They had lasted for eleven months, two weeks, and three days. Just a few more weeks and they would have made it for an entire year.

But then the owl had come, flying into the Great Hall on snow-laden wings to deliver Aldon’s first correspondence since Hannah’s return to Hogwarts after the Christmas holiday. Hannah remembered interrupting a conversation with her friend, Neville, to retrieve the parchment from the owl’s leg with hands that worked quickly from the hope that this letter would contain something to ease the worries that had plagued her all throughout her visit home.

It took a while for the words to sink in. Hannah read and re-read the message, looking for words of comfort… an explanation for his distance when she’d gone home to visit him… or maybe an apology for taking so long to respond to the owl she’d sent him last week… But there was no comfort to be found in the words that were penned in Aldon’s messy, left-handed scrawl:

…I can’t handle the expectations…
…if you weren’t so far away…
…I really like you, but…
…the stress…
…just too difficult…
…I want to stay friends, though…
…hope you understand…

And so Hannah’s first relationship had ended, just under a month ago.

The next few weeks had been spent in a haze of bewilderment: Why, after almost a year, did Aldon suddenly end their relationship? Why did he wait to break up with her until she was back at Hogwarts, where she had only one friend, instead of doing it while she was back home with all of her Muggle friends there to help her through this? Why hadn’t he complained before about the distance, or the stress, so that she could help him overcome it?

And most of all: Why didn’t her feelings for him go away?

Isn’t that how relationships were supposed to work: you stayed together while you liked each other, and then broke up when the feelings went away? But Aldon said he really liked her, still… So why did he break up with her? And why, in Merlin’s name, did Hannah still feel such a warm exuberance at just the thought of his name?

Hannah had only told one person that she still felt so strongly for Aldon, although she was pretty sure that her friends back home—who had all, as Aldon’s classmates at their Muggle school, heard about the separation and written their own letters of condolence to be sent via her parents’ owl—all knew about it as well. But Neville was the only one who had actually heard Hannah’s confession, as well as descriptions of the dreams that played through subconscious mind as she slept, even it had been almost a month now…

It was all his fault, she had concluded. If Aldon wasn’t so wonderful, in his own often frustrating way, she wouldn’t be in this turmoil. But no, he had to be intelligent and witty, full of himself at times, introspective, hilarious, patient, sarcastic but considerate when called upon, a willing pillow for impromptu naps, almost a perfect counter for Hannah’s own personality, which was rash and independent and shy, and very often indecisive. How could Hannah be blamed for still feeling the way she did?

If there was one thing Hannah could be accused of—and she did accuse herself of it almost every time she remembered Aldon—was that she had allowed a boy to hold so much sway in her life. She had broken the promise she’d made to herself at thirteen, not even five years earlier…: she had depended on a boy to make her happy.

Such inner chaos had deterred every attempt Hannah had made to respond to Aldon’s message: countless drafts had been thrown into a quickly accumulating rubbish pile next to her four-poster bed in the Ravenclaw seventh-year girls’ dormitory, each for its own reason:

I can’t tell him that, it might make him feel guilty…
He’ll just laugh if I tell him that…
If he thinks I’m depressed, it will make him feel bad…

I don’t think he’ll understand if I put that in…
Will he feel justified if I make it seem like I’m happy? But I don’t want that…

Eventually, Hannah just gave up on sending any sort of response. Maybe Aldon had already found another girl he liked better… a pretty, flirtatious Muggle girl who shared all his classes at the school that Hannah couldn’t attend because she was a witch and had to go to a magical school where she had only one friend… Maybe that was why it was too difficult for Aldon to continue the relationship: did he already have another girl he was interested in? Did the rest of Hannah’s friends, most of whom were also Aldon’s friends, know anything that Hannah didn’t know about why Aldon had ended their relationship?

Such thoughts had led to an even larger rubbish stack, piled high with letters addressed to Hannah’s Muggle friends back home:

Ashleigh—Hi! How are you? How is Aldon?
Celena—Hey! How are things going, chica? I’m doing okay, but I was wondering how Aldon’s been doing since we broke up…
Luke—Hey, how’s life? Have you heard from Aldon lately?
Beth—Wow, we haven’t talked for so long! Not since I came down, at least… Hey, have you seen Aldon recently?
Estella!—How is the new semester going? Do you still hang out with Aldon?

So many failed letters, all in one pile of parchment at the side of her bed, waiting for the authoress to allow the house-elves to chuck them out… it was really stupid, after all, for Hannah to keep the letters: each one felt like an admittance of guilt, yet Hannah couldn’t find it in her to let them be thrown out like the garbage they were. On the contrary: Hannah now had another letter to contemplate adding to the pile… it would be the first one not written in her own hand.

It had arrived this morning on the leg of her parents’ owl… just like the last one. It had her name etched clumsily down the side of the rolled-up paper, the same as last time. It even looked like it had been written with the same ball-point pen… after all, Muggles didn’t write with quills and ink, especially not left-handed boys who already complained about the ink and pencil lead that smeared onto their hands as they wrote.

What was it that Aldon wanted to say, this time? Hannah wondered. Did he decide he didn’t want to be friends anymore, either? That would be a blow almost even more terrible than the initial break-up, since Hannah and Aldon had been friends for three years before they started going out… just over a year ago, now.

Hannah wondered if she should even open the letter. After all: she hadn’t heard from Aldon in weeks, and his last correspondence had been dumping her… did she really want to read this letter from her… ex-boyfriend?

An ex-boyfriend that she still felt enamored of. An ex-boyfriend who could quote her favorite poems—magical or Muggle—from memory; who took her mountain-climbing over the summer holiday; who managed to make Hannah feel treasured even in a bathing-suit, baring all of her bodily imperfections to the garish light of the sun on hot summer days at the community swimming pool near Aldon’s house; of whom Hannah at spent countless sleepless nights wondering just how strongly she felt for, before finally—just days before that last owl—realizing that she loved him, as corny as it had felt to admit it to herself.

Hannah hurriedly un-scrolled the notebook paper Aldon always used to write her with and read:

Good luck with your final semester of school!
—Aldon

Hannah’s heart stopped. What had she expected: I’ve come to my senses, please take me back? I’ve found someone new who goes to my school, and she looks better in a bathing suit than you ever did?

The short message slid from Hannah’s fingers to land atop the tall tower of dejected letters, which crumbled despairingly into a puddle of crumpled parchment, with the one bit of Muggle notebook paper sitting blatantly on top, in the middle of the pile like an intruder.

Once more, Hannah sat on her bed with a roll of parchment laid out on top of her unopened copy of A History of Magic by Bathilda Bagshot. She unscrewed a jar of crimson ink and withdrew a quill from her school bag, which she dipped hesitantly into the ink. Careful not to jostle the inkwell, Hannah leaned over and put her hand over the parchment…

She didn’t know what to say. Obviously this sort of message required a response… And it would be especially rude to ignore the message considering Hannah had never replied to Aldon’s previous letter, either. But what should she say? What did one say to an ex?

Hannah looked down out of the window next to her bed, squinting a bit at the setting sun that glared teasingly over the tops of the trees of the Forbidden Forest, towards which four figures were marching ominously: probably Neville and some of the other members of the resurrected Dumbledore’s Army had gotten detention again.

Heaving a sigh, Hannah turned back to her parchment to see that a droplet of ink had leaked from the tip of her quill, which was still hovering indecisively over the page. Ignoring the stain, Hannah wrote simply:

Thank you. How are things going with you?

Another sigh: it had taken more effort than she had thought to just write out those few words. Part of her screamed to write more: I love you! Take me back! Let’s try again!

Hannah shut her eyes, breathing deeply. When she was certain that she could look down without giving in to the temptation to add more to the succinct inscription, she recapped her inkwell, cleaned off the tip of her quill, and made for the Owlry.

Hopefully she would make it there and back before Snape’s sunset curfew.

Sorry for the severe lack of conclusion... but in the real life version of this story, there is no conclusion yet, so... yeah.

Also: to all of the people who read my GoT fic The Sphere: I am currently writing the final chapter and I sincerely apologize for dropping off the face of the earth like that! Hopefully after you read this you'll get some idea... things for me have been really... argh. Hopefully I'll have a lot more time to write next semester, though, because I'm changing majors!: from physics to Spanish. Yeah, baby: I'm going from science to liberal arts! Why? Cuz I am just that cool.

Not really. I actually suck. And this lame story proves it. Hope you enjoy it, somehow...

(oh yeah, and Brindabot... I hope you noticed your own minor role in this story... not sure if you did, though, because I left out a letter in the name... ;) )