'cause everybody wants
by Silvia

doesn't anybody know how, how to walk anymore?
doesn't anybody know how, what a radio is for?

She thinks, sometimes, that they're not really here, none of them, and she went crazy.

You just go crazy, she's fairly sure, like you go to the store, like you walk out the window.

The teachers, and the students, and the wizards, and the werewolf, they say, "How come your pictures don't move?" and she wants to say, "Because pictures don't move," because that's ridiculous, like everything here is ridiculous.

But then she remembers summer. In summers, when she can lay her hands flat against the screen and tell the television that yes, she wants her MTV, pictures flicker and press and crackle with static against her palms. Her pictures move and she's not crazy. She's not.

Maybe.

The pictures are pale so often, with smooth, circling skin. Long legs, stretching to everywhere, elsewhere, and sloping backs that churn with a beat. Beats and girls. 

Soft and blurred, when she scrunches up too close, and warm in her belly.

They say -- 

"You feel it, in the pit of your stomach. Just push," 

and she's sweet eighteen, and she's taken the tests to move without moving. Apparition. Like magic.

She could tell them that she's been moving while sitting down for ages, crouched and breathless in front of her set, with soft wet mouths opening to tell her about the bad boys who hurt them.

She could tell them, because they wouldn't tell anybody, because these pictures move differently and they wouldn't believe her.

The last thing she remembers that made any sense at all is:

"A letter came for you. From a school, so don't you lose it."

And she said, "Thank you," and placed it carefully on the arm of the living room couch, because "A Grand Day Out" was on.

There was an airy light in the room from drawn curtains, but she could have flipped a switch if she'd wanted, to have more.

"In a minute," she said, because her mother was in the doorway again, and she couldn't think like that, with everybody always watching.

Seven years later, and Dumbledore says, with translucent eyes, "Congratulations. Take a trip," because he watches too and he knows. He never stops watching.

She needs to, to decide where she's going.

"I think I will," she says, and he nods, and she takes her textbooks with her, back to the dorm.

There are magazines there, that she brings from home and hides under her bed, with bright colors, bubblegum grins, fold out posters, and coupons for hair gel.

"In a minute," and she fiddled with the sharp edges of the envelope, slicing the side of her thumb. It would need a plaster.

The tape rolled on, a smattering of programs from the girl next door, with the long neck and smudged lipstick, who was too old to want to talk, but would let her borrow things.

The tapes were warm from her hands, when the girl gave them over.

"In a minute," and the tape rolled on.

And later, every summer after, it would be that one, singing about mice and Disney, and as alien as anything Hermione had ever had before she went crazy and thought she could run through walls. It would be the girl with the voice too big for her body, though right then it was other sorts of weather reports and foreign TV.

"In a minute," she said, and opened it.

"I think I'd like to see her," she says, and apparate flows between her lips like it flows in her chest, and before she can blink there's someone to hear it.

"Are you real?" says the girl, the summer one, and she blinks languid, smiles like molasses. She glows less in person, but her legs match the ones Hermione has memorized, and she smells like sweat and peach. Her name is haphazard, like her voice has become, and it's too hard to call her Britney.

Hermione would answer, if she knew, but she doesn't. It would be nice to kiss her but, maybe, it would taste like plastic and static.

"I could be a popstar," Hermione replies, because if she can do this -- if she can do this, she can do anything. She laughs, thick in her throat, and touches the warmth of her favorite season with ten fingers settled on million dollar hips.

Summer smiles back at her, sticky and sweet, and just maybe the taste would be worth it. "You sing?"

The hips shift under her hands, and it shouldn't be this easy, but she bets Britney, Britney - she said it - believes that they're dreaming.

"I could put a stopper in death," she explains, shrugging. "Well, he said I could, and I studied."

"Are you-," Britney whispers, and presses their mouths together lightly, and she's real. Something is, and it tastes like a mouth, and tongue, and teeth.

A pulse judders under Hermione's thumb, which slipped and slid up, to cup rough blonde hair, and that's where she went - a studio. There are wires beneath her feet.

"I think," Hermione says, "I imagine a lot of things."

Summer hums against her neck, hands clasping her hands, and tells her how good she feels.

doesn't anybody hate it when the street light turns red?
doesn't anybody want five more minutes in bed ?

everybody wants to hear someone say please

return

- lyrics from Stabilo Boss, "Everybody"