𝕨𝕚𝕝𝕥𝕖𝕕 𝕣𝕠𝕤𝕖𝕤. cedric diggory

1

Mum told me about love when I was young. She explained that with Dad, it was like electricity, his kiss igniting her body, his touch leaving a trail of fire, making her bashful and red in the face. She said that Dad was her other half, the one she knew she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. She said Dad was her soulmate.

I'm sure she didn't explain it like that, however, but it's still something that's stuck with me since I was younger.

My sister called me a romantic when I explained to her about wanting to find my own soulmate. She was bitter about it, a sneer evident on her face because, soulmates aren't real, Ced, get real. Crescent believed in things like that, though. I'm sure of it. I saw it in the way her eyes burned brightly in desire as she gazed at the stars painting the dark sky above us. I knew that deep down, she was thinking about finding her own soulmate, her own other half.

I didn't call her out on it because Crescent was someone who had to be coaxed into spilling their emotions. She had to come to you or, if you're like Axel, you force them out of her with willpower and threats of bodily harm before she talked.

But I thought about it a lot. Alone, in my room, staring up at the blank ceiling, wondering and waiting for that day. The day I would meet my own soulmate, my own other half.

It filled me with a certain kind of anticipation, the kind that had me on my toes, gnawing on my fingernails because I couldn't contain the excitement. I admit, it was something of peculiarity for me to do that, but I heard Mum and Dad's story and I wanted that love, that spark that would ignite me in flames and make me feel alive.

And then one day I stumbled upon you in Diagonal Alley and you were crying, tears streaming down your face and snot clotting up your nose and you were so scared and I probably should have known then but I didn't. Because it wasn't fire that lit my bones as I held your hand and bought you ice cream and helped you find your family. It wasn't passion or electricity caking my veins to the point where I felt completely paralyzed.

It was something else entirely.

It was the warm summer sun beating down on my neck as I tried to make you laugh, even the slightest bit. It was the small, crooked grin you sent me, Afro on display as you ducked your head to hide it because you were still a little shy back then. It was the way my heart slowed down and time slowed down and everything slowed down, like the world stopped to give us this moment, to let us have this one good thing - to let us have this moment.

It wasn't electricity but I should have known then. Meeting you, grasping your hand in mine was like finding the perfect puzzle piece to complete the collection. It was like the moment after the electricity where you just knew. Where everything was brighter and the animals were more lively and you just found everything more fascinating because you got to spend it with that person beside you and that person was enjoying it with you, smiling with you, laughing with you and just being a presence beside you forevermore.

Meeting you, Hamlin, wasn't electricity because we had been predestined to begin with.