Emerson Wilmore was an exemplary Ravenclaw student, known for her unwavering dedication to academics and an unyielding moral compass. However, things took a twisted and deviated turn in her life after her boyfriend, Cedric Diggory, was murdered by L...
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Mattheo and Emerson remained in the Astronomy Tower until the light began to fade from gold into soft blue. Neither of them suggested leaving.
The fear that lodged itself between them in the Dark Arts classroom no longer sat like an unspoken ghost. They dragged it into the light together, examined it from every angle, and somehow discovered it was smaller than the silence they might have allowed it to become. The conversation between the couple gradually drifted away from the Boggart itself because they both exhausted the fear without exhausting each other.
Mattheo shed his tie somewhere in the last hour, and Emerson sat tucked against his side with her cheek against his shoulder, listening to him breathe and counting the rhythm of it the way she'd counted her own heartbeat not long before.
They didn't talk about much important. He told her a story about Enzo nearly setting fire to the Slytherin common room in Third-Year trying to impress a girl whose name he could no longer remember, and she laughed until her cheeks ached.
The moment reminded Emerson why this place had become theirs.
The Astronomy Tower witnessed every version of them:
Enemies.
Friends.
Strangers pretending not to care.
Two people desperately trying not to fall in love.
Two people admitting they already had.
Now it watched them survive something else together.
At one point Mattheo quietly untangled one of the loose strands of her hair that caught on the clasp of her robes.
"You've been doing that a lot lately," Emerson observed, smiling without looking up at him.
"What?"
"Playing with my hair."
He glanced down, seemingly surprised to find his fingers already smoothing another strand behind her ear. "I have?"
"Mhm," Emerson hummed. "You only do it when you're thinking."
Mattheo considered her statement. "I suppose I do."
"What are you thinking about now?"
His hand paused, before he answered her. "That you scared me."
Emerson sighed. "I know."
"You disappeared before I could get to you," He added.
"I couldn't stay."
"I know."
"I just..." She searched for words that didn't sound like an excuse. "I needed to find somewhere that wasn't that classroom."
