first book in the Evelyn Black series
• • sequal: BACK TO LOVE
[ i promise the second book is better lol ]
• slow slow-burn (like years) friends to lovers •
• soft burn romance •
[ all books listed in prologue via chronological order ]
"As ador...
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She was expecting to fall dead asleep within minutes of crashing into her bed after a week of homework and O.W.L. reminders being stuffed into her already dense basket of stressing studies, avoiding Cedric by clinging onto George as much as possible, and ultimately trying to track down the location of whatever brick the silver bracelet of who-knows-where was so she could finally retire one overbearing thought train from her mind's track.
But it just kept chugging.
On...
And on...
And on...
And on...
She sighs deeply, opening her eyes to stare at the high arched, stone ceiling of her dorms. Everyone around her was long gone, they were out once she'd returned from the Gryffindor commons about 20 minutes ago after George almost fell asleep in her lap and Fred wet-willied him back to his feet.
"Fucking hell," she mutters before pushing herself to her feet and grabbing Loki off the foot of the bed. "You're coming with," she whispers to him, carrying the half asleep creature to the trunk at the end of her bed, grabbing the stack of loose parchment and a thin, leather bound notebook on her way out to the dorm halls.
She makes it into the common room, a The Sundays vinyl spinning mindlessly on the little yellow record player with the needle up. The sweet vanilla candles hover in the corner for subtle light, filling the room with one of her favorite scents. She steeps down into the leather couch and lets Loki climb off of her stomach to meander his way to the other end of the couch.
She starts unfolding the maps onto the glass table in front of her and finding the one of the west wing (where they've narrowed down on), laying the bracelet on top of them and flipping to the page where she'd made George take notes as she spoke.
Thank Godrick she's been deciphering his penmanship since they were 7.
"Okay," she scans down the list of his short hand. "Alright... so... if the 'H' hall," she leans over to scan the large parchment, "Is just outside the Gryffindor tower..." She chews on her bottom lip as her tired motors move. "There's probably an even and odd side of the hall... like a street..." Her fingers move over to the construction scale on the left end of the table. "And... if we have 211180 right at the corner— Merlin's Beard, who am I kidding?" She shuffles the papers together and starts folding them, dropping the book on top. "There's no way in Hell I'll find this shit on a map," she tells herself, standing abruptly and grabbing her wand in one hand and her thistle pendant in the other. "Alius ingrediatur."
The Gryffindor commons is empty and pitch black. She almost falls back into a side table since she can't see a thing around her.
"Lumos," she mutters, a bright white beam circling from the end of her wand. She patters up the spiral stairs to the left and stops the second to the top floor. It takes her a moment, but she focuses close enough in her tired state to extinguish the light without uttering another word.
