ʜᴇᴀᴠᴇɴ ᴏʀ ʜᴇʟʟ ⟶ ɢinny ᴡeasley

xvii

sigh... not sure if you'll like this but... here we go

trigger warning: sexual content

Riley Westbrook liked to consider herself a fairly simple person. She had had a happy childhood, but of course everything was cut short when she discovered that she would never have magic in her blood. Despite this, she had managed to become a strong, independent young woman, intelligent and consistent enough to have finished with a degree in psychology and working in a place like Hogwarts.

She liked to wake up early, early enough to watch carefully the sunrise over the horizon; she liked tea —neither too sweet nor too bitter, but with just the right amount of sugar; she liked to dress soberly, so as not to attract too much attention; she liked planning and having things go the way she wanted: Riley really liked routines and easy things. However, she also liked Jude Travers, so she no longer knew if she should consider herself a simple person.

She'd spent dozens of nights with her hands covering her face, huffing, wondering why it must be Jude that she thought of so often. She blamed herself for having continued to treat her so naturally when she knew that from the first moment she had captured her attention, she blamed herself for not treating her like just another student, because by her actions she was now screwed. Only because of Jude had she felt what she was feeling, and Riley knew there was no worse time or person for it.

Despite all the bad things that might cross her mind, Riley couldn't help but surprise herself by thinking of parallel situations: if she had been just one more student, had she been a few years younger, she was sure she would have fantasized about taking Jude Travers to the Ball. It didn't even haunt her mind that she'd been a Death Eater, that she was cold, or that she was a rude Slytherin: that was just an image of the girl, Riley was convinced that with her she was someone very different, and that was precisely what attracted her the most: that neither of them seemed to judge each other despite having infinite reasons for it.

Riley flopped down on the bed with a helpless grunt after looking at herself in the mirror and imagining that tonight she could be with her herself, invite her to the dance as she wished, spend a pleasant evening with her without anyone being able to say anything beyond the obvious, going out to the garden to get some fresh air, maybe spend a while away from the eyes of others, who knows. But none of this could happen, and Riley knew it, and that was why she hated herself.

Another reason why she hated her falling in love behavior was because she knew that Jude was being the mature of the two, the one who knew how to set limits, when and where to stop and, above all, because although she knew that she and Slytherin got on well, what the young squib was beginning to feel for the girl wasn't reciprocated in the same way. Yes, Riley liked the times they spent together, but although she wished otherwise, she knew that Jude didn't share her feelings. And although it hurt more than she thought to realize it, she knew it was the right thing to do.

Still, part of her couldn't stop thinking: what if she did? What if Jude really was willing to give up everything to give them a chance? What if the Slytherin's way of showing affection was just different from hers, but she did reciprocate her feelings? She wanted to stop giving herself false hopes, but after all, Riley was still a teenager in spirit, and she would find little hope anywhere to satisfy her love fantasies.

Sigh.

Sometimes she didn't know how to draw her own limits, and that for a psychologist wasn't very good.

She'd noticed from the beginning that Jude didn't like the idea of ​​going to the Ball, but she'd responded in a more friendly way because it was Riley who had asked her. And Riley, being herself, had insisted in a way that the Slytherin had lost her patience. Now she felt sorry for her behavior, because it had caused unnecessary tension between the two, despite their meeting at dance practice. Things weren't exactly the same since last week, and while it seemed like everything was fine, Riley knew it wasn't.