Harry Potter One Shots (Vol. I)

Kiss Me (Adrian Pucey)

"I'm here to take the kids out," a voice called out from behind me and Merlin, it was enough to have the smile freezing on my face.

Had the students not been staring up at me in desperation, I would have fled like I so desperately wanted to. But I couldn't do that. Not when they were counting on me. Forcing my shoulders to straighten out I turned to face the approaching trainee Auror whose steps visibly slowed at the sight of me.

"You'll be fine," I assured the students who looked no older than 13, with a glance over my shoulder. "This Adrian Pucey – he's training to become an Auror."

Adrian, coming to a stop in front of me, very briefly met my eyes before peering around me towards the hiding students. "Come on, we need to get a move on."

"Are you really going to be an Auror?" one of the girls piped up, stepping out from behind me.

"I am," Adrian said with a smile, trying to ease their worry but they just reached out to fist my jumper in their hands. Merlin, I felt like a mother duck with ducklings trailing after her.

"You can trust him," I assured them again, forcefully making them release me and ushering them towards Adrian. "I'd trust him with my life."

"But not your heart," he piped up quietly, the words meant for my ears only, but I didn't bother to answer him.

Instead, I pushed the students towards him and once I was certain that they'd taken to Adrian, only then did the tension in my shoulders ease. I could barely bring myself to meet Adrian's waiting eyes and did what any other coward in my position would do; I turned and ran.

**********

I didn't get very far during my attempt to escape, not that I expected too anyway. All it had taken for me to stop was me turning to corner to find myself face to face with a large pile of rubble from one of the walls that had been obliterated during the battle. Crouching down beside the mess, I tried to swallow down the frog that clogged my throat. No matter how many times I thought about things, I still couldn't believe that it had come this far. But perhaps thinking otherwise had been too naïve.

Trailing my fingers across one of the larger pieces, I froze feeling the carvings under my fingers. My breath left me in a small gasp –

Surely, not –

Hurrying to brush the dust off from the brick, I stared down at the initials carved into the rock. Helga, of all the walls to destroy –

Hidden in one of the more remote corners of the castle was the very wall that now lied broken at my feet. The students had affectionately dubbed the corner of the castle as the lover's corner because of the number of couples that had taken to carving their initials into the bricks as if it was a testament of their love. Rumour had it that the first couple to carve their initials into the bricks were from the first ever batch of students to enter the castle and they'd left their mark, simply because they could never be together. That set the tone for most of the couples that had chosen to follow after them; they ended up breaking up.

Putting the brick aside, I scrambled to my knees and began to push through the large pile in search of my initials. Helga, it was the most unhelpful thing I could have been doing at that time but part of me needed to see whether our brick had survived the crash or not. I had no logical explanation for why I was so desperate to find it, but I just was.

And I did find it after minutes of frantic searching. It was only a fraction of the size it originally was, sitting easily in my palm but somehow, miraculously our initials were perfectly preserved. Adrian had been the one to etch our initials into the stone during one of our paired rounds and he'd claimed that since he was Head Boy, it wasn't as if anyone was around to take points away from him. I'd just watched him with an affectionate smile, not even contemplating the idea that less than six months later we would be breaking up before the very wall.