What was hiding in the keyhole

He made me feel immaculate. Like something beyond pleasure. He said he was making me into art when he laid me out, massaging every inch of me. I know blokes are quite different creatures when it comes to sex but this was ridiculous. I never had a lover try to get to know me so deeply, delicately and just—-ardently… the way Humboldt wanted to love me.

That night he stayed over I remember it like it was yesterday. It was a few weeks after he kissed me. He was at my place. He had gone to the bathroom. I closed my door to change. He was peeking through the little keyhole—-and something changed in that brief instant with him. That’s where it all began. I wasn’t scared. He wasn’t Nosferatu. He wasn’t a ghoul. But he was my monster in a way—-a painted vampire that sunk his fangs deep inside my heart.

Harry tried so hard to give me support after this whole thing got from me. My other best friend Hermione tried to get my mind off him by taking me out to libraries and museums. Luna tried to teach me quirky magical spells to cheer me up. My brother George, my mum and dad—all of them really gave it their all.

But I felt invisible scars up and down my thighs. There were breaks in my skin that traveled to my heart, lungs and glands. Severed nerves that were once riding on a high that I never thought I’d get down from. They all told me it would heal. But no one talks about how skin remembers before it forgets. How touch lingers long after the person’s gone.

I talked to Harry at the old, decaying common room for our old house, sobbing like I was a war widower. I couldn’t think beyond the fact that I had lost him. I felt like there was nothing I could do.

I didn’t want to admit this was the end. I didn’t want to admit that he was gone.

Why did I fall for him? How could I allow myself to be swept up in his charms? I wanted to punch myself for being so stupid.

But when he first kissed me after that first bar night along with Harry—-I was stunned. I was stuck like a marble statue waiting for him to reshape me. He kissed me like he was trying to heal everything inside like a blender putting all the big pieces into a smooth, perfect sip.

It was as if he didn’t light a match or a log—-he blazed through my entire being like a wild fire. It was so intense, relentless. I had to let him do it again. And again. And more. I wanted more.

“More, more…” I moaned into his teeth as he drank me in like I was his Salvation, his Nirvana. But I didn’t actually say more, I was saying his name over and over as he was in turn saying my name like it was an eternal perfume he was leaving in his ears. And we weren’t saying each other’s name in a language that anyone understood. It was a love language that was beyond human comprehension. It was I love the way you show your love to me, so frantic, tender.

I had snogged with girls before. Gotten handsy. Even gotten to third base. But this was something that woke up something inside of me that I couldn’t put to words.

It took years of teasing me, jokes, deep conversations, hang outs, extended eye contact (Harry often pointed out that one to me), and an overall lack of decorum when it came to light touches, heavy looks and subtle flirting to finally get it. He would discuss science, history, fascinating facts and weird things that have happened in wizard and Muggle history.

The night I invited him over—-when he was peeking in my door’s key hole—-I was already dressed. He knew I saw him but didn’t run away. Something about him felt very different. His eyes were different—-like a glowing sort of new color.

He asked me if I could come in and I thought I was just imagining things. I said if I said no, would he explode if he came in without my permission? He laughed so loud I opened the door.

“You—-you think I’m really a vampire?” He laughed.

I countered, “Then do it then if you’re not.”

Humboldt straightened and frowned. He stepped lightly into my room but made a straining noise. He put his hand over his heart and yelled, “Ah! You killed me!” Doubling over in pain. I panicked and went down to him on the floor.

“You’re a bloody vampire afterall! Why didn’t you-” I yelled, but he closed my words up with another kiss. This time, with tongue. I moaned and let myself feel it all this time. I climbed on top of his hips and straddled him, thinking of how angry I’ll be later knowing this was the real results of all my confused thoughts.

He laughed, kissing me softly as we climbed into the bed.

“You ever snog with a bloke before?”

The way he asked it kinda knocked the air out of me. Like, not that it mattered that he was a bloke. It mattered that he was the first one to me. I shook my head.

“No. Never.”

We didn’t do anything sexual that night. We were so enthralled just being close to each other. He massaged my feet, my toes, my legs, my thighs, my back, my neck. When he got to my temples, I kissed his fingers. He leaned in but paused again, waiting for my silent agreement. He kissed me all over my face. I never felt so adorned with warmth, love without expectation. Love without needing to give something in return. We talked and talked.

“I write poetry for fun. It’s silly stuff. Nothing that’ll win me Poet Laureate. Haha,” Humboldt told me. “I just reach into the more dangerous parts of my grief, anger, sadness—-I try to color them in my searing words. I try to understand. I was so angry during the years of Voldemort’s reigns of terror. I stayed inside. A right recluse I was. You and Harry Potter and all your friends were stuck inside the front lines of that war. How can you move forward after such atrocities?” He sighed. “An unfair question. It’s like with any traumatic event. You just go forward. There’s nothing else we can do.”

I nodded. “But you also do card and yo-yo tricks as a hobby too. Remember when you walked the dog?” I softly chuckled. “I see there’s a jokey not-so-serious side to you.”

“And going off to Muggle bars!” He added and we both laughed.

“I like Wizard’s Chess! I am quite good at that,” I commented as he played with my hair. I was so relaxed that I couldn’t even move. I was truly in bliss. It’s weird—-we didn’t do anything sexual at all, yet I feel like I came anyway (it was a release of internal pressure I believe that felt similar to being intimate). We had known each other for the few years when Harry and I worked for the British Ministry of Magic. He did administrative assignments in our building (Wizengamot Administration Services) and often came by to chat, have lunch, and eventually got me to come out of my shell to go out instead of just safe bonfire hangouts with my friends.

“Do you like working in your brother’s joke shop?”

I nodded. “It’s to preserve my brother Fred’s memory.”

“Ah, yes. Family is important. Or so they say. But, usually whatever they say, is right. Whoever they are,” he said with a comical tone. I laughed.

“Friends are also important. To me, anyway,” I added.

“I noticed you are very close to Harry, and his wife. They seem like good people to me.”

“They’re the best people. Loyal and kind, the best…” I leaned in close as he kissed my nose and my forehead. I leaned into the indentions of his frame and pressed closer next to him, my hands at my side but now on his waist. “I trust them with my life.” His eyes fell a moment, dark, brooding, then he locked eyes with me again. They were this dark sort of blue that reminded me of midnight blue. Or that song by Enya, “Carribean Blue.” They seemed softer.

“I’d like that with someone. I never had that kind of trust with others. My family was broken up before I was born. My father left my mum and I right before she gave birth. Problems of being homeless, hungry, all that, it was something I tried so hard to move away from as I grew up. And hiding. Always hiding away from everything. I told myself if I was going to get a job at the Ministry, I’d stop hiding. I’d be a cheery old git, even if I had to annoy everyone and push them all away, but I’d stop hiding no matter what to stop being afraid.”

“I never felt like I had the opportunity to hide. I had to go out there no matter how scared I was. I felt like it was just… what I had to do. Now, I wanna,” we moved even closer. His hands were on my face, my leg wrapped around his backside. Why did this feel so safe? So natural? I never would’ve dared to act so intimate with a woman I just started snogging. It’s like we’ve always been intimate without even touching.

“Wanna?” He continued softly.

“Wanna just melt..” I moaned as he laid on top of me.

The next morning was coffee, pastries, eggs and crisp bacon, and it turned into a two year love affair.

It was then everything pulled together in this perfect unison. He would make me laugh with his tricks, learn new yo-yo techniques and show me his findings. I taught him how to play Wizard’s Chess. Once he really caught on he only won once. I think he realized I was a poor sport about losing, and to make me happy, he lost on purpose. I’d give him joke cards, cool prank stuff from my brother’s shop. He’d cook me delicious meals, I’d clean up. We felt so perfect.

It was six months into our relationship, we got more intimate. It was eye-opening to me. I never was with another bloke before in a romantic setting before him. He was also twenty years older than me. I was about twenty-four when I first realized my feelings for him—-however we didn’t start dating until I was twenty-five.

So, six months into our actual relationship, he proposed we make love.

“Remember Ronny, that night we snogged all night?”

I nodded, laughing. “What about it?”

“You saw me watching you through your door’s keyhole. Right?”

I froze a little, but I shrugged, “You were a Peeping Tom,” I teased and he chuckled.

“Did you see me change? Did you see me in a different way that night?” He suddenly got serious. I sat down next to him during morning coffee often but this conversation was definitely not of the norm.

“Uh, bloody hell, Hubby, I don’t know…” I muttered. But, I did know. Well, kind of. I remember seeing something that looked ethereal, different, eyes that looked the sun. Which is weird…

He said nothing, his eyes looking at me more intensely.

“Don't look at me like that!”

He laughed, playing with my long hair in a curl over his finger, “You like it when I act like a bad old wolf…”

I felt hot in my face as I sipped my coffee, making him burst out laughing.

“Oh. Just get it out you dumb old lump!” I shoved his arm lightly.

“My eyes, Ron, what did you see?”

“Uh, uh…” I stuttered like a idiot. “I just thought you were .. your blue eyes changed…”

He got up and banged the kitchen table happily, “Yes! That’s right. Alright, luv, I’ll tell what’s going on. My eyes change from blue to gold when I…” he took in a deep breath, looking nervous. “This is something no one, not a single soul, has ever known about me. They think they know. But they don’t.”

I felt frozen in the chair, gripping my hot mug of coffee tightly.

“Luv…” his tone suddenly broke, a very tender tone making my beating heart calm down. “What do you think is going on?”

I suddenly burst out of my chair, the coffee spilling in a line dotted along the table. “You really are a vampire aren’t you?!” I said in a panic. “That’s how your eyes changed… isn’t it? I knew it!”

Humboldt laughed so hard he started wheezing on the floor. After he started coughing, I helped him get up. In a steamy, strange blur of color, I felt dizzy as something whirled, churning the face of the man I adored into something unrecognizable.

Suddenly, I was face to face with a curvy, luscious, slightly overweight woman with bouncy, messy brown hair and golden eyes.

My eyes went wide. “Eh—what—-who the hell are you..” I muttered in a panic, coffee stained and nervous.

He gently gripped the sides of my arms, really eyeing me, our gazes astray but now firmly locked. I could still make out finer details of who he really was—when I realized… this was who he was too.

“I wanted to show you the real me… who I feel inside. I told you I was hiding away from everyone and everything for so long. This was the biggest part of why I hid so long. I tried to give you a glimpse that night… of my whole world, Ronny…” He said in this soft, wispy, feminine voice, “because I knew you were the missing piece that was my whole world.”

I kissed him so deeply at those beautiful words—-her, him, didn’t matter—-I was in love. He told me others knew he was a Metamorphmagus but not his preferred form (female). I told him I knew Tonks also was also one that could change forms too as a Metamorphmagus. Basically it’s a witch or wizard that can change their form at will without spells, potions or charms.

I made love to him in his female form, ravishing him as he often did to me in even more intimate manners (we found such a perfect non-sexual intimacy before we had sex), and of course, he’d return the favor. I rather enjoyed his wolfy sort of approach when he was back to being a man—-he would get me crying from pleasure when he’d do these things to me that I never knew I could feel. I liked to switch off being dominated and also dominating when the mood was lit inside of us.

The last six months of our two years together were the opposite of those moments as it felt like a suffocating, slow, terrible death. I refused to let this happen, I tried to talk to him, I tried to do more—-nothing seemed to work.

I think that that he was scared to commit, scared to let this ride out and finally feel safe. I know I was too, but I wanted him so badly.

What was really hiding behind that keyhole?

Golden sun chills me as I’m left in the dark without him. I’m looking for that dark sunshine as the evasive blue of the atmosphere clouds my heart. Sometimes the quiet endings feel the most heartbreaking—-and I wanted so badly to pretend ends didn’t exist.