Glamour

Decisions

The next night brought Harry back to the astronomy tower where he sat with legs dangling over the edge of the observation deck, looking out over the black lake, parchment and quill in hand. The map was in his bag and the invisibility cloak over his shoulders, no one would think to look up here so he should be free for a few hours.

Over the last day he had put plenty of thought into what he hated about himself, what he needed to change to stop his transformation into his father. It had nearly gotten him into trouble with several teachers for daydreaming in class, and even Ron noticed his preoccupation, nudging him in the ribs after charms and offering a game of chess, tantamount to a heart to heart from his best friend.

Sighing harry put quill to parchment and drew out a table, first he had to figure out everything he needed to change. Then he would be able to plan out how he would do this. Under the soft light of his Lumos he started to scribble, noting down a few points before smiling slightly to himself and jotting down calligraphy, remembering all the returned assignments with comments on his atrocious handwriting. In all it seemed fairly comprehensive.

As he sat looking at his list he thought through Snape's memory again. His father had been so intolerant, but the part that kept running through his mind was the look of disgust when he found out Snape was gay. For some reason the look hurt him more than anything else his father had done.

With a slow deliberate scrawl he wrote out one question.

Am I gay?

The final point on his list that had been erased and rewritten so many times over the last few days was the looming question of his sexuality. Harry had never considered himself anything but straight. But if he was honest with himself, he had never thought much about any of that stuff in the first place. The other boys in his dorm had started making comments towards the end of last year, making tentative forays into relationships during the fervour of the Yule ball. All Harry really remembered was the pressure to have a date and for it to be the correct choice, he was tired of the comments about him being the fourth champion and wanted to show that he could do something correctly.

It was after the fourth consecutive day staring at the list hoping the answer would suddenly just jump out at him that Harry found himself grabbed from the Charms corridor as he made his way towards the great hall and dragged behind a tapestry. The parchment was grabbed from his hands before he knew it and Harry spun to see the grinning faces of the twins staring down at him.

"Guys, please give that back!" Harry pleaded, not wanting his secrets to get out just yet. It was too late, as the twins eyes lit up with what they read on the parchment.

"Ooh look George it seems our little Harry-kins has undertaken a self-improvement project." Fred grinned brandishing the parchment in front of him

"Quite an extensive one at that." the other replied.

"Guys please. No one can know!" Harry pleaded. The twins were generally good at keeping his secrets, but they were also wild cards and he didn't know if this would be deemed worth their secrecy.

"Oh don't worry harry. Your secret is safe with us." Fred said, folding the parchment and handing it over to George

"It is just nice to see you spread your wings -" George said, taking the parchment from his twin and opening it again to read for himself.

"Fly from the nest of little Ronnie's influence-"

"Even though he is our little brother-"

"He can be a prat" Fred finished, and Harry had to stifle a grin at them.