The best thing that happened to me this year: On the second day of term, I sat next to you in Charms.

Of course, I did not know it was you. Had I known, perhaps I would have taken History of Magic instead, but I didn't.

I entered the classroom, unnecessarily complicated timetable in hand – I mean, why Professor Fawcett insists on making it so complex will for ever be beyond me – and immediately saw that it was full of Hufflepuffs. Being a Ravenclaw, I naturally assumed there had been a mistake. A colossal mistake.

And there had, but I realized that only later.

So there I was, nervously blushing, already having to navigate a world that was beyond me. I sat next to you, hoping I was in the right class (I couldn't ask you, because I did not know you. I have a rule against talking to strangers, which you would someday learn). As soon as I had sat down, I stood up again. You thought I was mad, you told me weeks later, which I found funny. Funny peculiar and funny ha ha, both. Still, I left the class, as though sitting in a room for a few seconds with ten Hufflepuffs confirmed that I had been right; there had been a mistake, and I was supposed to be sitting in a room the other end of the corridor. Fortunately, perhaps – or maybe it wasn't – Rose slammed into me as I turned a corner and, without her saying a word, grabbed my hand and pulled me back the way I came.

Breathless, thirty seconds later, I found myself sitting at your left-hand side again for what would not be the last time. You had a smirk on your face, do you remember?

The first time you smirked at me, and, yet again, it would not be the last, and it all began because I could not understand my timetable.

And that is why we aren't together.

The first time I ever spoke to you would be after a fortnight of blurred classes and conversations with friends, of common room parties and gossip. I arrived to Potions before my friends did, and yes, it was the right room.

I knew not one person sitting in the classroom; perhaps it was the haze coming from the cauldrons that obscured my vision, or perhaps it was something else. Whatever it was, it made me recognize you, and I weaved my way past tables and, catching your attention, gestured a silent question about sitting next to you, my eyebrow raised and head cocked to one side. You nodded, sliding your books over to your end of the desk to make room for me. You made plenty of room for me, Lorcan, but in the end it was never enough.

Halfway through the class you put your head down on the desk and mumbled something about hitting you if you fell asleep. I let out a smile, my head bent over my textbook as I tried to decipher the notes we were supposed to be making, and let you sleep. When you woke, a full thirty minutes later once the scraping of chairs against the stone floor indicated everyone was getting ready to leave, I said in a rather matter-of-fact tone about how I considered punching you to wake you up but didn't want to send you flying, for fear of disrupting the lesson.

You let out a laugh, a glorious sound that was gone before it had settled in the air. Just like you, I suppose.

You asked what class I had next, although we both knew. About a week ago we had registered each other's presence in Magical Theory classes, a subject as meaningless as it is dull. I walked with you there, our bodies close at each other's side but never quite touching.

That was the first Magical Theory lesson in which you sat next to me, and that is why we aren't together.

The same process continued for another week. We'd sit next to each other sometimes; once I caught you staring at me as I taught a Gryffindor boy the fine points of a particular section of our Magical Theory course. On the whole, however, we largely did not mix, and yet for some reason I found myself one day sitting with Rose and Albus in the chilly Transfiguration courtyard talking about you.

I sighed. Rose thought nothing of it; dear, sweet Rose who would all too soon be my literal shoulder to cry on. I sighed again, wistfully, already having noticed you sitting at the edge of the courtyard with a textbook on your knee. A quill was balancing haphazardly in your mouth as you stared at the words before you, dumbfounded. I stared at you, dumbfounded. Albus noticed.

He sighed; a different sigh to me: his was an act of resignation; mine, hopeful. He fixed his bright green eyes on me, rolled the sleeves of his jumper up and I remember every word of the following conversation.

'He's not even that attractive, you know.'

'Yes, he is!'

'Out of ten, he's about a three.'

'Al!'

'I'm being generous.'

'He's at least an eight. I think ten.'

'He is not a ten.'

By now Rose had joined in:

'Al, he's not a three; Dom, he's most definitely not a ten. He's maybe a six.'

'He has stupid hair.'

'You two are horrible. I think I fancy him.'

'Oh, Merlin.'

And so it continued, until one heart-stopping moment when you stood up and began to walk over, my eyes wide and Rose and Albus's hushed giggles in my ear. When you were close enough from me to be touching distance, you held out your Magical Theory textbook, pointed to a section on the page that I shall never remember, asked me something about it. I have no memory of what it was; I was too stunned and too embarrassed by the pointed looks my two friends were giving me. I mumbled a reply; you laughed – surely I can't have been that funny – and walked away.

Maybe it was an excuse for you to talk to me; I've never figured it out. I doubt I will.

As soon as you were gone, the chatter resumed, though this time with a new air of excitement about it.

'Do you think he fancies me?!'

Spoiler alert: you did. You maybe still do, but that is not why I'm writing this.

I'm writing this because I don't take Magical Theory classes any more, because you're perhaps a seven at best, and because you do have stupid hair.

And that is why we aren't together.

I feel I ought to admit this now, whilst I am being honest. I did not come across your WizardSpace profile by chance: I found it, and maybe this will sound hideously obsessive, but it is too late now, by looking up how many Lorcans there were in my year and searching each and every one of them until I found your page.

Yes, it was a bit unnecessary, but this was before I knew you well enough to remember your surname. Besides, it got us talking, after an agonizing conversation with Rose as to what my opening online message should be.

'Yo' sounded too casual, and not something I would say to anyone who wasn't my best friend; 'Hi' sounded too formal and too weak. In the end, Albus rolled his eyes and suggested I just go with 'Hey'.

I didn't. I asked you about some homework instead.

But it worked. Heaven knows it worked. It sparked an almost infinite amount of cyber conversation, messages passed between us quicker than the Slytherin Chasers pass the Quaffle.

The first time you joined me and my friends, the first time you got included in our group, was when you moved to sit on our bench in Potions. It wasn't a permanent move, rather semi-permanent, but it was enough. It wasn't the same as sitting alone with you at the front like the first time we had met, but it seemed better, almost, as though you were becoming an important part of my life.

That lesson, we did nothing but send WizardSpace messages to each other and maybe scratch down a sentence or two. We sat close enough so that our arms touched, yet still we conversed mostly that lesson through cyberspace.

I don't think either Rose or Al knew; they may have guessed, but they said nothing.

In fact, most of our talking was done through WizardSpace, and I suppose that is why we aren't together.

The most adventurous night of my seventh-year life so far was not, as Rose would guess, the time I went back to my dormitory with a Slytherin boy at a midnight party, nor was it, as Albus would assume, the evening in which I snuck to the kitchens with him in order to fill up on free food.

No, it was the time I was in the library until 3am with you, both of us feeling the high of Muggle caffeine tablets and neither of us doing the work we'd promised to do.

You'd mentioned to me – over WizardSpace, of course – about how you were having trouble with some coursework, and I, being cool and collected, had offered to help you. I hadn't expected you to take me up on that offer; I'd assumed you'd think it was rhetorical.

Nonetheless, I left my dormitory at 10pm and quietly made my way to the library. As promised, you were on the ground floor, half-hidden behind textbooks. Yet, as I walked towards you, my cheeks surely pink from the walk there, I noticed your cheeks were also coloured. You were blushing, I realized, and, like a detective finally solving a mystery, it was done. There is only one logical reason why you'd blush when I made eye-contact with you, and I don't need to be a Ravenclaw to tell you.

To be fair, we did accomplish something in the first hour of being there. I helped you with your coursework, although you lacked the necessary motivation to finish it. You handed me caffeine tablets, after a lengthy discussion over whether they were safe and whether they'd stop me from sleeping later. Largely, however, we spent the next four hours leaning back on our chairs and talking about everything, from our hideously boring Charms professor to whether caffeine was supposed to make you feel this ALIVE (I say ALIVE because that is how we felt; everything that night was capitals).

We joked and made sarcastic remarks to each other and marveled at the Gryffindor boy who was just arriving to begin homework. We dreamt of food, since we both hadn't eaten for a while, and of stupid little things that mean just as much now as they did then.

Overall, it was hardly a constructive night; we both woke, individually, exhausted the next morning, and yet it solidified the foundation of something that had already begun.

We were now, I thought, as you walked me back to my dormitory before heading to your own, most definitely in the category of 'good friends'. This was a good thing, and this is why we are not together.

November arrived. Crisp red leaves fell from the trees; awkward sixth-year boys fell from grace; all of that metaphorical rubbish that never means anything anyway.

Rose and I were planning to go to a Muggle movie theatre together, to see a film whose title you do not need to remember. I am sure you do remember it, since you asked me to see it with you twice, but this is, for now, irrelevant.

This particular film was showing at night, and Rose and I left the village of Hogsmeade and ambled down windy roads to reach the cinema. Her tomato-red hair was hidden beneath a hat; my hands were buried inside gloves. I realize this is not relevant to you, but you shall have to be patient. After all, I had invited you along, but due to unforeseen circumstances you could not come. I didn't mind; it was fun to be with Rose, and as this is where this particular part of our story starts, you shall have to sit back and deal with my telling it to you.

The film itself was horrific. It was intrinsically brilliant; I would highly recommend it, and yet it was so brutal and violent that it haunted me for the following few days. It was a peculiar mixture between the best thing I have ever seen and the worst thing. The walk back to our dormitory was mostly spent in silence, both of us absorbed in our own thoughts, though I vividly remember us talking about boys at one point. Rose was currently seeing a boy named Harvey, a tall, broad-chested Hufflepuff who spent his days excitedly chattering about Quidditch. I was somewhat seeing you, though it had not yet come to anything.

I wondered aloud as to whether you would ask me to see the film with you: you wanted to see it; you later learnt that I would see it again. You did ask, but you never did get round to seeing it with me. And that is why we aren't together.

The rest of our story happens very quickly, and yet it takes so much time to think about, so forgive me if I draw it out for too long here.

You first asked me to see the film with you the next day. In a very casual way, almost as though it didn't mean anything. But it did; of course it did. I accepted, and we planned a date for the following Wednesday.

The second time you asked me was after a particularly interesting common room party that drives our plot along rather exponentially.

The party in question was that Friday night, a day after you'd asked me to the cinema and five days after I'd first proposed the idea of the party to you. It was held in our Ravenclaw common room; a fairly sizeable group of Gryffindors came, as did you. You were the only Hufflepuff, but you knew Rosie and Al from Potions classes and so you fitted in quite well.

I will admit, just to you (although I have admitted it several times before now to my friends), that I got hideously drunk that night. It wore off as the night went on, but for the first hour or two most of what happened was a blur. I do remember you trying to kiss me, which I pulled away from, because the time and place for the first kiss between two people is not in front of Gryffindor boys you hardly know.

It was, however, in front of fellow Ravenclaws, out in the corridor after walking the Gryffindor students back to their common room at 1am. It was fun, I'll give you that.

Repeatedly you asked me whether you ought to leave and go back to your own dormitory, down by the kitchens, but each time I had shrugged off-handedly and, somehow, we both ended up in the empty Ravenclaw dormitory together.

You sat on my bed; I sat on my desk's chair. We faced each other. I wasn't as drunk as I'd first started the night, but there was a blissful numbness in my head that stopped me from feeling largely too uncomfortable with the silence. At some point, we kissed again, and we both know what happened next. I'll spare you the details, because I am pretty sure you can remember them if you tried, but when we awoke in the god-awful hours of the next morning, your arm around my shoulders, you promised that this wasn't just a one-night stand. And it wasn't supposed to be, either.

It was the start of something, something good and right, and before you left you asked me for the second time – and the last time – whether I would see the film with you on Wednesday. I smirked and nodded, wrapped in my duvet, and watched you leave.

We never did sleep with each other again (whether I mean simply sleeping next to each other or something more is up to you), and that is why we aren't together.

Silence.

It's such a horrible thing. Agonizing, unavoidable, helpless.

The next two days were filled with it, and that is why we aren't together.

Eventually, we spoke.

I started the conversation on WizardSpace about something meaningless that I can't think of now. It was a relief to have everything flood back; the past weekend of silence meant nothing; everything was normal; the train was on the right tracks.

'I can't see you any more.'

Train off its tracks.

'It's not fair to you.'

Train out of control.

'I'll explain everything tomorrow.'

Train crash. Three dead, one hundred injured. Something like that.

The train never reached its destination, and that is why we aren't together.

You didn't tell me the reason for ending things – ending things, ha. We were just at the beginning; we didn't really have any official things. You didn't tell me the reason until the next day, leaving me with nothing to do that night but talk to a friend I hadn't seen since sixth-year and let it all out to him.

He told me it would be fine. We both agreed that the worst scenario was that you had decided you didn't have feelings for me; the best scenario was that you were some hero who had decided to be noble and spare me a life of waiting for you to finish a death-defying adventure.

That friend helped me calm down and he helped me a lot more that night than you ever did, and that is why we aren't together.

The best thing about my cousin Lily – famous Lily Potter – is that she's fearless. She's Al's little sister, and yet the two couldn't be more opposite. Lily takes what comes and deals with it in the best way she can and would never let a boy dare break her heart. They'd be mad to try.

The morning on which I met you (it was a Tuesday; we met in Hogsmeade in our free period before Potions), I was the perfect emulation of my cousin Lily. Hard-hearted and fearless; I hardly felt a thing as I saw you leaning against a wall and swore to myself to deal with this in the rational way that I have been doing my whole life.

We ended up at a table in The Three Broomsticks; it was quite loud, but we could hear each other. A group of warlocks soon joined us at our table, but they sat far enough away to not hear our conversation.

Slowly, awkwardly, you explained your reason for doing what you did. You cared for me and you had enough hope in what we had, but you'd seen your ex-girlfriend at the weekend and you realized you still had feelings for her. You'd decided to let what you had with me stop for now whilst you worked out what you felt.

Fair enough, I thought. Sort things out with your ex- and pick things back up with me where they left off. You promised a few days to talk to her and sort your old feelings out before doing anything else with me.

That's not what happened, though, is it? You left me hanging, and that is why we aren't together.

You did talk to your ex-girlfriend. I still thought I had a chance; I think most people I talked to did, they labeled you as 'confused' and said the only way to find out what was going on was simply to wait and see. I couldn't do anything until you'd sorted things out with your ex-; I was left spaceless with uncertainty about what to hope for. Yes, you'd 'ended' things with me, but you admitted that what we have was on the cards, just not right now.

Why just not right now? Oh, for a reason I only found out after I sent a lengthy letter to my mother and got a lengthy letter in reply. She said that it sounded as though you were keeping me as a second option – you'll have something with me as long as this something with your ex-girlfriend isn't available. She reminded me that boys don't define my worth, something I'd forgotten after thinking about you for so long. She's taught me many things, my mother, and she gave me what was needed to ask you outright that night what was going on.

You were back with your ex-girlfriend.

Because I asked you this at 2am, when not even the smartest person can feign complete rationality and sanity, I dealt with it in a way that would make little Lily proud. I was fine with it; I was happy for you; I forgave you. No, this is no big deal; we weren't even officially together.

I wasn't even lying, and yet nothing could stop me from spending a significant portion of time the next day crying on Rosie's shoulder. She said everything that helped and nothing that didn't; Albus called you an idiot; both of them helped me come to my senses, something which you never did.

And that, really, is why we aren't together.

The worst thing that happened to me this year: On the second day of term, I sat next to you in Charms.

That is why we aren't together.