Angel (prose poetry - Neville Longbottom)

7. Where did time go, I lost a friend

To run in a greying field, knees chapped by the rough twigs; and to clutch your hand so tight we'd blister our palms.

To lose a ring (the one you gave me) in the mud pond, a girly plastic one you'd found at your nana's.

The fiery baking afternoons, flour on every counter and cloth, rolling out cute-shaped shortbread biscuits, glittered and sprinkled with hand-picked petals & leaves after the icing.

The August month, with the canicular sun, and your birthdays I always came to. We had a tea-party with your plushes and plants. With Didier the Dittany, Flitwick (yes) the Flitterbloom, and Valerie the Valerian (all totally original names picked by me). I'd hand-craft you a new bookmark every year, with a hanging-string beaded with small charms, and you'd use it all year [there were things to be scatterbrained about, and others that wouldn't dare flee your soul]. I would paint and draw plants & creatures on them, asking for your top-plant-of-the-year. That's mostly what you let me gift you, apart from books, miscellaneous goodies, letters. I was always a gifter anyway. Like a crow loyally fetching little treasures for its human. I'd pebble you rocks flowers and shells when we went on walks, half of them lost in some corner of Hogwarts we forgot we went to.

...

And yet you grew older. Fuller biceps & cerebral muscles. I was afraid you'd become who your bullies wanted you to be. Where was the looney cinnamon roll :) ? Every teacher of Hogwarts is a nutter, you're no exception.

You picked half-rimmed glasses, they made you look cooler, hotter. With that long coat you bought for yourself instead of your grandpa's old one. You didn't like being at home a lot, because it made you relive your trauma all over again. Nana getting old: dementia. Even with good spirit, and a world of plants, some things made us cold. That and the Order, which you nonetheless volunteered with many times. Loyalty wasn't half a word to you.

...

And I was falling behind.

Your plants are like my screens. I can see your eyes drown in the chlorophyll, and then the worn-out book paper. You went to school as a dork to become a nerd and you succeeded.

I could only ever dream to have passions as vibrant as yours. A feeling of direction so crisp and clear.

It makes sense why you left.

Every plant is better than a woman or man.

And every office worships you more than a person.