Rossa Corsa

AN: I haven't written any fic in a long while, especially not for this fandom so I hope it's not as awful as I worry it may be. No, I don't own the Harry Potter franchise. If I gained anything at all from this I'd publish more frequently!

This is for everyone who was kind enough to review my previous works and asked for more.

Fire is not the right word.

There's copper in there, for sure, and shades you're sure you've never seen in anything else. Not even in books, in your mind. And it's frustrating. Even though you know a name would only diminish it's brilliance, it's vibrance.

You like red. Gryffindor red. You suppose it's quite fitting – Prefect, Head Boy, he would have to be red wouldn't he. It doesn't even clash with the robes. It's that good; the red.

Once they have a History of Magic lesson where they're required to spend almost all the day wandering round the grounds looking at, well, history. In the past, and in the making. The usual nonsense that washes over you like a heatwave (and gives you almost as much as a headaches as sunstroke) but it's outside so at least there's something to look at that's some other colour than grey (or at least a different shade of it). It being autumn, and a Scottish one at that, the sun goes down early on them and bleaches through the trees. Then there really is something to look at. You're meant to be wasted your life listening to someone whose wasting their death telling you about some chap with an unpronounceable name and how he "fundamentally restored the vital concepts that were instrumental in formalising the obligations of educational reform" ad infinitum, ad ridicule. Instead you're watching the fading sunbeams burn their last through Percy Weasley's hair. And, my God, does it burn.

It's gold and it's electric, and you're sure if you were to run your hands through it (not that could, that you would, that you should) you would never feel another sensation like it again in this lifetime. You wouldn't want to. Nothing would feel like that.

It's not a normal kind of love. You're not really sure how love with Percy would work, if it can work, but sometimes you think it would be enough to have someone pick out that colour of red for you and make it into paint, to wool. So you could coat the walls in it, make a jumper out of it. Then you could stare at it all day, bury your face in it and breathe it in. But that would be monstrous. Is nothing sacred?

You've been trying to put your finger on the colour. It's too dark for amber, not rich enough for burgundy. It's not exotic but it's by no means dull or drab. And you think it might be the most beautiful colour you've ever seen. Percy might be the most beautiful person you've ever met. And all you want is to tell him that, and all the other nonsense that is supposed to come later, that you're supposed to want falls into grey, grey apathy. You've tried looking it up, and there's Racing Green, Bulgarian Rose, and even something called Fandango. But there's nothing that comes close the colour you love the most. There's no-one that comes close to him.

You have wasted hours of lessons staring at the back of Percy's head. It's not difficult – he sits towards the front (of course) and you're not a bad student but sometimes it's hard to get enthusiastic about the properties of bits of dead animal or such the like. So you sit back a bit, and from where you tend to be positioned in the classes you share with Percy you can usual see him with great ease. Sometimes you wonder if he knows. He's caught you looking once or twice, although whether he's thought anything of it, ever spared a thought for why the House Keeper happened to be looking his way, you don't know. Maybe it would be easier to tell him. It might be enough for him to know, for him to understand (or at least comprehend), to maybe even feel the same way. But you're a gangly thing with muddy hair (sometimes literally) and you scrape by and school and sometimes save a match but you're not really much more. Captain of the Quidditch team doesn't really mean a lot outside the walls of Hogwarts, particularly not to someone like Percy. Although you both share that maverick nature. The desire, no, the need, to do better, to aim higher and to score and to win. But you're still nowhere near on par with the boy with the sunset for hair and you never will be.

So instead you take the less and more and you stare. You see red every day and it's the best you think you'll get but that's alright, because, after all, red is your favourite colour. And Percy Weasley, is your favourite shade of red.