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Harry suppressed a sigh as the door of the empty parlor she'd claimed as refuge after having escaped Lily and the last of her cosmetic charms creaked open. She had hoped, perhaps futilely, that no one would find her here until just before the ceremony, obscure as the room was in a mostly-abandoned wing of Dartmoor, but she should have known it would be impossible for the bride to disappear on the day of her own wedding.
Her eyebrows rose, a bit however, when the person who stepped through was not Lily or Hermione, but Caelum, dressed in his own brilliantly blue and silver wedding robes. "Caelum. What are you doing here?"
"Hunting you down," he said, lips pressing together in a thin line. "I had something to ask you."
"You're not supposed to see me before the actual wedding part of the wedding, you know."
His brow furrows slightly in confusion "What?"
"Never mind." She feels a smile twitch at the corner of her mouth. "Muggle tradition. What did you have to ask me about?"
The silence hung awkwardly for a moment before he huffed, folding his arms over his chest. "The kiss at the end of the ceremony."
Harry frowned. The kiss at the end of the ceremony was one of the simplest parts of the whole thing, perhaps the only simple part. Aside from the inevitable (hopefully internal) meltdowns that Bellatrix and her father would no doubt be having over it, there really wasn't much to say. "What about it?"
"I need to know if we're doing it," he said, looking down his nose at her. "Obviously."
He was doing his best to look unconcerned, but it wasn't quite working, his arms too stiff and his skin flushing red.
Harry was confused.
"...Is there a reason we wouldn't?" She asked slowly. "It's not optional, is it?"
"No," he sniffed, still practically made of rock. "But if you were going to refuse in spite of that, I wanted to know before you embarrassed us both in front of all of high society."
Harry looked at him, a touch incredulous. "Did you think that was likely?
"I have learned in the past that expecting you to do the reasonable thing is unwise," he said sardonically, though he seemed to relax a little, a tiny bit of the tension in his shoulders dissolving.
She chuckled, but when she spoke again, she let her voice go a little softer. "You know… I did agree to marry you, Caelum. I know I didn't have a lot of other choices, and I know how angry I was about it at first, but that was mostly at the law, you know that? I don't hate you."
"There's a big difference between not hating someone and wanting to kiss them," he said.
His eyes, when they met hers, held a spark of something challenging. She didn't flinch away, easing back into the softness of the parlor's sofa with a shrug. "The thought of kissing you is honestly not that bad either, even if it is…" she chews her lip, trying to find the right word. "...Weird. Really, if one of us was going to have a problem with it… ...I would have expected it to be you."
Weird was the wrong description, she knew, but she had no better way to explain the twisting in her stomach she felt whenever she thought about being married to Caelum. It wasn't horror. There was a large part of her that thought perhaps it should be, but as awful as Caelum could be at his worst, she'd never quite been able to go back to hating him the way she had before they became friends.
Maybe, she thought, it was difficult because she knew they could so easily have had something real if he was just a slightly better person. If he didn't hate her and everyone like her just for existing.
She cared about him anyway, enough to be almost content with this, and she didn't know how to feel about that.
Caelum was quiet for a long time before speaking again. "I don't. Not anymore, at least."
It took a moment for her to understand, but when she did, her heart clenched.
She didn't know what to say. You don't have to lie to me, maybe, only Caelum didn't lie, not to spare feelings, which meant he meant this, or at least thought he did.
A bit of disbelieving laughter crept into her tone. "Coming from you, that almost sounds like a love confession."
"Maybe it is," he snaps.
There was one moment of absolute, prickling silence before Harriet realized that that hadn't been a denial.
"You're joking."
He snorted bitterly, and it took him a moment to respond. "Why would I joke about that?"
The words love confession replayed themselves in her head, and Harry just stared, because he was serious. Her mind stuttered, refusing to accept it. It was Caelum.
Only, he had said it.
She stared. "You're in love with me."
He sneered, looking away from her. "Do you need a signed statement?"
She just blinked at him, trying to process.
She'd known that Caelum valued their friendship, even if he denied it--he'd simply tried too hard to win it back after he'd almost lost it in the Voldemort fiasco for his protests to mean anything, as often as he repeated them. But the thought that he'd harbored romantic feelings for her all that time was absurd.
And yet it was true. It was apparently true, she'd just heard it directly out of his own mouth, and he was right, he wouldn't lie about that.
She just stared at him for a moment before letting out a hollow laugh, burying her face in her hands. "Merlin."
He didn't say anything, just stood there with an expression on his face that was partially dread and mostly blank. As if he expected her to yell, or hex him.
"I'm not mad," she said, keeping her face in her hands for a few moments longer. "I… shocked, but not mad. You can sit down."
"I didn't expect you to be mad," he said, standing rock-stiff with his arms crossed over his chest. "I expect you to throw this back in my face and laugh."
He was sneering, but his voice didn't sound condescending, or angry. If anything, it was guarded--missing the usual thorns, but still as impenetrable as dragonscale.
Throw it back in his face and laugh.
Of course that was what he expected. Of course that was why he had hidden it.
It was still difficult to reconcile with everything she'd thought she knew about their relationship, but it made sense. She knew Caelum. Shoving down his feelings and then acting as viciously uninterested as possible was exactly what he would have done had he realized he was falling for a half-blood.
Was exactly what he would have done if he was falling for her.
The inside of her mouth felt dry. "I… Caelum..."
His jaw tightened. "I don't want or need your pity. If you're going to be considerate, I'd rather you not say anything."
She chewed her lip. "Don't you think we need to talk about this?"
"I don't see a reason why we would," he said, teeth gritting together. "I'm not an idiot, I know you don't feel the same way about me, so it's not like it changes anything about our arrangement."
"Doesn't it?" She wanted to look away from his eyes, frost blue and cuttingly clear, but she forced herself to hold firm. "I agreed to marry you on the false assumption that you were absolutely disgusted by the idea of anything more than brewing potions together and sharing a last name, and… and I was okay with that, but I would like to be in a relationship that's not purely a matter of convenience and political necessity. If we're both open to more we should at least talk about it."
He held her gaze tightly for a moment before swallowing. "Alright, then. Talk."
She took him by the wrist and gently tugged him down beside her, leaving them sitting shoulder to shoulder. It felt intimate--she could feel the warmth of his body even through the thick fabric of his robes, and her fingers resting loosely around his wrist created a circuit of buzzing magic between them, but it was easier, too, not having to look him in the eyes.
"I'll start with things as they are right now, I guess," she says, rubbing her thumb in circles on the inside of his hand. "I don't… reciprocate your feelings, not really, but I think I could. Someday. There are reasons that I never let myself look at you that way, but it's not a matter of not caring about you or not finding you attractive. I can't guarantee anything, but I want to try. If you do."
He swallowed. "What are those reasons?"
Harry allowed herself to be blunt. "Mostly? You don't act like you respect me and you're a bigoted blood supremacist."
He flinched, twisting his hand slightly so he could grip hers. "Right. I…" he took a deep breath, and swallowed again. "I--you're right."
She squeezed his hand back. "I'm not asking for an apology, or, or a promise you'll change, or anything like that. I'm telling you this because it would be unfair not to. I'm going to try either way. I just… I can't promise I'll get past it."
"You should," he spat emotionlessly. "You should be demanding a bloody apology from me. You deserve all the respect in the world and the only reason I haven't been giving it to you is that I'm a bloody coward."
His words simultaneously made her feel like a warm blanket had been wrapped around her shoulders, and like she wanted to cry. It felt somewhat bittersweet that he was only saying this now, after years of friendship. "Thank you."
"You shouldn't need to thank me for the bloody truth."
Harry just stood there, feeling suddenly and stupidly delicate.
"Can I ask you…" she said hesitantly, "To tell me? What it is you respect about me?" I need to hear it from you, she didn't say. I need to hear it to know you mean it.
"I think you know," he said stiffly.
"I really don't," she said, shaking her head. "I know the truth. Not what you think."
He let out a long sigh, and it was an even longer moment before he spoke again, voice quiet, after a long exhale of air. "I think you're bloody brilliant, Harriet. You're the smartest witch I've ever known--smarter than I am. I hate you for that sometimes, but it's brilliant. Magnetic." He paused. "You don't lie to me like everyone else does. You're idiotically forgiving. You're beautiful."
"The first time you saw me without polyjuice," Harry said slowly, turning her head to look up at him. "You told me I was uglier without it than with."
"Yeah, well." He swallowed. "That was a lie."
He looked back at her, nerves and sincerity and anxiousness all transparently obvious on his face, and it occurred to her then that this was the kind of moment where people kissed each other. That she could kiss him right then and he would probably like it.
There was a part of her that wanted it to, suddenly, ferociously so, but it was too much, too sudden, so she pushed the urge down and away.
If this lasted, she promised himself. If this turned out to be real and not just some bizarre fluke of reality from which things somehow went back to normal afterward, she would have other chances.
(She would have other chances, and she would take them.)
"Thank you."
His face quickly morphed into a scowl, and Harry thought she knew now why he always wore such an arrogant array of expressions. He was so readable, it would have left him vulnerable otherwise. "I told you not to thank me for honesty."
"Yeah, well." She smiled wryly. "That was obviously really, really difficult for you. I thought it deserved acknowledgement."
"Make me do that again, sometime." He scoffed. "That was utter rubbish. I know I can do better."
"I will."
She wasn't actually sure she'd have the courage to ask him so directly again, but she wanted to, she found, with painful acuity. The warmth from his words still lingered inside her, leaving her body hot and fluttering.
It was, she realized with a sharp pang, going to be much easier than she'd thought it would be to fall in love with him, if he kept this up.
He re-settled himself beside her. "I don't know about blood purity," he says, jaw twitching. "That's… something different. But I'll examine it. From more than just the pureblood perspective."
"That's all I can ask," she said softly.
It was more than she had asked. More than she had ever expected, and she felt something else knot in the pit of her stomach.
She really did want to kiss him.
Abandoning caution, she stood up, pulling him along with her, finally able to look him in the eyes again.
"It would really be a shame," she said. "If the kiss during the ceremony was our first one."