It is strange to hear my words
Read back to me.

I don't think I wrote them
To have them ever leave the page.

I think I only write
What happens across my brain
When my feet are too weary
To dance anymore.

I feel his arm
Lightly
Over me.
He takes one of my outstretched hands.
Draws it beneath my stomach.

"One more time..."

This is not sex,
Not friendship.
Something
Strange
Special
In the stillness of his breath,
The waterlike way he moves.

He is making a dance.
We are making a dance.

I play the music of Steven
for Steven;
ragged, helpless,
it owns me, enveloping me
with an incomprehensible love -

Maybe he, like me,
is engaged in the kind of unspoken rebellion
you don't want to perform too brightly
since you're never certain
anyone in your family will notice
your darkened eyes, skeleton shoes, tousled hair,
patchy attendance record.
You may be sacrificing body and soul
on a ghostly battlefield, fighting across a divide
seen by no one
but you.

It has taken me years of struggle, hard work, and research to learn to make one simple gesture, and I know enough about the art of writing to realize that it would take as many years of concentrated effort to write one simple, beautiful sentence.

As though an invisible hand were writing upon it, words appeared on the smooth surface of the map. "Mr. Moony presents his compliments to Professor Snape, and begs him to keep his abnormally large nose out of other people's business."Snape froze. Harry stared, dumbstruck, at the message. But the map didn't stop there. More writing was appearing beneath the first."Mr. Prongs agrees with Mr. Moony, and would like to add that Professor Snape is an ugly git."It would have been funny if the situation hadn't been so serious. And there was more..."Mr. Padfoot would like to register his astonishment that an idiot like that ever became a professor."Harry closed his eyes in horror. When he'd opened them, the map had had its last word."Mr. Wormtail bids Professor Snape good day, and advises him to wash his hair, the slimeball."