I was rereading that one drabble I wrote about his half hibernation/half sleep tendencies where he gets really pliant in the morning and I wanted to draw it out ^3^
This is a really old drawing so the proportions are really off !! i think i kinda based this on patreon: All the nerves but all the celebration after the performance and they had no idea how to dress so they just did whatever 😭💔 OHH MYGOSH
Synopsis: “…because maybe, you’re gonna be the one that saves me.” [GIF Creds: milesgmorales]
WC: 3684
Category: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Heavy Angst, Angst With An Optimistic Ending, Slow-Burn, Mutual Pining, Shifting POV’s, {TW: Grief, Mentions of Loneliness}
[PART 1 | MASTERLIST]
LAST PART! Are you guys crying? Because I am 😭 Unironically, I never thought this would turn into a series but now i’m glad that all the support i got made it happen. So, thank you. All of you 💖
For some background on how I came up with this idea, I was watching the show Lost (very good show), and this song—the one I named this part after—became one of my favorites solely because of its importance due to two of the “main” characters.
I’ve always had this thought of “what if someone did remember Peter?” and this song was the game-changer in making my thought a reality. So, if you guys know this song as well as I do, get ready. This finale is a MESS of emotions
『••✎••』
Peter’s mind raced, trying to piece together the puzzle in front of him. You were a mess—a soaked, trembling, sobbing mess—and for a terrifying second, he thought someone had hurt you. His senses went into overdrive, cataloging every detail: the scent of rain and chemicals clinging to your clothes, the frantic, arrhythmic beat of your heart against his chest, the salt of your tears soaking into the collar of his shirt. He was ready to bolt, to hunt down whoever or whatever had caused this, to make them pay.
But then you pulled back, just enough to look at him, and what he saw in your eyes wasn’t fear or pain. It was recognition. A deep, soul-shattering understanding that made his blood run cold.
And he knew. He knew before you even said the words. You weren’t running from something. You were running to him because you finally, truly, understood. You believed him in the way he needed, the way he had never, ever expected anyone to.
You believed him and it was destroying you. The girl who had been so kind, so gentle, so quietly resilient, was breaking right in front of him, and it was all because of him. Because of the truth he had selfishly laid at your feet. He had thought giving you the truth would be a gift. A relief. But looking at you now, he saw it for what it was: a curse.
He didn’t know what to do. His entire life, people had relied on him for strength. May had relied on him to be responsible. MJ had relied on him to be honest. Ned had relied on him to be the hero. Spider-Man was supposed to have the answers. He was supposed to be the one who fixed things.
But what did you need him to be? Spider-Man couldn’t stop the storm outside. He couldn’t erase the grief etched onto your face. And Peter Parker… Peter Parker caused this. How could he comfort someone when he was the very source of their pain?
He made a decision. Not a hero decision. A Peter Parker decision. He guided you further into the apartment, his hands gentle but firm on your arms. He maneuvered you around a stack of textbooks and a precariously balanced pile of takeout containers, leading you to the one piece of furniture that wasn’t salvaged from a curb: the armchair. He gently pushed you down into it, then dropped to his knees in front of you, looking up at you with an expression of such raw, unguarded concern that it made your breath hitch.
“I’ll be right back,” he said, his voice soft but steady. “Don’t move.”
He was up and moving before you could respond, a blur of motion. He returned a moment later with the towel from the floor, now warm from being draped over a radiator, and a large, worn-out sweatshirt that smelled faintly of detergent and… him. He gently draped the towel over your shivering shoulders, then started unwrapping the wet lab coat from your body, his movements clumsy but careful, like he was defusing a bomb instead of taking off a piece of clothing.
You were too numb to protest, too overwhelmed to do anything but let him. He peeled the soaked fabric from your arms and tossed it aside, then held out the sweatshirt.
“Here,” he said. “Put this on. You’ll get sick.”
You nodded, your fingers fumbling with the damp hem of your own shirt. He waited patiently, his gaze fixed on a spot just over your shoulder, giving you a sliver of privacy in the small, cluttered room. You pulled the sweatshirt over your head, the soft, warm fabric enveloping you like a cocoon. It was too big, the sleeves swallowing your hands, the hem falling down to your mid-thigh. You were swimming in it, swimming in him. And for the first time since you’d run out of the lab, you felt a semblance of warmth return to your body.
He was still on his knees in front of you, looking up at you with those big, brown eyes that held a universe of pain. He reached out, not to touch you, but to peel away your set of safety goggles, which you’d forgotten you were still wearing. He set them aside on a nearby stack of books, then just… looked at you. He looked at you as if you were a piece of art in a museum, with a kind of reverence and a hint of sadness.
“You saw them, didn’t you?” he asked, his voice barely a whisper. He knew. Of course he knew. He saw the truth in your eyes, the same way he’d seen the truth in your kindness in that cafe, the same way he saw the truth in that quote on your book.
You just nodded, a fresh wave of tears welling up in your eyes. You tried to speak, to tell him about Ned and MJ, about Mr. Harrington and the AV cart, but the words got stuck in your throat, coming out as a series of choked, incomprehensible sobs.
He didn’t need the words. He understood. He just gave a small, sad nod, a silent acknowledgment of your shared burden. Then, in a move that was both utterly heartbreaking and profoundly comforting, he leaned forward and rested his forehead on your lap. You felt the warmth of his skin through the thin fabric of the sweatshirt, the slight tremor in his body. You were reminded at that moment that he wasn’t just the boy who was erased, who had to live with being erased. He was also secretly the friendly-neighborhood hero, bearing the weight of two worlds.
You kept forgetting about that part.
You let your hand fall to his head, your fingers tangling in his damp, soft hair. You could feel the slight, rhythmic buzz of his senses working overtime, cataloging your every shudder, every hitched breath, every frantic beat of your heart. But it wasn’t invasive. It was… intimate. A quiet, unspoken conversation between two people who existed in a space no one else could see.
“Is this… is this what it feels like?” you managed to choke out, your voice hoarse. “All the time?”
He didn’t lift his head, but you felt him nod against your knee. “A little,” he whispered. “You get used to it.”
He was lying. You both knew he was lying. You don’t get used to being a ghost. You just learn how to haunt the living.
He finally pulled back, looking up at you with an intensity that made your heart ache. His hair was a mess from your fingers, so much so that you had to fight back the urge to smooth it down.
“Why didn’t you tell me it was this bad?” you asked, your voice cracking with a mixture of anger and sorrow. “When you were at the cafe… you made it sound like a metaphor. With how you described it, I thought… I don’t know what I thought. But I didn’t think this. I didn’t think that I would ask about you and get blank stares. I didn’t think I had to convince my own mind that you were real.”
“What was I supposed to say?” he asked, his voice rising with a frustration that had been building for a year. “That I caused the multiverse to almost collapse, and to fix it, I had to make everyone I ever loved forget me? That my aunt’s last words were to a stranger? That I’ve been living in a glorified closet, eating expired microwave meals, talking to myself because the silence is so loud it feels like it’s going to crush me?!”
He was on his feet now, pacing the small length of the room, the frantic energy returning with a vengeance. “I barely know how to say it to myself without wanting to punch a hole through the wall! How was I supposed to say it to you? To the only person on the planet who doesn’t look through me? What was I supposed to do, scare you away? Have you look at me with the same… pity… that I see in my own reflection?!”
He stopped, his back to you, his shoulders slumping in defeat. You could see the tension in the lines of his back, the way his hands were clenched into fists at his sides.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice muffled. “I didn’t mean to yell. I just… what was I supposed to say?”
You watched him, your own tears momentarily forgotten. You saw the desperation in his posture, the raw, unfiltered pain. He wasn’t angry at you. He could never be angry at you. He was angry at the universe, at the cruel, cosmic joke that had become his life. And he was terrified. Terrified that you, the one miracle, the one anchor, would be snatched away just like everything else.
So you did the only thing you could think to do. You stood up, the sweatshirt—a tangible reminder of his care—hanging on your small frame like a shield. You walked over to him and, without a word, wrapped your arms around his waist from behind, pressing your cheek against the tense muscles of his back.
You didn’t say anything. You just held him. You let him feel the warmth of your body, the steady rhythm of your breathing. You let him know just how much strength he had. That he wasn’t alone.
He was tense for a long moment, a coiled spring of grief and anger. Then, slowly, incrementally, he began to relax. He leaned back into your embrace, the fight draining out of him, leaving behind a hollow ache. He brought one of his hands up, covering yours where they were clasped over his stomach, his fingers entwining with yours.
“You could have said that,” you whispered, your lips brushing against the fabric of his shirt. “I would have listened. I would have tried to understand.”
“You’re trying to understand now,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. “And look what it’s doing to you.”
“Then let it,” you said, your voice firm with a conviction that surprised even you. “Don’t you get it, Peter? That’s what friends do. They carry the heavy stuff together. You don’t have to be strong for me. You don’t have to be a hero. You can just… be. Be Peter Parker. And I’ll be right here.”
He turned in your arms, slowly, until he was facing you. His eyes were red-rimmed, his face etched with a sorrow so profound it seemed to age him by years. He looked at you, and for the first time, you saw something other than pain in his eyes. You saw… hope—a fragile, flickering ember in the vast darkness of his loneliness.
“Friends?”
He said the word with a mixture of wonder and disbelief, like he was trying on a coat that hadn’t fit him in a year. Friends didn’t seem like a big enough word for what you were, for what he needed you to be. It was too small, too simple for the weight of this truth.
“Just friends?” he asked, his voice barely a whisper.
You looked at him—at the boy who could apparently lift a bus, who could swing between skyscrapers, who could face down aliens and monsters, but was terrified of being forgotten. You saw the vulnerability in his eyes, the desperate, hopeful plea for something more than just a shared burden.
And in that moment the past came into play, for both of you. For him, it was all those years in high school where you had been just a face in the crowd. All those missed opportunities, all those silent observations, all those what-ifs that had suddenly become painfully relevant when he found you. In a matter of days, those short conversations and your quiet presence had become more real to him than years of memories with people who no longer knew his name.
The cafe conversation, the hug, the sticky note—it all came rushing back to him, a kaleidoscope of moments that had led to this. You had been there, all along, a quiet observer in the background of his life, and he had been too preoccupied with his own world to see you. And now, here you were, as if the universe had given him a second chance, a do-over for all the times he had been too busy, too distracted, too Spider-Man to just be a teenager.
And for you, it was all those years of watching from the sidelines. All those times you played observer instead of participant. All those moments you chose your textbooks over a chance at a real connection. You saw him—the boy who was always running, the boy who was always kind, the boy who was always just out of reach. And you had done nothing. You had let him run right past you, too caught up in your own quiet world of grades and expectations to see that he might have needed another friend. The trip to Europe was proof of that. You had seen the grief on his face and you did nothing. Nothing.
A wave of guilt washed over you, so strong it almost brought you to your knees. You regretted everything. The silence. The lost years. You should’ve gone to those parties. You should’ve spoken up in class. You should’ve gone up to him in Venice and asked if he was okay, even if you had never spoken a word to him before. You should have said something. Anything.
You looked at him, at the hope in his eyes, and you knew, with a certainty that was both terrifying and exhilarating, that ‘friends’ was not enough. It was a start, a crucial and necessary start, but it wasn’t the end. It wasn’t what this was. This was bigger than friendship. This was… fated. A cosmic collision of two lonely souls who had been orbiting each other for years, never quite close enough to touch, until a cataclysmic event had finally forced them into each other’s gravitational pull.
You took a deep breath, the air catching in your lungs as you made a decision. A decision to stop watching. A decision to start living. A decision to finally, after all these years, take a risk.
“If not friends,” you whispered, your voice trembling with a mixture of fear and anticipation, “then what would you call this, Pete?”
You let the nickname slip, a casualty of the intimacy, a sign that the old rules no longer applied. You saw the way it made him flinch, not in a bad way, but in a way that suggested it was a long-forgotten word that suddenly held new meaning.
“What would you call us?” you pressed, your eyes locked on his, daring him to give you an answer.
And he didn’t know how to. Not in words, anyway. He’d spent the last year learning that words were flimsy, unreliable things that could be erased with a wave of a hand. They were promises that could be broken, memories that could be rewritten. But actions… actions had weight. They had consequences. They had a truth that couldn’t be denied.
So instead of answering, he did the only thing he could think to do. The only thing that felt right.
He leaned in and kissed you.
Slowly, making it known he was giving you all the power. If you were to pull away now, he’d let you. If you had even a spark of hesitation in your eyes, he would have stopped. One of his perks of being him was seeing it all before it even happened. Spider-sense aside, he’d learned how to read people. And what he was reading in you now was all about the courage to take a chance. So that’s what he did.
His lips were hesitant at first, a question rather than an answer, a gentle exploration of this new, uncharted territory. He tasted of rain and grief and a desperate, aching hope that made your heart ache with a sweetness you had never known before. You responded in kind, your lips parting slightly, a silent invitation.
He knew immediately this was your first kiss. It wasn’t hard to figure out. The slight tremble in your lips, the way your hands remained at your sides, unsure of what to do. He would’ve smiled if he wasn’t so busy. So he made it a point to show you what to do, to lead you in a dance as old as time itself. His hands found their way to your waist, pulling you closer, the space between you disappearing until there was nothing but the shared heat of your bodies and the frantic, synchronized beating of your hearts. Your own hands came up to rest on his chest, feeling the solid, reassuring thump of his heart beneath your palm, a steady rhythm against the chaos of your own.
This was it. This was the answer to your question. This was what you were. This was what this was. It wasn’t friendship. It wasn’t pity. It wasn’t even a second chance. It was a beginning. A new beginning, born from the ashes of two lives that had been consumed by fire.
The kiss deepened, growing in confidence and intensity, a conversation without words. You weren’t the quiet girl in the front of the class anymore. He wasn’t the ghost haunted by a past that no one else could remember. You were just two people, two lost souls who had finally found their eye in the middle of a hurricane.
He was the one to pull away, not out of hesitation, but out of a need to breathe, to see, to process the monumental shift that had just occurred. He rested his forehead against yours, his breath coming in ragged gasps, his eyes closed, as if he was trying to burn this moment into his memory, to hold onto it with every fiber of his being. His hands were still on your waist, his thumbs tracing slow, deliberate circles on the fabric of the sweatshirt that now smelled like both of you.
You were breathless, your head spinning, your body humming with a new and unfamiliar energy. You felt… seen. Truly seen. Not for your grades or your quiet demeanor or your potential, but for you. For the girl who had watched and waited and regretted. For the girl who had finally found the courage to speak up, to reach out, to take a chance.
You opened your eyes, finding him already looking at you, a soft, wondrous smile playing on his lips. It wasn’t a sad smile. It wasn’t a tired smile. It was a real smile. A Peter Parker smile. And it was the most beautiful thing you had ever seen.
It took you a second to realize he was humming a song. It was soft, so quiet you almost thought you were imagining it. But you recognized it immediately. It was that one song you were always listening to in class, the one with the intricate guitar riff and the haunting lyrics. The one you’d been listening to on your headphones the day he ran into you, as well as the day in the cafe.
And ironically, thinking back, it had matched the situation more than you realized. The one about being lost and found, about being seen and unseen, about saving someone from the wreckage of a life they thought was over.
And he knew it, too. He heard it first through your headphones. And since then, he heard it everywhere he went, and for the life of him he couldn’t figure out what it was. He tried Shazaming it, he tried humming it to Siri, he tried searching the lyrics, but nothing.
Then, on a night he was feeling nostalgic and pulled out one of May’s old record players, he found it. Tucked away in a box of her old vinyls, a record by a band he’d remembered as her favorite. He played it, and he listened. And he understood.
He understood the lyrics, the melody, the ache behind it all. He understood why it had been playing on a loop in your head, why it had been following him around like a shadow. Because it was his song. It described his life to a tee. The feeling of being erased, of being a stranger in your own life, of knowing that the one person who saw you could be the one thing that could save you.
And when he looked at you now, he didn’t see the quiet girl from the front of the class. He saw the girl who had been listening to the soundtrack to his life, even before she knew she was in the movie. He saw the girl who had been singing the words he couldn’t say, feeling the pain he couldn’t show, holding the hope he couldn’t find.
He stopped humming, the last note hanging in the air between you, a fragile, ephemeral thing. You didn’t have to ask what it was because you were singing the same song. Always have been.
He didn’t know what tomorrow would look like. He didn’t know how you were going to help him, how you were going to navigate this strange new reality that only the two of you could see. He didn’t know how you were going to convince the world that a boy named Peter Parker existed, or if you even could.
But as he looked at you, as the lyrics said:
“…because maybe, you’re gonna be the one that saves me.”
He knew one thing for sure: that you would. And you did in more ways than you could possibly imagine. You saved him from the silence, from the loneliness, from the crushing weight of being the only one who remembered. You saved him from himself.
You were his wonderwall. And after today, he was starting to believe he might have been yours, too.
(6/6) of the 6 IF characters drawing requests (or should I say 5 requests since I used my artist's privilege to add Stevie) !
Drawn above are (name - IF): Melody - Love and Leases ( @loveandleases ); Stevie - Press Play ( @pressplay-if ); Céline - The Ballad of the Young Gods ( @childrenofcain-if ); Athena - Apartment 502 ( @apt502-if ); Orla - Remember You Will Die ( @vapolis ); Qiu - Merry Crisis ( @merrycrisis-if )
Shout out to the authors of these lovely IFs and to the people who have requested the characters😘🫶!
.ೃ࿔ I just can't come in between them, they got their own thing or 6 times people thought they were dating + the 1 time it was actually true.
"So, you're dating?" the new camper looks between her and Percy after they gave him the tour around camp.
Ah, the long awaited question.
And the answer never changes. "No, we're friends, why?"
Once again, the camper looks between her and Percy, who's standing just behind her with his arms wrapped around her shoulders, her head comfortably resting back on his chest. "Oh, nothing, I just thought—"
Yes. Everyone just thought. Everyone just thought they were together, and everyone was always shocked when it turned out they were merely friends.
Percy and her couldn't understand it at all, because it was totally normal for friends to act the way they acted with each other. Right?
⋆˚𝜗𝜚˚⋆ the ponytail incident
It is, obviously, totally normal for friends to want to help each other out before combat. So, of course Percy knows exactly how to tie her hair into a perfect ponytail.
Shouldn't everyone know that?
Who can blame him if he knows his best friend so well that he can easily notice her discomfort with her hair falling on her face when she's sparring? And who can blame him if he wants to help? That's what best friends do.
So he doesn't see anything wrong with standing behind her after she calls for time out, his fingers gently carding through her hair, gathering it into a ponytail, twisting it with practiced fingers and securing it with the hair tie that he just happens to have on his wrist.
"Thanks, Perce." She says, as if it's nothing out of the ordinary.
"Dude, how do you even know how to make a ponytail to begin with?" Leo asks when he hangs back and she goes back to sparring.
"She hates when her hair falls on her face." He shrugs, like there's no more explanation needed.
Leo doesn’t understand, he doesn't know if he wants to, "You do realize you're in love, right?"
But Percy isn't even listening, his eyes already fixed on her and his smile growing when he sees her more relaxed without her hair bothering her.
⋆˚𝜗𝜚˚⋆ the necklace and hairtie
Yes, it's completely and totally normal if she wears a necklace with her best friend's initial around her neck.
It isn't even that noticeable— just a small, golden "P" that rests on her collar bone. Cute and meaningless. She just likes jewelry. This one she especially likes, since she wears it every day.
Clarisse has never noticed it before, but now that she stands in front of her while they drink water after training, the gold necklace manages to catch her attention, sparkling under the sun tauntingly.
Clarisse squints her eyes at it. "Is that... a 'P' on your necklace?"
She lowers her water bottle and smiles, and oh— Clarisse already knows what's coming just by the silly smile on her face. "Yes, for Percy."
"How is that—" Clarisse stops herself with a sigh. "Nevermind."
She's tired of questioning it.
Meanwhile, Percy carries a hair tie on his wrist. Because friends should be prepared for when their best friend needs a hair tie, of course. There’s nothing else to it.
People don't notice at first, it's a simple black hair tie, nothing to question.
But Percy fiddles a lot with it during meetings, snapping it against his skin when he's bored. And he doesn’t let anyone take it or borrow it from him, "anyone has an extra hair tie?" and he's silent because he's sure as hell not giving his.
Nobody really understands why until he ends up losing it and he's frantically looking around for it as if it's such a precious object he just lost and not a simple hair tie.
"Hey do you know if I left the hair tie in your cabin last afternoon?" He asks her when they sit together for breakfast.
"No, but you can have this one if you want." And it's that simple. He nods. And she takes it off her hair to give it to him.
This one is not even a black hair tie, but rather a lilac scrunchie that definitely clashes with his orange camp shirt. But Percy is grinning like a child opening christmas gifts, and you best believe he won't lose this one.
"Is that her scrunchie on his wrist?" Katie Gardner squints at him when he walks past her table.
"Yes, and he's wearing it like it's a promise ring."
⋆˚𝜗𝜚˚⋆ the kiss on the cheek
And of course it's normal for her to greet him with a kiss on the cheek every time.
Hi? Kiss on the cheek. Bye? Kiss on the cheek. Training? Kiss on the cheek. Breakfast? Kiss on the cheek. Seeing him after capture the flag? Kiss on the cheek. It was simply her way of greeting. Him. Only him.
So when she was late for a cabin meeting and rushed past him with a distracted, "Morning, Perce!" without a kiss?
Percy kind of freezes. His eyes follow her as she walks away, looking like a kicked puppy.
He proceeds to spend the rest of the day sulking. No sign of her around. No kiss on the cheek. By dinner, he's still weirdly quiet.
Grover asks first. "Dude, are you okay? you look like a child that got his candy stolen."
"She didn’t kiss my cheek today." He mumbles, more to himself than to his friends.
Piper looks like she wants to throw her fork to his head. "Is this whole thing just because she didn’t kiss your cheek?"
"Why didn’t she? Did I do something wrong?" And he's pouting, dramatically sad about it.
Grover raises an eyebrow at Annabeth, but before any of them can say anything else— there she is, rushing to the table to take her usual seat beside Percy.
"Sorry guys, had a busy day today." She excuses herself and, like it's second nature, she leans to press a kiss against Percy's cheek. A greeting.
And every single one of his friends is able to witness the change in Percy's expression, the way his whole face just brightens. Long forgotten is the sadness and the sulking.
"How is this normal?" Annabeth shakes her head, going back to her food.
⋆˚𝜗𝜚˚⋆ the picture on the wallet
Percy, as a good friend would, has memorized her usual order. "Chicken sandwich with no tomatoes and fries on the side, add honey mustard for those please."
"Does it change anything if I point out that you hesitated with your own order but not with hers?" Jason asks, looking at him as if he's simply ridiculous.
"That's what friends are for." Percy shrugs, taking out his wallet.
"So you know all your friends orders that way? I don't think-" Frank's words trail off when Percy opens his wallet. "What is that?"
Percy pulls out a few dollars before he realizes Frank is talking to him, his eyes fixed on his wallet. "Hm?" he looks down and he smiles at the photo. "Oh, that's y/n."
He proudly opens the wallet wider to allow both Jason and Frank to see the picture of little five year old y/n squinting at the camera with a wide grin and a bandaid on her nose. "Doesn’t she look cute?"
"I— uh— do you just carry it on your wallet?" Jason asks, genuinely taken by surprise.
"Well, yeah? She gave it to me ages ago." And he turns to pay, like he doesn't understand why they're so surprised about it.
Frank and Jason exchange looks and shake their heads in disbelief, meanwhile Percy is already distracted. "Hey do you have those chocolate chip cookies with the colorful little sprinkles on top? She likes those."
⋆˚𝜗𝜚˚⋆ pink lilies and cherry-minted lip balms
Friends get each other flowers, right? At least, Percy will if he casually spots flowers while grocery shopping with his mom.
It's not his fault that he finds a bouquet of pink lilies, her all time favorite flowers, right when he's walking past the flower stand. They are basically calling for him.
When Sally Jackson looks up from her cart and finds his son holding a bouquet, she smiles knowingly.
"Is there any special dates coming soon?" She teases, knowing exactly what this is about.
"Oh?" He looks down, as if he just realized he's holding flowers. "Oh these? they just remind me of y/n, so I might aswell get them for her."
Sally nods, she doesn't question it, she doesn't try to understand it. Because she already knows.
Except sometimes it really is unbelievable that his son is so oblivious, Sally gets to realize this when she takes a lip balm from the racks by the cash register. "Maybe I should get y/n one of these, she likes them, doesn’t she?"
Percy hums, distracted by placing the groceries on the checkout belt. "Yep, just make sure to get the one that tastes like cherry-mint, you know? the one in the little pot with the silver lid, it's her favorite."
"Percy, how can you know how it tastes?"
Silence.
Percy stops mid-putting the bread down and realizes what he just did.
"I guessed." he replies simply.
Because he's not about to confess to his mother that he knows that's the lip balm she has been wearing since he kissed her for the first and only time when they were twelve.
So what? they had just been friends who had never kissed anyone before. It just seemed fitting at the time that they should share their first kiss with each other.
And it's totally normal if maybe he simply made a mental note not to ever forget her favorite lip balm. Because he's a good friend.
"Perseus, you are unbelievable."
⋆˚𝜗𝜚˚⋆ the date
Percy felt as if it was perfectly normal to be worried about his best friend going on a date, but worried to the point of sulking the entire day? completely normal.
Yes. She has a date. With some guy Percy didn’t even bother learning the name of. Percy had only focused on the sheer audacity of this guy to be charming enough to get her flowers—roses, seriously? and ask her out.
But it's normal for him to be a little protective over his best friend. That's all it is. He just doesn't want her getting hurt by some dude that didn’t even bother trying to get her favorite flowers.
That's the only explanation for the way he felt something inside him twisting when he saw her before she had to leave for the date, looking all pretty and smiling brightly to go out with some other guy.
That's why he doesn’t do much the whole day, he can't be bothered with training or joining his friends on their impromtu day at the lake. And by the time the night falls, he has been on his cabin for hours, glaring at the ceiling for more time than he'd like to admit.
It's past lights out when there’s a soft knock coming from his door. And before he can even react, she opens the door and slips inside, still in that dress that looks like it's been made just for her, her heels clicking as she holds them in her hand.
Most of the times, she lingers on the door to wait for Percy to give her permission to step inside— as if he would ever tell her to leave. But not this time, this time she walks quickly and doesn’t even stop at the edge of the bed or sits like she always does.
No, this time she simply crawls into bed with him.
"Hey, how did—" He gets cut off when she suddenly wraps her arms around him, burying her face against his chest.
"Missed you." Her voice is muffled against his chest, but he's able to understand. "So much."
Percy wraps his arms around her waist almost instictively, pulling her closer to him. "You saw me this afternoon."
"Still missed you." She replies. "Especially after that date."
He chuckles softly, his fingers carding through her hair, her fingers curl slightly against his shirt, and he tightens his hold around her. And it feels right.
"Was it that bad?" He asks, keeping his tone light, as if he didn’t spend the whole day brooding.
"So bad." There’s no hesitance. "He talked about himself the whole night, barely asked anything about me. And when he did, and I brought you up, he got all weird."
Percy's hands stop on her hair for a second, his eyebrows raising slightly. "Weird?"
She shifts slightly, nuzzling her face against the crook of his neck. "He told me that we should probably distance ourselves a little because people thought we were dating and he almost didn’t ask me out because of you."
"That's ridiculous." Percy laughs, but it even surprises him how forced it sounds, how his stomach twists.
She pulls away now, barely really, just enough to look at him. "Yup, ridiculous, right?"
They both look at each other, her fingers still curled in his shirt, his arms still securely wrapped around her waist. And neither of them moves.
After a moment, he whispers, as if he couldn't allow himself to speak any louder because it might break the whole thing. "Have you ever thought that maybe... it isn't so ridiculous?"
His heart is pounding, his gaze glued to her, waiting for a response. "Yes, maybe it isn't ridiculous, maybe—"
Percy doesn’t let her finish her sentence, he can't. Because the moment she confirms what he has been thinking about, it's like his body moves instinctively, his lips suddenly crashing against hers.
Cherry-mint lips welcoming his like they've been waiting for this for a long time, his hand brushing over the delicate chain around her neck, fingers pausing just for a second on the tiny gold letter that hangs on it.
And it's exactly what it should be. Soft. Sure. Familiar. Comforting. And even better than that first time they kissed back when they were twelve year-old kids convinced that all they could ever be was friends.
⋆˚𝜗𝜚˚⋆ the kiss
The next morning, nobody notices the change— because there has not been any evident change in the way they act. Everyone just thinks that the clingyness, the kisses on the cheek, the hugs, are just part of the routine already.
Until they're getting ready for capture the flag and, as usual, Percy helps her with her ponytail. It isn't anything that people haven't seen already, No. So everyone just rolls their eyes at them, mumbling about how oblivious they are.
"How many more months do you think will take them to finally realize?" Clarisse mumbles, putting on her helmet.
"Who knows? It could be years, they—" Grover's words die on his mouth when Percy suddenly leans to kiss her.
Kiss her. Percy is kissing her. In front of everyone.
He doesn’t even realize that people have stopped to look at them, because as he pulls away, the only thing worth his attention is her smile as he says. "You'll do great out there, angel."
"I swear if you tell me you're only friends after that, Jackson." Leo tells him after she runs off to go find her spear.
Percy chuckles, his smile bright, his eyes still fixed on her. "Friends? No, that's my girl."
ᯓ➤ "Just us two..." "Oh, that would be wonderful!" "…Three?"
← ʙᴀᴄᴋ. ⋮ ⌞ jason todd ✘ reader + platonic! damian wayne ✘ reader ⌝ .ᐟ .ᐟ
ৎׅ ׄ synopsis ⋮ Jason loves your alone time. Jason also loves Damian. Jason does not want to share your alone time. Damian loves you both. Damian will make him share your alone time.
aka ›››› "You can’t force me to participate in no-nut November." word cnt. 3.4k
You never quite understood why Jason was upset, even if you tried with all the patience you possessed. Most of your “dates” were not dates in the usual sense at all, but small, tender things done quietly within the four soft walls of home. They were evenings stitched together from the ordinary: the rhythmic sound of Jason’s knife against a cutting board while you perched on the counter, watching him cook and finding new, shameless ways to distract him; the slow comfort of cleaning together, your shared music low in the background as sunlight drifted across the floorboards; laundry dates that ended in laughter, with soap bubbles clinging to Jason’s hair; and movie nights, his favorites—the kind where you both ended up asleep before the film even reached its second act. Or...occupied with something else.
Movie nights without his little brother, that is. Because when Damian was there, movie nights somehow stopped belonging to Jason at all. They became something else entirely—soft, conspiratorial things between you and the boy. The two of you would sit wrapped in the same blanket, heads bent close, whispering about the film’s inaccuracies.
Laundry days became a battlefield when Damian joined in. He would stand beside you, arms crossed and unimpressed, as he scrutinized every item of Jason’s wardrobe like a disapproving tailor. “You wear this?” he’d ask, his voice flat with disbelief.
Cooking nights weren’t much better. You found yourself giving too much of your attention to Damian’s questions, explaining measurements and flavors and medical nutrition while Jason sighed and stirred and watched from a distance, half-amused and half-wounded.
Jason could never quite tell when it happened—when you and Damian stopped being polite strangers and somehow became… something else. Something closer.
All he knew was that one night, both of them were bloodied bone-tired, and he’d broken his own rule: no family in the apartment. But Damian needed help, and he trusted you. You had training, steady hands, and the kind of gentle patience that could coax a frightened little robin to rest.
You patched them both up that night. Bandages and soft voices, soup after that. It was supposed to end there.
It didn’t.
Somehow, after that night, the boy who once hissed at anyone who dared to touch him began to let you close. Damian—the child with the wary eyes and the spine made of quiet pride—let you ruffle his hair without complaint. He let you mend the tear in his sleeve, let you fuss over his meals, let you feed him soup when he was too tired to lift his arm.
Jason watched it all with a strange mix of awe and jealousy.
Damian even began to compliment you—though always hidden in insults aimed at Jason.
“I don’t know how you tolerate Todd,” he’d say airily. “You’d think you’d prefer someone who matches you intellectually.”
Jason would groan and roll his eyes. You’d only laugh.
There were other things, too. The tutoring sessions that had somehow become part of your week—Damian’s new interest in medicine, his newfound fascination with anatomy and physiology. You were his favorite teacher, though he’d never admit it outright.
You were also, much to Jason’s dismay, his doctor.
And Damian liked his “patient room”—your shared bedroom—kept quiet as a cathedral. No chatter, no movement, no sound but the clink of teacups and the rustle of papers.
Damian liked your apartment. Truly liked it. Liked the calm that hung in the air like a soft blanket. Liked that you didn’t speak unless you had something to say. Liked that you covered every window with those translucent suncatchers that painted colors across the floorboards when the light came through. Not the gaudy sort found in tourist shops—yours were delicate, old, a little imperfect, like melted drops of glass. Your home reminded him of a place he once called home.
Damian liked the kittens you fostered. He liked feeding them, brushing them, pretending he didn’t enjoy either. He liked making tea with you because you brewed it properly, just as it was made when he was small with the old servants, with patient hands and quiet dignity.
He did not like your choice in company.
And he told you so, in his usual unflinching way.
“I can find you a more adequate match,” he whispered one afternoon, low and confidential, though Jason heard every word from across the room.
You were kneeling beside the tub, sleeves rolled up, bathing a litter of kittens in a metal bucket from the hardware store. The poor things had fleas and ringworm, and your fingers were red from the warm water and soap. Damian crouched beside you, sleeves just as damp, as if he’d been born to this small ritual of care.
“I think he’s quite adequate,” you whispered back, soft enough not to wound his pride.
That was another thing Damian liked: the way you spoke to him. You matched his tone, measured and deliberate, the way someone might match a heartbeat. He knew it wasn’t how you spoke to everyone—he’d seen you with delivery men, with Jason—but with him, you were precise. Thoughtful. Gentle.
You spoke like he did.
And for a boy who’d spent years surrounded by voices that stumbled over his accent, who had grown used to repeating himself until the words felt wrong in his mouth, that meant more than he’d ever say aloud.
“Yeah, I think he’s adequate too!” Jason called suddenly from the doorway, grinning as he tightened a hinge on the bathroom door. You turned to glance at him, smiling despite yourself.
He was dressed in that white T-shirt with the sleeves cut off—his arms smudged with grease and his hair far too long, hanging just above his eyes. His clothes bore the familiar stains of oil and paint and everything else he’d fixed that week. His sneakers were worn down to their last thread, and yet somehow, standing there with a screwdriver in one hand and a crooked grin on his face, he looked steady.
His skin had color again, no longer the pale gray of sleepless nights. His back wasn’t as stiff as it used to be, his shoulders at ease. And though he grumbled endlessly about Damian’s visits, he looked softer when the boy was around. A little more human. A little more home.
Perfect, as always. Yours as always.
“You look like a turd,” Damian said flatly, scowling in Jason’s direction.
Jason didn’t even flinch. “Bro, you smell like a turd.”
“I wonder why,” Damian muttered, holding up a dripping kitten by the scruff, water trailing from its tiny paws.
Jason dropped the screwdriver and spun, pointing accusingly. “Damian, I swear to God—if you drip that medicine on the rug again, I’ll—”
Before he could finish, you reached forward, gently guiding Damian’s small hands back toward the bucket. “Let’s not test him,” you murmured, the edge of laughter in your tone. Damian’s lips pressed into a thin line, but he obeyed, his pride intact.
Half an hour later, the kittens were washed and dry, bundled in towels that smelled faintly of lavender. They lay in the wicker basket you used for your farmer’s market trips—the same one Damian sometimes carried with a reluctant sort of pride. The three of you sat together in the aftermath of the small chaos: Jason kneeling by the repaired door, you perched on the rug with a kitten in your lap, Damian cross-legged beside the basket, his expression unusually serene.
“What do you want for dinner?” Jason asked finally, testing the hinge one last time.
“Biryani,” Damian said immediately, still rubbing a towel over a kitten’s ears.
Jason didn’t look up. “I was asking my girlfriend.”
The room went quiet for a heartbeat. Then both of them turned to look at you—Jason with a weary sort of amusement, Damian with scandalized indignation.
You sighed, stroking a kitten’s damp fur. “I’d like biryani too.”
“Vegetable,” Damian added.
You paused, glanced down at him, then back up at Jason. “…Yes, vegetable.”
Jason blinked. For a long moment, there was silence. Then he muttered, “Lost to a vegan,” and wandered out of the bathroom, the sound of his boots fading down the hall.
When you looked back, Damian was smiling—just a small, quiet smile, the kind that didn’t reach his eyes but softened them all the same. You felt warmth bloom in your chest.
By the time dinner is ready, the kittens are all asleep, little bodies curled into soft commas in their basket. The faint hum of the radiator fills the silence between your breaths, and the apartment smells rich and warm—spices blooming in the air like memory.
The biryani sits steaming in the center of the low coffee table, bowls placed in an uneven triangle around it. Damian is already criticizing between bites.
“There’s too much cardamom,” he says with all the dignity of a food critic, squinting at his plate. “And the star anise—how am I supposed to chew on this?”
Jason looks like he’s aged five years in the span of the meal.
“Don’t eat it then,” he grumbles, though there’s no real bite to it.
Damian ignores him, of course, muttering something about “culinary atrocities” and “unsuitable textures” as he gets up to fetch salt from the kitchen. His footsteps fade down the hall, leaving a kind of hush behind him.
Jason exhales hard, running a hand over his face. “Gods, I—” He stops himself, then huffs again and reaches over to scoop a few extra vegetables into your plate. “I love the kid. I mean it, I do. But does he always have to be around?”
His voice drops low, almost conspiratorial. The firelight flickers against his face, softening the hard line of his jaw.
You smile, trying to keep your voice light, teasing. “Are you jealous?”
You hope to draw that familiar flush to his cheeks, to make him sputter and deflect because you don't want the risk of Damian hearing all of this and drawing back into himself.
But Jason doesn’t take the bait—at least not the way you expect.
“No,” he says, too quickly. Then, quieter, “Yes. No—I don’t know. I…” His gaze drops to his food, then to the floor. “I like having you to myself.”
There’s something naked in that confession. Something fragile, almost boyish. Jason, for all his rough edges and sharp words, has never learned how to admit loneliness without looking away.
He doesn’t need to pretend with you—not like he does with his family. Around them, he wears armor made of sarcasm and silence. Even now, years after coming back, Jason doubts he’ll ever fully relax in their company.
Especially not around Damian.
It isn’t the boy’s fault. Jason knows that. But every time he looks at Damian, he remembers.
Remembers standing in the League’s training yard, watching the child run until his small body trembled, his tutors shouting that failure was death. Remembers the look in Damian’s eyes when they handed him a knife and pointed to a chained dog. Remembers him crying—choking on his own breath, spitting his mother’s name like a curse—and then, finally, going still. Blade down.
Jason had watched from a distance, powerless to intervene. That memory lives in his bones.
He can’t relax around that kid. Not really. And yet Damian has learned to relax around you—and Jason knows how rare that is.
So it feels selfish, maybe, to resent it. But he does.
He misses you.
Misses you kissing his neck without warning, standing on tiptoe instead of asking him to lean down. Misses the way you’d curl into his lap whenever he finally sat down, the solid comfort of your weight grounding him in a world that never stops spinning.
He misses you walking around half-dressed and unbothered, so at ease in your skin that he felt human just watching you. Misses you sneaking up behind him while he cooks, arms slipping around his waist, the low hum of your laughter against his back.
Misses the smack you’d give him whenever he teased you about your inability to ever survive as a celibate.
Apparently, you could.
Apparently, you could rival a monk.
And Jason’s pretty sure you’d win, too.
Apparently he's the one who'd die if he was ever made celibate.
“…He needs a space,” you murmur finally, your voice as soft as the fire crackling in the grate. Your hand drifts to his thigh, a gentle anchor.
Jason sighs, leaning into the touch like it’s the first warm thing he’s felt all day. “I need a space,” he grumbles, sounding more like a sulking teenager than a grown man. He pokes at his food. “And I need meat.”
You roll your eyes, amused. “The chicken biryani you made last week tasted wonderful.”
“Yeah, well, apparently chickens are birds,” he mutters.
You blink, looking up at him. “Huh?”
“I always thought they were like… fat fish,” Jason says. “That’s what Dick told me when I was, like, ten.”
You stare for a second before laughter spills out of you, helpless and bright. “And you believed him?”
Jason just shrugs, reaching for another spoonful of biryani. “I believed everything my brother told me at that age.” He scoops some of his food into your mouth, shoveling most of his vegetables your way.
You chew, smiling around the bite. “You know who else believes everything his brother tells him?” you ask, voice sly.
Jason pauses mid-bite, suspicious. “…Damian calls me an idiot daily.”
“Yeah,” you hum. “But he still listens when you talk. He doesn’t do that with Tim.”
“That’s because no one can stand Tim talking.”
You groan, rolling your eyes again. “He does it with Dick, and no one can stand Dick talking either.”
Jason snorts. “He does not like me as much as Dick.”
“Me either,” you admit easily, your tone warm. “But he likes us as much as Dick. You don’t see him going to his apartment.”
“Yeah, because Kori brings out his worst habit,” Jason mutters, though there’s fondness hiding under his words. “All that god-awful rambling.”
You laugh quietly. “I think they’re sweet.”
He gives you a look, the corner of his mouth twitching.
“Tim and Kon, too,” you continue, ignoring it. “No matter how much you complain.”
“They need to learn how to get a room,” Jason groans, shoveling another bite into his mouth. “And I love Kori and Dick, I do, they’re just—”
“Loud,” you finish for him, gentle and knowing.
He chuckles, a low rumble in his chest. “Yeah. Loud.”
You both sit in the quiet that follows, the kind of quiet that’s easy, lived-in. The kind where every sound feels magnified—the slow ticking of the wall clock, the faint purrs of sleeping kittens, the crackle of birch wood in the fireplace.
Jason stares into the flames for a long time before muttering, “It’s not just them. The manor’s always so damn loud. Steph and—”
“Hm.” You hum softly, eyes thoughtful. “Yeah. So if I were Damian, I’d want to come here, too. To my brother’s quiet home. The one with tea, kittens, a bed for Titus, and a sweet older brother who actually makes ethnic food.”
Jason snorts. “Alfred can make him biryani.”
“Jason,” you say, laughter slipping into your tone, “I know you love him, but…”
You trail off, because you don’t need to finish it.
Jason already knows.
And somewhere in the kitchen, Damian’s voice drifts faintly back:
“You’re both eating without me—uncivilized.”
You and Jason exchange a look, trying not to smile too wide.
The kiddo comes back, and Jason immediately feels the loss of your hand on his thigh. The warmth that had anchored him to the moment is gone, and he notices it before he even thinks. Damian strides in, shoulders stiff, grinding salt onto his onion raita with a small scowl.
“Honey,” you murmur quietly, all knowing, “that’s your third bowl.”
Jason can’t help the small smirk that tugs at his mouth. He folds his arms in faux pride, chest puffed out like a rooster, though his eyes linger on your face and your hand brushing lightly over Damian’s, quietly correcting his angle with the spoon. You glance at him briefly, then pull back to focus on Damian, who has paused mid-grind, frowning at his food as though it’s betrayed him.
“You people will make me fat like Jason,” Damian declares, voice sharp, accusation hanging in the air.
“I am not fat!” Jason huffs immediately, scandal written across his features. He glances at you, eyes wide and pleading. “You’re the doctor! Tell him, babe!”
You pause for a moment, tilting your head thoughtfully. Technically, according to textbooks and clinical standards, someone of Jason’s size could be considered slightly overweight—but he carries it like armor, and your instinct is to reassure rather than lecture.
Damian’s grin grows impossibly wide at your pause. Jason’s jaw drops.
“HA! Told you! Fatson Todd over here is in denial!” Damian exclaims, triumphant, waving the onion raita spoon like a sword.
You bite the inside of your cheek to keep from laughing, handing Damian a stack of empty dishes with a soft, indulgent smile. Begrudgingly, he gets up to collect them, still muttering, still scowling, but your quiet smile seems to soften him just enough.
“God, sometimes I think you play mom,” Jason mutters, leaning back slightly. He watches your expression—the soft, gentle tilt of your lips, the quiet care in your movements as you help Damian balance the plates—and he feels the warmth of it wrap around him. “You really want someone like him as a kid? Hey, if we had a kid like him, I’d toss it right back to Grandpa Bruce.”
Damian’s huff echoes faintly from the kitchen, scowling and stomping as he disappears from view.
You turn to Jason, your voice low, almost conspiratorial. “You’d love a kid like Damian.”
He looks at you, hesitant, unsure, because the concept of children has never been simple for him. And yet… the softness in your eyes, the gentle calm you exude, makes him pause.
“Yeah,” he mumbles finally, uncertain but open. “Sure.”
You lean closer, brushing a fingertip over his hand. “He looks like you,” you murmur, “your eyebrows and cheekbones.”
“Bruce’s eyebrows and cheekbones,” Jason corrects softly, then glances at your face, his eyes lingering. “Your eyes would suit them.”
You hum, leaning forward to kiss the side of his neck briefly, warm and comforting, and then you hear the faint rush of water as Damian starts washing dishes. Jason freezes slightly under the gesture.
“Oh, so now you kiss me?” he huffs, mock-indignant, a childish edge to his voice. “Go kiss his cheeks like I know you want to.”
You pinch the cheek unmarked by his scar gently. “I love him too, because he reminds me of you. Don’t forget that.”
“You also think raccoons remind you of me.” Jason says, smirk creeping in.
“Raccoons are adorable!” you reply, cheerful and soft.
“Well, this raccoon wants attention,” he huffs, mock-sulking.
You glance toward the kitchen, checking Damian’s progress, then lean in, pressing a quick kiss along the bicep you’ve been eyeing since he came back from fixing the door. “…Damian mentioned he has a sleepover with Jon on Friday. I can call off work too and…”
Your voice trails, hypnotic, and Jason lifts his gaze, caught in the light of your lashes and the quiet intensity of your expression. “…we can—”
“Have a sleepover?” Jason murmurs, small smile teasing the corners of his mouth.
“Oh, there won’t be any sleeping,” you whisper back, eyes sparkling with mischief.
He blinks, and a slow smirk spreads across his face, soft and fond, the apartment feeling warmer somehow. The smell of biryani, the faint crackle of the fire, the distant splash of water from Damian’s dishwashing—everything settles into a rhythm that feels like home.
Jason leans back slightly, still mesmerized by the faint glow of your eyes and the way your lips curl at the edges.
please please please let me know what you think it gives me so much motivation to write and you will be getting a new work sooner if you do ; (◞‸◟)
I desperately need more moments of Seven Lawless being jealous. it’s a little funny how O and August have a lot more moments where they notice other romances than any other RO. It makes sense given that they’re more frequently with MC than the other ROs but it’s still a little funny.
The main Seven moment I can think of is when Seven noticed the G romance in the XTRA cafe scene. God, I want to do a deep code dive and find out every single instance when a RO noticed MC initiated romantic moves towards another RO.
Chapter 6 will probably have a lot harsher consequences than the current flavor text I’m guessing……
summary: when you struck the arrangement with damian wayne to act as your fake boyfriend for a party hosted by your ex and ex-best friend—you thought your choice made perfect sense. choosing damian wayne, the most logical, unattainable person you knew, removes the complication of feelings being involved. till of course, damian stops pretending.
pairing: damian wayne x fem! reader
content: flufff, damian wayne is a yearner and takes his role of being your pretend boyfriend very seriously.
"You are suggesting I partake in a fake relationship—" Damian Wayne stares down at you, still dressed in his lab coat, with what may be the closest to genuine concern you've ever seen on him, all cramped into the crease of his brows. "To help with your dilemma?"
"Exactly." Your grin is the only positive staple throughout this entire exchange, after your successful cornering of only the most unattainable medical student of Gotham University. "It's like a fancy title for an assignment partner but removing the word 'assignment', right?"
"Assuming that your ambitious plan would even work." Crossing his arms, Damian looks more unimpressed over your carefully planned spreadsheet titled 'Fake-Dating Operation' than the earlier assigned pairings by Dr. Lake. "Do humour me on your astounding confidence that I would even offer my assistance."
"We're already assigned together for the semester." You shrug. "What's one reunion party, and an hour spent pretending you don't hate my guts like you do with everyone else?"
He stares at you for a long beat, before his lips twitch into the smallest smirk. "I appreciate your attempts at lowering my expectations further on how idlers are able to accomplish wasting hours in a day. I expect your section of the report to be done by Sunday."
"Wait!" Your hand reaches out to grab at the ends of his sleeve as he moves past you. "I am an amazing fake partner. I provide free dog walks, cookies, amazing work ethic—it's practically a free service just for a little acting on your part!"
"I appreciate the desperation, and the answer is still a no."
"Wayne!" You call out as his sleeve slips out of your fingers, stopping in your tracks right in front of him—blocking the exit. "Damian, please."
His head tilts to cast you a disapproving expression. "My word of advice, is to gain enough respect for yourself to not be bothered by what others think."
Your lips pull together into a frown, but you refuse to be dissuaded, not when you've already laid all your cards on the table. You didn't expect it to be easy, and you had already prepared yourself for his vicious tongue.
"My self-respect has already been trampled on when they decided to send me the invitation." You state honestly. "It's scheduled for its revival in five weeks, after the party. I'll be a changed person by then, scout's honour."
His brow pulls higher, as if silently questioning if you had even part of the Gotham Scouts, but you're not done.
"But before then, I plan on being the pettiest, deranged person in all of Gotham University." You declare. "And that includes you in my plans, because you, Damian Wayne, are the only person who checks all my requirements of a fake boyfriend."
"I'm honoured." He mocks, gaze flickering past towards the hallway.
"You are Walter's role-model, he would kiss the test tubes you lay your fingers on. Paige has a Pinterest folder labelled with your name, and it has all your news sightings saved by colour coordination."
"Sounds like your issues derive more from the company you keep." He mutters, expression pulled together in disgust.
"Point besides, I want it to be you, Damian Wayne." You confess.
It sounds ridiculous, but this was fully concerning your pride and something you've forgotten in your years of working yourself away for your dreams, which was the taste for controlled chaos. He blinks once, staring at you incredulously as if deciding where to place you in his ranking of newly discovered lunatics.
"You're the only person who will drive them as insane as they've made me." Your voice chokes, filled with determination or buried rage, the difference didn’t seem to matter. "You could walk in there for just an hour to save my life, and I know that you won't have the slightest chance of complicating things, or falling in love with me—and that's what makes this perfect. This may sound crazy to you, but you're the only person that's made sense to me ever since my life was turned upside-down."
Your chest heaves, and your arms are still outstretched to stop him from leaving the lab. You're nothing like this—impulsive, frantic, verging on insanity—but you're also done being complacent. Of letting things go just because it's the right thing to do.
After what feels like eternity, Damian's expression flickers. Implicit and almost undetectable, but his gaze is on you as if he's finally registering your existence and trying to catalogue you into a different box than the one he's placed you in.
"Send the spreadsheet to my email." He answers apprehensively, as if he can't believe the words coming out of his mouth. "I will review through the calendar on its... feasibility. Expect a response by eight p.m.."
You let out a held breath, a smile finally breaking through. "Thank you, really—"
"On the condition that I expect you to finish your section by tonight."
Your expression freezes. "Tonight?"
"To prove your desperation's worth considering." He tosses you a mocking smile, all sharp edge and nothing considerable of warmth. "You have ten more hours before my interest wanes."
Your smile weakens, blinking rapidly as you calculate your remaining time to draft something of substance. "Okay, sure— that's not going to be a problem."
It's worth it. Dealing with Damian Wayne is going to be worth it.
I have reviewed through your spreadsheet in detail. Do answer my enquiries on my comments below.
- I believe watching romance comedy as 'theory practice' is highly inefficient and prone to fantastical expectations. Do amend this.
- As for my 'meeting' availabilities, I am free on Thursdays and Fridays at noon to two, on the condition that at least an hour be reserved for actual assignment discussions. You are required to provide evidence of actual progress for the assignment, or this arrangement will be considered void.
- Provide me a list summary on details for answers regarding possible interrogation questions during the party. It will be more efficient as compared to you providing me the details in person.
As for the assignment, your section draft is acceptable, and I expect our lab findings to be updated into your table by the following lab session next week.
Regards,
Damian.
You can barely contain your grin, kicking into the sheets despite the exhaustion that plagues your bones from grueling non-stop over the section and multiple tabs later. He had looked through your multi-coloured spreadsheet calendar, and actually considered it with his own enquiries. Typing out your own response, you give serious thought into his enquiries.
To: [email protected]
Subject: Reply: 'Fake-Dating Operation' Spreadsheet Review
Thank you for your detailed consideration of my spreadsheet. Your efforts are acknowledged and appreciated.
- I believe we are required to watch at least one rom-com that involves fake-dating. Neither of us have had previous experience in this department (unless you'd like to share valuable information), and it will boost our success rate.
- Perfect! I'm available on Fridays, and scout's honour, I promise to have my progress brought for each meeting session.
- As for the list, I will provide you possible answers, but some may require in-person explanations. I'll explain more this Friday!
Can't even express my thanks on how grateful I am, you're the best Wayne in history!
Signing off your name, you close your laptop with the giddiest smile you've had since—at the reminder, your grin falters. Your chest thuds faintly, as if reminding you that the fun you've just experienced can still be dampened by reality. No, you refuse to let it ruin your enjoyment.
This is the most alive you've felt in weeks, and you're going to make the most of it. If your life feels like it's finally picking up through colourful spreadsheet rows and columns, and waiting on an email reply from the most terrifying student in Gotham University—so be it.
Damian slides your extremely lengthy list across the lunch table, and you can barely hide your shock that he actually printed it out—before you catch sight of many red circles marked neatly around your points.
"Your least favourite vigilante is Robin?" He interrogates.
You blink in surprise, not expecting him to start there. "Well, he's not exactly original—I mean, c’mon, they’re multiple versions of him."
His lips part, aghast in a half-caught scoff. "He's one of the most prominent vigilante figures in Gotham."
You shrug. "Spoiler's cooler."
He clicks at his tongue. "You have horrible taste."
"You are not telling me that you, Damian Wayne, have a favourite and that is Robin?"
He doesn't blink. "There are several other questionable details in your list."
"Yes, I can see that." Peering back at your list, your brows furrow. "What's wrong with liking Gotham's Pizza?"
"Only that you're clearly fond of days-old grease and artificial cheese."
"Hey, that's where it gets its flavour."
He shakes his head, disgusted. "I refuse to be associated with someone who has non-functioning taste buds."
"Fine—we'll say we often have dates at Romeo's instead." You shrug. "Not like I'll be caught there after our agreement's expired."
He raises a brow. "Expired?"
Pointing at your open tab, you reference a newly added row. "Our break-up, scheduled for Monday after the party."
He stares at the date, before his gaze roams over you with a questioning look. "Despite my lack of experience, should you not consider the likely suspicions if you were to end a relationship three days after the party?"
Your lips part into an 'oh'. "I thought you would want to get it over and done with as quickly as possible."
His expression closes in, gaze narrowing. "I will not put my reputation at stake by agreeing to this facade, if it means having our efforts go down the drain because of an obvious flaw.”
Your grin slips out uncontrollably. “You just said ‘our’ efforts. Look at us, the perfect team.”
His expression remains impassive, before he raises a slow brow. “Switch to the assignment tab.”
“Yes, sir.”
Resting below a willow tree, your third Friday with Damian is spent resting below the shade on your picnic cloth—one you used to share with Paige. The sight of its red plaid, stuffed behind your piles of clothes in your wardrobe, was getting sad—even for you.
Damian’s back is resting against the tree bark, shoulders nearly taking up the width—brows impossibly furrowed as his gaze narrows on your laptop displaying ‘To All The Boys I Loved Before’.”
“This movie is non-sensical.”
“I think it’s romantic.” You shrug.
He tosses you a judgmental glance. “Having your own blood betray you by revealing your own personal letters, is your idea of romance?”
“I mean Lara Jean and Peter, Damian.” You snort. “That’s our main source of inspiration.”
“He’s hardly appealing.” He scoffs, arms crossing over the other. “Is this the standards you expect from our arrangement?”
“If this is mediocre—” You respond, aghast. “You have no idea how dire love can be nowadays.”
His frown deepens. “You are not expecting me to perform in this manner?”
“What—falling in love with me?” You grin. “No, I do not expect you to be Peter Lavinsky.”
He stares at you with barely concealed frustration. Before you can tease him further, something purple is tossed into your face.
A yelp escapes your mouth, the light weight of an object falling into your lap.
“That’s—the discontinued, limited edition Spoiler cap!” You gasp, eyes widening in realisation. “How did you get this?”
He shrugs begrudgingly. “My sister used to be a collector. She doesn’t mind giving it away.”
“Giving it away?” You mutter incredulously. “This is actual gold. Your sister is my favourite person on Earth.”
His brow twitches. “I bargained for that cap.”
You snort. “What did you exchange it for, your dignity?”
“You have no clue on my sacrifice." He grimaces.
“Your sacrifice is acknowledged." You tease, before letting out another huff of amazement. “This is the best day of my life.”
When your gaze falls back to the cap, tracing your fingers over the logo—you miss the twitch of his lips into a semblance of a smile.
You missed today’s meeting without prior notice. Not that your absence has affected my ability to resume our assignment, but after your frequent reminders to not miss on our mandatory meetings—it leaves me with doubt that you intentionally missed our sessions on your end. Do update me as soon as possible on your status.
Regards,
Damian. (Sent yesterday, 1.20 p.m.)
Subject: Reply: Reminder on Friday Meetings
I feel I must reinstate that my previous email regarding your absence, as well as this reply, should not be twisted in its meaning as more than a mere enquiry. Given previous evidence of the average speed of your responses, a full 24 hours with a lack of response prompts me to send another email. Do respond when you are able.
Regards,
Damian. (Sent today, 1.32 p.m.)
Three respectable knocks resound against your dormitory’s door. A groan escapes your lips, your head pounding from the cold you’ve caught from a late night running through pouring rain. You had missed the bus and had to make it back before curfew, and now your body is reminding you of its frail mortality, chills shaking throughout your limbs and rendering you heavily immobile.
The knocks echo again when you shift your head deeper into the pillows. You muffle curses into the cotton, gripping at your sheets to steady yourself as you force your body upright. The world sways on its axis as you make your way—shifting pathetically with every step, towards the door.
Missing your lock a few times, you finally grab a hold of the chain and slide it off, clicking the door open. You’re immediately faced with a broad chest, donning a familiar black sweater. Shifting your gaze up, you’re met with Damian Wayne’s narrowed gaze, sweat trailing down his temple.
“Damian?” Your voice croaks, and even the attempt of speaking hurts. “What are you doing here?”
He takes one glance, and immediately, his expression contorts in… concern? You barely have time to explain about the cold, or an apology for missing the meeting, when you feel the warmth of his palm press against your forehead.
You blink, stunned as he measures your temperature. He shakes his head slightly in a disapproving manner. “Your temperature is too high.” His tongue clicks with his observation.
You suppose he was right. You did feel one wrong step from keening over and lying on your welcome mat.
“I got caught in the rain.” You explain, trying your best to pull together a more reassuring expression, one less filled with nausea-induced tension. “I’ll be fine—just need rest.”
His frown creases deeper. “Have you taken medicine?”
You try shaking your head, but that loses whatever balance you had left. The world actually tilts, or maybe you are the one who's obeying gravity—but strong arms catch you before you collapse.
“Look at your state.” Damian grits, pulling you back upright but closer. There's barely any space left between the two of you. “This fever, has it worsened considerably?”
“Yeah—but I didn’t have anyone to call.” You mutter in truth, cheek still smushed against his chest as support. “I ran out of medicine a while ago, and by the time I woke up—I couldn’t get out of bed.”
You feel his arms tense around you. Above the crown of your head, you feel a soft sigh. “You have me.” He mutters, almost reprimanding.
Your brows furrow in confusion. “You would get me medicine?”
“That would be a start.” He states, his grip shifting with his words.
The world shifts again when his hands wrap around the under of your thighs, lifting you into his arms gently to not worsen your state. If your mind wasn’t completely swarmed by the symptoms of your cold, you’d stop to think of how strangely sweet it was that Damian had come all the way to your dormitory, and that he was carrying you bridal-style towards your bed.
”It’s not usually this messy.” You feel the need to point out, words muffled against his sweater. “You just have impeccable timing.”
His lip twitches involuntarily as he sets you down against the thrashed sheets. “Organised according to your system?”
You smile weakly at the thought of your colour-coded spreadsheet. “Exactly.”
He places his palm against your forehead again, and you subconsciously find yourself leaning into his touch. “You’re like—really warm.” You murmur. “Do you always run hot?”
He swallows, touch lingering on your skin. “Your temperature is dysregulated. I’ll return soon with medicine. Rest. I won’t be gone long.”
“Okay.” Your lids fall shut, the pounding lessening with your head burrowed into the pillows, and his touch a gentle anchor. “You know—you’d be a great boyfriend for someone one day.”
You don’t hear a response, and your honest thoughts continue to tumble out from your skull like a cracked jar. “You’re really nice, Dami.” The shortening of his name feels like cotton candy stuffed in your mouth, and you barely register the stiffening of his fingers. “Fierce, but I like that about you. I like you a lot, actually. Not in a swooning way, but in a—I’m really glad I met you kind of way.”
He doesn’t pull away when your lips finally clamp shut, but the silence is almost deafening. You peek open with one eye, catching his expression. He’s staring at you… as if no one’s ever said that to his face—ever.
“Don’t make it weird.” You tease softly, voice tethered with exhaustion. “I’m just giving you your deserved five stars.”
You hear the soft echo of his scoff, withheld from its usual bite, but you don’t hear much else after. Only that the lingering touch of his fingers over your skin stays put till sleep catches up on you, and the world falls silent under the weight of Damian’s gaze. Okay, maybe you were lying a little about the swooning.
Fevers fade, but the warmth that lingers seems to seep past the well-defined borders of a spreadsheet, or the predictable order of a list—like the one currently in your hand.
"Favourite vigilante?" You quiz, red pen bitten between your lips as you laid stretched on the wooden bench.
"Spoiler." He answers, tossing you an expression as if to convey that he couldn't believe you even bothered with such a question.
"Good job." You tease, fiddling with the cap of your pen, attached at the end. "Favourite date spot?"
"Gotham's Pizza." He huffs.
You blink. "Hey, it's supposed to be Romeo's."
"You prefer Gotham's." He mutters.
"But you don't." You remind him.
Averting his gaze to your lips, his fingers loop around the red pen, dragging it gently out from your teeth's grip, and adjusting the answer with a cross. "That's irrelevant. I'm merely pointing out an inconsistency."
Your lips quirk up into a smile. "You don't even need this list anymore. Why bother keeping it?"
Tension pulls briefly at his jaw, but it relaxes before you can trace it to an emotion. "You haven't tested me on all the questions."
You lean in, the crinkled paper resting below your fingers as you gaze into his eyes. "Alright? Something off the books." You hum. "What do I think of Damian Wayne?"
He blinks, surprised. You wait patiently, the warmth of summer carrying the scent of grass blades past the picnic table, the world narrowing into the space between the two of you.
His lips part after a moment. "Fierce." He answers. "Though you're one of the few who doesn't run from it."
"What's there to run from?" You hum. "I think he's nice, you should give him some credit for that."
His brow raises, amusement flickering in his gaze. "That's not a common perception."
"Yeah, but no one else gets to experience him being their partner." You tease. "He even offers to rearrange your dormitory to a better system if you're lucky."
He scoffs lightly. "That's only considering if the existing system barely works."
"Just say you hate colour-coding, Dami." You snort. "I know you're itching to fix our spreadsheet."
His expression flickers for a moment. "Not exactly."
You tilt your head, questioning. His gaze averts to the open spreadsheet, something familiar after the weeks spent together. "It's grown on me."
Grown on him—despite it being everything he initially found horrendous, from the many details pasted in long paragraphs into the comments, and the bright colours for the special shared Fridays between you two. Something warm pools in your chest, and you find your gaze trailing to the red pen held between his fingers instead.
"You're more prepared for this party than I am." You admit softly.
You feel his attention switch onto you, trained on the nervous tick you have where you hyper-focus on something brightly coloured. He twirls the pen once, considering.
"You don't have to go through with this." He says. "Just say the word. I'll honour whatever decision you make."
His reassurance makes you consider it, you really do. With the dreaded anticipation finally reaching its peak, with the party being tonight—you have stopped to think if it was worth it. To show up in a room where the story's long gone sour, and your presence is more likely to be a blight than a welcomed gift.
Then again, you hadn't prepared this all for nothing. You hadn't gotten to know Damian—for nothing.
"No, it'll be fun." You smile, meeting his gaze. "We'll be just like Lara Jean and Peter, but with better standards."
Damian's mouth twitches, almost imperceptible. "Agreed."
Your fingers catch onto the silk-like fabric of your dress. Once bought as a birthday present, you never had the chance to wear something like this. Walter had called it overkill, and you convinced yourself that you’d eventually find a day to wear the gorgeous shade without feeling inadequate for it. Nothing required overkill more than tonight.
Damian's promised to pick you up, even when you had reassured him that meeting at the venue was fine. You stare at yourself in the mirror, and something quivers in your gut.
You don't feel as brave as you'd like, not even in your favourite dress. The thought of the two people you once trusted most being together, exchanging normal niceties with you as if nothing had ever happened—you're seriously beginning to overthink just how horribly awkward this situation was going to be.
What if it wasn't like the movies? What if Damian saw too—just how horribly small you felt—and decided you weren't worth the spreadsheets and lists and medicine kit he over-splurged on when you caught that cold?
The party was going to be over in an hour, you had promised Damian the both of you would be present for no more than that duration—and now, you feel ridiculous in your own skin. You're tempted to text him if he wanted to ditch and just head to Romeo's instead—when you hear the signature three knocks of his against your door.
You swallow your fear-induced nausea back into your gut, and force yourself to open the door with something akin to a smile. Your expression freezes in place at the sight... of Damian tidied up.
You knew he was handsome, you obviously had eyes, but to see him in that white collared shirt that made his green eyes pop, loosened at the buttons, with his hair pulled back and just—wow. Damian Wayne, you were seriously going to the party with this guy? As your fake boyfriend?
You don't notice the way his own expression completely falters at the sight of you. Nor the way his fingers tightened into a fist, digging into his palms.
You only notice how the silence stretched out between the two of you lingers long enough to matter.
"Hey, handsome." You start, trying to regain your composure. "You cleaned up nice."
He blinks, as if stunned. His response comes out delayed, brows pinching together into something honest. "You are beautiful."
Not you look—as if he's only noticed. No, he emphasised the 'are', as if he's always seen it. Your heart doesn't quite know what to do with that information, or how to catalogue the way he's looking at you as if he's—not pretending.
"Thank you." Your voice comes out weaker than you intended, because for all his intensity, Damian being soft is what renders you stunned. "I still don't know if I should do this."
His gaze clears, something steady offered to you when you return it. "You don't need to be sure." He answers, offering his hand. "That's what I'm here for—so you will not be alone."
He's right. Despite your doubts, seeing him in front of you reminds you of the steady presence he's offered from the very beginning. Through your nonsensical email threads, the Friday lunches, the rom-com binging, rushing to the store to buy you cold medicine—your fears always quieted when Damian was near. Your smile brightens, taking his hand in yours. "Let's get this operation over with."
Walter catches sight of you first. His vision is perfectly facing the entrance, your ex's gaze meeting yours as soon as you step through the doorway—and he immediately taps on Paige’s shoulder. An insincere smile arrives on his expression, but it freezes in place the moment Damian enters with you.
He isn't the only one to notice. You knew the effect Damian had on others, standing out without even meaning to, much less in an environment like this. Damian doesn't seem bothered at all, because you feel his attention acutely trained on you instead. His hand rubs a soothing notion over your lower back, as if you're the only person he's aware that exists in the room.
Walter's gaze drifts, from the dress he hated to Damian’s hand wrapping around your waist. He puts the facts together, faster than you had when he and Paige had approached you with the news. The warmth leaves his welcoming expression, and he whispers something into Paige's ear.
Damian registers this entire exchange in under a second, and his hand tightens briefly on your waist, as if reassuring you that he was right beside you.
The distance closes in between you and the two people your life once revolved around, and you train your gaze on Walter, because you can tell immediately that Paige is struck by Damian's appearance, more so by his hand on your waist.
"It's been a while." Walter starts off, though his gaze barely lingers on you before switching to Damian. "Wayne, I don't believe we've been properly introduced."
"There hasn't been a need." Damian shuts him down.
The atmosphere turns icy the moment Walter registers the tone of Damian's voice. He laughs, astonished—and embarrassed. Paige finally recovers in an attempt to salvage the situation, pulling together her best smile.
"Well, it's lovely to have you both here." Paige starts, and her voice is distant—nothing like the girl you used to know, hidden under the blankets of your beaten IKEA sofa when watching Scream for the tenth time. "You look amazing, and—sorry, I'm just curious on how the two of you know each other?"
Her question is directed towards you, but Damian takes the lead. "She's my partner."
"Partner?" Walter chokes on his breath. "As in—"
You finally find your voice to speak. "We are seeing each other." It comes out levelled, matching Damian's.
Their shock registers in different levels. Walter's nears disbelief, while Paige—looks at you, betrayed.
"I didn't know about this." Paige stammers.
"Yes, you didn't." You answer shortly.
She stares at you as if she's seeing a stranger. "Right. I guess it's been a long time since we've caught up."
You're tempted to laugh. A long time is an understatement. You can feel Damian's low scoff against your shoulder, and the absurdity of the situation feels less gut-wrenching with him by your side.
"You know she's a real mess." Walter speaks involuntarily. "Like her apartment's an actual hazard. Isn't that right, Paige?"
Paige freezes, lips parting into a gap, but Damian's faster.
"I am aware—that she has her own unique system." Damian states, gaze narrowing in discontent. "It didn't take long for me to understand it, or to appreciate it."
"Appreciate it?" Walter sneers. "Are you sure you're talking about the right person?"
"Yes." Damian doesn't hesitate, eyes steady, fixing yours. As if he was conveying it to you instead of the audience, he answers. "I'm sure."
You swallow dryly, unable to hide the softened smile you usually reserved for him only when it was the two of you. Both of them catch sight of it, and you can sense the question becoming less of whether it was real, and more of the how.
It's easy to act in love when Damian's this close, muttering words like that, with his familiar warmth grounding you through the stagnant conversation. So instinctive, that you think it's easier than breathing.
You sense Paige shifting closer and you force yourself to focus, and casting her another glance, only to finally catch a glimpse of the girl who used to be your closest person.
“Hey, can we talk?” Her expression is vulnerable, tentative in her offer. "Y'know, catch up in private."
Damian immediately shifts you back slightly with his weight, but you place a hand tentatively on his arm. His gaze locks onto you, reading into your expression. His brow raises as if to ask, 'You're sure?'. You give him a nod.
"Fine by me." You murmur, because despite everything—maybe a part of you still wanted to hear the honest truth. For her decision, on when she decided you should’ve been cut out of the picture then forcefully glued back into what they envisioned to be the perfect way to continue their lives. Maybe you just wanted to see if the Paige you knew still existed.
The moment you enter an unoccupied bathroom, Paige presses the door shut and immediately turns to you. "You have to spill."
Your brows furrow. "On?"
"Damian Wayne." She points out as if it's obvious. "You don't even know him."
You blink once then twice, and something colder settles in the cavity of your chest. "Things change, Paige."
“I’m just worried. It's all just so sudden.” Her hand reaches out to grasp yours, and you resist the instinctive flinch. “You’ve always been sensitive, and a guy like him is just bad news. I mean—Damian Wayne? I get that it feels exciting, but he barely knew of your existence before and now, he's suddenly dating you? I just want us to be on the same page here, that it doesn't really make sense."
A scoff rises up your throat, barely constrained as she continues on, her softened voice a perfect replica of how she had been when you first made your decision to break up with Walter.
“You know I’ll always support you if you need me.” She reassures. “You can tell me anything.”
The anger bubbles so violently, and it hits you. That despite everything, you had came into this party hoping that maybe a fraction of the girl you knew—who cried with you on bathroom floors when you experienced homesickness, who celebrated when you managed to pass your first year of medical school, who was there for your entire life in Gotham—would still exist. That something would give way, and her leaving would make sense, to have a reason. You realise now, that you've only been giving her excuses on the basis of what she used to mean to you.
Your wrath gives way to something cold, absent of grief—only the need to rip your hand out of hers. You do just that, and her shock barely registers before you open your mouth. “No.” Your voice carries a finality, strength you’ve been trying to garner since the day you lost her. “You don’t get to define my relationship with Damian, when you never addressed ours.”
She blinks, affronted. “Is this about Walter? We've already explained—we only felt what we did after the two of you broke up—”
“No, this isn’t about Walter. This is about us.” The coldness in your tone finally strikes something honest in her expression. “You broke my trust, Paige, and then you invite me to this party cause you thought it would help make amends? I thought you brought me in here, to at least explain to me on what happened to us."
"You should've told me." She says, a frown stretched at her lips. "If you weren't comfortable being around me and Walter, we wouldn't have forced you to come."
We—the word runs through your mind like a tire screech.
“Yes, I wasn't comfortable—I nearly died inside when it happened." You raise your head. "I lost my best friend, who drove me to karaoke night whenever I needed to forget about home. I lost the girl who swore to re-watch all rom-coms that ever existed in the 90s before we both turned fifty. I lost the only person I trusted since I moved into this city, over what—a man? Was it worth it, was our friendship worth it?”
She swallows thickly, and you see a fracture of the girl you recognise under the glitter, and the tears collecting at her lower lashes. “I thought you understood—that I love him differently than you did.”
Your gaze doesn’t flinch at the admission. “You were by my side when he broke up with me, when I told you that he called my dresses ugly, when he said my attitude was too much, when he made me smaller because it was more convenient for him when I was quieter, and you still got together with him. Maybe I thought you loved me enough too, to understand why I wasn't comfortable with it.”
Her expression shatters, and tears drip down her cheeks before she harshly wipes at them, smearing her eyeshadow. “You don’t get to say that.” She spits out. “Making it seem like I chose Walter over you, when you brought in Damian Wayne.”
Your brows contort. “What are you talking about?”
“You decided to come to the party to—prove you suddenly became better than us just by being with a Wayne?” She snaps. “You're acting like this because you think he's going to stay—but you don’t seriously believe it’ll actually last when Walter could barely stand you?”
That anger, buried deep, comes alive with a roar. You take a step forward, causing her to inch backward as you close in. “That's all your taking from this?" Your scoff resounds coldly. "Damian was the one who was there for me when you left—so yeah, I have more trust in him to treat me like an actual person."
She flinches, her lips parting in the same way she had done earlier when Walter tried to make you small. Silent, and unable to do anything but lay there in her guilt of absorbing an idea of who you are in Walter's head, and erasing what made you human in her eyes.
"Rest assured. You will never gain my trust again to even know what’s going on in my life and the people in it, and you never will.”
Taking a step back, you look at her one last time. Of the mess of her makeup, the same puffy eyes whenever she cries that you used to immediately follow up with the instinct to comfort her. You feel none of that now. “Goodbye, Paige.”
She doesn’t call out your name when you turn your back on her, and she doesn’t come after you. You needed that, more than you needed her to be the person you thought she was. To be blunt, and truthful to yourself—even if no one but you believed in it.
The euphoric lightness of your body from finally severing the bond doesn’t last long, when a rough hand grabs at your wrist. Being twisted around, you’re faced with Walter’s accusing expression.
“What did you say to her?”
“What I discussed with Paige stays between us.” You answer coldly, tugging at your wrist.
His hand tightens more, almost bruising. “You’re bringing in that attitude of yours, when we were kind enough to think of you? To let you stick around our lives?"
You’re sick of this narrative, of acting like you should’ve been grateful they thought to include you into this sick little group from your past life as if they hadn’t completely burnt it into flames.
“Walter, get your hands off before I shove—“
A fist slams into the side of Walter’s face before you even have a chance to finish your sentence. Screams erupt from the crowd, or cheers—you can barely tell because your eyes are locked onto Damian, who’s grabbing Walter by the collar with chafed knuckles.
Multiple eyes are on them, but your own gaze is fixed on Damian’s expression, who has gone completely cold. Nearly murderous, and filled with uncontained wrath. His glare, almost deadly, is trained on his target in a way you’ve never seen him before. The composed, distant Damian—is nowhere to be found.
"You stay away from her." Damian growls.
"What the hell, man!" Walter spits, blood sprayed over his nose. "Do you seriously think she's worth—"
Damian drags him closer by the collar, and something inhuman flashes past his concentrated gaze. "She's worth more than you ever will dream of trying to be. You are nothing, and even daring to lay a hand on her is something you will pay for."
“Damian!” You shout.
That finally reaches him, past the simultaneous gawking and murmurs. It’s as if he’s reentered his own body, and Damian immediately drops Walter to the ground with a loud thud. Walter lands embarrassingly on his bottom, and his entire face has gone red with shame.
His gaze switches to you, and his wrath fades immediately into concern. His eyes fall onto your bruising skin, and his emotions fall apart into something colder. You have a feeling if you don’t get him out of this room, this fight may escalate into something much worse.
Pushing through the forming crowd, you reach out. “Let’s get out of here.” You plead, holding out your hand.
His gaze drops to your fingers, then back to the forming outline of a hand gripped around your wrist, and you see his calculating assessment. Damian leans lower, muttering something low into Walter’s ear. It is quick, but you see the way Walter completely freezes in place—his struggle evading from his body like a statue. When Damian’s eyes meet your frightened ones once more, he doesn’t hesitate a second longer before grabbing your hand.
Damian doesn't waste time in leading you through the crowd, towards the exit and away from the escalating noise—and into the night breeze. When the cold wind finally hits your skin, his hand remains firmly intertwined with yours as he guides you somewhere far away—the fact still lingers that Damian, perfect track record and Wayne prodigy, just punched someone for you.
“You punched him.” You mutter faintly, seated at a bench you’ve both found, crisp leaves surrounding you with the faint singing of crickets.
“He was hurting you.”
“Damian, the whole school’s going to talk about this.” You stress. “You’re going to get in trouble, possibly a suspension.”
His jaw clenches. “I am your partner.”
Damian’s agitated. Over the situation, despite there no longer being any witnesses to his supposed protection. His shoulders are tense, jaw clenched and his gaze—you recall how he had looked at Walter when he landed that first hit, the pure anger that seized him.
“Not a real one.”
He flinches, as if struck, and you knew immediately that your words landed wrongly. His emotions topple over the other, and you’re unable to name any that arises before it all falls apart like his body’s regained consciousness. Concealed, and distant.
“My mistake.” He mutters. “I’ve forgotten my standing.”
“Damian—”
“I do not wish to inconvenience you.” He states, words leaving in a bitter rush. “I have overstepped, I realise that.”
“Damian.” You call out for the second time, fingers reaching for his—and he finally breathes when your warmth seeps through his skin. You’re relieved he doesn’t pull away. “That came out wrong. I’m not mad you punched the jerk, I would’ve done it myself. I am glad you stood up for me, but I’m just confused on why you did it, because there's nothing at stake for you, only something to lose.”
His expression stiffens at the verbal admission of his visible frustration. This conversation sounds much too real, and the lines that have been carefully drawn are erasing themselves, leaving behind uncharted territory. One you weren’t sure how to navigate.
“You do matter to me, as more than a role.” You plead. “I don’t want you to think you’re someone I chose out of convenience. Please don’t believe that.”
His breath exhales low, controlled. His gaze flickers with the briefest uncertainty, and you realise how selfish you’ve been. This arrangement had been perfect for you, that you simply assumed it was the same for him.
“No, you are not at fault.” He mutters after a moment. “It is not your responsibility to handle the consequence of my actions. We had agreed on no complications, and I have done exactly that.”
His jaw tightens, before he finally spits it out. “I punched him because the boundaries of what was was real or imagined between us has never made a difference to me. He had hurt you, not only physically—“ His gaze shifts to your reddened wrist, and it darkens completely. “—but he is a culprit to your existing pain. I was angry, because I couldn’t comprehend that I was finally faced with the two morons who thought losing you was even a consideration, and to see them hold no remorse for it made me forget my place.”
“I’ve always excelled in being what others expected of me.” He mutters. “When you approached me, it was the first time I had not wanted to be confined to a role. I did not want to partake in a façade, because—I had wanted your request to be for something real. Then, you mentioned that you picked me because I had not the slightest chance of falling for you. It was ironic, and I knew then that I should've rejected your request."
"But I started to earnestly believe—that I could separate emotion and duty. I could be in your presence, and not feel the consequences if the arrangement ended—because nothing would be real.”
“Till I realised—how much it affected me to not have you truly at all.” He confesses. “I should’ve been honest, that this arrangement had become the opposite of what we’ve agreed upon. But I was afraid, of admitting that I wasn’t capable of control, of driving you away."
“Damian." Your frown deepens. "You’re not going to lose me.”
“I don’t know.” He blurts honestly. “I do not know how to handle want. I am built of structure, of worth to prove why I deserve to keep my position, that has always been what I’ve provided. I do not know how to want without providing substance to covet a person.”
“But I want you.” He exhales. “Not once has it been pretend for me, not when it had already existed before our arrangement. Every moment I reached for your hand, every time I checked that horrendous shaded calendar of yours. I rushed over the moment you went missing when you were sick, because I had wanted to look for you. I have never once hesitated in calling myself your partner, even knowing the role was temporary. I want you, in the real, complicated way—that I've failed in being what you needed me to be."
"That's not true." You break. "That's not what I need you to be at all, Damian."
He finally looks at you, a little less restrained—and almost startled at your words.
"If you had been real about this the entire time, Damian, then so have I." You admit. "I chose you because I thought you wouldn't have fallen for me, that is true—but that is because I also thought it was safe because I knew I was going to fall for you."
"I wasn't kidding when I said I like you." You confess. "In all of the complicated, real sense of the word, and you were always going be the one I was going to choose. Even if you had said no, I wouldn't have asked anyone else. I wanted you from the start, Damian, and that hasn't changed. I was going to ask you at freaking Romeo's after this, if you wanted this to be real too."
The moment those words leave your lips, Damian closes in. His fingers tug you by your waist, his hand wrapping around the nape of your neck, and his lips are on yours. Damian Wayne, who still has forming bruises at his knuckles from a fight he landed in to defend you, is kissing you on a park bench in the middle of the night—and you're not dreaming.
It's clearly his first, but there's something so tenderly sweet about it that your heart trembles uncontrollably—enough to render something wet at your lashes by the time he's pulled back.
He pulls apart just to meet your gaze, and you've never seen him this relieved. "This is real." He restates, as if he can't quite truly believe it.
“We did just have our first official fight.” You murmur, cheek pressed to his chest.
"Official." He hums in acknowledgement. "I like that."
Your smile teethers into something soft when you feel the soft press of his mouth against the shell of your ear. "Yeah, guess our operation tonight ended in a success."
I LIVE FOR THIS 😩🥰💐 it just kept getting better and better… I love Damian so much!!! It’s the way his actions backed every single word he’s ever spoken 😍 the boys knows how to romance, I’m still swooning
hi these two are my favorites like OFCOURSE i had to draw them!! my MC jude sharpe and seven from @infamous-if before they decided to be angsty and not talk it out for 3 years ☺️💔
Word Count: ~19,6K (I know it's quite long, but once I started I couldn't stop.🫦)
Setting: Sixth year, during the Triwizard Tournament
CW: discussion of parental abandonment, anxiety around abandonment/attachment, brief mention of a parent leaving a family, a slut-shaming comment (challenged, not dwelt on), a panic-attack-adjacent moment, angst, a few kisses, one shirtless-adjacent scene (nothing explicit), swearing, emotional hurt/comfort, a misunderstanding trope, a brief argument, happy ending.
Summary: Everyone at Hogwarts knows two things: Fred Weasley is hopelessly, publicly, embarrassingly in love with you, and you don't do relationships — only casual, only temporary, only safe. So when you bet him he can't last a month as your boyfriend without losing his patience, you expect an easy win. You've never lost a bet in your life. You didn't expect this one to cost you your heart.
Director's note: Maybe some of the days or timeframes of the bet sound incoherent(? I'm not good with numbers and I got a little confused in the middle, but I think it turned out well. Anyway, please think of it as fiction! I loved how this one-shot turned out, and I'm planning a themed series of one-shots with Harry Potter characters. I hope you like it!
Before any of this was a bet, Fred Weasley had been shameless about it for two full years before the bet ever existed.
He wasn't subtle. He never tried to be. He'd corner you in corridors just to tell you your hair looked good, hand you the last treacle tart at dinner before you'd even reached for it, materialize at your elbow in Hogsmeade with some excuse about ‘just happening to be going the same way’. Half the school had watched him do it so often it had become a kind of background noise to Hogwarts life, like Peeves or the moving staircases — Fred Weasley, hopelessly gone on you, making absolutely no effort to hide it.
"You're doing it again," you told him once, fourth year, when he'd shown up at the library table where you were studying for no reason except that he'd seen you go in.
"Doing what?"
"Following me around like a lost Kneazle."
"I prefer 'devoted.'" He dropped into the chair across from you, propping his chin on his hand, watching you with the kind of open, unembarrassed adoration that should have been unbearable and somehow, infuriatingly, wasn't. "Also I wasn't following you. I was here first."
"You were not."
"Prove it."
You couldn't, because he'd clearly followed you in, and he knew it, and he grinned at you like getting caught was half the fun.
He flirted with other girls, plenty of them, loudly and cheerfully — but it never once looked the same as whatever this was. With other girls it was a performance, easy and weightless, over the second it stopped being fun for either of them. With you it had teeth in it. It meant something, and everyone could see it meant something, including, eventually, the entire castle.
There was an afternoon in fifth year — you never knew about it, not for a long time — when a Slytherin boy named Warrington had made a comment in the corridor outside the Great Hall, loud enough in a malicious tone for a knot of people to hear, about how you'd 'been through half the boys in your year' and ought to charge admission.
Fred had been three feet away, and something in his face went very still and very cold in a way that people who only knew his easy grin rarely saw.
"Say that again," he said, quiet, which was somehow worse than shouting.
Warrington, sensing an audience and stupidly emboldened by it, said something about how he was "just being honest," and Fred stepped in close enough that the corridor went silent around them.
"She can kiss whoever she wants, however many times she wants, and it's worth exactly nothing to you," Fred said. "You don't get a say in what she does with her own life. And if I hear you talk about her again — if I hear you talk about any girl in this castle like that again — you'll wish McGonagall had gotten to you before I did."
He hadn't hexed him o punch him. Hadn't needed to. Warrington had gone pale and muttered something and left, and by the next week the story had made its way quietly through Gryffindor and half of Hufflepuff, and nobody — not once, in all the time since — ever said anything like that about you again where it could be traced back to a source.
You never found out it was Fred. He never told you, never held it over you, never once used it as leverage in all the months that followed. It simply sat there, one more thing he did for you without expecting anything in return, the kind of thing that made George, who had seen it, look at his twin sometimes like he was trying to solve a puzzle he already knew the answer to.
All Hogwarts had opinions about you, and none of them were particularly kind.
It wasn't just that you moved from person to person without apology — that alone might have earned you a raised eyebrow and nothing more. It was that you did it loudly, unapologetically, with a kind of sharp, biting wit that made you genuinely frightening to cross. You'd been known to reduce a seventh-year Slytherin to stammering silence in the middle of the Great Hall over a comment about your skirt length. You'd hexed a boy's eyebrows off in third year for grabbing your wrist too hard on the dance floor, and never once apologized for it, even when a professor docked house points. You picked fights the way other people picked flowers — easily, often, and without much regard for whether it was strategic.
"She's not exactly warm," a Ravenclaw prefect had said once, within earshot of Lee, not realizing — or not caring — that word traveled. "Fun to watch from a distance. Terrifying up close."
It wasn't entirely fair, and it wasn't entirely wrong either. You were sharp. You picked fights with people who deserved it and let the collateral reputation fall where it may, because defending yourself — and, quietly, defending anyone smaller or softer than you — had always felt safer than being soft yourself. Better to be the girl people whispered about than the girl people could hurt.
This was, more or less, why the rest of Gryffindor found Fred's devotion so baffling. It wasn't that you were unlikeable. It was that loving you looked, from the outside, like signing up for a fight you hadn't started.
"You're an idiot, mate," Lee Jordan said, not unkindly, one evening in the common room a few weeks before the bet, watching Fred watch you across the room with an expression Lee had personally seen aimed at nothing but a decent plate of chips before. "She's turned you down, what, four times now? Five?"
"Six," George supplied helpfully, not looking up from his cards. "I'm keeping a tally."
"She called me an insect last week," George added, half delighted, half baffled, "because I asked if she and Fred someday they would go out and she would be my sister-in-law.. An insect, Fred. Unprovoked."
"You deserved it," Fred said, not looking up from his toast. "You'd been needling her for ten minutes."
"That's not the point. The point is most people would be scared off by that. You're just — encouraged."
"She only bites when she's protecting something," Fred said, simply. "Usually herself. Sometimes other people. It's never actually cruelty, George, it just looks like it if you're not paying attention."
"You're never going to wear her down by mooning at her from across a room," Lee tried again.
"I'm not trying to wear her down," Fred said, mildly. "I'm not a bloody millstone."
"Then what are you doing?"
Fred considered the question with more seriousness than either of them expected. "I like her," he said. "Properly like her. Not the version everyone talks about — the reputation, the casual thing. I like that she memorizes people's likes and dislikes and never tells anyone she does it. I like that she reads the same three books over and over because she says knowing how they end is comforting, not boring. I like that she's rude to people who deserve it and unbearably gentle with everyone who doesn't. I like that she pretends she doesn't care what happens to Kettleburn's ridiculous creatures and then sneaks food to the injured ones at two in the morning." He shrugged, entirely unembarrassed. "I'm not chasing an idea of her. I know her. That's the whole point."
Lee and George exchanged a look.
"You've actually got it bad," Lee said.
"Been saying that for two years," George muttered, and dealt another hand.
"Someone should have thought about why she bites first," Fred added, quieter, almost to himself, "since she's spent five years making sure nobody else bothers."
The thing about Fred Weasley was that he never pretended to be subtle about it.
You'd been at the Three Broomsticks for exactly eleven minutes when he abandoned the sixth-year Ravenclaw girl he'd been leaning over — hand braced on the table, grin doing all the work his mouth hadn't gotten around to yet — because you'd walked past the window. Just walked past it. Hadn't even looked in.
He was outside a minute later, coat half-on, cheeks red from the cold or from running, you couldn't tell which.
"You didn't come in," he said, like it was an accusation.
"I wasn't invited."
"You don't need an invitation, you're — " He gestured at you, vaguely, as if the rest of the sentence was self-evident. "You're you."
Behind him, through the frosted window, the Ravenclaw girl was watching with the particular expression of someone recalculating her entire evening.
"Go back inside, Fred."
"Come with me."
"I have somewhere to be."
You didn't. But it was easier than telling him the truth, which was that being anywhere Fred Weasley was for longer than ten minutes had a way of rearranging things in your chest that you'd worked very hard to keep in order.
He caught your wrist — not hard, just enough that you stopped. "One of these days," he said, "you're going to run out of somewhere to be."
"Careful, Weasley. Almost sounded like a threat."
"It was a promise." He let go, stepped back, and the grin came back like it had never left. "See you at the match Saturday? George says Angelina's captaining us to an early grave but I have faith."
"Wouldn't miss it."
You would have missed it, gladly, except that everyone in Hogwarts had come to understand, without ever being told outright, that watching you and Fred Weasley orbit each other without touching was better entertainment than most of what happened on a Quidditch pitch.
It was Angelina who finally said it out loud, three days later, sprawled across your bed with a Chocolate Frog card held up to the candlelight like she was reading tea leaves instead of Dumbledore's face.
"You know he means it. The thing he says. That you're ‘the love of his life’."
"He says that to everyone."
"He says charming things to everyone. He says ‘you're the love of my life’ only to you. There's a difference." She flicked the card onto your blanket. "He turned down Diane Fenwick at the party last week. Mid-flirt. Because you walked by and glanced at him for maybe two seconds."
"I didn't glance."
"You glanced."
"I was looking for the exit."
Angelina gave you a look you'd been on the receiving end of enough times to recognize instantly — patient, a little exasperated, entirely too knowing. "You like him."
"I like a lot of people. Liking people casually is sort of my whole thing."
"Right. Casual." She said the word like she was testing it for weak spots. "Except you've never once been casual about Fred. You've been very deliberately, very determinedly not about Fred, which isn't the same."
You didn't answer that, because there wasn't a good answer that didn't require unpacking things you'd rather leave packed.
It was true, what people said about you — that you didn't do serious. You did fun, you did easy, you did a few weeks of somebody's attention and then a clean, friendly end before anybody got in too deep. It wasn't cruelty. It was maintenance. You'd learned a long time ago that the deeper a thing got, the more of you it could take when it left, and you had exactly one data point on what that looked like, and it had nearly ended your father.
Fred Weasley was not a few-weeks kind of complication. Fred Weasley was the kind of complication that rearranged furniture in a person's life and didn't apologize for the mess.
So you didn't do Fred. You did everyone except Fred, sometimes rather pointedly, and if his ears went a bit red every time he found out about it, that was his business, not yours.
The bet happened almost by accident, the way the worst — or best — decisions usually do.
It was at Katie Bell's birthday, the common room too warm and too loud, and Fred had been telling some story about the twins' latest almost-catastrophe with a swamp-in-a-teabag prototype, gesturing so widely he knocked over someone's drink, and you'd said, half into your own cup, "You'd never survive being someone's boyfriend for longer than a week, you know. You've got the attention span of a niffler."
The common room didn't go silent, exactly. But it definitely leaned in.
Fred set his drink down very deliberately. "I beg your pardon."
"You heard me."
"I could absolutely be someone's boyfriend."
"For a week. Maybe. Before you got bored, or they got bored, or George set something on fire and you forgot the person existed."
"Name a month," Fred said, "and I'll prove you wrong."
"A month?"
"A month. Thirty days. You pick the person, I'll be the perfect, patient, devoted boyfriend, and you'll eat your words."
And this was the part where you should have laughed it off, should have said 'sure, ask Diane, good luck,’ should have done anything except what you actually did, which was look at him — really look, the way you tried very hard not to — and hear yourself say:
"Me. I'm the person."
The common room, this time, actually did go quiet.
Fred blinked. "You?"
"Me. One month. You be my boyfriend, properly, no cheating, and if you make it thirty days without losing your patience with me — " you paused, because some reckless, self-destructive part of you had already decided to make this as impossible as you could — "I'll stand up in the Great Hall and tell all of Hogwarts I've fallen hopelessly in love with you."
Somewhere behind you, George choked on a Butterbeer.
Fred didn't say anything for a long moment. Then: "And if I lose my patience even once?"
"Then I get to say I was right, and you never bring it up again."
"Deal." He held out his hand, and when you shook it, his grip was warm and sure and didn't let go half a second longer than it should have. "Thirty days, starting tomorrow."
"You're going to lose."
"Maybe." His eyes were bright, delighted, entirely too pleased with himself. "But I've wanted this for two years, love. I'll take losing on these terms over winning on any other."
You went to bed that night with your heart doing something complicated and refused, absolutely refused, to examine it.
You had a plan, and the plan was simple: be exactly difficult enough, exactly often enough, that Fred's patience — which you privately suspected was more myth than fact — would crack within the week.
Day one, you were forty minutes late to meet him at the lake, on purpose, and arrived to find him lying in the grass reading a Quidditch magazine, entirely unbothered.
"You're late," he said, without looking up.
"I got held up."
"Sure you did." He turned a page. "Sit down, I saved you the good spot, the one without the ant hill."
"I didn't say I was staying."
"You didn't say you weren't, either." He patted the grass beside him, and — this was the maddening thing about Fred — he didn't beg, didn't sulk, didn't make you feel guilty for the lateness. He just waited, easy as anything, like your company was worth the wait and the waiting itself wasn't a hardship.
You sat down. You told yourself it was strategic — better to needle him up close.
That first week you noticed, despite yourself, the small things. The way he always split whatever food he had in half without being asked, sliding the bigger portion toward you and pretending he hadn't. The way his handwriting went looping and careless in his own notes but turned neat, almost careful, on the little scraps of parchment he occasionally left folded on your books — a joke, a doodle, once just the words 'you looked tired at breakfast, sleep well tonight’ — as if the difference in penmanship was his way of saying ‘this part is serious, even when I'm not.’
He had a habit, too, of touching the back of his neck when he was nervous, which he almost never was except, you began to realize, around you, in the seconds right after he'd said something that mattered to him and was waiting to see how you'd take it.
You weren't supposed to be cataloguing these things. You did it anyway.
Day four, you flirted, deliberately and obviously, with a Hufflepuff boy in front of him at breakfast, waiting for the flash of jealousy, the crack in his composure. Fred watched for a moment, then turned to George and said, loudly enough for you to hear, "d'you reckon she's trying to make me jealous, or does she actually fancy Wentworth's personality?" and went back to his eggs, apparently unbothered, though you noticed — you always noticed, damn it — that his knuckles had gone white around his fork.
He found you after breakfast anyway. Not angry. Just there, falling into step beside you like nothing had happened, and he'd slipped his own scarf around your neck without asking, because you'd complained about the corridor draft the day before and he'd apparently filed it away like everything else.
"You're not going to ask about Wentworth?"
"Do I need to?"
"Maybe I like him."
"Maybe you do." Fred shrugged, hands in his pockets. "Doesn't change my thirty days. I'm not trying to win you by being the only option, love. I'm trying to win you because I'm the best one."
You had absolutely no response to that, so you didn't give him one, and he seemed content to let the silence sit between you all the way to Transfiguration, his sleeve brushing yours the whole walk, never quite closing the last inch of distance unless you closed it first.
It happened in the middle of the Great Hall, at lunch, with absolutely no warning and no discernible reason, sometime around day ten.
Fred stood up from the Gryffindor table, climbed — actually climbed, one boot on the bench, one on the table itself, ignoring the way plates rattled and pumpkin juice sloshed dangerously close to the edge — and cleared his throat with the exaggerated gravity of a man about to deliver a State of the Union address.
"Fred," you hissed, already feeling your face heat up. "What are you doing."
"Attention, Hogwarts!" he announced, arms spread wide, entirely unbothered by the two hundred faces now turning toward him. "I would like it formally recorded that I am, as of this moment, the luckiest man in this castle, possibly this country, arguably this hemisphere."
"Fred, get down — "
"I am dating," he continued, undeterred, gesturing grandly at you like you were a prize being unveiled at a fair, "the cleverest, funniest, most terrifyingly competent witch in our year, who has, against all odds and several of her own better instincts, agreed to put up with me for thirty days! I would like everyone here to know that I do not, in any way, take this for granted."
Someone at the Hufflepuff table actually started clapping. McGonagall, three seats down at the staff table, had pressed two fingers to her temple in the specific way she did when deciding whether a rule violation was worth the paperwork.
"You're an idiot," you said, hiding your face in your hands, mortified down to your toes, while half the hall laughed and George banged appreciatively on the table.
"A very devoted idiot," Fred corrected, hopping down at last, landing with a flourish, entirely pleased with himself. "Ten points from Gryffindor, probably, but worth it."
He was right. McGonagall docked exactly ten points on his way out of the Hall, muttering something about theatrics under her breath, and Fred didn't look remotely sorry about any of it — grinning at you the whole walk to class, utterly without shame, while you buried your burning face in his shoulder and told him, with zero real conviction, that you were never speaking to him again.
You forgave him by dinner. You suspected he'd known you would would before he even climbed onto the table.
One evening that same week, George cornered his brother by the fire while you were off at something, and asked, half-teasing, half-genuinely baffled, the question that had apparently been bothering both him and Lee for a while now.
"Why do you keep at it? She's said no more times than I can count. Most blokes would've called it after the third."
Fred didn't even look up from the essay he wasn't really writing. "Because she's not actually saying no to me. She's saying no to the version of this that scares her." He tapped his quill against the parchment, thinking. "You know she's got the entire Hogwarts kitchen staff's names memorized? Talks to every one of them like they matter, because to her they do. You know she reorganizes her whole schedule during exam week just to sit with first-years who are panicking, doesn't tell anyone she does it, would be mortified if I brought it up to her face. She picks fights with people who bully smaller kids and never once mentions it afterward like it's something worth being proud of, even though it obviously is."
"That's — a lot of very specific detail, mate."
"I pay attention." Fred finally looked up, and there was nothing performative left in his face at all. "Everyone sees the version of her that flirts and moves on and doesn't stick around. I see the rest of it. The part she doesn't let people see because she thinks it'll get used against her eventually." He shrugged. "I'm not chasing someone who doesn't exist. I know exactly who she is. That's rather the whole problem — once you know, you can't really unknow it."
George didn't have anything to say to that, for once, and simply reached over and clapped his brother on the shoulder instead.
Day twelve, you told him, flatly, over a shared table in the library, that you thought this whole thing was stupid and he should give up now and save you both the trouble.
Fred looked up from his essay, and for once there was no grin, no performance. "Why do you want me to give up?"
"Because you're wasting a month on something that isn't going to end how you want."
"That's my risk to take."
"It's not just your risk. It's mine too, and I don't — " You stopped yourself, aware you'd said more than you meant to.
"You don't what?"
"Nothing. Forget it."
He didn't push. That was the thing about Fred that you hadn't accounted for, hadn't built into your plan at all — you'd expected loudness, persistence that grated, the kind of pressure that would make walking away easy. Instead he gave you room. He noticed when you needed the room and he gave it to you without making a production of it, and somehow that was so much harder to resist than anything else could have been.
It was that same evening, walking back from the library, that he asked, apropos of nothing, "What's your favorite flower?"
"Why do you want to know that?"
"Because I don't know it yet, and I'd like to."
You considered lying, just to be difficult, and then didn't, mostly because the question had caught you off guard enough that the honest answer came out before you'd thought better of it. "Lilies."
"Yeah? Any particular reason?"
"They're the only thing that ever grew properly in the garden at home. My dad planted them the year my mum left, said the garden needed something that would keep coming back even if nobody remembered to look after it. They just do it on their own." You shrugged, embarrassed at how much you'd said. "I don't know. I like that about them."
Fred didn't say anything clever back, for once. He just nodded, filed it away the way he filed everything else, and didn't bring it up again for weeks — not until much later, when he mentioned to Hermione in passing that he wanted to get you lilies for your birthday, and Hermione, delighted and a little smug, informed him that in the old language of flowers, lilies carried a particular meaning: I dare you to love me.
Fred laughed for a solid minute once she told him, half disbelieving, entirely charmed, because of course — of course — the flower you loved without knowing anything about its meaning turned out to be exactly, precisely the dare the two of you were already living inside.
Whatever else you wanted to say about Fred Weasley, this much was true and had always been true, long before the bet: he noticed people. Not in the loud, performative way he flirted — that was for show, mostly, harmless and a little silly — but underneath it, quieter, he actually saw people.
He'd seen you, once, crouched by a first year's trunk in the corridor outside Gryffindor tower, helping a small, frightened boy repack the mess of robes and books he'd spilled everywhere after some older student shoved past him too fast. You hadn't known Fred was there until you stood up and found him leaning against the wall, watching, something unreadable in his face.
He'd seen you with Ginny, too — hadn't said anything at the time, hadn't needed to, but he knew you'd sat with his little sister the night of her first period, scared and embarrassed and not wanting to bother Molly over the holidays, and that you'd talked her through it with the kind of steady, unbothered warmth that made a terrifying thing feel ordinary. Ginny had told him, eventually, in the offhand way siblings share things, and Fred had filed it away like he filed away everything about you — evidence, slowly accumulating, of the person underneath the reputation.
He'd seen you be kind to professors, too, the ones the students mostly ignored or mocked behind their backs — Professor Kettleburn, half-forgotten by the current wave of Care of Magical Creatures students, and you always stayed a few minutes after class to ask him something, anything, because you couldn't stand the idea of someone feeling invisible in their own castle.
None of that was casual. None of it fit the story Hogwarts told about you, the story you told about yourself. Fred had known, for two years, that the girl everyone thought was allergic to seriousness was in fact one of the most quietly serious people he'd ever met — she simply reserved it for everyone except herself.
He didn't say any of this to you. Not yet. But it was why, when you tried to provoke him, tried to be difficult and prickly and impossible, he never quite managed to be as frustrated as you wanted him to be. He wasn't fighting the version of you that you were trying to perform. He was fighting for the version he'd already seen.
What you didn't expect — what genuinely surprised you, somewhere around the second week — was how much you had started noticing about him.
You noticed that he was left-handed but wrote with his right because a teacher had corrected him as a child and he'd never bothered to switch back, and that when he was truly exhausted, past the point of performing anything for anyone, his handwriting would slip back to the left without him seeming to realize it.
You noticed the small scar above his eyebrow that he'd gotten from a garden gnome incident at age nine, which he told you about with such delighted, self-deprecating detail that you'd laughed until your ribs hurt.
You noticed that he hummed under his breath when he was concentrating on something fiddly — usually a prototype for one of the twins' inventions — and that the humming stopped entirely the second he thought someone was watching, like he was embarrassed by a habit that was, in fact, one of the more endearing things about him.
You noticed that he always let George take credit for the funnier of their jokes in front of teachers, quietly stepping back so his twin could have the moment, and that he never once seemed to mind.
You noticed the way his ears went pink before the rest of his face did, every single time, a full half-second warning system for whatever he was about to say.
None of this was information you had gone looking for. It had simply accumulated, the way sand collects in the folds of a coat without anyone noticing they've been to the beach, and by the time you realized how much you knew about Fred Weasley that had nothing to do with his reputation, it was already far, far too late to pretend you hadn't been paying attention.
It happened on day sixteen, in a mostly empty corridor after dinner, torchlight throwing long shadows, and you weren't entirely sure afterward which of you moved first.
You'd been arguing — not seriously, the kind of argument that was mostly banter with teeth — about whether he'd cheated by having George slip you compliments on his behalf—he hadn't, George had done it entirely of his own accord, delighted by the whole arrangement—, and somewhere in the middle of your sentence Fred had simply stepped closer and kissed you.
It was not a gentle, testing kiss. It was two years of 'almost finally’ allowed to happen, and for several long seconds you kissed him back like you meant it, like your hands hadn't fisted in his shirt entirely on their own, like this was easy, like this was nothing.
Then you pulled back, breathing unsteady, and said the cruelest thing you could find fast enough to reach for:
"I've kissed better than you, Weasley. You're not the first, and you won't be the one who makes me fall for anyone."
You watched it land. Watched something flicker across his face — hurt, quick and real, before he shuttered it.
"Alright," he said, quietly.
"Alright?"
"You're allowed to say that. Doesn't mean I believe it." He tucked his hands in his pockets, and there was none of the usual performance in his voice, just something steadier and sadder. "But you don't kiss someone like that if you're trying to convince them you don't feel anything. You might want to work on your delivery."
He walked away before you could answer, and you stood alone in the corridor for a long time, furious at him for being right and furious at yourself for kissing him like you meant it, because you had.
The next Quidditch match fell three days later, Gryffindor against Ravenclaw, and Fred found you at breakfast that morning with a piece of chalk-paint and an expression far too pleased with itself.
"You're coming to watch."
"I always come to watch."
"You're coming to watch as my girlfriend, which means you're required, by ancient and binding tradition, to wear my number." He was already reaching for your cheek before you'd agreed to anything, carefully painting a small, crooked 5 just below your cheekbone, tongue between his teeth in concentration like it was the most important spellwork he'd ever attempted.
"This is ridiculous."
"This is tradition." He leaned back to inspect his work, grinning. "There. Perfect. Now everyone in the stands will know exactly who you're cheering for."
"I could cheer for you without face paint, Fred."
"You could. But this is more fun." He kissed the corner of your mouth, quick, easy, like it cost him nothing at all to be that soft with you in front of half the Gryffindor table, and jogged off toward the pitch before you could tell him to stop grinning like an idiot.
You cheered loudest for him that match, whether you meant to or not, and when he help to scored — showing off, clearly, doing an entirely unnecessary loop before landing — he looked straight up into the stands and found your face in the crowd like he'd known exactly where to look the whole time.
The invitation came two days before the holidays, delivered with the kind of casualness Fred clearly hoped would disguise how much he wanted you to say yes.
"Mum's doing Christmas at ours. Everyone'll be there. You should come."
"Fred, we're in the middle of a bet. I don't think 'meet the family' is part of the terms."
"It's not a term. It's an invitation." He shrugged, but his ears had gone slightly pink, the way they did when he was hoping harder than he wanted to admit. "You don't have to. But I'd like you there. And Ginny's been asking, and Mum already knows about you — "
"Your mum knows about me?"
"Ginny wrote her a very detailed letter. I had no editorial control." He grinned, but it softened almost immediately. "Come. Please."
You went. You told yourself it was for the sake of the bet, optics, keeping up appearances — you did not tell yourself the truth, which was that some small, starved part of you wanted, badly, to know what it felt like to be somewhere a family actually wanted you.
The Burrow was chaos in the best way you'd ever seen it — crooked, warm, impossibly full of noise and love in a way that made your chest ache before you'd even taken your coat off. Molly Weasley hugged you like she'd known you for years, pulled you into the kitchen, put a mug of something hot in your hands before you'd said a full sentence, and asked about your classes with a warmth so unguarded it nearly undid you on the spot.
"Fred talks about you constantly," Molly said, conspiratorially, stirring something on the stove. "Has done for ages. I was starting to think we'd never actually meet you."
"He's — persistent."
"He's smitten, dear, there's a difference, and don't let him tell you otherwise." Molly's eyes crinkled with quiet amusement, and then, gentler: "You look tired. Not sleep-tired. The other kind."
You hadn't expected to be seen that clearly, that fast, by someone you'd known for twenty minutes, and it knocked something loose in you that you weren't prepared for.
"I'm alright."
"You don't have to be, in this house. Whatever you're carrying, you can put it down here a while." Molly patted your hand once, brisk and warm, and went back to her stirring like she hadn't just cracked something open in your chest with a sentence.
The days passed, the afternoon turned bright and cold, and the whole yard behind the Burrow dissolved into an impromptu game — some chaotic Weasley variant of tag crossed with a made-up Quidditch drill, played entirely on foot because Ron insisted his broom needed ‘repairs’ that suspiciously coincided with him being terrible at flying that week. Ginny recruited you onto her team without asking, on the grounds that you ‘looked fast,’ and George immediately declared this an outrage and demanded a trade.
Fred ended up on the opposite team, which meant the entire game rapidly stopped being about the actual rules and became almost exclusively about the two of you trying to tackle each other into the frost-hardened grass, laughing too hard to actually catch anyone properly.
"That's cheating," you shouted, when he scooped you clean off your feet to stop you scoring past him, spinning you half around before setting you down, both of you breathless and pink-cheeked from the cold.
"Everything's fair in love and backyard Quidditch."
"You made that up just now."
"Doesn't make it less true." He was grinning at you in a way that had nothing performative left in it at all, snow-dusted and delighted, and for one unguarded moment you grinned back just as helplessly, forgetting, entirely, that this had ever started as a bet.
From the kitchen window, Molly and Arthur stood side by side, drying dishes that had long since stopped needing drying, watching the two of you chase each other across the yard.
"She's laughing," Molly said, quietly, like it mattered. "Really laughing. Have you seen her do that before?"
Arthur shook his head, smiling. "Not like that." He nudged his wife gently. "Reminds me of someone else I used to watch through a window, actually."
Molly swatted him with the dish towel, but she was still smiling when she turned back to the glass.
Dinner that night was loud and enormous, plates passed hand to hand faster than anyone could track, Fred's knee pressed warm against yours under the table the entire meal, and it was somewhere in the middle of the noise and the warmth and the sheer, overwhelming muchness of the Weasley family that it slipped out of you before you'd caught it.
"Could you pass the potatoes, Mum?"
The table didn't go silent all at once. It went silent in pieces, the way a held breath does, Ron's fork stopping halfway to his mouth, Ginny's eyes going wide, George actually turning to look at you properly for the first time all dinner.
You heard it a half-second after you'd said it, the word sitting in the air long after it left your mouth, and your face went hot with a mortification so total it felt like drowning.
"I — sorry, I didn't — " Your chair scraped back before you'd finished the sentence. "Excuse me."
You were up the stairs before anyone could stop you, into the first empty room you found, door shut, back against it, hands pressed to your burning face, humiliation crashing over you in waves you couldn't seem to get ahead of.
Hermione found you there less than a minute later — she'd been at the table too, had followed without a word, and simply sat down on the floor beside you without asking permission or offering platitudes.
"That was mortifying," you said, voice thick.
"It was an accident. Nobody thought anything of it."
"Everybody thought something of it, Hermione, I just called Molly Weasley ‘Mum’ in front of her entire actual family and Fred and — " Your voice cracked. "I don't even know where that came from. I don't call anyone that. I haven't had anyone to call that in five years."
"Maybe that's exactly where it came from," Hermione said, gently. "You've been sitting in a house that feels like what you didn't get to have. It doesn't mean anything's wrong with you. It means you noticed something you needed."
You didn't have an answer to that, and Hermione, wisely, didn't push for one, just sat with you on the floor until your breathing evened out.
It was Fred who came up eventually, knocking once before letting himself in, dropping onto the floor across from you with the specific, careful casualness of someone who'd clearly rehearsed several serious speeches on the stairs and decided, at the last second, against every single one of them.
"So," he said. "Word around the house is you've adopted my mother."
You groaned into your hands. "Fred."
"I'm only saying, if this keeps up you'll technically outrank me. Mum's had five sons and a daughter, and you managed it in one dinner. Efficient, really."
"I want to disappear."
"Don't. I like you visible." He nudged your knee with his. "For what it's worth, Mum nearly cried into the gravy boat after you left the table. Good tears. She's been saying for weeks she hoped you'd feel comfortable enough here to slip up exactly like that."
You peeked at him through your fingers. "You're not going to let me be embarrassed about this in peace, are you."
"Not a chance. It's far too good material." But his voice had gone soft underneath the teasing, and he reached over, tucking a loose strand of hair behind your ear with a gentleness that didn't match the joking at all. "You didn't do anything wrong. You just felt safe somewhere for a second and it came out sideways. That's not something to apologize for, love. That's just a house doing its job."
You let yourself laugh, finally, shaky and real, and let him pull you up off the floor and back down to a dinner that had, mercifully, moved on to arguing about dessert by the time you returned.
Later that night, unable to sleep, you found Fred out by the garden fence, staring up at a sky far too full of stars for anywhere near a city, and settled beside him without a word.
"Can I tell you something nobody outside my family knows?" he asked, after a while, voice quieter than you were used to hearing from him.
"Of course."
"George and I want to open a joke shop. A real one — Diagon Alley, our own name on the door, everything we've ever built and tested finally getting sold properly instead of confiscated by Filch." He picked at the fence post, not quite meeting your eyes. "Mum thinks it's a phase. Dad's supportive but worried, because it's not exactly a stable career, is it, and everyone assumes we'll end up doing something safer eventually because that's what's expected." He exhaled. "We've got savings hidden away. Not much. Enough to start, maybe, someday, if we're careful and lucky. But I don't really tell people that part, the plan, because it's — it's the thing I actually want, underneath all the jokes, and it feels like it'd hurt more than usual if someone laughed at it."
"I'm not going to laugh at it."
"I know. That's rather why I told you." He glanced over, something unguarded and slightly nervous in his face — the same look you'd catalogued weeks ago, right before he said something that mattered. "You're one of maybe four people who know that's real and not just a running joke with George."
"For what it's worth," you said, quietly, "I think it's a brilliant idea. And I think you'll actually do it. You're the most relentlessly clever person I've ever met, when you're not busy being an idiot about girls."
"Only one girl," Fred said, "and she's sitting right here," and you let him take your hand in the dark without pulling away, both of you quiet for a long time after that, comfortable in a way that had nothing to do with a bet at all.
"My mum left," you said, eventually, into the dark. "When I was eleven. Told my dad she couldn't do it anymore — couldn't do me anymore, said living with us would kill her. She wasn't wrong to leave, probably. But she made it sound like I was the reason staying wasn't possible."
Fred didn't say anything for a moment. Then: "That's not love talking. That's her limits talking. Those aren't the same thing, even if it felt like they were."
"You don't know that."
"I know you helped a terrified eleven-year-old with her first period because you didn't want her to feel alone with something scary. I know you sit with Kettleburn because you can't stand the idea of him feeling forgotten. I know you shoved half your dinner at a first year last week because his trunk got trampled and he looked like he hadn't eaten." He looked at you, steady, unflinching. "You are not difficult to love. You're just used to people who weren't equipped to try."
You didn't have an answer for that. You let him keep the silence with you instead, and for the first time in longer than you could remember, the quiet didn't feel like something you had to fill or flee.
You wrote to your father that week, from the Burrow's kitchen table while Molly hummed over the stove, and found yourself telling him more than you'd meant to — about the noise and the warmth of the house, about Fred, about the word that had slipped out at dinner and the shame that had followed it.
His answer came back three days later, his familiar cramped handwriting filling both sides of the parchment.
'You don't have to feel guilty for wanting a full table, love. I've watched you build yourself into someone who doesn't need anyone, these last five years, and I've let you, because I didn't know how to teach you otherwise while I was busy learning it myself. But your mother leaving wasn't a rule about what happens to people who let themselves be loved. It was one woman's limit, not a law of the universe. I've thought that every day since, and I should have said it to you sooner. If this Weasley boy makes you feel like a full table is possible again, don't apologize for it. Let yourself have it. We're a good team, you and I, always have been — but a team of two was never meant to be the whole shape of your life."
You read it twice, sitting very still at the Weasleys' kitchen table, and folded it carefully into your pocket instead of your trunk, where you could find it easily whenever you needed to.
Back at Hogwarts after the holidays, the little things kept accumulating, on both sides, in a way neither of you commented on directly.
Fred gave you his jumper without being asked, the first properly cold morning back, sliding it over your head before you'd finished complaining about the temperature in the corridor, sleeves swallowing your hands entirely. He saved you breakfast on the mornings you slept through your alarm, wrapped in a napkin and left on your usual seat with a scrawled note 'eat something,’ before he'd gone to Quidditch practice. He fixed your hair without thinking about it, tucking a strand behind your ear mid-conversation the way you'd catalogued him doing for weeks, an absent, easy gesture that had nothing showy in it at all.
You, in turn, had started doing things you didn't fully notice yourself doing until Angelina pointed it out over lunch one day.
"You've been carrying an extra quill in your bag for two weeks."
"So?"
"Fred's quills keep exploding because George keeps testing prototypes on them. You've been quietly replacing his without him asking." Angelina raised an eyebrow. "You also started reminding him to eat when he skips lunch because he's too deep in some invention to notice he's hungry."
"I haven't — " You stopped, because you had, actually, done all of those things, without deciding to, the way you'd apparently decided things about Fred a long time before you'd agreed to admit it.
"You're taking care of him," Angelina said, not unkindly. "You've just been doing it so quietly you didn't clock it as anything."
You didn't have a response to that, mostly because it was true, and because some part of you had apparently started treating Fred's wellbeing as something worth quietly managing long before you'd agreed this was anything more than a bet.
There were other things, too, that you only noticed because you were looking for reasons to stop noticing him, and kept finding the opposite.
You once braced for him to say something petty about a boy you'd dated briefly the year before. Instead Fred just shrugged. "He seemed alright. Didn't work out, clearly, but I've no interest in trashing someone just to make myself look better by comparison. Not really my style."
When Angelina needed to talk to you privately during a Hogsmeade trip, Fred didn't sulk about being excluded or ask what it was about. He simply said, "Take your time, I'll get us a table," and did exactly that, without a single pointed question when you returned.
He'd shout compliments across the Great Hall without a shred of embarrassment, but the second you were alone and something had actually gone wrong — a bad grade, an argument, a bad day — his teasing dropped instantly, replaced by something quieter and far more careful, like he understood the difference between performance and the moments that actually mattered.
None of it was dramatic. All of it, taken together, was somehow harder to argue with than any grand gesture could have been.
It hit you at the most ordinary moment — Fred's hand laced through yours at breakfast, nothing dramatic, nothing new — and still your chest went tight and your pulse spiked and some old animal part of your brain screamed this is too much, this is too close, this is exactly the kind of thing that gets taken away.
You excused yourself before anyone noticed, made it to an empty corridor, and stood there with your back against cold stone, breathing hard, furious at your own body for betraying you over something as small as a held hand.
Fred found you five minutes later — you hadn't heard him follow, hadn't wanted him to — and didn't touch you, didn't crowd you, just stood a careful few feet away.
"You don't have to tell me what that was," he said quietly. "But I'm not going anywhere, whatever it was. Take whatever time you need."
"I don't understand why this is so hard," you admitted, voice cracking. "It's just a hand. It's nothing. Why does nothing feel like everything with you?"
"Because it isn't nothing to you," Fred said gently. "It hasn't been nothing in a long time. That's allowed to be frightening. It doesn't mean you're broken for finding it hard."
He didn't bring it up again after that — no careful check-ins over breakfast, no meaningful looks — just quiet, steady normalcy that let you decide, on your own timeline, whenever you wanted to explain it further. You didn't, not for a while. He never once made you feel like you owed him the explanation sooner.
The closer you got to the end of the bet, the less it felt like a bet and the more it felt like something... natural, something that was always meant to be.
It happened on an ordinary Tuesday, late, the common room fire burned down to embers, most of Gryffindor tower gone up to bed. You'd been curled against Fred's side on the sofa, half-listening to him and George argue happily about a Filibuster firework variant, and at some point, without deciding to, you'd simply fallen asleep against his shoulder.
Fred noticed the exact moment it happened — your breathing evening out, the weight of you settling fully against him — and went very, very still, like any movement might undo it.
"Oi, don't wake her," he hissed, when Lee came thundering down the stairs a few minutes later with some story that clearly required a loud audience.
Lee stopped dead, took in the sight of you asleep against Fred, and grinned slowly. "Oh, this is precious."
"Lee, I will hex you."
"Wouldn't dream of waking her." Lee lowered his voice to an exaggerated whisper, which somehow drew more attention than his normal volume would have, and George, delighted, immediately shushed the common room with the enthusiasm of someone orchestrating a very important event.
"Everyone quiet, Fred's got a girl asleep on him and he looks like Christmas came early."
"I hate all of you," Fred whispered, and did not move an inch, one arm curled carefully around you, expression so unguardedly happy that Angelina — arriving from the girls' dormitory, hand in George's the second she reached the bottom step, since the two of them had gotten together earlier that term — actually laughed out loud at the sight of him.
"Someone get a camera," she said. "This is going in a frame."
Someone did, in fact, get a camera — Colin Creevey, roused from his dormitory by the commotion and thrilled beyond measure to be included — and the photograph that resulted, developed and delivered the next morning, showed you fast asleep against Fred's shoulder, his arm around you, his face turned slightly toward you instead of the camera, wearing an expression of such uncomplicated happiness that even you, seeing it for the first time, felt something in your chest go soft and unguarded.
Fred kept that photograph in his trunk for the rest of the year, tucked inside the cover of his Charms textbook where nobody but him would think to look.
You woke an hour later, disoriented, to find the common room mostly empty and Fred still exactly where he'd been, patient, unmoving, one hand resting loosely against your hair.
"You didn't wake me up."
"Didn't want to." He smiled, soft in the low firelight. "You looked like you needed it. Figured Lee's shouting could happen literally anywhere else in the castle."
"How long was I out?"
"Hour, give or take. George took a photo. Fair warning, it's going to end up somewhere embarrassing eventually."
You should have minded that. You found, somewhat alarmingly, that you didn't.
All that new familiarity, this affection, awakened something in you had come loose and frightened, and you did what you always did when things got too real too fast: you reached for the one language you trusted completely.
You sent Fred a note — the password to the prefects' bathroom, a time, nothing else. He arrived to find candles floating over water gone opal-soft with bubbles, and you, waiting, dropping your robe with a steadiness you didn't feel, offering him exactly the kind of easy, physical, uncomplicated thing you knew how to give without breaking.
Fred didn't move toward you. He looked, for one unguarded second, and then very deliberately looked away, reaching for a towel and holding it out instead.
"Put this on."
"Fred — "
"I'm not doing this." His voice was gentle, but there was no give in it. "Not like this. Not because you got scared and this is easier than talking about it."
Something in you flared, humiliated. "I'm offering you exactly what you've wanted for two years and you're turning it down?"
"I've wanted you. All of you. Not the part you hand out easy so the rest stays safe." He kept his eyes carefully, deliberately on your face, patient even now, even with you furious and half-dressed and lashing out. "If we do this — when we do this — it's going to be because you want me, not because you're trying to prove something's still simple between us. That's not a punishment. That's just — that's what I want it to mean, when it happens."
"You're an idiot," you said, voice thick.
"Probably. Ask George." He held the towel a little further out. "Get dressed. I'll wait outside. We can still talk, if you want to."
You didn't talk that night. But you didn't send him away either, and something about the walk back to the common room in silence, his hand loosely, carefully not-quite-touching yours the whole way, felt like the first honest thing that had passed between you in weeks.
It happened on day twenty-four, and it was, in retrospect, almost funny how small the argument actually was.
Fred had made plans — dinner, just the two of you, sneaked down to the kitchens with help from a very smug house-elf — and you'd cancelled at the last minute with a flimsy excuse—Just because your self-destructive side was faster than your new feelings—, then been caught twenty minutes later by George, laughing easily with a Ravenclaw boy in the library, clearly not otherwise occupied at all.
Fred found you afterward, jaw tight, some of the easy warmth gone out of his face entirely.
"You lied to me."
"I didn't lie, I just — didn't feel like dinner."
"You didn't feel like dinner with me, so you made something up instead of just saying so." His voice had an edge to it you'd never heard directed at you before, frustration finally breaking through weeks of careful patience. "Do you know how that looks? I planned something, I told the elves, I was excited, and you couldn't even be bothered to tell me the truth instead of making something up."
"I didn't think it mattered that much — "
"It mattered to me!" It came out louder than he meant it to, echoing slightly in the empty corridor, and you both went still, startled by it. Fred's hands had curled into fists at his sides, and for one long, terrible second you thought, with something like grim vindication, 'there it is. There's the crack. He's finally done’.
Then you watched him catch himself. Watched him take a breath, visibly, deliberately, and unclench his hands one finger at a time.
"I need a minute," he said, quieter now, strained but controlled. "I'm not — I don't want to say something I can't take back. Give me a minute."
He walked a short distance away, back to you, shoulders tight, and you stood there in the sudden quiet feeling something you hadn't expected to feel at all: not triumph, but a strange, unfamiliar guilt.
When he turned back around, a minute or two later, his voice was steadier, though his eyes were still bright with the leftover heat of it.
"That hurt," he said, simply. "I'm not going to pretend it didn't. You lied to me over something small, and it stung more than something small should, because I keep hoping you'll trust me enough not to need to." He exhaled. "But I'm not giving up on you. Not over this, not over one bad night. I got frustrated, and I'm allowed to get frustrated, and I'm telling you honestly instead of swallowing it — but that's different from losing patience with you. I haven't. I'm still here."
"I thought you'd bolt," you admitted, quiet, thrown by your own honesty. "I thought that was it. I thought I'd finally found the thing that would make you stop."
"I'm not your mother," Fred said, gently, echoing Hermione's words from weeks before without knowing it. "Getting annoyed isn't the same as leaving. I'm allowed to be human about this without it meaning I'm done with you."
You reached for his hand, and this time it was you who didn't let go first. "I'm sorry, i-i get scared…again.That wasn't fair, what I did,"
"No," he agreed. "It wasn't. But I forgive you, and I'd still rather have dinner with you tomorrow than not have you at all." He squeezed your hand once. "Next time, just tell me the truth. Even if the truth is you'd rather have a night alone. I can handle that far better than I can handle being lied to."
The habit didn't stay confined to Fred, and it hadn't started with him, either — which was, in its own strange way, some comfort a few days later, when Hermione was the one who felt the edge of it.
You picked the fight with her over something so small you could barely remember it afterward — a comment about a shared essay, a joke that landed wrong — and escalated it far past where it needed to go, voice sharp, words chosen precisely because you knew they'd sting.
Hermione didn't yell back. She just went quiet, hurt clear on her face, and said, "Why are you doing this? I didn't do anything to deserve that."
The question landed like a slap, mostly because you didn't have a good answer. You apologized within the hour, mortified, but the pattern was old enough that Hermione recognized it before you did.
"You do this when you're scared," she said later, gently, no accusation in it. "You did it to Fred a lot of times. You're doing it to me now. It's like you need to test whether people will still want you around after you've been at your worst — and it's exhausting for the people on the other end, even when they understand why."
"I'm not trying to hurt you."
"I know. But you are, a little, and I'd rather you just told me you were scared instead."
It happened again later, worse, with Fred himself, though this time you knew exactly what you were doing even as you did it.
You told him, unprompted, that you thought the entire relationship had been a mistake, that you'd been counting down the days until you could stop pretending.
It wasn't true. You knew it wasn't true the second it left your mouth. But some old, frightened part of you needed to see what his face did when you said it — needed, badly, to catch him in the act of finally, finally giving up on you, so you could point at it and say see, ‘I told you so’ and never have to risk this again.
Fred went very still. Then, quietly: "That's not what you actually think."
"How would you know?"
"Because you've been leaving me notes in my Charms book and you cried actual tears telling me about your mom and your dad and you fell asleep against my shoulder in the common room like it was the safest place you'd been in years. People who think something's a mistake don't do any of that." He wasn't angry, just steady, watching you with something that looked uncomfortably like understanding. "You're trying to make me leave first so it doesn't feel like your fault when it happens. I'm not going to do that for you."
You didn't have an answer. You went to bed that night furious at yourself, and it was Hermione, again, who found you crying about it afterward, who said nothing except I know and let you sit with the shame of it until it passed.
The letter had been sitting under your pillow for eleven days.
It was from your half-brother — a name you'd known about only distantly, a fact more than a person, the son your mother had gone on to have after she left, at a school in the north with a name that sounded cold even to say. He'd written to you out of nowhere, careful, hesitant handwriting, saying he'd like to meet you, if you'd be willing. He didn't mention your mother beyond a single line: ‘she's not really part of my life either, not the way you'd think’.
You hadn't answered. You weren't sure you could.
Hermione was the one who finally asked about it directly, catching sight of the parchment corner poking from your bag. "Are you going to write back?"
"I don't know what I'd even say."
"You don't have to know everything before you start. You could just say hello."
"He's got the same mother who thought staying with us would kill her. What if he's — what if there's something about the way she raised him that means he'll leave too, eventually, the second I'm inconvenient?"
"Or," Hermione said, carefully, "he's a kid who never got a sister and is trying, awkwardly, to have one. That doesn't mean he inherited anything except her handwriting."
You looked at the letter a long time that night before you finally wrote back — three sentences, tentative, an agreement to meet during the Tournament, when the delegations were all at the castle together. It felt like the bravest thing you'd done in years, and also the smallest.
By the last days of the bet, something had settled between you that no longer felt like performance at all.
You'd started sitting together at breakfast without any prompting, your hand finding his under the table as easily as breathing. He walked you to class even when it took him wildly out of his way. You'd started leaving your own notes back, tucked into his books — nothing profound, sometimes just ‘good luck in practice’ or a badly drawn picture of George's face — and he kept every single one.
"Twenty-eight days," Fred said one evening, lying beside you in the grass by the lake, fingers laced loosely through yours. "Two to go."
"Feels strange, doesn't it. Counting down to the end of something."
"Doesn't have to be the end of anything." He turned his head to look at you, something hopeful and a little nervous in his face, the look you'd catalogued weeks ago. "I know how this started. But it doesn't have to stop just because the thirty days run out. I'd rather this kept going. Properly. No bet attached to it at all."
"I know," you said, and found, to your own quiet astonishment, that you meant it entirely. "I'd like that too."
He kissed you then, slow and unhurried, nothing like the first kiss weeks before that you'd tried so hard to undercut with a cruel joke. This one you didn't pull away from. This one you leaned into, both hands fisted gently in his shirt, and when you finally broke apart he rested his forehead against yours, breathing uneven, smiling in the dark.
"Two more days," he murmured.
"Two more days," you agreed, and let yourself, for the first time in five years, imagine what came after without flinching from it.
Your brother's name was Kirill, and he was younger than you by two years, gangly and awkward in his Durmstrang uniform, with your mother's eyes and none of her coldness that you could find, not yet, not in the hour you spent with him in a quiet alcove near the courtyard.
He talked too fast, nervous, told you about his father — not yours, a stepfather who'd never quite warmed to him — about a mother who was, in his words, ‘around, but not really there, not for either of us, I think’. Somewhere in the middle of him showing you a battered photograph of a ship he wanted to sail someday, something in your chest cracked open with a feeling that wasn't grief exactly, more like relief: 'it wasn't just me. It was never just me.’
When he finally, awkwardly, hugged you goodbye — stiff-armed, unpracticed, clearly unused to affection — you were laughing, eyes bright with tears you hadn't let fall, cheeks flushed from the cold courtyard air and the strange, enormous feeling of maybe, possibly, gaining something instead of losing it.
Fred saw you like that. From across the courtyard, half-turned toward the castle doors, he saw you wrapped around a Durmstrang boy, laughing, glowing, happier than he'd seen you in the entire month he'd been trying to earn exactly that look.
He didn't wait to find out who it was. He turned around and walked back inside, something cold and quiet settling into his chest, and told himself, with the particular, practiced ease of someone protecting a heart he'd handed over freely: 'of course. Of course it was never really me’. She was always going to find someone easier to be happy with.
Fred didn't confront you. That was almost worse.
For the last day he was polite — cordial, even, still technically your boyfriend, still technically inside the bounds of the bet — but the warmth had gone out of it, replaced by a careful, controlled distance that felt like watching a fire go out one ember at a time. He didn't seek you out at meals. He didn't find you in corridors. When you spoke, his answers were short, correct, and utterly without the teasing warmth you'd only just let yourself start expecting.
"What's going on with you?" you finally asked, cornering him outside the library.
"Nothing. Everything's fine."
"You're lying."
"I saw you," he said, finally, voice tight, "with him. In the courtyard. Looking happier than you've looked with me all month." He wasn't looking at you, jaw set hard. "I'm not angry. You're allowed to want someone else. I just — I'd rather know now than keep pretending for the sake of a bet you never wanted to lose anyway."
You stared at him, and for a second you almost laughed, except it wasn't funny, it was awful, this entire month reduced to a single misread hug.
"Fred. That was my brother."
He blinked. "Your — what?"
"My half-brother. From Durmstrang. My mother's son." Your voice was shaking now, some mixture of fury and relief and old grief all tangled together. "The letter I've been avoiding — I finally answered it. I met him for the first time today. He hugged me because neither of us have ever had a sibling, and I was crying because for once in my life something about my mother didn't feel like it was going to hurt, and you thought — you actually thought — "
"I didn't know." His voice cracked, just slightly, guilt flooding in fast behind it. "I'm sorry. I should have asked. I should have come and asked instead of just — deciding."
"Yeah," you said, some of the fight going out of you, replaced by something rawer. "You should have."
"I was scared," he admitted, quiet now, all the careful distance gone. "The whole month I've been terrified you'd wake up one day and realize you didn't actually want any of this, that I'd just worn you down instead of actually winning you over, and then I saw you look at someone like that, and every fear I've had for two years just — came true, all at once, before I could stop it."
You let the silence sit a moment, let both of you breathe through it.
"I'm not in love with my brother, Fred."
"I know that now."
"Are you still in love with me?"
"I have been for two years," he said, simply, no performance left in it at all. "That's never been the question. The question's always been whether you'd let yourself believe it."
Day thirty one arrived on a grey, ordinary Tuesday, and you stood at the doors of the Great Hall with your heart going faster than it had any right to, watching four long tables full of people who had, whether you liked it or not, spent a month watching this exact thing unfold.
Fred was at the Gryffindor table, not looking at you, giving you the space to do this on your own terms, which was, you thought, exactly like him.
You didn't need to stand on a table or make a speech dramatic enough for the whole month to deserve. You simply walked to the middle of the hall, waited for enough eyes to land on you that the room quieted on its own, and said, plainly, "I lost the bet."
A ripple went through the hall. Somewhere near the Gryffindor table, George was already grinning like Christmas had come early.
"Fred Weasley did not lose his patience with me once in thirty days, which is either the greatest feat of patience in Hogwarts history or proof I'm not nearly as difficult to love as I've spent the last five years convincing everyone, including myself." Your voice wavered, just slightly, and you let it. "So. I fell for him. Completely, embarrassingly, against every plan I had. I'm in love with Fred Weasley."
The hall erupted — laughter, a few cheers, someone, definitely George, actually applauding — and Fred was already crossing the hall toward you, disbelief and hope and something helplessly fond all fighting for space on his face.
"You didn't have to do the whole hall," he said, when he reached you, voice low, just for you now. "A quiet word would've done."
"You didn't win a quiet bet. You won loudly, in front of everyone. Seemed fair you got your answer the same way."
"I love you," he said, like it was easy, like it had always been easy, like the only hard part had ever been getting you to a place where you could hear it without flinching.
"I know," you said. "I love you too. Try not to let it go to your head."
"Too late," Fred said, and kissed you in the middle of the Great Hall, in front of all of Hogwarts, like he'd been waiting two years for exactly this moment and finally, finally, wasn't waiting anymore.
Later, much later, curled together by the lake with his jacket around your shoulders and his fingers laced loosely through yours, you asked him the question you'd been sitting with since the courtyard.
"What would you have done? If it really had been someone else. If I really had wanted out."
Fred was quiet a moment, thoughtful in a way that had nothing to do with the easy performance he gave the rest of the world. "Let you go," he said, finally. "Badly. Probably pathetically. But I wouldn't have made you stay somewhere you didn't want to be, no matter how much it would've wrecked me." He looked at you, steady. "Wanting you was never about winning, love. It was always just wanting you happy, even in the version where that didn't include me."
You thought of your mother, then, the version of leaving that had nothing to do with love and everything to do with limits she wasn't equipped to hold. And you thought of Fred — thirty days of staying, of noticing, of giving you room instead of pressure, of a hand held out with a towel instead of taken advantage of, of a moment of real frustration met with honesty instead of an exit.
Not everyone who could leave, would. Not everyone who loved you was destined to find you too difficult to keep.
"Good," you said, finally, resting your head against his shoulder. "Because I'm not going anywhere."
"Neither am I," Fred said. "Never was." He reached into his pocket, a little sheepishly, and produced — of all things — a slightly crumpled lily, clearly transfigured rather than grown, given the season. "Hermione told me what these mean. In the old language. Apparently I've been daring you to love me since October without even knowing the word for it."
You laughed, and took the flower, and didn't let go of his hand for the rest of the afternoon.
Summary: Anything written on your skin appears on your soulmate’s, leaving you to wonder whether your destiny can still be rewritten.
A/N: these fuckass summaries are gonna be the death of me... also i really enjoyed planning for this fic but now that i've done my final read i actually kinda hate it
Year 2:
Soulmates were a tricky business.
No one fully understood the magic behind it—how the universe could possibly decide, from the moment you were born, that there was one person out there meant specifically for you. Even now, it remained one of the greatest mysteries of the magical world. There were no rules you could study, no spells to influence it, no way to predict it.
All anyone really knew was this: somewhere out there existed a person whose magic matched yours so perfectly that the universe itself would one day intervene and make it known.
How it chose to do that, however, was entirely unpredictable.
Some people were born with timers on their wrists, ticking down to the exact second they would meet the person meant for them. Others lived their entire lives in muted shades of grey until they met their soulmate and the world burst into colour all at once. Some carried their soulmate’s first words etched permanently into their skin, waiting for the moment they would finally hear them spoken aloud.
For others, it came later.
Marks that appeared on first touch.
Marks that only revealed themselves after years of friendship.
Marks that didn’t appear at all until it was far too late to matter.
There was no pattern. No certainty. No way to guess what form your own bond would take—or when it would appear, or who it would tie you to.
And so, by your second year, you had stopped thinking about it too much.
Well... not entirely.
Like any other girl, there were nights when you lay awake staring at the ceiling, letting your mind wander to the inevitable moment when it would happen. You imagined the first meeting in painstaking detail—how everything would fall into place like the final pieces of a puzzle, how suddenly the world would make sense in a way it never had before, as if you had finally found where you were meant to be.
You imagined what it would feel like to be close to them.
To hold their hand.
To kiss them.
To run your fingers through their hair and feel them do the same to you.
You imagined quiet moments and laughter, whispered words meant only for the two of you, a future that felt certain in a way nothing else ever did.
And sometimes, buried into your pillow so no one could hear, you’d find yourself smiling—giddy with anticipation for a life that hadn’t even begun yet.
But it was easy not to dwell on it too much.
None of your friends had found their soulmates yet—not Hermione, not anyone—and that made it easier. It meant you weren’t falling behind. It meant there was still time.
When it happened, it would happen.
And when it did, everything would make sense.
Until then, your biggest problem remained your exams.
The Great Hall was silent in that suffocating, unnatural way it only ever was during exams.
Rows upon rows of desks stretched endlessly beneath the enchanted ceiling, each one placed with careful precision—far enough apart to make cheating impossible, close enough to remind you that you weren’t alone in your misery. The usual warmth of the hall felt stripped away, replaced by something rigid and tense.
The only sound was the uneven scratching of quills against parchment, echoing faintly in the vast space like a hundred tiny clocks ticking out your time.
You hunched over your Transfiguration paper, brow furrowed in concentration, your hand moving quickly but carefully—fast enough to keep up with your thoughts, slow enough to avoid smudging the ink.
You were on the last question.
Finally.
Relief flickered through you as you exhaled quietly, adjusting your grip on your quill. You leaned in slightly, beginning to write your answer, already thinking about how quickly you could leave once you were done—how good it would feel to be free of the stifling silence, the pressure, the weight of it all.
A shadow fell across your desk.
Your quill stilled mid-word.
“Miss (Y/N).” Came Professor McGonagall’s voice, low and composed.
You looked up sharply, your pulse jumping.
She stood just behind you, posture as straight as ever, hands folded neatly behind her back. Her expression gave nothing away—no irritation, no warmth, just that familiar, impenetrable calm.
“Yes, Professor?” You whispered, instinctively lowering your voice to be mindful of your fellow classmates. The last thing you needed was Hermione scolding you after the exam for making a ruckus while she was trying to focus.
Her gaze flicked briefly to your paper, lingering for just a moment, before returning to your face.
“I’ll need you to come with me.” She said quietly.
Your stomach dropped.
“Now, please.”
For a second, you just stared at her.
Confusion hit first—sharp and immediate.
Had you done something wrong? That didn’t make any sense. You hadn’t even finished your exam yet. Your eyes darted down to your parchment, then back up at her.
“…my exam—?”
“I will take it with us.” She replied smoothly, already reaching forward.
Before you could protest, she lifted the parchment from your desk, your unfinished answer still drying on the page. You stared up at her in surprise, your quill still clutched in your fingers, ink well sitting open on the desk.
Something wasn’t right.
Slowly, you pushed your chair back, the scrape of its legs against the stone floor sounding far too loud in the heavy silence. A few heads turned at the noise—quick, curious glances—but just as quickly snapped back down to their work.
After all these were your final exams, they didn't have the time for their focus to be broken.
Your heart began to beat a little faster as you stood, a faint, uneasy feeling settling in your chest.
“Follow me.”
You trailed after her down the narrow aisle between the desks, acutely aware of every step you took, every eye you could feel flicking toward you before darting away again.
The large doors of the Great Hall loomed ahead, growing closer with every step, and with them, that strange, creeping sense that something had shifted.
You didn’t know what you had done.
Still, you bit down hard on the inside of your cheek and clenched your fists at your sides, willing yourself not to cry from sheer anxiety. The past few weeks had already left your nerves stretched painfully thin.
Between late nights revising, early mornings spent cramming information into your head, and the constant pressure hanging over every second-year student during exam season, it felt as though every nerve ending in your body had been stripped raw.
Even now, as you followed Professor McGonagall through the corridors, you could feel your heart hammering painfully against your ribs. You dug your nails into your palms until they hurt, desperately trying to ground yourself, but the growing lump in your throat refused to disappear.
Professor McGonagall led you into an empty classroom adjacent to the Great Hall and quietly shut the door behind you. The click of the latch sounded far louder than it should have.
"Sit."
You obeyed immediately, lowering yourself into the nearest chair while she remained standing. For a long moment she simply looked at you, her expression unreadable save for a distinct note of disappointment that made your stomach sink even further.
"Miss (L/N)," She began, her voice calm and measured, "students are made aware at the beginning of every examination period that cheating results in an immediate Dreadful. Your parents will be notified and the staff will need to discuss whether you will be permitted to sit a reexamination or whether further disciplinary measures are necessary."
For a second, you genuinely thought you had misheard her.
The words didn't make sense.
You stared up at her blankly.
"Professor... what?"
Her expression remained unchanged.
"You were found in possession of examination materials during your Transfiguration exam."
"I wasn't copying."
The denial left your mouth before you could stop it.
McGonagall's gaze lowered pointedly and, confused, you followed it.
The moment you saw your leg, your entire body went cold.
Written across the skin of your calf in cramped black handwriting were notes. Definitions. Theories. Entire sections of information taken directly from your textbooks and condensed into neat little sentences. There had to be dozens of them, stretching across your skin in dense clusters of writing.
Your breath caught painfully in your throat.
"What the hell?"
Your mind immediately began scrambling for an explanation. Had someone done this while you slept? Had ink somehow transferred from your notes? Had you absentmindedly written on yourself during a revision session? None of it made sense. You had showered the night before.
In your panic, you failed to notice that this wasn't even your handwriting.
"No."
You immediately started rubbing at your skin.
"No, Professor, I didn't write this."
You scrubbed harder, panic making your movements frantic.
"I swear I didn't."
The notes didn't budge.
Your palms were beginning to sweat, but the ink remained exactly where it was, stubborn and unmoving.
"It's not even coming off!"
The last few words came out dangerously close to a sob.
You looked back up at McGonagall, your vision beginning to blur around the edges as tears gathered in your eyes. Everything suddenly felt horribly unfair. You had spent weeks preparing for these exams. You had stayed up late memorizing definitions, quizzed yourself until your head hurt, worried yourself sick over every possible outcome.
"I swear I didn't do this, Professor," you said, your voice wobbling despite your best efforts. "I promise. Please don't fail me. I studied so hard."
The tears escaped before you could stop them.
One moment you were trying to hold yourself together and the next you were crying outright, fat tears rolled down your cheeks while the tiny amount of mascara you'd put on that morning in an attempt to look slightly less exhausted began smudging around your eyes. The embarrassment only made it worse. You couldn't remember the last time you had cried in front of a teacher, but now you couldn't seem to stop.
It was only through your tears that you noticed something change in McGonagall's expression. The disappointment that had been there moments ago had vanished completely, replaced by something that looked remarkably like realization. Her eyes flickered briefly from the notes scrawled across your skin back to your face and you watched as the pieces seemed to fall into place behind them.
"Miss (L/N)," She said, her voice considerably gentler than it had been a moment ago, "it would appear that I owe you an apology."
You blinked up at her through watery eyes, still struggling to catch your breath.
"What?"
"I believe there has been a misunderstanding."
For a moment you simply stared at her, the words refusing to make sense. A misunderstanding? Five minutes ago she had been discussing whether you would be forced to repeat the year.
"Once you've composed yourself," McGonagall continued, clearing her throat and smoothing a hand over her robes, "You may return to the examination hall and complete your exam."
The room fell silent.
You looked down at the notes still covering your skin and then back up at her, trying to understand what had changed. The writing was still there. The evidence hadn't disappeared. If anything, it seemed even more obvious now than it had before. Yet whatever conclusion McGonagall had reached was apparently enough to completely alter the situation.
Before you could ask any further questions, however, she was already moving toward the door.
By the time you had managed to stop crying and make yourself somewhat presentable again, your eyes were still red and your cheeks still blotchy. You clutched your exam paper tightly against your chest as you made your way back toward the Great Hall, still trying to piece together what had happened.
The corridor ahead was empty save for two approaching figures.
At first you barely paid them any attention.
Professor Snape was walking briskly in your direction, his dark robes billowing dramatically behind him as they always seemed to. Beside him walked another student, hands shoved into his pockets and expression thunderous enough to make most people step out of his way.
Mattheo Riddle.
At first, you barely paid attention. Then your eyes caught on the black smudges beneath his eyes—dark, uneven streaks that clung to his lashes and marked the skin beneath them. Mascara. Your mascara.
You stopped walking.
Mattheo stopped too.
For a moment, neither of you spoke. The corridor around you felt strangely distant, as though everything else had faded into a muffled blur while the two of you stood suspended in something sharp and disorienting.
His gaze moved over your face, lingering on your red-rimmed eyes and tear-stained cheeks. Slowly—almost visibly—understanding began to settle across both of your expressions at the same time, like the final pieces of a puzzle clicking into place.
The notes that hadn’t been written by you but had appeared on your skin anyway.
The mascara that hadn’t been applied by him but was now smeared across his face.
The reason Professor Snape was escorting him down the corridor.
His expression darkened first.
Yours followed not long after.
You had never met him before. Never spoken to him.
And yet somehow, within minutes of discovering he was your soulmate, Mattheo Riddle had nearly gotten you expelled.
As he continued to glare at you from across the corridor, looking every bit as offended by the situation as you felt, you came to one very simple conclusion.
The universe had an absolutely horrific sense of humour.
Year 6:
It was quiet in the dormitory—far too quiet for a weekday morning.
You frowned slightly, still half-asleep as you burrowed deeper beneath your blankets, turning your face further into the pillow. Usually by now the room would already be alive with noise: drawers slamming shut, sleepy complaints about unfinished homework, someone inevitably losing a sock five minutes before class. But there was none of it. No chatter. No rushing footsteps.
Which could only mean one thing.
You had woken up too early.
A pleased little sigh escaped you as you snuggled further into the warmth of your bed, already drifting back toward sleep. Maybe you had another hour left. Maybe—
“(Y/N) (L/N), FOR GODRIC’S SAKE, WAKE UP! YOU’VE ALREADY MISSED BREAKFAST!”
You bolted upright so fast you nearly headbutted the bedpost.
“WHAT?!” You shrieked, voice rough with sleep as panic shot through you all at once, “Hermione, why didn’t you wake me?!”
“I DID, YOU TEA TOWEL!”
The insult barely registered as you threw your blankets off yourself and stumbled out of bed in a frenzy, hair a complete mess and heart racing with the immediate horror of being late. Your bag was still unpacked from the night before, half your books hanging out of it as you rushed around the room trying to pull yourself together.
“Why didn’t anyone shake me harder?!” You complained, yanking your uniform shirt over your head inside out before realizing and swearing under your breath.
Hermione, already fully dressed and exasperatingly put together, didn’t even look up from stuffing parchment into her bag, “I did! It's not my fault you sleep like the dead.”
You huffed, grabbing your skirt and tugging it on crookedly as you rushed toward the mirror, mentally planning the fastest possible route to class. If you skipped properly brushing your hair and just fixed it on the way—maybe if you brushed your teeth in the bathroom nearest the Charms corridor—
And then you looked up.
Your stomach dropped so suddenly it felt like the floor had disappeared beneath you.
For a moment, all you could do was stare.
Your own reflection stared back at you in equal horror, pale and frozen and impossibly awake now, but you barely noticed the expression on your face because your eyes were locked on the red mark pressed against your cheek.
A lipstick stain.
Bright. Smudged.
Unmistakably shaped like the imprint of someone’s mouth.
Your breath caught.
There was another near the corner of your lips, blurred slightly like it had been kissed there carelessly. One against your jaw. Another lower down, just beneath your ear.
Dread began settling into you slowly, horribly, piece by piece.
“No.” You whispered.
Your hands started shaking.
“No, no—”
You turned slightly toward the mirror, fingers fumbling desperately with the collar of your shirt as you pulled it aside.
More.
Faint red marks scattered across your skin, disappearing beneath the fabric of your clothes. Some were clearer than others; some were smeared, dragged slightly, as though whoever had left them behind had done so thoughtlessly. Casually.
You stared at them, your reflection blurring around the edges as tears began burning in your eyes.
Your throat tightened painfully.
The room suddenly felt too small, too warm, your chest caving inward as realization settled fully over you.
“)Y/N), come on, class starts in—”
Hermione stopped mid-sentence.
You didn’t turn around, but you saw her expression shift in the mirror from annoyance to shock. Her eyes caught on the marks scattered across your neck and collarbone, and the look on her face softened so quickly it made something inside you crack further.
“Oh.”
You squeezed your eyes shut.
A heavy silence settled across the room. Then you heard Hermione approach slowly, carefully, like she was afraid one wrong movement would shatter you completely. She stopped just behind you, her reflection appearing over your shoulder, and when you finally forced yourself to look up again you saw nothing but sympathy written all over her face.
“Oh, (Y/N),” She said softly, and somehow the gentleness in her voice hurt worse than the marks themselves, “I’m so sorry.”
You swallowed hard and forced yourself to inhale, then exhale, trying desperately to hold yourself together.
“It’s fine,” You said immediately, too quickly, your voice unnaturally flat, “It’s not like I liked him anyway.”
The second the words left your mouth, your chin trembled.
Hermione’s expression crumpled.
And suddenly you couldn’t do it anymore.
A broken sound escaped your throat before you could stop it, and then the tears were falling all at once, hot and uncontrollable as the ache in your chest finally split wide open. You covered your mouth with your hand like that could somehow hold the sobs back, but it was useless. Your knees nearly gave out beneath you as weeks and months of buried hope came crashing down all at once.
Hermione caught you before you could fall properly, pulling you into her arms immediately.
And the second she did, you broke completely.
You cried into her shoulder so hard it hurt, fingers clutching desperately at the fabric of her jumper while humiliation and heartbreak tore through you in waves.
Your soulmate had slept with someone else.
A few mornings later, when Hermione sat down at the Gryffindor table for breakfast, she wasn't remotely offended when the eyes of her friends immediately flicked over her shoulder.
It had become something of a routine.
Every day for the past week, someone would look up when she arrived, expecting to find you trailing behind her. Every day their faces would fall when they realized she was alone.
Just as she was today.
Harry was the first to break the silence, "She still won't come down?"
Hermione's grip tightened slightly around her spoon.
The concern on his face mirrored exactly how she felt.
You hadn't attended a single class all week. The first two days had been the worst. You had cried until you physically exhausted yourself, until your body finally gave out and sleep claimed you against your will. By the following morning, you'd developed a fever bad enough that Hermione had practically dragged you to the Hospital Wing herself.
Madam Pomfrey had taken one look at your blotchy face, red-rimmed eyes, and dangerously high temperature before ordering you into a bed and refusing to hear arguments.
Hermione had stayed beside you for as long as she'd been allowed.
She remembered watching you sleep fitfully beneath white sheets, occasionally stirring only to curl further into yourself. She remembered the way your hand would sometimes move unconsciously toward your neck, fingers brushing against skin where the marks had long since faded.
Eventually Madam Pomfrey had forced Hermione out, insisting there was nothing more she could do.
Now several days later, the fever had broken.
But you still hadn't left your room.
Hermione shook her head, "No."
Hermione sighed, reaching for her tea, though her attention was nowhere near her breakfast. Her gaze swept across the Great Hall, not aimlessly skimming over the hundreds of students filling the room, but locking onto its target almost immediately like a heat-seeking missile.
Mattheo Riddle.
He sat at the Slytherin table with his friends, laughing at something one of them had said, completely at ease, looking every bit like he hadn't a single worry in the world. The sight of him sitting there so carelessly, smiling like life had handed him every reason to, made Hermione irrationally want to march across the hall, grab him by the ears, and squeeze his head until it popped like an unsightly pimple.
He had absolutely no idea.
No idea that his soulmate hadn't left her bed in days.
No idea that she'd cried herself into a fever.
No idea that Hermione had spent hours sitting beside her, listening to her sob until she had nothing left in her, only to watch her stare blankly at the canopy above her bed as though she'd forgotten how to exist.
Her jaw tightened.
"Look at him," She muttered bitterly, her eyes boring so intensely into the side of his head that she was almost disappointed when he didn't spontaneously burst into flames, "I spent half the week consoling her, and he's sitting over there like he's the bloody king of the world."
Then, she looked back down into the untouched cup of tea in front of her, watching her own furious reflection ripple across its surface. The anger was still there, burning hot beneath her skin, but it had long since become tangled with something far more unbearable.
Helplessness.
Because no matter how angry she was, it wouldn't undo what had happened.
It wouldn't stop you from shutting yourself away in your dormitory, curtains drawn around your bed, convinced that facing four wooden bedposts was somehow easier than facing the rest of the world.
She felt the sting behind her eyes before she realized she was blinking a little too often.
"I can't believe someone like her is supposed to end up with someone like him." She murmured, her voice losing all of its earlier bite.
She absentmindedly stabbed at her pancakes with her fork, skewering a lone berry in the process without even noticing.
"She's the sweetest, kindest, most selfless person I've ever met," Hermione continued quietly, swallowing around the lump that had formed in her throat, "She'd do absolutely anything for the people she loves, and somehow..." She gave a humorless laugh, shaking her head, "Somehow he's the person the universe chose for her."
Finally, Hermione let out a slow, defeated sigh.
"How could the universe be so cruel?"
Harry and Ron exchanged a glance, but neither of them answered.
Because what could they possibly say?
Afterall, they had no idea what it was like to be rejected by your soulmate.
Your head felt impossibly heavy.
When you'd finally cried yourself to sleep the night before, you'd hoped that maybe—just maybe—you'd wake up feeling even a little bit lighter.
Instead, it felt as though someone had stuffed your head full of damp cotton.
Everything was muted.
You could see the familiar shape of your dormitory around you, the sunlight spilling lazily through the windows, painting warm patches across the wooden floor, but none of it felt real. If someone had asked you to name half a dozen things in your own room, you weren't entirely convinced you could have done it. Your thoughts drifted in and out without ever quite settling long enough to grasp them.
Outside, Hogwarts carried on as though nothing had happened.
Somewhere below the tower, students laughed as they crossed the courtyard on their way back from breakfast. Every so often, a shrill whistle carried in through the open window, followed by the distant roar of voices from the Quidditch pitch.
Life went on.
It always did.
But inside your dormitory, it felt as though time itself had stopped.
Like you were sitting inside a vacuum, sealed away from the rest of the castle, where even the sound of your own breathing seemed impossibly far away.
You hadn't even realized someone was knocking.
The sound barely registered through the haze clouding your mind, so faint and distant that you mistook it for part of a dream. It wasn't until the door slowly creaked open that you finally stirred, letting out a weary sigh without even bothering to look up.
"Hermione," You mumbled into your pillow, your voice hoarse from days of crying, "Please... I don't want breakfast."
There was a brief pause.
"Well," Came a decidedly unfamiliar voice, "It's a good thing Chocolate Frogs aren't considered breakfast."
Your eyes snapped open.
Slowly, you pushed yourself upright, blinking through the fog in your head until the figure standing sheepishly in your doorway came into focus.
Messy ginger hair.
Hands buried deep in his pockets.
A crooked smile that looked like it wasn't entirely sure whether it belonged there.
"...Fred?"
The way you said his name made him chuckle softly.
Not because it was funny, exactly, but because your tone carried that slight undercurrent of cautiousness, like you were trying to work out whether you were looking at Fred Weasley or his identical twin.
"It's me," He assured you with an easy grin, "George is considerably uglier."
Despite everything, the corner of your mouth twitched.
Fred caught it but, to his credit, didn't point it out. He simply closed the door quietly behind him and wandered further into the dormitory, his hands still buried in the pockets of his jumper as though he were only stopping by for a casual chat.
Although, you knew better than to believe that.
He was here for something.
You just couldn't work out what.
Had Hermione sent him? Had she somehow decided that Fred's ridiculous sense of humour might succeed where she had failed? More importantly, how in Merlin's name had he even managed to get into the girls' dormitory in the first place?
"...What are you doing here?" You asked.
The question left your mouth more out of politeness than genuine curiosity.
Truthfully, you didn't really care.
Whether Fred was here or not, whether he'd come to cheer you up or drag you to breakfast or simply stare at you until you spoke, all you wanted was to be left alone again. So you settled back against your headboard, waiting for whatever explanation he had prepared so you could nod absentmindedly, mumble something about still being tired, and hope he'd take the hint.
Fred scratched the back of his neck.
"I don't really know," He admitted after a moment with a small shrug, "I heard Hermione talking about you downstairs."
He finally pulled his hands from his pockets.
A handful of Chocolate Frog boxes tumbled into his palms.
"I heard she was worried." He looked down at the collection of sweets before giving one shoulder another little shrug, "Next thing I knew, I was standing outside your door."
He crossed the room and sat down carefully on the edge of your bed.
Instinctively, you tugged your cocoon of blankets out from beneath him, unwilling to surrender even that small comfort. Fred pretended not to notice. Instead, he simply dropped the Chocolate Frogs into your lap one by one.
"I figured," He said, "if nothing else, chocolate rarely makes things worse."
You stared down at them for a second before absentmindedly picking one up and peeling open the box.
"Whatever Hermione's worried about..." You murmured, carefully unfolding the cardboard, "...it isn't going to happen."
The chocolate frog immediately sprang from your hands.
You watched it bounce across the dormitory floor, disappearing beneath someone's bed but you paid no heed, fishing the card from the now-empty box instead.
Helga Hufflepuff.
Nice.
"I just wanted some time to be alone," You said quietly, your thumb tracing absent circles over the edge of the card, "Some time to think. You wouldn't understand."
Fred's smile faded.
"Oh," He said, leaning back on his hands, "Believe me."
His eyes drifted toward the window for a moment.
"I know exactly what that's like."
You froze, your thumb absentmindedly tracing the edge of the Nicolas Flamel card as you silently cursed your own stupidity.
Of course.
You had completely forgotten who you were talking to.
Everyone knew Fred Weasley's story.
It had been impossible not to.
It had spread through Hogwarts like wildfire the day the twins turned sixteen and discovered, to the absolute bewilderment of the entire school, that they shared the same soulmate mark. The same name inked onto both of their wrists.
Angelina.
No one had known what to make of it. How could the universe make a mistake? It wasn't supposed to.
Yet somehow, two brothers had been promised the same girl.
In the end, Angelina had chosen George.
No one blamed her. She'd simply followed her heart.
And just like that, Fred had become the boy without a soulmate.
What followed had been painful to watch.
Every passing week seemed to chip away at something that had once felt unbreakable. Fred and George had always existed as a pair. Joined at the hip, people liked to joke. Before that, joined by an umbilical cord. There had never been one without the other.
It had been heartbreaking watching the distance grow between the twins afterwards. Not all at once, but slowly, almost imperceptibly, until people realized Fred no longer occupied the seat beside George in the Great Hall. They stopped seeing them sneaking through corridors together after curfew. Their jokes became less frequent, their laughter less shared.
Fred simply couldn't bear to watch the girl he'd spent years believing was destined to love him fall into his brother's arms instead.
Eventually, time had done what time always did.
The sharp edges had dulled.
The twins laughed together again. They pulled pranks together. They looked, from the outside at least, like themselves again. But anyone paying close enough attention could tell they were never quite the same.
How could they be?
Their seemingly inseverable brotherhood had been eclipsed by an ineffable bond.
Soulmates.
It was no longer Fred and George, the terrible terrors. Now, it was George and Angelina, the star-crossed lovers, and Fred, who had been left behind.
"I'm sorry." You whispered, the apology slipping out before you could stop it.
Fred's eyes met yours.
"So am I."
He didn't elaborate.
He didn't have to.
And for the first time in days, you felt the glass jar you had trapped yourself in begin to crack.
This whole time, you'd convinced yourself that hiding in your dormitory was helping. As long as you stayed within these four walls, you could pretend the world outside had stopped moving. Pretend that morning had never happened.
Reality settled over you with unbearable clarity.
That was what this was, wasn't it?
Rejection.
Mattheo had known exactly who you were. He'd known that every mark left on his skin would bloom across yours. He'd known you would wake up wearing the evidence of his choices.
And he'd done it anyway.
The thought hollowed you out.
Your entire life, you'd been told that soulmates were certainty. That somewhere in the world there was one person who would choose you above everyone else because the universe itself had decided you belonged together.
So what did it mean when they didn't?
If even your soulmate could look at you and still choose someone else...
Where exactly did that leave you?
Slowly, you lifted your eyes from the card to Fred, who was sitting beside you now, close enough that your shoulders nearly brushed, his gaze already fixed on you.
Your heart ached.
Because the answer to your unvoiced question was written all over his face.
He was every bit as heartbroken as you were.
Just as lost.
Just as unsure of where he fit into a universe that had promised him one thing, only to hand him another.
It hurt him every time he saw George with Angelina. You knew it did. No matter how much he loved his brother, no matter how genuinely happy he wanted to be for him, there had to be a small part of him that wondered why it hadn't been him.
Why fate had bothered writing her name onto his skin at all.
And you knew, with sickening certainty, that the next time you saw Mattheo...
It would tear you apart in exactly the same way.
Fred's expression softened as he noticed your eyes beginning to fill again.
He offered you a small, sympathetic smile.
"Well..." He said, giving one shoulder an exaggerated shrug, "At least we've got each other."
A laugh escaped you before you could stop it. It was watery and quiet, immediately chased by the tear that finally slipped down your cheek. Fred grinned a little wider, looking entirely too pleased with himself for managing to get even the tiniest laugh out of you.
"I suppose the reject bin isn't completely empty."
"No," Fred agreed, "Turns out it's got surprisingly good company."
Turns out misery really did love company.
It was almost pathetic, in a way.
The only reason you had finally been able to leave your room, to walk back into the Great Hall, to sit through classes without feeling like the walls were caving in around you, was because you'd discovered you weren't the only person carrying around this strangely specific kind of heartbreak.
Your chest still tightened whenever Mattheo walked into a room. Every accidental glance across a corridor still left you feeling hollowed out from the inside, wondering how someone who was supposedly destined to love you had found it so easy to choose somebody else instead.
But sitting beside Fred somehow made it easier to breathe.
You supposed anyone watching from the outside would've found it to be the most obvious outcome imaginable.
Birds of a feather.
Two people who had somehow fallen through the cracks of destiny naturally gravitating toward one another.
Before long, spending time with Fred stopped feeling like something you consciously chose to do and instead became part of your routine. You'd find him waiting outside your classroom without either of you having planned it, or he'd drop into the empty seat beside you at breakfast as though it had always belonged to him.
Sometimes you talked about soulmates.
Most of the time, you didn't.
And somehow, those were your favourite conversations.
You hadn't realized just how grateful you'd become for his presence until one morning at breakfast when Harry slid onto the bench opposite you, looking unusually flustered and whispered, "I met my soulmate last night."
Thankfully, Hermione's excited gasp and Ron's loud, "You what?!" completely drowned out the sound of your breath catching in your throat.
For a brief, horrible second, it felt as though you had left your own body.
The conversation continued around you in muffled voices while you watched it all unfold from somewhere far away, like you were observing it through thick glass. Hermione was already peppering Harry with questions. Harry, red-faced and grinning despite himself, tried unsuccessfully to answer them both at once.
You just... watched.
Until something warm wrapped gently around your hand beneath the table and your attention snapped back. Without saying a word, you laced your fingers through his beneath the tablecloth, hidden from everyone else.
The knot in your stomach loosened.
Not completely. But just enough so that when you turned back to Harry, the smile on your face no longer felt so forced.
"Congratulations, Harry," You said softly, "I'm really happy for you."
Harry's smile faltered.
Only then did it seem to occur to him what he'd just blurted out—and who he'd blurted it out in front of.
A flicker of guilt passed across his face behind his glasses.
"Oh, (Y/N), I didn't—I wasn't thinking—"
You shook your head before he could finish, "It's okay."
And surprisingly...
It was.
Harry relaxed, offering you a small, grateful smile before Hermione immediately launched into another question, successfully stealing his attention once more.
Only then did you turn your head.
Fred was already looking at you.
Your joined hands still rested beneath the table, his thumb absentmindedly brushing across your knuckles.
"I just can't believe how much time I've wasted."
Your voice was quiet as you stared up at the canopy of Fred's bed, watching the afternoon sunlight dance lazily across the faded red fabric. Beside you, Fred lay with one arm tucked behind his head, the other dangling over the edge of the mattress. He turned his head slightly.
"Hm?"
It wasn't often the conversation drifted back to soulmates anymore.
Somehow, the two of you had become remarkably good at avoiding the very thing that had brought you together in the first place. But every now and then, usually when the castle had gone quiet around you, one of you would bring it up again.
And somehow it was always easier talking to Fred than anyone else.
"I've never even been on a date," You admitted with a humourless laugh, "Can you believe that?"
Fred's eyebrows lifted.
"I just... wasted so much time." You sighed, picking absentmindedly at a loose thread in the blanket. "I kept thinking there was no point. Why bother dating when the universe was supposedly going to hand me the perfect person eventually?"
You shook your head.
"I was so convinced that one day everything would just... happen."
A small smile tugged at your lips.
"I suppose, in retrospect, that's a rather ridiculous way to live."
Fred was quiet for a moment.
Then he nodded.
"I get it."
You looked over at him.
"Before my soulmate mark appeared," He continued, "I never really bothered trying either. I always figured I'd meet my soulmate eventually, so whoever I dated beforehand wouldn't really matter."
He let out a small breath through his nose.
"And after..." His smile turned a little sad, "Well, there wasn't much point then either."
You understood immediately.
"Everyone already had someone they were meant to end up with."
"Exactly."
He shrugged, "It felt like borrowing someone else's future."
Silence settled comfortably between you.
"I know exactly what you mean," You murmured, "Even if I'd somehow found someone I actually liked. It would've only been a matter of time before they found their soulmate."
"And then I'd just be..." You trailed off, "Temporary."
Fred didn't say anything.
He didn't have to.
Because he'd spent the last year feeling exactly the same way.
You groaned dramatically, throwing an arm over your eyes, "I just want to go on a date for once."
Fred snorted.
"Is that too much to ask?" You bemoaned.
"I don't even want anything extravagant," You continued, finally sitting upright since the topic had become important enough to warrant an actual discussion. You gestured vaguely with your hands, trying to paint the picture in the air between you, "Just… one completely ordinary date."
Fred turned his head to look at you.
"I want to wear a pretty dress," You admitted, counting on your fingers, "I want to spend far too long doing my hair, even though it'll probably end up looking exactly the same as it did before. I want someone to bring me flowers."
The last part made Fred's eyebrows climb.
"...Flowers?"
You frowned at him as though he'd just said something outrageously offensive.
"Yes. Flowers."
"You've just spent the last minute insisting you don't want anything extravagant."
"They're flowers. It's the bare minimum."
A comfortable silence settled over the room again. You flopped back against the mattress with an exaggerated sigh, staring up at the canopy above while Fred continued looking at the ceiling beside you.
"I just..." You murmured after a while, your voice softer now, "I wish I knew what it felt like."
"What?"
"To have butterflies."
The admission felt oddly embarrassing.
"To get excited because someone asked me out. To spend the whole day wondering what they're going to think when they see me. To hold someone's hand because they wanted to hold mine." You laughed quietly at yourself, "I don't even care whether it's life-changing anymore."
You swallowed, the words catching slightly in your throat.
“I just wanted to know what normal feels like.”
For a moment, Fred didn’t respond.
He just lay there beside you, one arm tucked behind his head, eyes fixed lazily on the canopy above as though he were turning your words over somewhere quieter than conversation. The pause stretched longer than you expected it to—long enough that you almost convinced yourself he wasn’t going to answer at all, that the moment had passed and you’d said too much again.
Then, almost absentmindedly, he spoke.
“So let’s go on one.”
You frowned, turning your head slightly, having forgotten how the conversation had even ended, “...Go on what?”
“A date.”
That made you sit up a little more properly, the word feeling strangely out of place in the softness of the room, “A date?”
“Seems like the obvious solution.” He added, as though he were suggesting something as simple as going for a walk.
You blinked at him, trying to make sense of his expression, “...With who?”
Fred looked almost insulted.
"With me."
Silence.
Not the comfortable kind this time.
The air between you shifted—just slightly. You became acutely aware of the space between your shoulders, the way your fingers were curled into the blanket, the way Fred didn’t seem to notice any of it at all.
He, meanwhile, looked completely unconcerned with the fact that he had just suggested something that felt like it should be impossible to say out loud.
“I mean…” He continued after a beat, shrugging one shoulder as if it were obvious, “Think about it.”
You hesitated, “I am.”
“We’re both sitting here complaining we’ve never really dated anyone.”
“Yes…”
“We’re both catastrophically single.”
“Unfortunately.” You muttered, despite yourself.
“We both want to know what all the fuss is about.”
“I suppose.”
“So…” He spread his hands slightly, palms up, as though presenting the most logical conclusion in the world, “Why don’t we just take each other? Scratch the itch a bit.”
You looked away for a second, down at your hands where they were picking absently at the edge of the blanket, “I don’t know…” You admitted quietly.
Fred didn’t push. He rarely did.
Instead, he shifted slightly closer—not enough to crowd you, just enough that his presence was harder to ignore.
“You said you wanted to wear a pretty dress.”
“I did.” You murmured.
“You said you wanted a normal date.”
That made you glance back at him again.
Your voice came out softer this time, almost uncertain, “I do.”
A pause.
The kind that felt like something was being decided inside it.
Fred’s expression didn’t change much, but his voice gentled.
“So let me take you on one.”
Even though you were almost entirely certain Fred had suggested the date as a joke, you found yourself surprisingly nervous when the day finally arrived.
Not because you expected anything to happen.
It wasn't really a date, after all.
Not a real one.
Just two rejects pretending, for a few hours, that the universe hadn't forgotten about them.
Still, you couldn't deny there was something undeniably exciting about getting ready for it.
You stood in front of the mirror for far longer than you cared to admit, smoothing invisible creases from your clothes before immediately finding new ones to fuss over. Your hair had already been redone twice, and you were currently debating whether it looked better tucked behind your ears or left loose around your shoulders.
You had practically licked your lips dry, wanting to put on just a little bit of gloss, if not to look good then at least to stop you from worrying them so much.
But third year had taught you that makeup simply wasn't worth the argument.
The memory still made you grimace.
You had gotten a tube of cherry lip gloss as an impulse purchase from Hogsmeade. The bottle was just so cute and the colour was just right and it smelt like a cherry pie.
You'd worn it exactly once before Mattheo had cornered you in a corridor, positively livid over the matching sheen that had mysteriously appeared on his own lips.
The argument had been spectacular.
You'd shouted.
He'd shouted louder.
By the end of it both your cheeks had been burning, partly from anger and partly from the sheer humiliation.
After that, you'd quietly switched to glamour charms.
You shook your head, willing the memory to leave your mind. A light spritz of perfume followed, and then another after you convinced yourself the first one hadn't been enough.
This wasn't a date.
You reminded yourself of that several times while changing outfits.
And yet, by the time you finally slipped out of Gryffindor Tower—carefully timing your escape before Hermione and the others returned from lunch so nobody could make a spectacle of it—you couldn't deny the flutter of anticipation low in your stomach.
Your first date.
Fake though it may have been.
Fred was already waiting beside the Black Lake when you arrived. The moment he spotted you, his face broke into an easy grin. He awkwardly straightened where he stood before holding out a small bouquet of hand-picked wildflowers.
A smile spread across your face before you could stop it.
You accepted them carefully, bringing them close enough to catch their sweet scent, asking with a teasing lilt to your tone, "Now whose Herbology project did you ruin by nicking these?"
Fred clutched dramatically at his chest.
"I would never."
"No?"
"I'll have you know these were ethically sourced. Well, a bit of unpaid labour." He said, showing you the slight dirt that was still left on the tips of his fingers.
You grinned, leaning to give him a quick peck on the cheek, "There, paid for in full."
"So..." You said, looking up at him, "What's the plan? It isn't swimming, is it? Because I spent entirely too long on my hair."
His eyes flicked over said hair for only the briefest moment.
"It looks nice."
You blinked.
"...Thank you."
The words came so casually that he didn't even seem to realize he'd said them aloud. Then his usual grin returned, "And don't worry. I've got something much more special in mind."
Rather than reassuring you, that somehow made you considerably more suspicious.
Fred simply laughed before turning on his heel and beckoning for you to follow. He led you around the edge of the Black Lake and toward a dense cluster of trees you'd never paid much attention to before.
"I thought we'd collectively agreed wandering into mysterious forests was a terrible idea after the centaurs last year." You remarked as you ducked beneath a low branch he held out of your way.
"We did."
"And?"
"We also established I was the worse student between the two of us."
You rolled your eyes, "Can't argue with that."
A few moments later he stopped.
Nestled between several thick tree trunks was what appeared to be nothing more than a tiny tunnel woven entirely from vines and ivy.
Before you had time to question it, Fred crouched down and disappeared inside.
You stared after him.
"...Bit brazen of you to expect a girl to get on her knees on the first date, don't you think, Weasley?"
His laugh echoed back through the tunnel.
"Oh, come on."
"I'm simply making observations."
"Get in here, (Y/N)."
Still muttering dramatically under your breath, you crouched down and crawled after him. The tunnel only lasted a few feet.
The first thing you noticed as your head emerged from the other side was the sunlight. Bright summer sunshine spilled across your face exactly as expected.
The second thing you noticed was the cold.
A sharp, winter chill immediately kissed your cheeks and nipped at the end of your nose.
You blinked.
Then looked up.
Your breath caught.
Hidden away beyond the curtain of vines was a tiny clearing unlike anywhere else on the Hogwarts grounds.
Wildflowers carpeted the earth in every imaginable colour while rabbits darted lazily through the grass, entirely unconcerned by your arrival. Golden afternoon light poured through the canopy overhead, making the entire place glow like something lifted straight from a fairy tale.
But none of that was what stole your breath.
At the very centre of the clearing lay a lake.
Perfectly still.
Perfectly frozen.
A sheet of flawless ice sat beneath the blazing summer sun as though winter itself had been trapped inside this tiny corner of the world.
"...What on earth..."
"Amazing, isn't it?"
You turned to find Fred watching you rather than the lake.
His grin was quieter now. There was still that unmistakable stretch of pride across his face as he took in your gobsmacked reaction, but beneath it lingered a hint of fondness that sent a slight flush to your cheeks, one you stubbornly insisted was caused by the cold.
"I was mucking about here in second year," He admitted with an embarrassed scratch at the back of his neck, "George and I were trying to invent a product that could make it snow indoors."
"And?"
"And... I may have perpetually frozen the entire lake."
You stared at him, "You may have?"
He shrugged, "I got scared I'd be in trouble if anyone found it."
"So you..."
"So, I never told anyone."
As he spoke, he reached out and absentmindedly cast a quiet Scourgify over your clothes, brushing away the bits of moss and leaves that had collected while crawling through the tunnel.
His fingers paused near your shoulder.
"There."
He gently plucked a tiny twig from your hair before tucking a loose strand behind your ear with absent familiarity.
"So..." You looked back at the lake, "You've never shown anyone this?"
"No."
"...Not even George?"
Fred's smile softened.
He shook his head.
"No."
Something warm unfurled low in your chest.
Warmer than the summer sun beating down on you.
You felt it.
The butterflies.
Walking back toward the castle felt strangely bittersweet.
Like stepping out of a storybook.
The hidden clearing disappeared behind the curtain of vines the moment you stepped through it, swallowed once again by the forest as though it had never been there at all. If you hadn't still felt the lingering chill clinging to your clothes, you might have convinced yourself you'd imagined the entire afternoon.
Your nose stung from the cold.
Your cheeks, however, had turned pink from hours spent laughing beneath the summer sun.
The two of you had spent hours on that frozen lake.
By the time the sun had begun sinking below the treeline, painting the ice in shades of amber and gold, the two of you had been too exhausted to do much more than sit side by side on the frozen shore, talking until the growing darkness reminded you that professors generally frowned upon students disappearing into enchanted forests after curfew.
Now, the familiar warmth of the castle wrapped around you as the heavy oak doors swung shut behind you.
The sudden change in temperature made your fingers tingle unpleasantly as feeling slowly returned to them.
A comfortable silence settled between you as you wandered through the entrance hall.
Students passed around you in little groups, chatting animatedly over dinner plans and unfinished essays, but neither of you made any move toward joining them.
Eventually, you reached the foot of the marble staircase.
You turned toward Fred.
He'd been unusually quiet for the last few minutes.
The easy confidence he'd carried all afternoon had somehow disappeared somewhere between the lake and the castle, replaced instead by something unexpectedly hesitant. His hands had found the pockets of his jumper again and he rocked back slightly on his heels before clearing his throat.
"(Y/N)..."
"Hm?"
He rubbed the back of his neck.
"So..."
You waited.
"I know..." He let out a small, awkward laugh, "I know this wasn't exactly a date-date. But…" His eyes found yours again, "I had a really good time."
Something in your chest fluttered.
"And unless I've completely misread today..." He continued carefully, "I think maybe you did too."
You did.
Far more than you'd expected to.
"So..." He took a small breath, "Unless I've made an absolute fool of myself here, I was wondering if maybe—"
"Let's go on a second date, Fred."
The words escaped before your brain had the chance to stop them.
You hadn't meant to interrupt him.
Truthfully, you'd been rather enjoying the exceedingly rare spectacle of Fred Weasley stumbling over his own words. It was oddly endearing watching someone who always seemed to have a joke ready suddenly become hopelessly tongue-tied.
Unfortunately, your own anticipation had won the race.
Silence settled between you. Fred simply stared. For one wonderfully long moment, he looked completely dumbfounded.
Then, slowly, a grin began tugging at the corners of his mouth.
It spread across his face before he could stop it, bright enough that you watched him actively try to suppress it.
"Well," He drawled, folding his arms as though he hadn't just been struck speechless, "Someone's certainly getting ahead of herself, isn't she?"
You folded your own arms in mock offence.
"Oh?"
"I hadn't even finished asking yet."
"You were taking too long."
He took one thoughtful look at you before his grin returned in full force.
"...So," He tilted his head ever so slightly, "Same time next week?"
Fred was always good at date ideas.
You knew that much by now.
Every time you met him, there was something planned—something a little ridiculous, a little exhausting, and always, without fail, something that made it impossible for you to think about anything else except how much you were laughing.
But with the July heat pressing down over Hogwarts like a heavy, unrelenting spell, even Fred’s usual energy had begun to soften at the edges.
The castle itself felt sluggish. Corridors held onto warmth long after sunset, windows stayed permanently open, and even the enchanted ceiling of the Great Hall seemed stuck in an endless stretch of pale, hazy blue.
But it seemed the unbearable heat had given Fred an idea for another date.
Which was how you found yourself standing at the edge of the Black Lake in a cute bikini you’d been waiting all summer to wear, your shoes discarded somewhere in the grass behind you, watching him attempt to skip stones across the water.
He managed one bounce.
The stone immediately sank.
“Hm,” Fred said thoughtfully, staring at the ripples like they had personally betrayed him, “I’ve gotten considerably worse at that.”
“You were never good.”
“I distinctly remember being excellent.”
“That’s the heat talking. It’s cooked your brain.”
He gasped, pressing a hand to his chest in mock offence.
“You wound me.”
“I try.”
He looked at you, a sinister smile on his face that gave you a feeling that he was planning something, “Well, I try harder.”
You barely had time to process the warning in his grin before you felt it—a sharp splash against your shoulders, cold water exploding across your skin.
“Fred!”
You sputtered as you broke the surface, hair dripping into your eyes just in time to see him double over laughing.
And then, before you could retaliate, he cannonballed in after you.
Every moment of calm dissolved into splashing, laughter, and half-hearted attempts to dunk one another beneath the surface. Fred succeeded exactly once before you retaliated by grabbing his ankle and dragging him under with you, emerging seconds later breathless and triumphant.
By the time the chaos finally eased, you’d drifted farther from shore, your limbs heavy with exhaustion and your sides aching from laughing too hard.
For a moment, there was nothing but gentle movement. Water lapping softly against your shoulders. Sunlight scattering across the surface in broken gold. Fred floating nearby, hair plastered to his forehead, grinning like he didn’t have a single thought in his head except this.
You turned slightly, your gaze catching on something in the water near your hands.
It glimmered faintly beneath the surface.
“Oh—wait—” You said, reaching out instinctively, “I think that’s a shell or something. It's pretty."
Before you could even finish the sentence, Fred was already diving.
He disappeared beneath the surface without hesitation.
"Chivalry is dead, they say."
The words died in your throat when he resurfaced a moment later, shaking water from his hair.
In his hand, he held the shell out proudly, grinning at you, “Ta-da.”
You smiled automatically, already reaching for it, already preparing some teasing comment until your eyes slipped past his hand.
Past the shell.
To his wrist.
Angelina.
The name sat against his skin like it belonged there.
Like it had always belonged there.
Your fingers stopped mid-air.
Fred was still talking, still smiling, still looking at you with that easy warmth that had become so familiar you didn’t even think about it anymore. His voice blurred slightly at the edges, like it was coming from farther away than it actually was, and the lake around you suddenly felt quieter, heavier, as though it had decided to hold its breath with you.
You couldn’t look away from it.
Angelina.
It wasn't wasn't the first time you were seeing it. It definitely wasn't new.
And yet seeing it like this—so close, so real, so casually visible between moments of laughter—made something inside you tighten in a way you hadn’t been prepared for.
The universe’s choice.
Not you.
Never you.
A strange stillness settled in your chest, not sharp at first, just heavy, like the slow sinking of something you hadn’t realized you were holding. Your thoughts began to slip before you could catch them, drifting in directions you couldn’t stop.
Would they make a good couple?
Did she ever think about him when she looked at George?
Did she ever wonder what it would’ve been like if she’d chosen differently, if she’d taken a different path, if she’d looked at the wrong twin and hesitated just a second longer?
And worse—did Fred ever think about it too?
The shell in his hand suddenly felt irrelevant, something from a different moment entirely, like it didn’t belong in this one anymore. Like it had been part of a version of the world where you weren’t thinking about this. Where you weren’t standing in the middle of a lake watching the evidence of a future you didn’t belong in wrapped around his wrist.
You weren’t even fully aware of the shift until it had already happened.
One moment you were here, in sunlight and laughter and water that still clung warm to your skin.
The next, everything felt distant.
Muted.
As though you had stepped just slightly outside of yourself.
“…(Y/N)?”
You blinked, forcing yourself back into your body, into the moment, into the lake and the shell and him.
Fred was closer now, his expression no longer playful. The smile had faded without him even seeming to notice, replaced by something quieter, more attentive.
“You alright?”
For a second, you forgot how to answer.
Then you managed something that almost resembled normal.
“Yeah.”
A pause.
His eyes didn’t leave your face.
“You sure?”
Too quickly—too automatically—you nodded.
“Just cold.”
Even as you said it, you knew it wasn’t convincing.
Fred didn’t push. He rarely did when it mattered.
Instead, he moved closer through the water until his arm brushed yours, steady and grounding, and then—like it was the most natural thing in the world—he slipped it around your waist to keep you from drifting too far with the current.
“Yeah? Well,” He said softly, almost lightly again, as though trying to pull you back without forcing it, “We can fix that.”
And for a moment, you let him.
Just a moment.
A final moment.
In all honesty, you hadn’t meant to avoid him.
Really, you hadn’t.
It wasn’t like you actively chose to turn around every time you saw Fred in the corridors, or pretend you hadn’t received his notes because you’d gone to bed early, or slip out of a room the second you heard his boisterous laughter drawing closer—the same laughter that used to send a wave of warmth flooding through you.
But every time you saw him—his warm brown eyes, shadowed by long lashes—you felt that sinking pit open up in your stomach, swallowing everything else whole. It ruined your day before it had even properly begun.
And even though all you wanted was to be near him, you couldn’t help but turn away every time his eyes searched for you.
You really should have considered the fact that Fred wasn’t going to take it lying down.
And that he knew all about the secret passageways scattered around Hogwarts.
So you really shouldn’t have been surprised when he appeared in the corridor that had been empty not even a second ago—grabbing your wrist and stopping you in your tracks.
“Fred.”
“This push-and-pull bullshit isn’t going to work with me, (Y/N),” He said immediately, “If you want to break up with me, you better look me in the eye and do it.”
Ironic.
Because you couldn’t.
Your gaze stayed anchored to his wrist—specifically, to the inked name along his pulse, peeking out from beneath his sleeve.
And just like that, the pit in your stomach returned.
“This isn’t going to work, Fred.”
His brows twitched, his grip tightening just a fraction—like he was afraid you’d slip away again if he loosened it.
“Why?”
You let out a breath, shaking your head like the answer should be obvious.
“Because you’re not meant to be with me,” You said, “You’re already… destined for someone else.”
A flicker of confusion crossed his face.
“My brother’s soulmate?” He said, almost incredulous, “I would never do that to him. And she’s already made her choice.”
“And if she didn’t?” You pressed, your voice tightening, “If she changes her mind tomorrow? If she decides you’re the one she’s meant to be with… would you change yours?”
The question hung between you.
Fred didn’t answer immediately.
Instead, his gaze sharpened.
“Well then what about you?” He shot back, “If Riddle suddenly realizes how badly he messed up—comes crawling back, begging you to take him—would you go?”
The edge in his voice hit harder than you expected.
Suddenly, you were back in your dorm room again, staring at lipstick marks you hadn’t chosen, feeling that same hollow, awful ache in your chest.
Except this time—
he wasn’t your soulmate.
You had no claim to Fred.
If he turned around tomorrow and chose Angelina, you couldn’t fault him for it.
After all… she was his soulmate.
And if he wasn’t by your side—
If Mattheo came back, asking for your forgiveness—
Would you really be able to go back to him like nothing had happened? Could you let him touch you with the same hands that had touched someone else, pretend you didn’t know exactly where they had been? Could you stand there in his arms and still feel that sense of certainty you used to dream soulmates would bring—the feeling that this was your place in the world, that you were chosen, needed, loved completely?
“No,” You said, your voice barely above a whisper as the realization settled in, “I wouldn’t.”
Your voice steadied as you continued.
“I don’t want someone who would hurt me on purpose,” You said quietly, “I don’t want someone who makes me feel like I’m something they can come back to when it suits them. Like the only reason I’m with them is because someone out there decided it.”
Your eyes lifted to meet his.
“I want you.” You admitted, your voice tightening as you realized just how true it was.
These past few weeks with Fred had been the happiest you’d been in a long time. When you were with him, it felt like you’d finally found your place in the universe.
And that terrified you.
Because he wasn’t yours.
Not really.
And if those lipstick marks had broken your heart, then watching Fred walk away from you and go back to Angelina the second she called would destroy you.
“But I want you to want me too,” You finished, “Not just because I’m there. Not just to fill some empty space.”
Silence settled between you.
Fred’s grip loosened—not letting go, just sliding from your wrist to your hand, holding it instead.
“I’ll admit it,” He said after a moment, “That’s how it started.”
Your chest tightened.
“Just… something to make it hurt less,” He continued, quieter now, “Something to not feel so bloody lonely all the time.”
He looked at you then—really looked at you.
“But it’s not that anymore, (Y/N).”
And when you met his eyes, all you saw was sincerity. It hit you in a way you couldn’t quite explain—like the two of you weren’t just standing in a corridor anymore, but somewhere else entirely. Somewhere smaller. Quieter.
Just the two of you in the entire universe.
“I’m falling for you,” He said, like it scared him a little to admit it, he'd been burned before and he was scared he was going to be again, “And I want to be with you. Soulmate or not.”
You wanted to believe him.
You really did.
But the tattoo of her name lingered in your mind—a ghost between the two of you you didn’t know how to exorcise.
“But what about—”
“Fuck Angelina, alright!”
Your eyes widened and he dragged a hand through his hair, frustrated, desperate, “There isn’t a single part of me that wants her right now,” He said, “I thought I did. I thought I was supposed to. But I don’t.”
His voice dropped.
“Not like I do when I’m with you.”
You stared at him, that pit in your stomach beginning to dissipate, just slightly.
“(Y/N), please.” He said, taking your hand in both of his and pulling you closer, guiding your palm to rest against his chest.
His heartbeat was fast.
Almost as fast as yours.
“If you don’t feel the same way about me, that’s okay,” He said softly, “But don’t push me away because you think I’d rather be with anyone other than you. Because there is no one else, and there never will be.”
Something in you shifted, quiet but undeniable, and before you could second-guess it you stepped closer, your hand coming up to rest against his shoulder as you rose onto your toes, leaning in with the simple intention of pressing a soft kiss to his cheek.
But at the last second, he turned his head.
Your breath caught, your lips just a hair away from meeting his, so close you could feel the warmth of him, could see your own reflection in his blown out pupils. Your gaze dropped, almost involuntarily, to his mouth for just a moment and before you knew what was happening, you had closed the distance.
You had always thought your first kiss would be with your soulmate. You had saved it, carefully, stubbornly, building it up in your mind during sleepless nights—imagining electricity in little jolts rushing through your body, feeling inexplicable heat where he would've grabbed the dips of your waist, imagining certainty, imagining that unmistakable feeling that would tell you, without question, this is it.
You thought you would feel boundless joy rush through you, a state of euphoria that made you feel tethered and floating at the same time as you kissed the person you were meant to be with for the very first time.
As your arms slid around Fred’s neck and pulled him closer, as he kissed you back, his arms looping around your waist as he began to lose himself into you, blurring the lines between where you ended and he began.
You realized—
It was everything you had ever dreamed it would be.
The Gryffindor common room was rarely this quiet.
It almost felt like you had managed to catch your foot in the rug and slip into some kind of alternate dimension. Normally, it was chaos in its purest form—laughter spilling over armchairs, someone shouting about Quidditch from across the room, first-years getting shushed for the tenth time in five minutes. But tonight, the fire crackled softly instead of roaring, and even that felt like it was trying not to disturb the peace.
You were curled up in Fred’s lap like it was the most natural place in the world, one of his arms loosely around your waist while the other lazily traced patterns against your knee. You, meanwhile, were fully invested in a crossword puzzle like your life depended on it.
“Six across,” You murmured, brow furrowed, “Ten letters. ‘An ingredient in Pepper-Up potion—’ oh, this is easy.”
Fred hummed behind you, amused, “You say that about every single clue.”
“Because I am right every single time.”
“You absolutely are not.”
You glanced up at him over your shoulder, squinting, “Are you challenging my intellectual superiority?”
He shrugged, though that infuriating smirk was still on his face, “Not at all. Oh look—twelve down. Another word for humility. Quick, how many letters in 'not (Y/N)'?”
You clicked your tongue, rolling your eyes, and moved on to the next clue, solving it just as quickly as the last one. You leaned back against him with a satisfied little grin—and Fred tightened his arm around you just enough to make you tilt into him again.
“Show-off.” He murmured.
You solved another clue, and without thinking, pressed a quick kiss to his jaw.
Fred paused.
Then, like it was nothing at all, he kissed the top of your head in return.
It became a rhythm after that—clue, answer, kiss; clue, answer, kiss—soft and absentminded, warm in a way that made the rest of the world feel very far away.
Until it didn’t.
“You two are adorable.” Came a voice behind you.
You both turned slightly.
Lavender Brown stood a few steps away, arms folded, her expression somewhere between pity and smug satisfaction. Her gaze flicked pointedly between you and Fred, lingering just a second too long on the way you were sitting together.
“It’s just…” She continued lightly, “such a shame, isn’t it?”
You blinked, “What is?”
“That you’re not actually soulmates.” Her lips curled, “It’s such a shame you’ll never know what it feels like to be in your soulmate’s arms.”
Silence settled for half a beat.
Fred’s hand stopped moving on your waist.
You slowly closed the crossword book.
Then you looked up at her properly.
“Well, I actually take a lot of pride in that,” You said, voice sweet as honey, “At least I’m not like some people who the big man in the sky clearly knew wouldn’t be able to land a partner with that face and personality… so he had to shackle some poor bloke to them just to make it work.”
Fred made a sound that suspiciously resembled a cough hiding a laugh.
Lavender’s face went red instantly, “That’s— I didn’t—”
“Mm.” You tilted your head, “Anyway, good talk.”
She opened her mouth again, clearly searching for something to salvage her dignity, but nothing came. After a second of flustered silence, she spun on her heel and walked away far faster than she’d arrived.
The moment she was gone, Fred let out a low whistle.
“Good job, sweetheart.”
“Well,” You said with a small shrug, “I am the funny one in this relationship.”
Fred hummed quietly—the sound vibrating through his chest where your back was pressed against him.
“Oh yeah?” He murmured.
There was something in his voice now—lower, slower, warmer.
“S'that so?”
Something about it—the depth of his tone, the way his words seemed to slur like they were weighing on his tongue, the way he looked at you like he was genuinely drunk on you—made your stomach drop in a way you’d never felt before.
The crossword book slipped from your lap and fell to the floor.
And then you were turning fully in his arms, grabbing the front of his jumper, and kissing him properly.
Fred made a sound of surprise that quickly melted into something far more pleased. His palm slid to your back, pulling you in, and you felt yourself go slightly hollow with it—like every thought had been knocked clean out of you. Your hands moved up to frame his jaw as he kissed you back with growing desire.
And for a moment, the rest of the world didn’t exist at all.
Ron Weasley chose that exact moment to walk into the common room like he had impeccable comedic timing and absolutely no sense of mercy.
The door swung open with a creak, letting in a burst of cold corridor air—and Ron, flanked by a couple of his friends, froze mid-step.
Ron physically recoiled.
“For God’s sake,” He groaned, dragging a hand down his face, “Can you guys stop this disgusting display of affection?"
Fred didn’t even look embarrassed. If anything, he looked mildly offended that Ron had interrupted his very important work of being glued to your lips.
You, still slightly breathless—and also slightly offended—were actually a little relieved he’d walked in. Because if you’d been allowed to carry on, you were fairly certain you’d be expelled for public indecency.
Ron gestured vaguely at the scene like it physically pained him, like he was about to wretch up his guts at the thought of one of his best friends with his brother, “It makes other people who haven’t found their soulmates feel bad.”
Your eyes flicked to Fred.
And before you could stop it, you both shared the same secret smile.
Ron hadn’t even realized what he’d implied.
Still, something warm and oddly sweet curled in your stomach anyway.
Fred noticed it too. Of course he did.
“Right,” He said lazily, looking back at Ron, “We’ll make ourselves scarce then. Wouldn’t want to traumatise poor, lonely Ronald.”
“Oi—”
But Fred was already standing, pulling you up with him in one smooth motion like it was second nature.
You barely had time to steady yourself before his hand found yours.
And just like that, he was leading you toward the staircase.
You glanced over your shoulder at Ron one last time, sending him a mischievous smile and a quick wink.
He responded with a face of pure disgust.
It made you laugh—but the sound faded as you climbed higher into the tower, Fred still holding your hand like he had no intention of letting go.
epilogue: (lowkey the og plan was to kill off freddie but i changed my mind lol)
Eventually, Mattheo Riddle became very good at pretending.
It was a skill he perfected over the years in the same quiet, miserable way people learned to live with old injuries—carefully, stubbornly, until the pain became less of a sharp wound and more of a permanent ache woven into everyday life.
At first, it had been difficult. Mattheo had always been a man of candor. When he wanted something, he took it. When he felt desire, he showed it, and more often than not the world bent willingly into his hands. When he felt anger, disgust, hatred—he made sure everyone around him felt it too.
But heartbreak?
Guilt?
Regret?
Those emotions sat strangely on him, like clothes tailored for someone else entirely.
For a long time, he found reminders of you everywhere. Every couple passing him in the street felt like a mockery of something he had ruined with his own hands.
But time had a cruel way of dulling even the sharpest pain.
Eventually, Hogwarts became memories instead of places. The castle faded into nothing more than fragments in the back of his mind. He stopped dreaming about you eventually. Or perhaps he simply stopped remembering the dreams by morning.
He learned how to fill his days well enough.
Work helped.
Noise helped.
Women helped sometimes too, though never for very long. He became frighteningly good at moving from one distraction to the next without ever lingering long enough for silence to settle around him properly.
Because silence was dangerous.
Silence was where you lived.
People stopped mentioning your name around him after a while.
That helped.
Or at least, that was what he liked to believe.
Years passed that way.
Quietly. Pathetically.
And eventually, he became good enough at pretending that even he almost believed himself.
Until one morning, long after he had stopped allowing himself to think about soulmates at all, Mattheo woke to faint silver lines stretching across the skin of his stomach.
For a long moment, he simply stared at them in the mirror.
Then, silently, he swallowed the pain.
And pretended he never noticed them.
To be added to a taglist, please send me an ask! (I might respond to you in comments but I can’t guarantee that I won’t accidentally miss it)
HI INFAMOUS PEOPLE I HAVE A QUESTION! once infamous chp 6 comes out, will all my saves in the IndexedDB storage be erased?? i have like...74 saves on that.. and i just caught up w my points after the release of chp 5 🙁💔 if it does usually get deleted does anyone know how to save them to the desktop?? i have a mac but i genuinely feel like an unc using it THANK U SO MUCH✌️
DID HABIT EAT HER AFTER SHE WAS RUDE TO BON BON??? LMAO???
"Only i get to be mean (affectionate) to them" type shit
YESSSS !!
The only reason she got to be that mean was because she was literally holding his phone AND she had hers on.
Her location was at his house and she was a party girl/social with a lot of friends. People would look for her you know?
Which meant he needed to appease her enough until she left, then take her out when she’s far enough.
Habit didn’t care about her, she was truly just lying for fun. The very flirty type, pets his shoulder and likes guys who clearly have something wrong with them.
It was supposed to be a quick fuck but she grabbed his phone when he went to the bathroom. And the only reason it was even unlocked was because he’d turned it on to check on you.
His thumb slipped, tech mishap, yada yada. It wasn’t off when he threw it aside and she saw the notification.
The entire “oh ur who he was talking about” is true. He did bring you up a couple times because your things are all over his house. It made her feel like she was “losing” at being his favorite, so she got snippy with you.
Ironic because she was and would never be his favorite. #girlgetuphesNOTpickingyou
Being a bird will get you nowhere but the grave LEARN THAT
theartofmadeline
prguitarman
stormborns
areudirty
romaincrisis
baratheonpilled
snowghoul
