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I had fourteen and a half years to get used to the body I’d been given, and the damn thing kept changing on me in exciting and sometimes alarming ways. I wasn’t alone in my adolescent plight.
Summer was quickly turning to autumn and we clung to the last moments of warmth with greedy abandon, shucking our black robes and charcoal jumpers to bask in the September sun.
Lazing on a flat expanse of grass, we were fragile, brittle, mutable, beautiful things. With long, pale limbs that hungered for sunshine and ached for contact, we rolled up our shirtsleeves and tangled ourselves in each other. I laid my head on Draco’s folded legs, while Pansy rested hers on his shoulder.
I reached back with eyes closed, blindly seeking a connection – any connection - until my fingers met skin. I slowly ran the back of my hand along the mysterious flesh, searching for clues with my knuckles. What I felt was smooth, soft, and malleable. Though my touch was innocent, my heart beat faster, for my mind conjured intimacy on a level that transcended friendship. I imagined my fingertips sinking in, my lips tasting it. It didn’t matter to whom this skin belonged – girl or boy, Pansy or Draco. Pleasure had no gender. Pleasure only had supple, sun-warmed flesh that I longed to explore.
Pansy giggled, unveiling the mystery of my desire. I smiled softly with this knowledge. But I still wasn’t sure what part of her I was touching, and that was perhaps even more exciting. I hazarded a more bold approach and slowly, slowly, ever so slowly slid the back of my hand further along. When she gave a small gasp, I stopped and pulled my hand away, embarrassed that I’d gone too far.
“You know it’s customary to kiss a girl before you try to put your hand up her skirt,” Draco teased.
I blushed hard, more from the idea that I’d been feeling up one of Pansy’s thighs – the thighs I’d been admiring quite a bit since the start of term. “I wasn’t trying to get up her skirt,” I muttered.
“I don’t mind, Draco. It’s just Theo,” said Pansy with a flippant giggle.
I didn’t know how to read that. On one hand, Pansy didn’t mind that I was touching her. On the other hand, I was Just Theo. Innocuous, harmless, boring Theo.
“You, on the other hand,” she started to purr, and I could tell from the tone of her voice that she was cooing into Draco’s ear, “are required to kiss me first before trying anything.”
I felt a little tug of jealousy at the pit of my stomach, but entirely confused about who I was more jealous of.
Draco drawled unenthusiastically, “I’ll keep that in mind.”
With that, the tightness in my stomach unwound.
Pansy gave an affronted little huff, and then changed the subject. “What’re you reading, Theo?”
“William Butler Yeats. Poetry,” I replied cheerily, returning my attention to the small paperback tome I had forgotten was in my other hand.
“He’s no Oscar Wilde,” Draco mumbled dismissively.
“As if you can tell the difference.” I scoffed. “Yeats is every bit a genius as Wilde.”
“Well, go on then,” Draco challenged, “Read us something. Impress us.”
I flipped back the pages in the book, going through poems that I’d already read, searching for a particularly juicy one. I cleared my throat. “The Lady’s First Song, is the title.”
“Sounds boring already,” Draco grumbled.
I was never one to let Draco’s arrogance bother me and so I began. “I turn round, like a dumb beast in a show. Neither know what I am, nor where I go.”
Draco interrupted with a disbelieving snort, “Is this for real? Or are you just making it up to be an arse?”
Pansy cackled, perhaps trying to earn Draco’s favor as she often did by laughing at my expense.
I did not deign to answer Draco’s question and asked my own rhetorical one instead. “Do you want me to read to you or not? Because I’m perfectly happy to go on reading silently.”
“Do go on, Theo,” Pansy encouraged. “I’m listening.”
And then I felt fingers upon my head – lithe, elegant fingers gently twisting in my hair. I assumed they were Pansy’s. But I couldn’t be sure. Again, I found that I didn’t really care who was touching me, as long as they kept petting me fondly in a way that made me shiver despite the warm feeling cascading from high on my ruddy cheeks.
I continued to read, annunciating dramatically for effect. “My language beaten into one name; I am in love and that is my shame.”
“Kinky,” Draco muttered mockingly, earning him a reprimanding nudge from Pansy, judging from the way he shifted suddenly beneath my head.
“What hurts the soul, my soul adores. No better than a beast upon all fours.”
“Really kinky,” Draco joked.
I closed the book with a resigned sigh and let it fall carelessly to the grass. “Thanks, Draco. You managed to ruin one of my favorite Yeats poems for me."
“Awh,” Pansy cooed, “I think it’s lovely. Love turns men into animals.”
“I don’t think it’s about that at all,” said Draco. “Love beats you into submission like a circus bear, and makes you adore the torture.” I was almost impressed with his ever-astute interpretation, but he had to go and negate it with a snide remark. “See? Kinky. What is this obscene trash you’re reading, Theo?” He chuckled and Pansy was quick to follow with a giggle.
Meanwhile, the phantom fingers continued raking through my hair.
“Yeats is not trash,” I argued, and then recited from memory, “I am in love and that is my shame. What hurts the soul, my soul adores. It’s gorgeous.”
Pansy sighed melodically. “Tragic. But beautiful.”
“Exactly,” I agreed with her, “If that sounds dirty to you, Draco, then you have issues.”
“I have opinions. Not issues,” Draco replied defensively, “I’m entitled, you know. Yeats is the one with issues.”
“Poets without issues are boring,” I stated superiorly, “The most screwed up writers are the best ones.”
“Then you’re going to be a brilliant author some day, Theodore,” said Draco. By the sardonic lilt to his voice, it was obvious that he did not mean it as a compliment. But I smiled wryly and took it as a compliment anyway, despite being aware of his intention.
We fell silent, quite casually so, letting our laziness and the heat of the day dictate the lull in the conversation. The fingers in my hair had resumed their gentle combing and my eyelids fluttered shut.
“Mm. Feels nice,” I murmured drowsily.
When those fingers brushed down to slowly trace the shell of my ear, I bit my bottom lip to stifle the pleased sound that eagerly wanted to escape. The pad of a single fingertip followed the curve of my ear, and I could tell that those fingers had never toiled – these were the soft hands of an aristocrat – hands whose dexterity came from practicing penmanship or some other frivolous art form.
“I prefer your hair like this,” said Draco. “When it’s long, your ears don’t stick out as much.”
It had been Draco’s fingers in my hair. Draco, outlining the shape of my ear. Draco making me feel warm inside. The heat he had inspired now scorched an invisible streak of fire down the side of my neck beneath my loosened shirt collar, following my hairline.
Something about Draco’s touch, however innocent, excited me a hundred times more than the feel of Pansy’s skin.
“You need to trim this up a little here,” Draco suggested. But it was more of a decree than a suggestion. “I’ll do it for you later.”
It didn’t matter that he was subtly dictating how I should wear my hair, or craftily telling me I had conspicuous ears. It didn’t matter that Draco was an arsehole, or my best mate, or an arrogant prat, or a boy.
I wanted him to keep touching me… just… like… that.