For a while, neither of them spoke.
The fire in the hearth had burned low, casting long shadows that danced across the walls of the Room of Requirement, and somewhere beyond the enchanted windows, the castle slept in the deep quiet of the night.
Amelia was tucked against his side, her head resting comfortably on his chest while Gilderoy absentmindedly played with a strand of her hair. His fingers moved through it with slow familiarity now, the motion no longer something he had to think about. It had become automatic in the way habits formed without permission, guided more by presence than intention. The strands were soft between his fingers, a deep reddish-brown that caught the firelight in ways that made him want to keep touching it just to see how the colour shifted.
He noticed, distantly, that she didn't move away from it. They had been together for only a few months, after all, and whatever this was between them was still new enough that he could feel its shape changing beneath his hands.
Eventually, Gilderoy broke the silence.
"You know," he said, his voice low and unhurried, "there is something I've always wondered. One thing."
He heard the slight awkwardness in his own phrasing as soon as the words left his mouth, but he didn't correct it. It had already escaped, and there was no point in pretending he could take it back.
Amelia didn't open her eyes. "Only one thing?"
Her voice carried that calm tone, the one that suggested she was listening without fully committing to being drawn out of the moment just yet. Her fingers were resting lightly on his chest, tracing idle patterns against the fabric of his shirt.
"I have many questions," Gilderoy admitted. "This one just happens to be at the top of the list."
That earned him a faint smile. The corners of her mouth curved upward in that quiet way she had, the one that suggested she was amused despite herself.
"What is it?"
Gilderoy hesitated.
He had been carrying this question for weeks now, turning it over in his mind during quiet moments, wondering if he should ask it at all. Some questions, once spoken, couldn't be unspoken. But he wanted to know.
"Why me?"
For a moment, nothing changed.
The fire crackled softly. The silence stretched between them like a held breath.
Then Amelia opened her eyes.
She turned her head slightly, enough to look at him directly. Her gaze was steady, the kind of look that had probably made junior Aurors stammer during her training evaluations.
"That's your question?"
She stared at him for several seconds. It wasn't a surprised stare. It was more measured, as if she was trying to decide how seriously she was supposed to treat something she had never actually prepared an answer for. Her brow furrowed slightly, the way it did when she was working through a difficult problem in class.
"You've waited months to ask that?"
"I've been distracted."
Her lips twitched. "By Quidditch?"
"You."
The answer came immediately, without hesitation or correction. The word had simply been there, waiting at the edge of his consciousness, and when she had given him the opening, it had fallen out without any attempt to dress it up.
She was taken aback by the sudden compliment, a faint flush creeping across her cheeks that she quickly tried to hide. But the laugh that escaped her was genuine, if a little shy, and by the time she had regained her composure, the warmth of it lingered in the space between them.
"Hah! Gil, You flirt even when you're being serious."
"It's a gift."
"No, it's a problem."
"It can be both."
Amelia rolled her eyes slightly at that, but she didn't move away. Instead, she settled back against him again, more comfortably than before, as if the conversation itself had already stopped requiring defensive distance. Her head found its place on his shoulder again, and her hand resumed its idle tracing against his chest.
Gilderoy noticed that again. He didn't comment on it, but he registered it clearly. This ease between them, the way she fit against him like she belonged there, was something he hadn't expected when he had first arrived in this world. He had anticipated many things—fame, power, women—but he hadn't anticipated this quiet comfort.
A few moments passed. Neither of them spoke.
It wasn't awkward silence. It was something slower. Something that gave space for thought without demanding action. The fire popped softly, and a log shifted in the grate, sending up a shower of sparks.
Amelia remained still for a while longer, as if she was deciding how far back in her memory she was willing to reach. Her fingers had stopped their tracing, resting flat against his chest.
"I can see auras," she said quietly. "Colours around people. It's not always clear, but yours…" She paused, searching for the right words. "Yours changed. It wasn't the same as before."
Gilderoy kept still, his hand pausing briefly in her hair before continuing again, slower this time.
"That's why I approached you," she continued. "I mean, I barely knew you before. We had been in the same classes for years, but I never really noticed you. You were just… there. Another face in the crowd. A Ravenclaw who seemed more interested in his hair than his studies."
Her gaze drifted slightly as she spoke, no longer holding eye contact in the same steady way, as if she was hiding something.
"But that morning in the Great Hall, when I saw you at the Ravenclaw table from afar, something was different. Not just the aura—though that was the first thing I noticed. It was in your behaviour too. Your expression. The way you carried yourself. You weren't acting like Gilderoy was supposed to act."
Gilderoy remained silent, but internally, he was freaking out.
She's onto me, isn't she? Shit. I did not expect this conversation to go in this direction. Can I even reveal it to her?
The explanation made sense on the surface, but it didn't fully resolve what he had been wondering. It explained her noticing him. It didn't explain her choosing him. There was a difference between being curious about someone and actively pursuing them.
Why do I feel like she's hiding something?
"That's all?" he asked.
"At first."
His eyebrow rose slightly.
"At first?"
"You're handsome, Gilderoy."
Her confession felt genuine, and there was a warmth in her delivery that softened the edges of her words.
"And you looked to me as if you had somehow changed," she continued. "Not just your aura, but the way you moved. The way you spoke. I was curious."
She paused, and something shifted in her expression-a flicker of reluctant admission.
"The more time we spent together, the more annoying it became."
Gilderoy grinned, raising an eyebrow twice in an exaggerated motion meant to tease her. "I became annoying? Really?"
"Yes."
"How so?"
"Something just kept me by your side."
That made him pause again. Not out of confusion, but out of consideration. He turned the words over in his head, trying to understand what she meant by them.
"What do you mean?"
Amelia didn't answer immediately.
Instead, her hand shifted, finding his again with quiet familiarity. Her fingers closed around his without hesitation, grounding the conversation in something physical while she continued. The contact was warm and steady, and he found himself curling his fingers around hers in return.
"When I first approached you, I thought you were interesting," she said.
"Then we studied together. We trained together. We became Animagi together. And somewhere along the way, I started enjoying your company."
"We spent months talking about things that had nothing to do with classes. You made me laugh. You challenged me. You treated me like Amelia instead of Amelia Bones."
Her voice softened at that—not fragile, never fragile with Amelia Bones, but carrying a vulnerability she rarely let anyone see.
"I wasn't looking for anything," she admitted. "I was focused on my studies. My career. My training. I had a plan, and you weren't part of it."
Her thumb traced a small circle on the back of his hand.
"But the moment I approached you that day in the Great Hall, everything changed."
Ok, She's definitely still hiding something. I know she is. There's something she's not telling me.
But even as he considered it, he couldn't deny the sincerity in her voice and in her eyes. The way her hand held his. The way she had said all of this without deflection or pretense.
I feel genuine feelings from her, though. She's not lying about liking me.
Amelia looked away slightly after that, as if the act of saying it had made her briefly more aware of herself than she intended. Her cheeks had flushed slightly, though she was doing her best to pretend they hadn't.
"So no," she said quietly, "I didn't approach you because I just felt like it suddenly. There were reasons. There were circumstances. I noticed you because of the change, and I stayed because of everything else."
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