Inspired by a line from Marvolo's lovely Penmanship.

Can't remember if Tom's a prefect in the diary or not, but I'm pretending he is because the Lexicon doesn't say.

*

His fingers are long and skinny beyond even a pianist's, and when he lies in bed next to you and stretches his arm out next to yours, you can see just how much longer and paler they are than yours. Yours aren't bad, either, and you always try to keep them clean, but there's this unearthly translucence about Tom's fingertips that really quite escapes you.

Part of it is because he's a ghost, but you're also convinced that he must have been this clean, this tidy when he was a boy. He's so real now that it's hard to imagine that he just comes to visit you after the rest of Hogwarts falls asleep, but you can see him filling in night by night, the colors getting more vivid and his uniform jacket starting to move from the muscles in his back. He sits at the foot of your bed and looks at your course books, smiling at them because they're so simple, and you come down from the front of the bed and sit with him while he tells you interesting addendums and monographs that he's read about those topics and that they've left out of the books. Sometimes, he'll even do your rounds with you -- you get the shitty graveyard patrol since you're the lowest of the sixth year prefects, below even that Hufflepuff fifth year who's in because she has long legs and flirts with the Head Boy, and afterwards he'll come up to the Prefect's bathroom with you for a good long soak.

Tom's the most charming thing you've ever met, and the handsomest of the Hogwarts ghosts. The handsomest ghost you've ever seen, really, though you didn't realize he was one at first. "I don't think I saw you in the Prefect's compartment," you said to his back the first night you rounded the corner for the Prefect's meeting at eleven and saw him up ahead of you. You'd seen him at the Sorting Feast, moving among the Slytherins, then chivvying some Gryffinidors into place, including your little sister. Ginny said something to him, pointed you out to him, and you had locked eyes across the crowded room.

The handsomest boy you've ever seen at Hogwarts, in fact. Even better looking than Diggory or Wood, with that soft waving black hair. That face, so full of intelligence and wit, and the way he'd smiled back at you, raised his hand at you, then bent back down to catch what Ginny was saying to him. Penelope had tugged on your sleeve, jealous, and you'd turned back to her, still entranced by that bright smile -- "Is he one of the new Prefects?" you'd asked her. "I don't think I've noticed him before."

Later, you'd run to catch him. Called out in the hallway, and the ghost had turned around then, his hands in his pockets. When you drew closer, you realized that you could see the castle wall through his funny, old-fashioned school uniform. "You're not real," you'd said to him, mouth moving as you worked the idea in your head.

"Oh," he'd said, sticking his hands in his pockets and giving you a rueful little smile as a breeze down the corridor made his shoulders ripple. "No, I'm not. At least, not now. I haven't ridden in the Prefect's compartments for a very long time. I'm very sorry if you thought I was a prefect or if I was overstepping myself at the Sorting Ceremony -- I loved being a Prefect, you know, and I wanted to pretend."

"You're a ghost," you said. Your lips felt rather dead and heavy themselves; his lips moved so easily, so fluidly. Most ghosts, after all, show how they died. The Bloody Baron, Nearly Headless Nick, the exsanguinated Grey Lady. But this boy is complete. Flawless. There isn't a mark on his skin aside from the occaisional ink stain between his thighs, and you should know because you've undressed him and he's undressed you. Acres of smooth, taut skin that's faintly cool underneath your fingers, though he moans in pleasure when you take his shoulder underneath your mouth. You know it's dangerous to make love to a ghost because they might be after your vitality; even if they're not, every time you kiss one, they steal a little bit of your life away, but it's a price you're willing to pay for this ghost. Tom apologizes so fervently everytime afterwards, and even if that weren't so, each kiss you give to him means a kiss he gives you back.

And he feels realer and realer with every kiss that passes -- he's getting realer even when you don't kiss him. On Valentine's Day, after you left Penelope and were getting ready to make your rounds, he'd popped into your room, looking realer than he ever had, and he'd almost pushed you to the bed in his eagarness. "I've missed you too," you'd said, pulling the jacket off his shoulders while he backed you into the bed.

You could almost even feel the fabric underneath your hands, he was so real that night. You remember being surprised, actually, because the fabric of his clothes was so poor. After all, he was such a beautiful boy that you assumed that he would only have beautiful clothes; somebody with cheekbones and a mouth like his could only be from a rich, old Wizarding family, and the way magic hummed in his teeth and tongue. . .

The idea that he'll someday be able to fuck you makes you tremble. His kisses are so forceful. There's always the touch of teeth when he wraps his mouth around your cock, and the idea of him drawing your hips back onto his cock. . .

That night, he whispered. "Someday, I'll fuck you, Percy," he said, mouth on your shoulder before you spread his legs wide and pushed into him. His head drops back when you do that: he gasps and writhes when you slide into him. When you bury yourself all the way, his shoulders go back and his hips go up. He arches. Yowls like a cat, whimpers like you're killing him, but when you stop to make sure he's all right, he guides your hand to his cock.

His eyes glitter like stars in the darkness of your bed. "Someday, I'll fuck you, Weasley. I'll make you beg for me. I'll make you put your hands on this headboard and spread your legs and say, 'Tom, please fuck me. You make me feel so good.' I'll split you in half, Percy -- I'll make you scream my name, beg me to let you come. Someday, I'll do that to you. Someday soon."

There was that time in the Prefect's bathroom, the night after Penelope got turned to stone. It was also the first time you took him into the Prefect's baths -- you liked taking a bath there after finishing your rounds, but you'd always shooed him away out because you didn't want him to see you naked. How could you undress in front of something like that? He'd laugh at you without your prefect's badge on, but afterwards, you would go back out into the hallway, your hair wet and dripping down your neck because you were so eagar to see him again that you didn't have time to cast a drying charm, and he'd always be sitting on the windowsill opposite, waiting for you.

That night, you were too tired to chase him away, and he followed you in. The surface of his body billowed and snapped taut as the steam from the baths hit him. "Oh, Percy," he had breathed, bringing his hands up to his face. "I'd forgotten how good it feels in here. I have such wonderful memories of this place, you know."

You had been stripping your clothes off by the black marble tub then -- your back hurt. You'd fallen asleep on the ground by Penelope's cot in the Infirmary before Pomfrey found you, and even then, it'd taken her and Dumbledore and Tom, quietly waving at you from the corridor, to get you off the floor.

"You should've come into the Infirmary," you said, looking at yourself in the mirror. You looked awful. Circles under your eyes. Even paler than usual, and the back of your throat was distinctly scratchy. "I. . . I would have liked for you and Penelope to have met."

Tom had pulled off his shoes and socks and was dangling his feet in the hot water. You came around and sat down next to him and started unbuttoning your shirt. "Oh, I think we have, actually," Tom said. "But they've got some wards around the Infimrary, so I can't get in."

"Oh? Not even if somebody invites you in?" You undid the buttons at your right cuff, remembering only briefly to be embarssed because you didn't have cufflinks to wear in them, and Tom always had such a beautiful pair. Slytherin green with silver edging and a pair of snakes wrapped around each other; they'd been a gift from his house-head, he explained. An award he got for special services or something.

You were fumbling with the buttons for your left cuff, then. Your right hand was even less inclined to cooperate than usual, and you were just on the verge of giving up, half in tears, when Tom had bent over, his lips grazing your wrist.

"No, I can't get in even then, but let me get that for you," Tom had said. He undid the buttons with his lips, and when that was done, he moved to your throat and finally your mouth.

"You're so cold," you said when he he started to undo the buttons of your trousers. "Your fingers are. . . How can you be so cold when it's so hot in here?" There was steam in the air, and a gloss of sweat on his forehead.

"Oh," Tom had said, pushing you back onto the tiles and running his mouth up your thigh. "I'll warm up."