I remember when I didn’t used to think of him this way. I remember when my heart didn’t pound every time he came too close. I remember when we just used to be best friends, when we could easily pull pranks, break laws, and just be careless. My life was simpler.

My love for him then was as simple as breathing. It wasn’t even bordering on romantic love. When I was around him, it was the only time I felt completely right. Moony and Wormtail were my friends too, but it wasn’t the same. James Potter was the only one who knew me so thoroughly that I doubt I could ever know myself that well. Before sixth year, this was all I needed. I just wanted to be close to him, and for him to be my best friend. I needed that one simple thing to be happy.

But life never stays the same; as much as you want it to, it keeps going without restraint. If you try to curb its path, it just becomes uncontrollable, dragging you along with it no matter how hard you resist.

Such happened to me.

Love was the trouble: it made everything turn to chaos.

I loved him too much, and it was a changed love. There were new feelings — ones so tainted and so pure at the same time. I wanted him for myself, only me, and no one else.

For the first five years, when I was around him I felt like I could breathe; nothing was as natural as being his best friend and spending all of my time with him.

But during my sixth year, whenever he got too close, I felt like all my oxygen was cut off; he took over everything. My heart would race, sometimes my face flushed, and often I couldn’t string together a coherent sentence until I was used to his presence. He dominated the world when he stood near me. I could think of nothing else and perceive nothing else. It was simply him and I.

“Hey, Padfoot,� he said in that always-casual voice, jumping onto the armchair next to mine.

It was the beginning of sixth year.

He leaned across the table separating us, his face too close to mine.

I opened my mouth to greet him like always, but I couldn’t speak. For some reason, though the day or moment was like any other, that was the instant I realised that I was in love with him. And as the thought occurred to me, my heart pounded; he must have heard it.

I felt myself grinning naturally in spite of it all, and managed to choke out, “Hey, Prongs.�

It was never the same from that moment on.

At first, I was disgusted that while I used to just want to be friends with him, now I wanted many other things. I wanted to kiss him, to be with him fully. He used to ask why I never wanted a girlfriend, and at the time I told both him and myself that it was because being a Marauder was more important to me than having a girl around. Why didn’t I realise then that the reason I never wanted one was because James was the only person for me? When he was around, no one else mattered.

We were best friends — an infamous duo, but we were nothing more than that. Did I dare say that I wanted to be lovers…? Did that sound ridiculous, unnatural — even at the same time that it sounded so perfect?

There was but one thing I knew for certain: I couldn’t risk my friendship with James by trying to attain something more. Some things are too important to be trifled with. I would never give my friendship for anything, even if it meant that it would be the cost of so much happiness.

Most of the time, I would take extraordinary risks. I would gladly put my life on the line for a prank, and if it got a few laughs in the end, then it was enough. I never actually harmed myself, and James and I could always weasel our way out of trouble. It was a second-nature to us, and I loved it.

So many things were disposable. I could do without almost anything or anyone. My family was unimportant, as were the majority of my classmates. They didn’t truly matter to me, and I didn’t think of them. But my friendship with James was vital to my very existence.

No matter how often I laughingly told James that Lily would come around, I never thought she would. She was always the merest ghost of a threat to me.

I both hated her and liked her. She was the one who would take James away from me, but at the same time it was so easy to tell that she was the one who brought him so much happiness, and I had to like her for that.

Every time she came, it hurt me. Before Lily, it was difficult to imagine jealousy, but when I fell in love with my best friend, I could understand. It is a feeling that takes your breath away, that makes everything fall into shadow. It made me want to pull him away from her, and let her know that he was mine, not hers, because didn’t I know him first? Didn’t I love him more than she did? I wanted to tell her that she doesn’t deserve him, and to get away.

The worst part was knowing above all that I could do absolutely none of that, because — as much as it hurt me — James loved her, not me. I couldn’t take any happiness away from him.

For some stupid reason, when they first began to date I still didn’t take it too seriously. But one day I watched them from across the common room. They were talking and smiling. Just from their faces, I knew that it was really love; I also knew that my own face would never look like that.

The feeling took my breath away. The unending pain of losing him came simultaneously with that selfless happiness for him.

He leaned in closer to her, and I saw their lips touch softly, and then they seemed to fall into their kiss. I sat frozen for what seemed like hours, and then stood abruptly, sprinting up the stairs. I collapsed onto the bed, making sure to close the curtains; I wanted everything to be in darkness.

I wanted James, and that was the moment I knew without the faintest shadow of a doubt that he would always be hers, never mine. And I? I would always be alone.

Had I always been mature, or did he make me that way? Was it only when I admitted that I loved him, I became selfless? I didn’t know, but it didn’t matter.

When the two of us were simply best friends, I never had to hide any of myself. but when I fell in love with him, it made me more distant. It was that love that ruined everything; if we had just stayed best friends, everything would have been comfortable forever.

Yet could I resent something that was so perfect? Could I hate falling in love with him, when it had been so inevitable?

He told me that he was going to marry Lily Evans, and I think that I laughed and said something about being his best man. I think that I plastered a grin on my face, while inside I seemed to die. I had never felt such anguish until that moment. Though for over two years I had known that we could never be together, and that he didn’t love me, there was always the faintest trace of possibility, one that I would think about over and over in my mind, no matter how childish. I dreamt of being with him, even though he and Lily were so happy together.

Even though he is with her now and not me, and even though she is having his child, and even though we are still best friends, some things never change.

He is my everything. He is the air that I breathe, the ground stable beneath my feet. He is the stars that brighten the darkness, the sun that breaks through the clouds on a rainy day. He is the joke that makes me laugh when I feel like nothing will ever be okay again. He is my feeling of desire, and he is my strength through good times and bad. He is the only one I will ever love.

To him, I am merely his best friend, and nothing more.

But I’ve come to realise that it is enough.