Chapter Text
No one expects a downpour to bloom so suddenly from a cloudless sky. No one, not in this world or any other, anticipates the heavens breaking open without warning, without even a whisper of thunder. Yet there it was: a rain so fierce, so uninvited, it felt almost holy. It fell like judgment or grace, depending on the heart that received it.
Kathryn stood still, eyes cast skyward, as the first drops struck her face. She did not flinch. She smiled, lips parted slightly, as though to taste the storm. The rain clung to her lashes, silvered her cheeks, traced the proud line of her jaw. And still she stood, letting the sky love her.
Behind her, the great black lake rippled in silent applause, its surface broken only by the rhythm of the rain. Hogwarts loomed in the background like an old, dreaming god, cloaked in shadow and watching.
Sebastian was quiet, hands tucked into the folds of his cloak, though the garment was soaked through now, useless against the deluge. His eyes never left her. There was something maddening in the way she welcomed the storm, as if she herself had summoned it, called it forth with the very force of her soul. A girl not afraid to feel.
She laughed—clear and full—and turned to him. Her hair clung in damp spirals to her cheeks, and still she laughed. There was no performance in it, no coyness. Just the unfettered joy of being alive. Of feeling everything.
“I think the sky approves of us,” she said, her voice lilting, half-mocking, half-hopeful.
He could not answer. Not in words. What words are there when the heart threatens to shatter from the weight of love unspoken?
So he ran to her.
He ran like a fool, like a man condemned to hang at dawn and tasting one final moment of freedom. Water splashed at his boots, the wind howled like some ancient thing, but he ran until he reached her. And when he did, he gathered her into his arms with a ferocity that startled even him. Not rough, but desperate. The desperation of someone who has finally found something worth breaking for.
One hand slid to the small of her back, the other tangled in the wet tresses of her hair, brushing it gently away from her face as though she were something sacred, a relic uncovered beneath years of silence.
She looked up at him, the smile fading now—not with regret, but with knowing. As though she’d seen this moment in a dream, lived it a thousand times in her imagination. Rain dripped from her brow, traced the hollow of her throat, soaked through the wool of her school robes. But neither noticed.
“Sebastian,” she whispered. That was all.
He didn’t kiss her. Not yet. Not because he didn’t want to, but because some moments are too heavy for even a kiss. Some loves are too large to be measured by the mouth alone.
Instead, he pressed his forehead to hers. Breathed her in.
“I would chase you into every storm,” he murmured.
She closed her eyes. “Then let’s never run from them.”
And so they stood, wrapped in each other beneath the scornful sky, while the rain poured like an absolution.
Just Kathryn and Sebastian, out in the rain.
That’s all.