forever

[Nick Charles]

It is Spring 2021.
Nick Charles is eighteen years old.
He is floating on the black lake with Emilia Montes
in a boat that they stole from the boathouse.

Emilia said that her eyes were hazel, but when Nick looked into them he only saw the purest green. They were the first thing he saw when he opened his eyes. He smiled lazily, the world still coming back to him after their brief little nap. It was hard not to fall asleep in the boat with her. He held her close to him, her wet clothes sticking to his chest, and closed his eyes to sink into the slow sound of the lake's waves against the side of he boat.

Nick had had a few girlfriends in his time at Hogwarts, but none as beautiful as Emilia. With his days here winding down, it felt more important than ever to find the right girl to settle down with. As he felt her body against his, Nick knew that Emilia was the one. He knew that it was too soon to tell her that, but he could already see their future five, ten, fifteen years ahead.

"Can you imagine having this feeling forever?" Nick asked, closing his eyes with a dreamy little sigh.

    Emilia Montes-Bishop

[Emilia Montes-Bishop]

The one thing all of Nick Charles’ girlfriends would agree on was that he was fun. Emilia felt the same way. Nick was a fun fling, something nice to look at while they slowly made their way through the end of the school year. She wasn’t looking for anything serious and looking at Nick’s track record, she didn’t think he was either.

That’s why, when he asked if she could imagine feeling like this forever, she thought he meant the peaceful way the boat rocked back and forth on the waves, lulling them to sleep. The sun was just beginning to make an appearance after a long, rainy start to Spring that year.

Emilia closed her eyes and just let herself feel the warm rays of the sun on her face. The way Nick’s damp clothes felt cool against her cheek when she rested her head on his chest. A dreamy sigh escaped her lips too and she simply said, “Yes.”

[Nick Charles]

Nick smiled, relieved to finally be on the same page with somebody. It was true that he had been with a lot of girls at Hogwarts, Nick was rarely single as a student. But his relationships never lasted longer than a month or two. With Emilia it just felt...right. Like this was something that would last forever.

He pulled Emilia closer into him so that he could kiss her.

[Emilia Montes-Bishop]

Emilia also felt deep relief. She knew she wasn’t in a place to really open herself up to anyone. Truthfully, she hadn’t been since her father passed. But being with Nick was simple and sometimes it was nice pretending that she was capable of letting her guard down even if it was never ever really down.

She pulled away from his kiss and stretched her body out. They had been floating out in the lake for most of the afternoon and no one had come to investigate why it wasn’t locked down in its usual spot at the boat house.

The things you could get away with when you were beautiful. Emilia smiled at Nick because even she was falling into a trance when she saw him flash his smile and his dimples deepened in his cheeks.

“I can’t wait for summer,” she announced mostly to herself. Emilia had never liked the rain. She knew she belonged in the sunny beaches of Spain.

[Nick Charles]

"Yeah..." Nick breathed.

Normally the thought of summer being so close would have excited Nick, but this year was different. His father's arrest was last year's news. He'd already survived one summer as a pariah. Hogwarts had always been something that Nick could depend on at the end of the summer holiday. No matter how bad things got at the Charles estate, his real life was here. Only, that wasn't the case anymore, was it? After this school year, he'd enter his service at the Ministry. That might have excited him in the past too, but now Nick had no idea what to expect.

"We have a summer house up here not far from Inverness," he said. "We don't really use it anymore."

[Emilia Montes-Bishop]

Emilia learned long ago not to ask why. When her whole life was uprooted and she was forced to move to a different country, other kids would ask why. It only made Emilia more upset because they obviously didn’t do it on purpose but it only reminded her that her father was gone.

Nick’s dad was alive but he was as good as gone too. Maybe it was even more tragic for Nick because his dad was still out there in the world but he would most likely never see him again. So instead of questioning why the Charles family didn’t vacation in Scotland anymore, Emilia tried to find a way to make this conversation work.

“How’s the weather in the summer?”

Ugh, okay, let’s be real here. Nick and Emilia weren’t together for their conversational skills. They communicated in other ways. It was something a little more physical.

[Nick Charles]

"It rains a lot," Nick said.

He adjusted so that he could face Emilia, but he kept his arm around her so that he could keep her safe. He continued, "But after several days of rain, when the clouds clear up and the sun peaks through, there's this kind of glowing haze out across the lake. It's beautiful."

[Emilia Montes-Bishop]

The way Nick described his summer home almost changed Emilia’s mind about her disdain for rainy places. He clearly loved it. Emilia had a place she held close to her heart too so she could appreciate that about Nick.

“It does sound very beautiful,” she agreed. “Even with all that rain.”

[Nick Charles]

"It would be more beautiful with you there," Nick said.

[Emilia Montes-Bishop]

“I know,” Emilia said confidently. What was she going to do? Pretend to be bashful and not take his compliment? That wasn’t Emilia’s style.

[Nick Charles]

"Maybe we can spend the summer there?"

[Emilia Montes-Bishop]

Spend the summer there? Emilia traced her fingers over the front of Nick's shirt while she thought. It was late April, summer vacation was two months away, plenty of things could and would happen in between now and then that could cause their relationship (she was being generous referring to this as a relationship, to be honest) to fracture.

"Sure," Emilia replied. Never mind that she already had plans for the summer. It couldn't hurt to feed into Nick's dreams of the near future. It wasn't like he was asking her to spend the rest of her life with him. She had just turned sixteen and that'd be crazy. "It would be just us, right?"

[Nick Charles]

Nick knew that he was going to spend the rest of his life with Emilia. It was obvious in the way she traced her finger along his shirt, the look on her eyes as she accepted.

“Maybe a year ago, you could have met my dad,” he said. “But things change. It’s totally ours, baby.”

[Emilia Montes-Bishop]

Why does he do that? Emilia wondered as she tried not to make it obvious that Nick's words hit a nerve with her. Okay, yes, it was sad that his dad was in prison and Emilia felt bad for Nick but he talked about his dad like he was dead. Emilia's dad was actually dead and Nick was here telling her that "things change". Nick really was the dumbest boy Emilia had ever met. He was lucky to have been born with good looks.

"That's good." She was glad that she didn't have to meet his family even if this was just a hypothetical scenario. She wasn't really planning on spending her summer with him. "What will you do after?" Once summer was over, Nick wouldn't be returning to Hogwarts, he was less than three months from graduation.

[Nick Charles]

But Nick’s dad may as well have been dead to him. His entire life had been defined by a man who didn’t exist. All Charles ever wanted was to live up to the expectations that his father set, but he’d learned that those expectations were just a dream and now he was living in a nightmare.

But it wasn’t all bad! Nick was really hot. And that was something that no department of ethics could take from him.

“After summer?” Nick asked, a little stunned that Emilia was even thinking that far in advance. “Well, I’ve already got my acceptance into the Hit Wizard program. I figure I’ve got some work to do to turn the Charles family name around. A proper family would probably help my image. Can you imagine having a little Nick running around? I think that would complete me. I don’t think I’d want to live at the estate anymore. I’d rather settle down somewhere a bit more modern, maybe further into the city. I want our kid to be cultured before he goes to Hogwarts. Then, once he's out of the house, those are the special years. It’s just you and me, alone together eight months out of the year. Think of the magic we could do then.”