or: how each member of the original gryffindor quidditch team fell in love.
Alicia falls headfirst over lunch on a Friday, when she spills her water and all Katie does is laugh and throw napkins over to her side of the table. She falls in love in between letters hastily jotted down between breaks and late nights in her dinky flat near St. Mungos, late nights spent wondering whether to voice how butterflies get caught in her throat every time Katie laughs. How her best friend has blossomed into something fierce, something untouchably bright.
Katie breaks the silence first, one night - says, in a hushed voice, too quiet to be anything but careful, that she thinks she might be in love and Alicia’s heart plummets but Katie’s voice breaks and continues with “I think I’m in love with you” and the rest, as they say, is history.
Katie’s felt it - felt it - the moment Alicia yelled at Malfoy all those years ago on the quidditch pitch. It just took her a couple years to realize.
George forgets about love after the war, too focused on making sure the joke shop does its duty, bringing the slightest sliver of relief to parents and children again. It’s not until years later, when Angelina resurfaces on his radar past the monthly exchanged word here and there, when she comes back from training camp abroad, that love gives him a nudge, a gesture, as if to indicate “There. There I am.”
Angelina loves many people, as bold, beautiful, young women are free to do, and she loves strong and falls hard and falls fast. She’d thought it was her greatest detriment, once upon a time, but there was something almost silly about George at her doorstep, stubbing his foot on the welcome mat, shy in a way she’d never seen before. She told herself this time - this time would be the most dangerous, but three months later, she realizes there’s nothing terrifying about being held by familiar arms.
The twins are the twins, but they aren’t the same. So Fred’s always had love at the tip of his fingers, because Lee’s been at his side since they were fresh-eyed and curious, on the wrong side of too eager. It’s always been there, a quiet undercurrent, the only thing delicate and untouched between them. One day, one of them takes the leap and asks, prods at the tension in the room. When it unravels, their grins bloom tenfold, like fireworks. It lasts for a lifetime.
Oliver says he fell in love fighting on the quidditch pitch (because where else) with an equally passionate quidditch player (because who else) - and that’s how it worked, except there’s always more to a story than that. He brings Marcus home one evening, and his mother smiles and says she had expected nothing else. In reality, Oliver fell in love between dawn and morning practice, yearning hitting him hard in the gut. He’d crawled back into a surprised Marcus’ bed, disregarding his routine morning run in favor of curling into an easy embrace.
Harry finds love lurking somewhere after war reparations and before peace, an odd tentative balance in chaos. He wasn’t looking for it, just as he very rarely asks for anything at all, but it sauntered up, arrogant and brash, unable for him to look away from. Love did that - not Draco, because Draco had his own reparations to make and his own makings of peace and he’d discarded the arrogance for that. Love was a mess and a half, except then it wasn’t, and it made sense, in an odd, funny, sort of way - how inexplicably tied in each other’s narrative the other had been at the end of all things. It made sense in the way that Harry and Draco didn’t, not to anyone looking in. But Harry knows better. He knows what love is, he knows when he has it, and he knows when it’s returned, with a genuine gaze and a steady hand.
okay, i do realize that all students from durmstrang delegation were probably 17-18 years old (to be able to participate in the tournament), but also i love this au too much to care
Draco Malfoy shouted across the Great Hall from the Slytherin table. ‘Hey, Potter! Potter! How’s your head? You feeling all right? Sure you’re not going to go berserk on us?’
- He’s so fucking dramatic I love him, he legitimately shouts across the Great Hall just to get Harry’s attention, is there anything more ridiculous//
one of my fav things about draco and harry is how the turn tables right after book 5 like for the first time in his whole life draco just Doesn’t Care about harry p
I’m like 87% sure that Draco Malfoy talks in his sleep, and is really concerned about how he needs to eat all of the ice mice before the peacocks start biting his toes.
I’m also 98% sure that Harry lies next to him with his head propped on his elbow, grinning, whispering little words of encouragement. “Oh no, not your toes! You can do it! Keep going!”
This is honestly the cutest and most accurate thing I’ve ever read bc Harry James Potter is a Menace and would cherish these moments
im fuckin laughin what if harry’s dirty talking to draco in parseltongue bc he has a parseltongue kink the size of the fuckin sun then out comes a snake talking to Harry like “holy shit shut the fuck up you kinky ass motherfucker do u realize I can /hear/ u MY KIDS CAN HEAR THIS i can’t believe this”
