disclaimer: i don't own harry potter. or maximo park.

i)

He is fire and she is ice and to be honest, they're probably going to destroy each other.

He cannot understand why she is in Gryffindor. He suits it perfectly; fiercely loyal and impulsive to the point of recklessness. But she? She is cold and careful, and lets no one in. An enigma, with her ice blue eyes and that long blonde hair. But then, he is an enigma too, a bad boy with a heart of gold, keeping all those sad stories locked in his chest even though it aches.

He thinks they are the same.

She wanders around the castle like a ghost, never stopping anywhere for too long. She is totally rootless and restless and she drinks too much and smokes too much and everyone wants to be in her gang because she is a queen but she will let no one in. No one can climb the wall she has built around her heart.

She thinks they are total opposites.

He is like a cannon ball, lurching from one mishap to the next, totally and utterly alive, with his brothers, his friends who he loves and trusts and would die for. She will die for no one (or so she says). Everyone wants to be in his gang, where he smokes too much and drinks too much and laughs too much, and they let nearly everybody in. Everyone is invited to their parties; everyone can laugh at their jokes. She doesn't know, of course, that none of these pretenders stays up late at night to help the brother that hurts and aches with a pain that cannot be cured, but still, he lets them further in than she does.

Sometimes he thinks he's made a break through. When they're sat under the stars and she says I'm scared or I worry about you or do you ever feel lost? But the next morning she'll be just as cold, just as guarded. Her cards are still close to her chest. And he'll fight the urge to shake her, to tell her its okay, it's alright to feel things, it's alright to exist.

He does not love her. He knows what love is, and he does not feel it for her. She is ice, and it is hard, bloody hard, to melt her. Damn near impossible.

She does not love him. She is certain love does not exist. He is fire, and it burns to stand beside him. She adds bricks to the wall, and he stops trying to climb it.

They never argue. It is a cold and careful agreement – just the way she likes things. You do not love me, she says, I do not love you and we owe each other nothing. They sign the agreement with an unfeeling kiss, and a puff of the other's cigarette, and her hand is cold to the touch.

ii

They make each other miserable. She can't even stand the word like any more, it makes her shudder. These things do not exist, she tells him, it is a lie. One day, Lily tells them the Greek myth that people were once four legged and how the four legged creature was torn apart, doomed to wander the earth searching for its other half. She thinks this is bollocks, and tells him so. He agrees, but the fire inside him dims a little.

He cannot understand why she is in Gryffindor. She is cold and unfeeling, and she will let no one in and sometimes he is done with her and her cynicism and her half smoked cigarettes and her ice.

She cannot understand why he loves so deeply and loyally. These people will hurt you, she says, you will ache with loss and sadness. Sometimes he quotes Shakespeare at her, hoping it will melt her.

Better to have loved and lost than never loved at all, he says. She raises her eyebrows and swigs her cider and says nothing. Still she does not melt.

When the end of their schooling comes, she tells him shortly that he will be seeing less of her, that she is going abroad. I'm telling you because Lily says it's polite, she says coldly, I'll be back in December. He wants to go with her; she is an enigma after all, and he wants to know everything. But she tells him she's going alone, that she might meet up with Dorcas in Rome, and that she will not write. I owe you nothing, she says.

iii

In the months she is gone, he lives alone. No, that is a lie. He lives with dozens of different people. Lily sometimes pops over for tea, and they dance to her Muggle punk records, and holding her hand feels like holding a flame. James comes with her, often, and the three of them stay up 'til two talking about love and life and death and eventually they fall asleep on each other's shoulders. Remus and Peter visit frequently, and they bring alcohol and chocolate and sometimes the four of them spend all night in their animal forms, running through the woods on the outskirts of London, or sometimes they sleep on the floor in his flat, the wolf and the dog and the stag and the rat. The Prewett brothers stop by for lunch and he plays at being a soldier, drawing up battle plans. Dorcas comes back from Europe and sleeps on his sofa for two weeks, and they argue about politics and what's-better-Honeydukes-or-Dr-Uxbridge's-chocolat e until they're blue in the face, and when she leaves, he finds a jumper bought from a flea market in Amsterdam and a box of Honeyduke's Assorted Gems on the kitchen table. His flat is host to Lily and James' engagement party, to the christening of Edgar Bones' youngest daughter, to Frank and Alice's wedding reception. He is known for loving deeply.

Whilst in Europe, she falls in love and does not sleep for six months. He is kind and makes her laugh and melts the ice so slowly she does not notice it. They first encounter each other in Barcelona, where it rains all night and she is caught in the cold without an umbrella. She is smoking outside the Wizarding British Embassy, where she was dropping off a letter for Lily, and she is soaked from head to foot and he offers her his umbrella. He is conventionally good looking, with messy brown hair and the softest Irish lilt to his voice. He tells her she is pretty, and she laughs coldly, and walks away. She does not see him again until Paris, which she hates because the people are rude and the roads are dirty and everyone is in love which is ridiculous because it doesn't exist. She visits Oscar Wilde's tomb even though she cares little for his writing, because she just wants to say she did it, and there he is, Umbrella Boy, again. He calls her Pretty Girl, and she can almost taste the capital letters. They observe the sniveling Muggles kissing the tomb of a long dead writer, and he tells her that his favourite Oscar Wilde quote is 'be yourself; everyone else is already taken'. She laughs coldly again, and he asks her to lunch. She refuses to admit it, but Paris is lonely when you're alone, and so they sit under the Eiffel Tower and eat and laugh and by the end of the afternoon he calls her Sweet Girl because there is more to her than just being pretty, says he. No one has ever called her sweet before. She has never had a nickname before. In Berlin, they run into each other on the way to a disco-tech. He confesses, shyly, that he thinks she is beautiful and she laughs- although not as coldly- and takes his hand. They dance all night. He is so kind to her. She keeps him with her because he makes her feel like she is good. That she has the capability to be kind, to love. He tells her long and rambling anecdotes about his school in Ireland, and she ruins the seats on the train to Prague because she snorts pumpkin juice out from her nose and it goes everywhere. In St Petersburg, she trips in the snow, breaking her ankle, and he refuses to leave the city until she is well again. She does, on occasion, grow bored with him; she kisses a warlock in Amsterdam, she leaves him on the platform in Prague. But still he stays.

Why, she asks him.

Because, he replies, just…because.

It is only when they kiss on the streets of Lisbon that the realization knocks her to her knees and robs her of her breath. Love is real she writes to Lily, I am a fool and love is real. It creeps up on her, like winter melting into spring, and it is like she has woken up. She tells him as they watch the sunset in Rome, in Vienna, in Paris on the last night of November, the night before she is due to return to England. Come with me she says, come with me, I love you.

So he does.

iv

The first place they go is her ex boyfriend's flat. A party is in full swing.

You've got dreadlocks, her ex boyfriend says.

You've cut your hair, she replies.

We're having a party.

I've noticed.

She introduces him to her Umbrella Boy, and he seems surprised.

I thought love didn't exist?

She thinks for a moment, and then says softly I was wrong.

Everyone notices it, how much warmer she is, how kind and funny she is. Lily says she was like that all along, but he is not so sure. Why him, he asks her at midnight, when she is sat on the sofa with Edgar Bones' daughter, why not me?

Because, she tells him, you didn't love me.

Since when has that stopped anyone? He says, look at Lily and James.

She does. They are sat together in one arm chair, having a fierce debate with Dorcas about the Montrose Magpies new Chaser. I know, she murmurs softly, I should've seen it, should've realised it. But I didn't, and now I do. Be happy for me?

He is. He is happy for her when they get engaged, happy for her when they buy a little cottage in Upper Flagley and he swears he will visit when they get married, he is happy for her when she gets her wedding dress and parades it up and down his living room, arm in arm with Dorcas and Lily. He is happy for her when they set a date, and devastated when she is killed along with the rest of her family, alongside her Umbrella Boy, at the age of twenty one.

He was fire and she was ice, but in the end the fire went out, the ice melted, and Lily Potter cried all evening.

Love is a lie which means I've been lied to; love is a lie which means I've been lying too.