long live (all the magic we made)

Fifth Year

There is a very thin line between loving your best friend and being in love with your best friend. Maya realizes she's crossed it when she looks up one day and finds that all her sketchbooks are filled with messy graphite doodles of Riley Matthews. Her hands, her eyes, the soft creases of her mouth. It's simultaneously too much and too little to take in all at once. Maya pays even less attention in class that day than she usually does.

Riley acts like her usual self so Maya tries her best to as well, it's not hard when she can attribute any flinching and atypical behaviour to the fact that they appointed her as the new Quidditch captain. Her mother was understandably excited, even though Katy doesn't quite know what Quidditch is. Maya knew her mother was proud of her and that was all that mattered.

James Potter is the captain of the Gryffindor Quidditch team and he takes every opportunity to throw his red and gold robes in her face and claim that Gryffindor is taking the Quidditch cup that year. Maya just rolls her eyes and manoeuvres Riley away when she sticks her tongue out at him. Maya could have been attracted to James Potter had she not been in love with her best friend.

Said best friend is one of the two Hufflepuff prefects that year and needs to live up to her badge by not doing things like sticking her tongue out at the Gryffindor Quidditch captain. Besides, James Potter has other things to worry about. Like his younger brother dating Scorpius Malfoy. Maya makes sure to tell him this as they walk away and laughs as his face goes red and he starts sputtering.

She doesn't stop to think why Riley was so worked up over Potter teasing her; it's what they all do as Quidditch captains. Friendly rivalry to keep the spirit up. Maya attributes it to the stress she has from all the homework piling up.

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It doesn't fully hit her that she's in love with her best friend until they're in Potions class and this time they're learning how to make Amortentia. Maya leans in toward the vapour again after Riley throws in the last ingredient and stirs clockwise three and a half times. She smells exactly the same things as she did in first-year and it's mildly confusing because she's sure she loves Riley and-

Oh.

It is at this moment in time that Maya Hart realizes she's always been in love with Riley Matthews because dear lord she smelled honey on the first day. She can't believe she hadn't put the puzzle pieces together before and now she is infinitely curious as to whether Riley can smell peaches. Her heart is thumping wildly all over the place and Maya is sure Riley can hear the erratic rhythm but all her friend is doing is finishing the questions that are written on the board.

Maya swallows her words and chains them to her ribcage, breath catching whenever Riley's fingers brush up against hers on the small, small, small table. The dungeons are cold but her chest is warm and so is Riley. Maya blinks twice and then settles with a feeling not unlike contentment in her bones.

She loves her best friend, she's always loved her best friend, and she will always love her best friend. It's not that difficult to wrap her head around anymore.

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Then there is the added complication of not letting it slip. Their friendship is the most important thing to her right now, Maya isn't about to let anything destroy it. Least of all herself. She tapes down her feelings and files them in the back of her heart, pretends she's not hurting when Riley talks about all the boys that she'd love to date. Farkle knows, she thinks. That boy has always been smart, he's probably picked up on it by now. Besides, he's been giving her sad smiles and sad eyes a lot lately. Maya would bet an entire pack of sugar quills on the fact that he knows.

She is, then, infinitely grateful to him for not saying anything even though he could. She would never confirm it, of course, even if Farkle told someone, but Maya knows she'd never be able to lie to Riley, no matter how much she wanted to. She was a great Slytherin until it came to her best friend, then she turned into a mushy pile of embarrassment, it's probably gotten worse since she fell for her. It's probably going to keep snowballing downhill until Maya isn't able to do anything but agree with Riley Matthews.

(She doesn't really mind agreeing with Riley, having spent the better portion of her life wrapped around her finger anyway; it's not that different, loving her and being in love with her)