This following story was created under these guidelines:

"Write a short story/vignette/whatever you wanna call it, describe the feelings one person is going through. Example: write about how a person feels about that popular kid across the room, or the intense hatred that fills someone at the mere mention of a certain person. Just describe the emotions, the feelings, etc. At least 250 words, unless a poem/song (then it should just be longer than just a few lines)."

If you would like to join a place which has challenges like these and much much more, head over to FictionNET ( http / sycotic . org / fnet ) for a mostly Harry Potter related site (it also does other things) and say that Keladryie sent you. It’s a fantastic place to be, and Slytherin shall win the house cup! Join for House challenges, RPGing, blend challenges and a heck of a lot more :)

The characters are owned by me. They are based on no one, and yet everyone really.

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He watched her,she who sat crossed legged on her computer chair, fingers flying over the keys and a nasty smirk on her lips as she mouthed the words to the song playing, blaring into her ears by her iPod earpieces. Or rather she breathed the words. He could hear a whisper every few moments or so, and it drove him wild. He tried listening to his own MP3 player, to muffle her sounds, but he couldn't handle it for long. He needed to hear her.

Her head turned a little, tilted as she listened to a certain part of the song, her lips still forming and breathing the words. She always acted as if she was on stage, even when she didn't realise it.

She laughed - a little mirth of laughter - at something on the screen, perhaps the green and white board she always visited, but he didn't bother to ask her about it. It only made her smile droop as she turned to face him, and shrug.

"Nothing..." she always said. As if he wouldn't understand even if she wasted time telling him, explaining it to him even. Perhaps he would, eventually, if she spared him a moment every so often.

Why couldn't she just...

Why didn't he...

He growled, displaying anger for once, stood up and threw the pillow he had been leaning against across the room in a fluid movement. It was followed by the book in his hands. Then his MP3 player, it shattered on impact with the wall and floor combined. Then the remote control.

She had turned around, spinning smoothly on her computer chair at the sound of his book hitting the floor. She watched him silently, him standing there with fists clenched and his chest rising and falling with every painful and full breath. He was glaring in the general direction of where he had flung his anger and his remorse, until he slowly dragged his eyes to where she was seated, her just sitting there so calmly, face blank of emotion, just gazing at him coldly.

Slowly, he stepped back, and fell back onto the sofa as the back of his knees came into contact with the fabric. He continued watching her as she ever so slowly raised an eyebrow at him, then swivelled her chair around again to face that bloody computer.

He hated her at times. Or maybe he just hated what she had grown to be. It was everything she put him through. She had to realise what she was doing to him, how could she not? Every night she’d follow him to bed, at least two hours after he had retired, always knowing he would still be up, waiting for her, and she would crawl under the blankets up to him. Dressed in her Japanese style pyjamas, the pair sexy and silky, or the soft and woolly pair, his personal favourite, and truthfully the pair she wore most often. She would crawl up under the blankets to him, and curl up to his side, and soon would be asleep. She was the cutest sleeper, snuffling in her sleep and murmuring long forgotten words he hadn’t heard from her fully awake lips for years now. And they were only 19 for Christs sake. Both so young. They’d moved way too soon. Everything was already falling apart and it wasn’t anywhere near time for their mid life crisis.

Yet he was already pushed away, as she laughed and smiled with others. But never flirted with any other, she just wasn’t like that. She had her standards and thankfully he still fit amongst them. But…they just never spoke together anymore. It was only playful banter once in company of friends, and at home it was nothing but technical politeness. To fill the gaps when they actually sat together to watch a TV show or the few choice times they actually ate a meal together. Sometimes she’d surprise him by making them a meal to share, but it hardly ever happened, that’s why it was always classed as a ‘surprise’.

He wanted to break things. He wanted to break her like she had him, but he couldn’t. She was her. She was who she was. And he didn’t know why things had changed to what they were now. Anyway…perhaps it was his fault…

She’d always mean too much to him. She had since high school, year nine or ten, surprisingly he couldn’t remember which year it had been. He had chased her, then only when he was interested in others for a short while would she chase him. He always knew she wanted him in return, but she’d never find the place to say so, just like he could never find the time or place to say it to her. He entered into auditions of the Year12 play for her, but he had failed to get the lead place beside her. He had to endure the scene of her kissing another man, and him kissing her in return, oh so many times. Trailing the back of his hand down her cheek and all the rest of it. He had watched from the sidelines, and then on closing night at the After Party he had kissed her, with all the emotion and passion he could muster, and she had returned it all and more, her hands locked in his dark and soft straight hair, and then she had walked away to tackle her Script-Husband from behind, only thinking he had meant it as nothing more than drunk affection.

He had hated the lead right then and there. Well, it would be a lie to say he hadn’t ever since the bastard had got the lead male role, but the hatred died down as soon as he had been convinced his girl and him were nothing but friends.

He had only been convinced when she had blushingly and shyly asked him to join her to their Graduation Formal, and then the truth had come out.

But now…look, just look at what it had spilled out to…

He wanted her back. He wanted to go back to their Graduation, where he had experienced the best celebration of his life with her always at his side, smiling and laughing happily, pretty young features in unguarded happiness. Instead of how she was now, bitter and twisted once out of school and working. He had told her she didn’t have to work, but she had just stared at him.

“Are you stupid?” she had demanded to know, and had flounced off, as if he had insulted her. He knew she was independent, but he also knew how much she wanted to just stay home and draw or paint.

He put all that in the past. It was too painful to think of. She was in her entirety.

But she was beautiful.

And she was his.

He just had to work out how to win her back.

He rose from his seat, calm now, and moved over to stand just behind her. By the way she turned her head ever so slightly to the right he knew she knew he was right behind her. Ever so slowly, he moved towards her and pressed a soft kiss to the base of her bare throat, his right hand resting on her head, fingers through her hair. Then he straightened and removed his fingers from her tresses of dyed hair, and with that he padded off slowly down the hallway of their split-level home, leaving her now turned from the computer as she watched his shadow merge with the other shadows cast against the wall in thought.

It was all he ever wanted. To be in her thoughts.