TOGETHER (A HARRY POTTER LOVE STORY) 4

47

MILLIE'S POV:

When you love someone, you can't help but wait for them. I tried hard to fight my feelings for a long time, but I just couldn't. I was falling deeper and deeper with every passing minute, and yet tried to hide it in every possible way. He was supposed to be my best friend, and nothing else, for surely he would have made a proper move by now...that was the lie I kept telling myself. I just kept saying he was simply my best friend, but deep inside, I was falling in love. Fuck, I was falling so hard. I wished I could explain his eyes, and just the sound of his voice giving me butterflies, how his smile made my heart skip a beat, and how every time I was with him, I felt so complete, and at home. I had genuinely never felt a feeling so strong in my life, which was why, sitting in the library the night before the second task beside him, I barely cared that he still hadn't made a move, for simply being around him was enough.

Harry had started to go off food about a week ago, and yet no-one had seemed to notice the happy, popular, energetic Boy-Who-Lived go silent every time he wasn't spoken to, his emerald eyes distancing in almost every group conversation, his familiar cheeky smirk having failed to make an appearance all week, replaced with a forced, almost pained smile.

Having discovered the eggs secret by a clue from Cedric - which I thanked the Hufflepuff endlessly for after finding this out - Harry had at least found out he would have to go and find merpeople in the lake, and get back something they'd stolen from him. However, this was a lot easier said than done. The poor boy had refused to swim any deeper than the shallow end in summer in my pool, having never had swimming lessons in his youth from his Aunt and Uncle, let alone a deep, dark lake.

Put it this way - my anxiety for Harry fighting a dragon had been absolutely nothing compared to how I was feeling for him now.

"I don't reckon it can be done," said Ron's voice flatly from the other side of the table. "There's nothing. Nothing. Closest was that thing to dry up puddles and ponds, that Drought Charm, but that was nowhere near powerful enough to drain the lake."

"There must be something," I muttered, moving a candle closer towards me. My eyes were so tired I was pouring over the tiny print of Olde and Forgotten Bewitchments and Charms with my nose about an inch from the page.

"Millie's right, they'd never set a task that was undoable," Mione croaked, voice hoarse from lack of use as she stood up for the 300th time, disappearing into the endless bookshelves to dig out yet another book.

"They have," said Ron, dropping his current one down onto the table and groaning. "Harry, just go down to the lake tomorrow, right, stick your head in, yell at the merpeople to give back whatever the fuck they've nicked and see if they chuck it out. Best you can do, mate."

"There's a way of doing it," I said, my mouth twitching, straightening up in my chair again as Harry sent a rude hand gesture at Ron lazily. "There literally has to be..."

"I should've learnt to be an Animagus like Sirius," Harry mumbled, resting, face down, on Saucy Tricks for Tricky Sorts, his dark hair falling over the page.

"Yeah, you could've turned into a goldfish any time you wanted!"

"Or a frog?"

"Oh, yeah, good luck swimming in a massive lake as a frog!"

"What do you suggest then, Mills? A dolphin-?"

"It takes years to be an Animagus, and then you have to register yourself and everything," came Mione's voice as she stuck her head back round the bookshelf. "Professor McGonagall told us, remember...you've got to register yourself with the Improper Use of Magic Office...what animal you become, and your markings, so you can't abuse it-"