'A crashing ocean wave,

She's powerful like the sea.

Born from a cage of blur

She flies like birds set free.

She glows wherever she walks,

Her wings so softly feathered.

She'll forever be his sunshine;

Nevermore will she be tethered.

Her freckles are the stars,

Her smile is like the sunrise.

And if you look closely, you can see

The light within her eyes.

He'd sacrifice everything for her.

His life; his very heartbeat.

He'd catch her when she'd fall

And stand her back to her feet.

So the night that she was taken,

His heart was only ever pain full.

It would ache until he bled

As he named himself the shameful.

But he has to remind himself,

When he names himself as blameful,

That she's in a better place;

With her kind among the angels.'
-G. Lee

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Hogwarts, The Half-Blood Prince.

The world was in greyscale that day. The sky like mercury glass, translucent with silvery clouds. Even the trees looked sullen, drooping under the weight of gloominess. It was warm inside her room—with both the heat and colour tones, but it was the coldest she'd felt in a long time. On the inside, at least.

Her suitcase spilled clothes out onto the maroon duvet—most of which were made and gifted by Mrs Weasley, or given generously by Hermione. Her dress, the only thing she still held from the mansion, other than the memories, of course, though too short and small for her near sixteen-year-old self, lay neatly folded at the bottom of the piles. It remained a murky colour from the lake those years ago; tinged a slight green rather than its original pearly white.

Adeline planned to be unpacked by now, as the welcome feast was being held in a mere twenty minutes, though only a small portion of her belongings had actually been put away. This included the rose—though that didn't really count, as she kept it at Hogwarts for the holidays, petals mildly wrinkled on their ends.

Dark curls, reaching her mid back, curtained the sides of her face as she sat cross-legged, her right side facing the floor-to-ceiling window. He smiled from across her on the carpet, and reached into the cardboard shoebox.

"Was this the first one?" Harry asked, pulling out the paper plane and, gently, turning it over in his hand as he examined the fragile craft. He tucked a bloodied handkerchief he'd previously been holding to his nose back inside his pocket.

She nodded, the pain in her head pounding sharp and heavy, though she brushed it away and mirrored his grin, slightly squirming under the consistent uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach.

The box was one she'd had for a while now, though only started using when she needed a safe place to put most of her treasured things, having dug it out from the bottom of her closet halfway through the previous year. Addie wasn't exactly the kind to throw things away.

The two had been going through the box ever since Harry had come down for company, interrupting her unpacking. The corners of his lips turned up once more as he pulled out a pile of small, folded notes tied together by string—each and every one they'd passed to each other during classes, the ones that had previously been paper planes now folded to squares, though the creases were still evident.

He squinted his eyes shut in remembrance, cringing at his past self after unfolding one of the many notes. At the time, he'd been sitting beside Addie during History of Magic—one of his least favourite subjects due to the dullness he found from it. Harry had attempted at drawing her, even if he, really, was no artist—he needed something to do, or else he'd probably 'perish of boredom', the phrase he always says to Hermione.

"I still don't know what that is you drew." She recalled, kneeling as she peered over his hands to look.

"It was meant to be you!" Harry laughed, looking up at her and back down to the drawing, pointing to parts of the picture. "See—those are your freckles, that's your nose..."

Addie giggled, sitting back down, even as her head throbbed. "I always thought you wrote something and scribbled it out!"

"Gee, thanks." He replied sarcastically, joking along, both their smiles twice as broad as before, sticking to their faces even as he slipped the note back into the pile, tying the string around loosely.

As Adeline skimmed the stack of moving pictures, the same size as Polaroids, she absentmindedly ranked them in order of which ones she loved most—distracting herself from the hurt. Her third most favourite was one of herself and Neville.

It had been nearing the end of fifth year, so the memory was still relatively clear; he was teaching her about different kinds of magical plants and fungi for, really, one main reason: Adeline was his only friend willing to genuinely learn and listen to his informative rambles. Harry had come along to spend time with the both of them, but he could never pay as much attention as she did. He'd brought his camera along, a special Christmas present from Sirius, and had taken the cherished photo without either parties knowing at first. It showed Neville and her sitting under a willow tree on the shore of the Black Lake, him sitting on his legs, holding the book open toward her like a parent showcasing a picture book, Adeline sitting cross-legged before him, hands resting in her lap, looking at the book, smiling to the picture he was pointing at. The photo caught the moment the two burst out laughing at a supposed plant-related joke Neville made that Harry wouldn't get. Both of them had a copy of the moving picture.

The second was a group photo of Adeline, Hermione and Ginny sitting together in the Gryffindor common room. The three girls faced the camera, arms around each other in front of the main fireplace, their eyes shining, bearing wide grins in the warm light, flames flickering behind them. Their grins turned into half-laughs as Ron jumped in front, photobombing with a stupid face, the camera seemingly shaking as Harry started to laugh, until the picture reset and played once more.

The first one, her very favourite of the bunch, was of herself and Harry. Hermione had taken this picture. It was raining heavily, drops plummeting to the earth; the bookworm had run undercover before it got too bad, and took Harry's camera out of her bag—where she'd been keeping it safe for him. The photo showed Ron running out of frame, undercover near Hermione, hair dripping wet onto his uniform, Harry and Adeline still in the open courtyard, racing eachother for shelter. Harry was much faster than Addie at that moment, and ran back to where she was, turning his back to her and bending his knees slightly. As they'd done this before, she quickly hopped onto his back, looping her arms around his neck as he held her legs on either side of him, running clumsily toward the camera undercover, raindrops covering the lenses of his glasses, Adeline a mixture between squealing and laughing. As the two reached the camera close enough to see these details, it reset and played back continually.

"I can't believe you saved all this stuff." Harry spoke up, snapping her out of the memory as she looked over to him. He was holding a small bunch of white daisies, kept alive from one of her enchantments.

They weren't the flowers from the Hospital Wing, but instead ones that she and Harry had picked. They were from the first time he showed her around Hogwarts back in his fourth year, and, apart from the paper plane, they were one of the oldest things in there; one of the most sentimental.

"Of course I did." She put the picture back in its pile, right on top, looking from the flowers to him. "It's you."

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a/n:

if there's a typo i'm gonna scream

also if you haven't read 'trust | h.p' before this then you probably should

otherwise you'll be super confused :))