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Harry eyed him from across the dorm, eyes inevitably trailing his every move with the utmost care. There was something about love that could make the boring, little acts of life so entertaining to the eye.
Ron was chatting with Seamus while changing into pyjamas, his fair stomach displaying a faint outline of abs, evidently proving his quidditch skills. Harry was in the process of trying to find a subtle way to eye them up without being caught. His pyjama pants hung low on his generally hairless torso, and Harry often found himself wishing that Ron would magically drop a pants size mid-sentence - gravity consequently taking the pants with them.
There was something innately beautiful about Ron. His red hair, for one - a stark contrast to his pale skin, which was lightly dispersed in freckles. He had surprisingly full flips, complimenting his robin eyes, which were draped over by long, light lashes. There was nothing harry couldn’t appreciate about him. His voice, which harry had listened to the deepening of over time, was always music to his ears.
Sometimes the aspect of his enamor being unrequited made his heart feel as if it would cease to beat. Romance tended to be what happened to people who didn’t seek it out, and where was the luck in that? It was all he hoped for at night, in the privacy of the dark that exposed your inner most thoughts.
“Alright there, mate?” Ron asked.
“What? Oh! Sorry about that, I suppose I’m just in a daze today,” replied a queasy Harry.
“Merlin, that was me last week. That Flitwick essay was a bloody nightmare, is all. What’s got you so distracted?”
“I reckon it’s just a lack of sleep. Don’t worry about me. Anyway, I should be getting to bed.”
Harry turned and started to draw the curtains opposite of where Ron was standing, wanting to end the conversation as politely as possible.
“This early?”
“Like I said, I probably need it. It couldn’t hurt, at the very least.” Talking to you is agony sometimes. “Goodnight.”
“Well, goodnight, I guess,” Ron reached out and placed his hand on Harry’s shoulder, avoiding his eyes. His fingertips brushed by the collar of his shirt, lightly touching the pulse point of his neck’s exposed skin. Harry held his breath, and Ron let his hand linger a moment longer than was generally socially acceptable. A moment longer than Harry’s sanity could handle. And then, not a second later, he was gone, briskly walking towards the stairs of the common room without so much as a glance back in Harry’s direction.
And what to make of that? It was the minuscule moments like that that kept him clinging to pointless hope, like a life preserver with the rope cut.
But then, it makes you wonder, doesn’t it? The little acts that we do when nobody sees? The ones we know mean the most? And maybe hoping on those has some merit to it, in the end.
Harry shut his curtains and resumed his Ron-centric, smitten daze once more.