Theodore Nott was eight years old when he climbed onto one knee, held out a cherry red ring pop, and promised he would marry you someday.

He'd been missing his two front teeth, and his hair had been sticking up in the back from where he'd fallen asleep on the common room couch. The ring pop had been slightly sticky, no doubt from being clutched in his pocket for hours while he worked up the nerve.

You'd laughed. Called him ridiculous. And then slipped the candy onto your finger anyway, because even at eight years old, saying no to Theodore Nott had felt impossible.

Neither of you knew it then, but that silly little promise would become the foundation of a lifetime of loving each other without ever quite finding the courage to say it.

You grew up together. Inseparable in every way that mattered. You stole food off each other's plates in the Great Hall, shared secrets no one else was allowed to know, and sought comfort in each other's arms without ever questioning why it felt so natural.

Your first kiss happened at twelve, behind the greenhouses, after Theodore had spent a full week avoiding you because he didn't know how to say he liked you. It was brief and awkward and absolutely perfect.

The years that followed were a blur of stolen glances across classrooms, sleepy cuddles in the Slytherin common room, and moments that blurred the line between friendship and something neither of you dared to name.

Theodore was your person. Your home. The boy you had always imagined growing old beside.

Then came your final year at Hogwarts. The war tore apart everything you'd spent your childhood building. Theodore was forced to follow the Death Eaters by his father's request; you refused to follow him into darkness. Suddenly, loving him meant watching him walk down a path you couldn't follow, and neither of you knew how to bridge the distance growing between you.

You held on to the promise he'd made at eight, believing that somehow, someday, you'd find your way back to each other.

And then Voldemort fell.

The battle was over, but the castle was still groaning around you—walls cracked, corridors collapsed, dust hanging thick in the air. You ran through the wreckage of Hogwarts, desperate to find Theodore, already imagining the moment you'd finally throw your arms around him again. You would forgive him. You would tell him everything you'd kept buried for years. Maybe, finally, you'd ask whether he still remembered his promise.

But Theodore was nowhere to be found.

Neither were his friends, and the longer you searched, the tighter the dread coiled in your chest. Bodies lined the Great Hall. Families wept over the fallen. The air tasted like smoke and grief.

Until Mattheo approached your group, his face pale and his eyes filled with a grief that made your heart stop before he even spoke.

The words didn't make sense. They couldn't. Theodore couldn't be gone. You'd just been running to find him. You'd just been about to tell him everything.

You refused to believe him. You ran until your legs burned, until the ruined corridors blurred together, until you found Theodore lying motionless in a collapsed section of hallway near the dungeons.

The boy who had once promised you forever was reduced to a silence you couldn't bear.

And when you reached for his hand, you found something clutched in his fingers.

A ring.

A delicate red sapphire, the exact shade of the ring pop he'd given you when you were eight.

Theodore had remembered. After everything—after the war, after all the things left unsaid—he had remembered the promise of a little boy who wanted nothing more than to marry his best friend.

He had carried the promise all the way to the end.

And you had arrived too late to tell him you'd always intended to keep yours.