Theodore had known it since he was seven years old.

Long before Hogwarts, long before he knew what it truly meant to want someone. You’d been sitting cross-legged beside him on the carpet of your childhood home, a bowl of sweets balanced precariously between you, the glow of some Muggle film flickering across the telly. He hadn’t cared much for the story—he rarely did—but the moment a boy on screen reached out, shy and clumsy, to take the girl’s hand, Theodore knew with a certainty that made his chest ache: he wanted that with you.

Not someday, not when he was grown. Even then, with his knees scraped and hair sticking in all directions, he wanted to lace his small fingers with yours. Wanted you in the way the boys in those films always seemed to get what they wanted.

Years had passed, and the wanting never dulled. It only grew sharper, quieter, tucked away beneath layers of smirks and sarcasm, hidden like contraband under floorboards. He carried it through every letter, every summer holiday, every stolen moment at Hogwarts when it was just the two of you and the castle seemed to hold its breath.

But now—now there was something cruel twisting in him. Because word had reached him, soft as rumor but heavy as a stone dropped in his chest: you were in love with someone.

Someone.

The vague, faceless name he could not place gnawed at him worse than detention or his father’s scorn ever could. And so he found you—where else but in the courtyard, sitting on the low wall beneath the shadow of an oak, the September air curling cool around you. Books forgotten in your lap, eyes downcast, that same smile tugging at your lips as though you carried a secret too sweet to share.

He couldn’t bear it.

“You could’ve told me,” he said, his voice level, but the edges too sharp, betraying him.

You looked up, startled, sunlight spilling across your face. “Told you what?”

“That you were in love with someone.” The words felt bitter on his tongue, like smoke he couldn’t exhale. His hands slipped into his pockets, shoulders slouched to mask the way his pulse drummed at his throat. He wanted to sound unaffected, casual, but even he could hear the accusation threaded through.

You blinked, lips parting, fumbling for words. He hated how much he wanted you to deny it.

“It’s—well—I didn’t…” you began, but the sentence collapsed under its own weight.

Theo tilted his head, watching you with those storm-grey eyes that rarely gave him away. But now they were burning, restless, searching your face for something—anything—that might reveal the truth. “Who is it?” he asked, softer this time, but laced with a quiet desperation. “Tell me.”

You hesitated, and in that silence he felt the floor tilt beneath him. You couldn’t tell him. Of course you couldn’t. His mind conjured a list of names—boys with louder laughs, with better families. Each possibility made him feel smaller, hollowed out.

You gave a small, practiced shrug, feigning indifference. “It doesn’t matter.”

But it did. To him it mattered more than anything.

He scoffed under his breath, glancing away so you wouldn’t see the rawness etched across his face. “Right. Doesn’t matter,” he muttered, though his jaw was tight.

When he finally looked back at you, the ache softened. Because there you were—his best friend. The only person who ever made him laugh without meaning to, who ever made the dark corners of his life seem less unbearable. The only person who had ever mattered.

He wanted to tell you then. Wanted to confess that it had always been you, that nothing and no one else had ever stood a chance.

Instead, he shoved his hands deeper into his pockets, smirked like he was unbothered, and sat down beside you on the wall. Close enough that your knees brushed.

If he couldn’t have the truth, at least he could have this—your nearness, your laughter, your unspoken secret pressed between you like the pages of a book only he would ever read.

And Merlin help him, he wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep it locked inside.