ravnclaws:

love
/lʌv/

noun

1. a strong feeling of affection.
2. something she exudes; her skin, her ribs, her heart cannot contain it.
3. she forgives, over and over; she tries to forget barbed words from someone who used to love her, pointed and aimed to injure; she tries to ignore the sense of him drifting away, into a darkness she cannot comprehend; she forgives, over and over, until she cannot ignore or forgive anymore; a line is crossed.
4. she watches him grow, change into someone different; his shoulders broaden and his voice deepens, but his crooked grin stays the same; his effect on her is a constant; she notices their orbits gravitating towards each other; she tries to fight, but the laws of physics are stronger than her resolve.
5. drunken laughter and silly faces; an oversized quidditch jumper that drowns her in something indefinable; the softness of his pillow and the warmth of his bedspread at three in the morning when she is too tired to move; he sleeps on the floor without complaint, even though the bed is plenty big enough for both of them; she wishes he wasn’t so noble.
6. a heady feeling in a misty room; the woody smell of broomsticks, of butterbeer, of disturbed dirt under a full moon; an involuntary smile that quickly spreads across her face; immediately understanding what it means; the relief of knowing no one else knows what she smells; him.
7. the big, bright and beautiful something that erupts from the end of her wand; being stunned momentarily by the glow, then by the surprising, but not wholly unexpected, animal standing in front of her; she ignores the murmuring around the room to catch his eye; her shy smile mirrors his broad grin and it feels like the start of something beautiful.
8. he makes her feel safe in a world ready to break her; he’s not so noble anymore, he shares the bed and steals the covers, but he shares his skin and his heart and it’s enough to keep her warm; she doesn’t complain.
9. an odd weight on her finger, full of history and importance, and she’s not sure she deserves it; he whispers iloveyouiloveyouiloveyou and she bursts.
10. eyes alight with happiness; cheeks that ache because she cannot stop smiling; a clumsy first dance; his arms around her waist and hers around his neck; their orbits collide into one, and she’s never been a physicist, but it feels like the big bang.
11. his warm hands press against her swollen belly; he coos and sings off-key while she tries to read; every time she thinks she’s reached a limit for how much she loves him, he proves her wrong.
12. harry; everything about him.
13. a home they’ve made for themselves, just their tiny family of three; the smell of baking every sunday morning; watching raindrops race down the window during downpours; the dream of freedom outside someday.
14. she loves so much, but it is not enough to save james.
15. she hears him fall and she shatters.
16. she loves so much, it oozes and pours out of her.
17. it is not enough to save her.
18. but it is enough to save harry.

selflessness
/ˈsɛlfləsnəs/

noun

1. concerned more with the needs and wishes of others than with one’s own; unselfish.
2. he has never had siblings to share with before, but now he has three brothers and he cannot give them enough; he would give them the world.
3. the moon waxes and wanes; he watches remus wax and wane, too; it is not a hard connection to make.
4. he gets ten detentions in a month, but it’s worth it to protect remus’ secret, to make peter feel included, to make sirius laugh; everything is worth it for them.
5. he breaks the law; he keeps a mandrake leaf in his mouth for a whole month and it’s difficult and annoying, but he never regrets the choice he makes.
6. finding his best friend on his front step with hollow eyes and a half-filled bag; welcoming him home like the brother he is.
7. he wonders if it’s selfless or selfish that he learns to make her laugh; the others complain that he’s selfish for always harping on about her.
   
8. placing a sack of gold galleons on the dining table; remus stammers out a protest, but he has none of it; his friend needs it more than he ever will and that’s all he needs to know.
9. in a choice between freedom and his son, there is no contest.
10. facing down death, straight-backed, proud and wandless; he hopes it is enough to save them.
11. falling like a marionette whose strings were cut.

betrayal
/bɪˈtreɪəl/

noun

1. exposing (one’s country, a group, or a person) to danger by treacherously giving information to an enemy.
2. his feet trip over themselves at the sorting ceremony; he curses them.
3. he dreams of growing out of his baby fat, of being tall, and strong, and handsome; his body has other ideas.
4. excited anticipation, followed by an incredible anticlimax; he watches his friends transform into impressive beings, noble and loyal; he breathes, his heart dances in his chest, and then it shrinks, he shrinks and the world becomes too much; his friends stare, frozen; fur prickles his skin, his voice squeaks and disappointment gnaws at him; why does this always happen to him?
5. even after everything they’d been through together, he pretends they forget him; he resents their successes; it makes it easier to turn the other way.
6. when the dark lord falls, he cannot help feeling deceived; no one cares enough about him to stick things through, it seems.
7. it is so easy to blame someone else.
8. he knows it’s over, knows they’ll come for the traitor.
9. so he runs.

emptiness
/ˈɛm(p)tɪnəs/

noun

1. the state of containing nothing.
2. sometimes he thinks about his life before; he prefers to forget.
3. the house he returns to every summer suffocates him; he spends his time dreaming of his new home, of his new family; he resists the urge to leave, but just barely; he runs on empty.
4. his life is a dichotomy, of light and dark, of everything and nothing; when nothingness becomes too much, he runs away and never looks back.
5. war tears them apart and leaves them hollow.
6. alarm bells sound when he visits peter to discover an empty house; he is not empty anymore; dread pools in his stomach.
7. the house is now a ruinous skeleton of its former self; he can see james’ body from the front porch, the door hangs off its hinges; there are no words.
8. from the arms of a giant, harry reaches for him, and he is filled with an infinitesimal hope, but it is all in vain; he bequeaths his motorbike, watches it roar into the sky and fade into darkness.
9. he has nothing left.

loneliness
/ˈləʊnlɪnɪs/

noun

1. sadness because one has no friends or company.
2. he feels it eat away at him, he has done ever since he was five; when he’s older, he laughs at the irony; oh, how can one be lonely when you keep a monster inside of you?
3. pomfrey’s pitying look; she cannot help him anymore than keeping him company on the trip to the shack; in the end, he relishes the isolation, wants to stay alone forever (it is better than the alternative); his skin crawls and he is not alone anymore; the moon and the monster keep him company.
4. they know and he pretends not to notice, but he waits for the inevitable; he does want them to leave him; now that he has known companionship, he dreads the ache of loneliness; it never comes.
5. it is something he forgets for a while; he wishes he could forget it forever.
6. howls and snarls keep him awake at night; the war rages on; he is surrounded by monsters, but he has never felt more alone.
7. he wakes on the first of november; the ache of loneliness comes and it does not fade.
8. he has no one.

tragedy
/ˈtradʒɪdi/

noun

1. a lamentable, dreadful, or fatal event or affair; calamity; disaster.
2. what they are.