hey, call me back when you get this message • {harri}

Desperate times called for extraordinarily desperate measures, and if Kay Sterling was anything right now, it was certainly desperate: desperate for advice, help, saving. He’d messed up somehow, but couldn’t quite understand exactly where he’d gone wrong – or if he even was wrong, which he found highly unlikely. Nevertheless, after pacing along the cold tiles of the Slytherin common room enough to create a hole in the ground, he decided to finally bite the bullet and send out an owl. Written in a messy hurried scrawl, he’d struggled to word his thoughts; Mark had always been the more eloquent one, crafting together sentences clever enough to persuade even the stoniest of souls. Kay’s message was simple and to the point: I need help. Please meet me at Honeydukes at 5pm tomorrow. Reflecting on it, perhaps he’d been a tad too cryptic. An ominous frame bordered the words, but she would discover the true meaning in due time.

The weather was warm today, a welcome change from the dreary rain that had plagued them endlessly last month. Kay’s robes were light and airy, and he stood beside a shelf filled with various types of chocolates. Were chocolates a sufficient apology? Was that too mushy? It certainly felt like it; the idea of handing off a box of chocolates to a girl made him want to gag. He didn’t want to recreate some gross cliche scene from those romance novels Lynette never stopped prattling about. While he stopped himself from cringing, he heard the tinkling of a bell and looked over at the door to see his cousin.

“Angharad.” Kay waved, addressing her with an awkward almost smile and making his way over. Should he hug her? It felt a little odd. They weren’t entirely close – she shared a better, stronger relationship with Lynette than the rest of them – but she had always been kind. Choosing her to be the recipient of his request came easily once he’d decided to actually write it. Lynette was open and would happily advise him if he asked, but even the thought of speaking to his sister about girl problems gave him early onset embarrassment. There was Mark, but as close as the pair were, Kay couldn’t find it in himself to vocalise what he was going through to his brother. He still felt a little stupid and silly for fretting as much as he did, and he didn’t want Mark to confirm that he was being ridiculous. Speaking to Harri just seemed the best option. She and Jessalyn were similar, he thought, and it was likely she’d have better luck figuring out how girls’ minds worked considering… well… she was one.

With a sharp intake of breath, he finally brought himself to speak again, red tinging the tips of his ears. “So… there’s a girl…”


@Angharad Hughes <3

Angharad hurried down the high street of Hogsmeade, her heels clacking on the cobbles; one arm huddling her mustard-yellow cardigan and tan leather handbag to her, the other outstretched for balance as she tottered along. She realised in hindsight that they had not been the most practical shoes for a trip to Hogsmeade, but now that she spent most of her days in a uniform this visit to Scotland had been an excuse to ‘dress up’; the skirt of her cotton sundress swishing with every swing of her hips.

She was making her way from the station towards Honeydukes, a little behind schedule. She hoped Kay was alright. Harri couldn’t help but think the worst, but then – what was the worst? A multitude of scenarios had run rampant in her imagination since receiving Kay’s owl the day before, each more fanciful and unlikely than the last.

The bell tinkled as Angharad pushed her way into the shop, ever-so-slightly out of breath from her little jog. Her warm brown eyes found Kay waving at her, and she broke into a friendly smile. “Hiya! Merlin, I don’t remember you being this tall!” She greeted him, pushing up on her tiptoes to wrap her arms around him in a brief hug, before stepping back to look at him seriously. “Are you alr— oh,” he’d beaten her to it, and thank goodness. A wave of relief washed over her and she let out a sigh, “Good!” she said quickly, grinning possibly a bit too eagerly, “I was worried about you! For Godric’s sake never do that to me again,” her lips remained firmly in a wide smile as she prodded at his chest playfully.

“Honestly, you Sterlings and your dramatics.” She picked up a pick-n-mix bag and began fanning herself with it to cool down a little, her cheeks still flushed, and allowed her gaze to drift over him as she did so. Angharad could tell already that he was somewhat uncomfortable with the topic – perhaps why she had received the call for help and not Lynette. “Why don’t you tell me about her while I stock up on some old favourites?” She offered, glancing around the shop and opening out the paper bag she had been using as a makeshift fan, “I haven’t been here in a few months, I’ve run out of fizzing whizbees.”

He stiffened a bit at the hug, giving an awkward one-armed response before stepping away. Harri was… really bright. Whenever she spoke he remembered why she and Lynette got on so well. They were pretty similar, though his sister was much more annoying and in-your-face than his more docile cousin. Several different looks crossed his features as she spoke, his brain processing these things all at a mile a minute. First, dismay at her initial response of ‘good’; it was good that there was a girl?! Did his cousin think he was bloody hopeless when it came to romance?! As if this weren’t already one of the most embarrassing moments of his life! That soon disappeared, replaced by his own relief when he remembered how he’d phrased his letter; maybe he should have taken more time to think about syntax, but the urgency hadn’t allowed for much thought beyond ‘how the hell do girls work’.

“I’m sorry,” he breathed, a combination of a soft laugh and a relieved sigh leaving his lips. “I wasn’t really thinking about it.” He swatted at her hand playfully and rubbed his chest like she’d done damage, then feigned (partially) being affronted by the mention of Sterlings. Him? As dramatic as Lynette? The insinuation was almost insulting. At her offer to talk and look, Kay nodded, settling back into the nervous state he’d occupied before she had arrived. Quietly, they browsed, as he tried to find the words to explain everything to Angharad. He’d never been very long-winded or eloquent or one to talk about feelings and dumb shit like that. Merlin, it felt like half of his brain was occupied by some sort of foreign substance; like there’d been an accident in a DADA class or a potion he’d drank that he forgot about, and now his brain’s other occupant was controlling all of his thoughts and actions without him knowing and turning him into some bloody bumbling idiot. Kay paused briefly to collect himself and his thoughts. He just had to get this out, assess the advice, and then he could put this day behind him and act like he’d never hastily sent an owl to his cousin asking for girl advice.

Now. How did he go about describing his… whatever it was with Russell to his cousin? How could he describe it when he wasn’t even quite sure what it was? He’d never questioned anything between the two of them before she’d gone and bloody kissed him! Now, she was ignoring him like this was all his fault. Girls were so unnecessarily complex. He could feel the annoyance creeping up on him all over again and willed it away. While he walked with his cousin, he pretended to analyse some of the sweets, pulling a jar off a shelf and rolling it in the palm of his hand lazily. There was a vague expression on his face as his eyes glossed over the label.

“We’ve never been friends or anything like that, at least not that I know of,” he explained. Merlin, his ears were going to explode if he didn’t get this out quick. “But we had this talk after class one day and… Merlin, I dunno! She just kissed me!” His gaze was downcast, mouth coiled into a scowl. “Is she just trying to fuck with me? It this an elaborate joke or something." It sure felt like it!

Angharad rose her eyebrows at him, “You, not thinking?” That was all the Sterling’s did, wasn’t it? They were the ‘smart’ cousins, as Harri’s elder brother Aled had once described them when trying to discern between the various branches of the Hughes family. “Ridiculous,” she grinned mischievously, her Welsh accent sounding that little bit more sing-song next to Kay’s thick Scottish one. At least he had more of a sense of humour than his younger brother, she noted as Kay played along with her jibes.

The petite witch shook her paper bag to open it right out and sighed contently as her warm eyes glanced over the sweets she’d grown up on. This was bad for her waist, she knew it, but it wasn't like she wouldn't lose the weight again at the next full moon. She picked up a set of tongs and started adding to her bag. Harri didn’t look at Kay again as she continued scooping things into her pick and mix, waiting patiently for him to explain his predicament. She could feel him hovering just behind her, and she was aware that even asking for her help must have been out of his comfort zone.

She paused, scoop in hand, when he finally started talking. She kept her focus on the wall of sweets in front of her until he finished, then turned to look at him, lips pressed together trying not to smile or laugh – and failing a bit at both. “She just kissed you? Out of nowhere?” She blinked. “Well,” she set her scoop down and moved over towards the sugar quills – wondering if she could get away with using those at work without her coworkers noticing – and bit on her lip softly as she thought.

“So did you ever talk before?” she paused, “Have you spoken since?” This seemed like important information to have before giving any sort of advice. “And um,” she feebly tried to hide her smirk, “was it a good kiss or…?” Probably pushing it a bit there, but how this mystery girl had kissed her cousin would be a good clue as to what it was all about. “Like, did it feel like she meant it?”

“Yes,” he coughed out incredulously, as if he were just thinking about it for the first time himself. It was out of nowhere; he’d been completely blindsided and she just expected him to take that in stride. Was she absolutely mental? Kay placed the jar in his hands back on the shelf and shuffled down the aisle, pretending to examine some other treats. If he was being honest, he wasn’t much of a sweets person. Desserts and lollies weren’t indulged in very often in their home, and while that may have given some of his siblings even more reason to seek out these sorts of things (Lynette), his palate hadn’t adapted to include them.

Harri’s questions were forcing him to give a lot of thought to the big picture and not just the isolated event. Did he and Russell talk? He supposed they did, but not in any sort of meaningful way – certainly not in a way to warrant her trying to snog his face off. It was more like one of them made a comment, and the other one retorted with some sort of jibe. Or minor arguing. His brow furrowed again. After struggling to conjure up some words, he finally settled on a simple explanation. “We have talked before, but it’s not like we were friends.” What were they exactly? Kay didn’t want to put too much thought into that. Especially when he considered that she had initially approached him to talk about their siblings. He didn’t want to think about what was happening there either. At all.

Before he come move on, his cousin posed a new question to him and Kay almost choked. He couldn’t go into details about a kiss with Harri. He wanted to just apparate away from the sheer embarrassment of it. If he was just mucking around with the lads, it would be easy to say something flippant, maybe dismiss it as alright and insinuate having to teach her a few things. He could joke casually and callously and be met with encouraging laughter that would absolve him from having to dissect the weight of his words. Kay’s ears turned a bright scarlet hue. “What?” Like she meant it? What the hell? “Isn’t a kiss just a kiss?” Merlin, what had he gotten himself into?