The past comes back
As you lay in bed that night, your gaze occasionally drifting to the blond men sleeping next to you, his head resting on your shoulder.
You couldn’t forget what had happened today and worry about the following day robbed you of your sleep. Under the dim moon light that shone into your room, occasionally covered by some clouds, your mind drifting back to the past.
You had considered staying. You had considered fighting. But in the end, you didn’t, leaving Harry and Britain behind.
Fighting a war had never been expected of you. Your family’s bloodline was coming from Scandinavia and was generally to be considered pure. However, you were never really considered part of the old British Wizarding Elite, allowing your family to keep clear of the Pureblood idealism.
Your great-grandfather had bought the land from the Queen, which is officially neither in the sovereign territory of Britain nor the Wizarding Ministry, allowing your family to stay impartial in all political questions. And it was important to them to carefully keep out of any political controversy.
Staying neutral was the only thing your family was known for and sometimes people would jokingly call you ‘the Swiss’.
You were a proud Ravenclaw. However, always curious and sociable, you easily made friends in all the other houses.
Ravenclaws didn’t particularly cared about house rivalry which they considered trivial, and nobody hated Ravenclaws anyway. Sometimes people joked that it is hard to start a fight with people who lived in the library where it wasn’t allowed to speak.
As it happened you soon discovered, spending time with the Gryffindors was especially entertaining, since they were always up to things, most of them disregarding school rules. This is how you came to grow close to Harry over the years, who became a close friend of yours. You appreciated his genuinely kind nature, something you weren’t used to growing up surrounded by purebloods.
But that didn’t mean you weren’t spending time with the Slytherins as well, they made great study partners with their ambition to excel, and you often found yourself in the library in the late evenings with Draco, Blaise and/or Pansy by your side.
Eventually, when you were older, Harry was your first kiss and first relationship.
It all happened so natural, you always had been close friends and when people around you started dating, it had only been a brief period o
f awkwardness, figuring out your feelings and entering the era of romantic relations. But somehow you both knew you were meant for each other, and none of your friends was surprised at that. Indeed, after some days of you both scooting anxiously around another, questioning each movement and its implication, it happened.
You had been studying together under the tree next to the Great Lake in a warm summer day. Harry was laying next to you and while you read a textbook for school, the stared at the drifting white clouds in front of a light blue sky occasionally pointing out what they reminded him of.
You two often spent time this way.
The sun was scorching that day.
While grabbing your water bottle, your hand accidentally grazed Harry’s, and he turned his head, eyes darting to you and brows slightly creasing.
Even though you had always been physical close, and you loved to hug, lately you had tried to minimize touching him.
You had become aware lately of the heat developing in your stomach whenever you touched and now, the thing that had felt so natural to you had changed to something loaded. So you tried to take the pressure out, and touch him less.
As you tried to stop the flush, you felt rising to your cheeks, Harry sat up with his hand catching yours.
You saw the green specks in his eyes, almost dancing around his widened pupils.
Instinctively, you knew something was different about that moment. Some invisible line was being crossed as the boy leaned his face closer into yours. Your breath hitched and it had become hard for you to keep breathing.
Harry whispered, eyes darting from your eyes to your lips. “I wondered …”
And then his lips touched yours.
You let go a surprised hiss but let Harry’s tongue enter your mouth.
It felt good. He pulled back, his eyes intently staring at you. And then he smiled.
No matter what, you knew you would always remember this moment. The soft breeze of the summer wind, the sun on your skin, your lips swollen from Harry’s mouth and his smile that made your insides melt.
“I wondered if I just imagined things.” He muttered, eyes going back to your lips.
You couldn’t help but grin yourself. “Oh, Harry.”
You pushed his chest back, so he would lie on the blanket and climbed on top of him.
He yelped in surprise, clearly not expecting that, but you didn’t give him time to say anything else, your mouth covering his immediately after you climbed on top of him.
And the rest was history, some would say.
Yes, you were school sweethearts, having started school the same year and practically growing up together.
Harry and you knew that there was no other person you both rather spend your time with than each other. The intimacy of your long-established familiarity didn’t dampen your romantic attraction but expanded in a deep-sated confidence and understanding while you discovered each other.
He made you smile, he knew how to handle your fits, while you were an intensely emotional person, he was incredibly calm and soothing. You were convinced he was the man you will marry one day.
When Harry had told you that Voldemort had returned, you and your parents immediately believed him and were planning to leave the country to stay safe. They emigrated to their property in Toronto and had only let you go back to attend Hogwarts in your 5th year due to your begging and their trust in the strongest wizard alive, Dumbledore.
But you have always been a Ravenclaw, and the difference to the Gryffindors and Slytherins had become clearer to you over the years. While they were finding pleasure at challenging another boldly in dueling, you are no fighter and never have been, preferring theoretical work over the physicality of fights.
While you excelled in every other subject, especially the nerdy ones like Arithmancy, Charms and Runes, DADA had been your worst subject. Even though your spellwork was astonishing and you could easily conjure complex magic, your reflexes were too slow, and you found yourself thrown on the ground more often than not.
When that happened during lessons, you remember Harry just giving you a kind laugh and always heling you up when he saw you falling to the floor.
But he was mainly on the other side of the room, impressing the teacher with his fierce dueling skills. While you were paired with Neville, and you still mostly lost.Only the thought of Harry and his many enemies motivated you, so not giving up your back ended up bruised from the many falls every time you left the classroom.
You had even joined Dumbledore’s Army, trying to improve. But then it didn’t really matter anyway, since everything changed after Dumbledore’s death.
This time you knew you had to leave Britain and Hogwarts, not just due the insistence of your parents, but you knew you had no desire to be caught up in a war.And you had to take care of your parents. Leaving them alone in a strange country as their only child, their only heir would break your heart. They needed you.Maybe you were a coward, but you realized you wouldn’t be mentally nor physically strong enough to handle what was waiting in the future of England.
Telling Harry your decision was maybe the hardest thing you had ever done.
And he hadn’t taken it well, to put it mildly. He became incredibly angry. You two had a big fight where he accused you of being a deserter for not fighting with them. You had felt awful, but you also didn’t want to risk your life fighting some Dark Wizards and stood behind your decision to follow your parents.
So, in the end, you and Harry broke up. And you have never seen him again since Year 6, except on an occasional excerpt in the newspapers about the Savior of the Wizarding World. Skimming these pages, your heart grew heavy but they also reminded you that your decision was the right one. He was a Savior while you were a coward.
The move, losing all your friends, your boyfriend, your familiar surroundings had been hard on you.
It had taken you a long time of painfully floating aimlessly around to finally come to terms with it. In your new school Ilvermony, you first had troubles settling in, being constantly worried about Harry and the situation in England.
You were the weirdo at that school, with British people facing prejudices because of the new fascist British Wizarding Ministry. British wizards had earned a bad reputation in the world and your new peers thought you also had affinities for the Dark Arts.
However, after some time, you found a new group of friends which you grew very close to.
But then, one autumn day just on the first days of your last year, you had gotten a letter that would change everything.
Your parents had died.
Apparently, they had found a wounded dragon and had tried to nurse it back to health. The dragon had been old and friendly but one day he had burst into flames and the whole barn, including their house burned down to the ground. It turns out the dragon was one of a rare Canadian species Fuema, one that boast into flames when it dies.
You were alone again. This time for good.
Eventually, you finished school and traveled to exotic places before starting your career in research of Arithmancy.
After studying you ended up working in the Huendos office, the Unspeakables of the Canadian Magical Ministry. You researched Dark Arts, the origins of spells and Magic itself. And you loved your job, finally relishing within the depths of your nerdiness.
Even though you were still pretty young, you had climbed up the ranks of your department quickly, being an expert on your research topic.
That’s why you had to sometimes attend Ministry meetings as a representative of the Huendos Department as a scientific consultant, depending on the topic at hand. You disliked these meetings, thinking of it as a waste of your time you would rather spend on your research.
That’s why you were there that day, encountering him.