One Shots || Bucky x Reader || ABC

L || Liquid Luck

Note before reading:

So I was fumbling about with this title and thought to myself; fuck it. Let's add some more magic to the already magical Bucky Barnes. This is the first time I'm not placing a gif above my story as I have been messing around with ai and managed to create this beauty. Seriously wondering if I should create these for all of my one shots. What do you think?

If you like the magic in this story, check out my Elixers & Enchantments one shot, or my currently running story Winter's Witch.

Love,

Nina

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Bucky

"Has her hair always been this shiny?" Bucky asked, his gaze fixed on you with an intensity that bordered on enchantment. Throughout the night, his eyes had remained captivated by the way your hair playfully danced over the expanse of your bare back.

"Oh, for Merlin's sake, Bucky. Put us out of our misery and ask her out already," Steve grumbled as he caught his best friend staring, as usual.

"You know he won't do it, Steve," Tony chimed in with a smirk. "She's been here for what? Four months now? And all our ladies' man Buck here has managed to do so far is dropping things like an idiot and spilling scintillation solution on her shoes."

Bucky scowled at his colleagues, a silent wish to hex them brewing in his mind. True, the scintillation solution had left your shoes permanently shiny, which you had blushingly claimed you hadn't minded at all as the greenhouses 'could use some brightening up', but Bucky had been far more horrified about the baby mandrake mishap. He had clumsily dropped the baby mandrake you had handed him and left the two of you with ringing eardrums for a week. He really had felt pathetic as the only thing you had done was to smile at him. He couldn't help it, as soon as you smiled at him or laughed at something he said his mind just blanked, his brain cells disappearing in a single heartbeat.

Bucky, being the Hogwarts' potion professor, had never struggled with romantic pursuits before, as he had enjoyed the occasional fling at the weekends. But, this school year you had trotted into the school with your herbology kit and turned his world upside down. Not only had he forced his best friend Steve, Hogwarts' Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, to switch places with him at dinner so he could sit next to you. Not that Bucky had said much to you, he had mostly cast stolen glances at you while his food went cold, waiting for you to ask him to pass the roasted potatoes.

Now, at the Hogwarts New Year's Eve get-together in the Three Broomsticks, Bucky found himself entranced by you in periwinkle blue. Even though the Hogwarts staff consisted only of about seventeen people, it filled up the room quite nicely as partners and former colleagues always joined. He didn't even notice his two friends hunched over, fumbling around with a glass, while he observed how good you looked in periwinkle blue. He liked the green dresses you usually wore when you were teaching, always covered by an apron filled with your tools. He especially liked the pinned-up braid you usually wore to keep your hair clean and out of the way. If anyone had told him a year ago that this was the outfit of his biggest crush, he would have had himself admitted to St Mungo's.

Bucky snapped out of his trance when Steve slammed three glasses on the table, sliding one to each of his colleagues. Bucky recognized it to be fire whisky right away, but failed to spot the golden sheen that just disappeared into the mixture.

"Now. Have a drink and go and talk to her," Steve said. Bucky chuckled nervously as he rubbed the back of his neck. He'd rather hug a Blast-Ended Skrewt. Or fight a dragon.

"If you're not going to ask her to dance Barnes, I will," Tony, Hogwarts' Quidditch professor, threatened with a smirk that had Bucky feeling a little nauseous. He looked back over his shoulder, seeing you laugh at something Professor Oddpage, the Arithmancy professor, said. Bucky couldn't help but squeeze his hands into fists, nearly breaking the glass of fire whisky he was holding. Tony downed his glass and theatrically started to get up, rubbing his hands together as he did.