supposed to say? I'd just jumped somebody who only recently started to view me as a friend. Yeah, really bad. And you know what? Harry wasn't upset. Not one bit. He sort of sat up and said, "Awkward, isn't it?" I told you he was weird.
I felt even worse once I found out that Harry isn't affected by Veela pheromones. Yeah, it'll make him stand up and pay attention, but he'd not do anything about it. It can't make him do anything. I wonder if it's because it's Draco's pheromones. So in the end, nothing came of me kissing him. He's not interested in men, much less boys. But you know, he kissed back. He really did. So, I guess it turned out all right in the end.
Fin
Just a little thing. I suppose I do want people to know that I'm still writing.