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There’s a memory Gideon has.
He’s eleven and hiding in his room, hearing his sisters thump up and down the stairs as he tries to gather the courage to talk to Halley.
Next to him is a diary. He spills his heart over the pages.
-
Gideon knows that he’s not eleven again. He’s no longer the same boy who wrote in a cursed diary and dreamt about bad poetry, a child crying out in the dark for someone to save him.
He’s grown, he’s changed.
But there’s a moment after practice when the spring rain has turned the pitch into a mess. Gideon has stayed behind to help Halley gather the remaining equipment, drawing up ridiculous plans for their next match against Ravenclaw.
Halley’s black hair looks like wet ink from the rain. She has a bruise on one shoulder from a wayward bludger, her glasses streaked with water. She sits on the lower seats of the stands, one leg crossed over the other with the snitch fluttering like a pixie above her hands. All their teammates have already left, and they're alone and talking and laughing – and somehow when the last of the clouds break, Halley is beautiful.
(Maybe she has always been beautiful, but that’s not the point.)
And instead of feeling like her teammate, maybe a friend, Gideon is suddenly eleven. He forgets about his girlfriend Diana, that Halley is their captain, and all he wants to do is to write in the diary about a girl who has eyes green like the pines surrounding the castle.
The quaffle he tosses in the air misses the landing, knocking the Quidditch chest over.
-
“Remember when you called me a fool at Slughorn’s Christmas Party?” Gideon asks in the library. He’s given up on pretending to study for his upcoming OWLs practice tests. He tries not to imagine how she looked in the dress, a clip with an engraving of flowers keeping her hair away from her face.
Hector looks up from knitting some kind of orange monstrosity. “It runs in your family.”
-
Usually at odd hours when Rory and Hector have Prefect duties, she will come to his room.
They sit on his bed, knees almost touching as they talk. Sometimes, they talk about Quidditch for hours or the stress of their respective years, but Dumbledore has given Halley impossible tasks. Only Gideon knows what it is like to search through Riddle’s memories.
“I’m afraid I see my face in his,” she admits. She picks at the gold embroidery at the hem of one of the scarlet curtains. “What if I’m more like him than I thought?”
“Let me know when the Dark Lord starts leading a Quidditch team.”
She snorts with laughter.
Gideon remembers losing bits of pieces himself to the dark, whole days swallowed up by the sense there’s something wrong with him. He remembers the touch of her hand in the Chamber as she brought him back, but he also remembers the hissing language of snakes, the same hungry look Halley has in her eyes whenever she wants something. The girl who looks beautiful in his mother’s garden among the wildflowers, the chosen one with a prophecy marked on her skin.
Halley and Riddle are orphans with a grand destiny tangled together, and Gideon doesn’t know what his role is supposed to be. The best friend's brother left in the cold, a hopeless spectator?
“Trust me,” he says. He nudges her knee. “You’re more different than you are alike.”
-
Gideon’s old feelings have always been a thing in his peripheral, a joke his family likes to indulge in. Georgia and Felicity tease him about all his girlfriends having dark hair. His mum likes to bring up the time when Halley first visited the Burrow when he was unable to talk. He will groan and they will all laugh and move on to something else.
And, sure, maybe Gideon has the occasional thought. A passing curiosity when Halley’s giving orders on the pitch or a dream that leaves him flustered the next morning.
He tries to ignore it, but somewhere between their card games in the Burrow’s kitchen and his breakup with Diana, Gideon has been paying more attention towards Halley.
-
“No,” says Rory, walking faster. “Do not get me involve. You’re making my dorm weird enough because you went to the Yule Ball with Nellie–”
“As friends!”
“Now Seanan and Diana are mad at you because of the breakup, and Halley…” Rory shakes her head. “I want to sleep in peace.”
Gideon hurries up to her, accidentally pushing a Third Year out of the way. “She’s talked about me?”
-
There are subtle changes in their interactions. The feelings are unspoken, but they grow like wild roses with each passing day. Shared looks, hands almost touching, a swooping sensation with each talk. Gideon feels suddenly restless and loud whenever she's near, wanting to show off a reckless trick on a broom. Halley blushes in his presence, making blatant attempts to spend more time alone together. She borrows his jumpers and never gives them back, and he makes excuses for her to help with his Defense homework.
And when Halley kisses him–
She kisses him.
Gideon can’t help but kiss her back.