The castle was quiet, the kind of silence that felt sacred, like the world had stopped breathing just for you.

You pressed your back to the cold stone wall, breathless from laughing as Harry stumbled in behind you, cloak slipping off his shoulders. His hair was messy, his glasses fogged from the run through the rain.

“We could get caught,” you whispered, eyes wide, heart hammering.

“I don’t care,” he said, stepping closer. “Let them catch me. Let them send me to Filch, or detention with Snape—just not away from you.”

You laughed softly, but it caught in your throat when he touched your cheek, gently brushing away a raindrop—or maybe it was a tear. Neither of you had been okay lately. The war was closing in. You both had scars now, inside and out. But when you looked at him, it was like none of it mattered.

“I think about you all the time,” Harry murmured, voice barely audible. “When I’m fighting, when I’m scared, when I can’t sleep. It’s always you. It’s mad, I know. We’re sixteen, and we could die tomorrow, but I’d rather have this—you—than nothing at all.”

You pulled him down into a kiss that was messy, desperate, and way too much for two teenagers who shouldn’t have had to grow up so fast. But it was yours. Fierce, clumsy, real. Your hands in his hair, his arms around your waist, both of you breathing like you’d just come up from drowning.

“I love you,” he said, forehead pressed to yours. “Madly. Terribly. Like an idiot.”

You grinned, “Then I guess I’m just as mad.”

And you stayed there—two reckless kids in love, kissing like the world was burning… because it was.