June, 1997 - Jade

She woke to the sound of fluttering wings, rustling paper and the snores of her dorm mates. Anyone else might be confused by the sound but it brought a huge smile to Jade's face because she knew exactly what it meant; a message from Beck.

Her eyes landed on the enchanted paper bird the moment she opened them and she extended a hand towards it, inviting it to come to rest in her palm. Once it touched her, it stopped flapping it's wings and slowly began to unfold itself so that she could read the message it held.

'I need to see you. Meet me in the same place as last time?' The note read in Beck's messy scrawl of handwriting.

She climbed out of bed, only pausing to pull on Beck's quidditch jersey before she made her way out of the dorm, through the common room and up the stairs that led up to the main part of the castle.

The air in the castle had a wintry chill to it despite the time of year and Jade hurried through the corridors as fast as she could without making a sound, her bare feet freezing on the flagstone. She didn't light her wand, for fear of being caught by a prefect or teacher out of bed at this time of night. It wasn't hard to find the passageway though, her feet had carried her there countless times and she didn't need to be able to see too well to find it in the darkness.

She reached out to draw the unicorn tapestry to the side, stealing a few steps inside and then letting it drop to fall back in place behind her. She held her wand out in front of her to light the passageway but before she could do so, two warm arms appeared out of the darkness and wrapped around her tightly.

"You made it." Beck whispered, his warm breath tickling her neck as he held her close to him. She wrapped her own arms around his waist, resting her head on his chest and letting out a small noise of contentment.

"Why the desperate need to see me?" She teased, leaning up to press her lips to his lips. Usually they made some sort of plan to meet up, especially since that time that Beck's note had been intercepted by a Slytherin prefect.

Instead of answering, Beck dropped his arms from around her in favour of taking her hand and drawing her further along the passageway. They had been here together enough times for her to know that he was heading towards a small alcove off of the passageway. It was strange that he wasn't answering her and his brisk pace seemed even more unlike him.

"Babe, what-" she started to say but was silenced by Beck's hand covering her mouth.

When they finally made it to the alcove, he removed his hand and his face was apologetic.

"Look, I'm sorry. I'm just worried that the sound will carry through that passageway and we'll be overheard by the wrong person."

"Beck, what the hell is going on?" She demanded, not impressed with the cryptic way he was talking.

"Shh. Just listen to me, okay? Something, something is happening. Something bad. We just had a meeting in the common room and everyone thinks that there's gonna be a war soon. Like, really soon. Sooner than we thought." He spoke softly and quickly, a rare serious tone to his words.

Jade didn't know what to say. Everything had been building for a while, You Know Who's return and the murdering of muggles but it still hadn't felt real, not until this exact moment. Her hands gripped the front of Beck's shirt, hoping that he couldn't feel that her hands were shaking. She was terrified about what was going to happen and he must have been too, from how serious he was acting. He was usually full of smiles, huge friendly ones in the halls and small honest ones when they were alone together.

He wasn't smiling now.

"What else did they say?" She prompted, wanting to know exactly what it was that had sent him running to find her in the middle of the night.

"The professors, they know that it's coming too and they're under a lot of pressure from the parents. They might send us home a few days early."

"They can't do that." She said softly, horror running through her as she realised what this really was. "You're here to say goodbye, aren't you? I'm going to have to go home to my dad and I'm not going to see you and-" Her breath was coming in short gasps and she felt herself on the verge of a panic attack. Not many things could truly upset her but the thought of not seeing Beck again for Merlin knew how long was definitely one of them.

"Hey, hey," Beck murmured, bringing his arms up to close around her again, "this isn't goodbye, alright? I just wanted to tell you what us Gryffindors have been talking about and I want to talk about what we're going to do this summer."

Jade tried to even out her breathing and calm herself down, something that being held closely to Beck in an embrace helped with considerably.

"I have to make sure my parents are safe. Have to get them out of the city, probably. Maybe try and get them to go and stay with our family in Canada or something." His voice sounded a little uneven as he said that and it broke her heart a little. She knew that each day with more news of brutality against muggles worried him and she could only imagine what this reality of a full blown war on the horizon was doing to exacerbate his fears.

"I know, baby. You should make sure they're safe." She agreed in a small voice that she hoped came across as at least a little comforting.

He simply nodded in acknowledgement but his arms tightened around her a little and she could tell that he was really worried about them.

"Once they're safe, I'll come for you and we can figure out what to do. I know a couple of the guys think it will be best to be on the move as much as possible when the war breaks out but maybe until then we could lie low somewhere? I would say at your dad's but we both know how unimpressed he would be with that suggestion." Beck sighed and let out a deep breath, maybe at the fact that they couldn't make a concrete plan yet or maybe he was remembering his last visit to the West household. Her father had insisted that he meet the young man she had been seeing and Jade had finally given in and agreed to invite Beck over for dinner.

It actually hadn't gone that badly and Jade had wondered what she had been so worried about. Until it came out that Beck wasn't a pure blood, wasn't even a half blood for that matter, and the night had gone from pleasant to crashing down in flames in an instant. Jade's dad had screamed at Beck to stay away from his daughter, cursing and yelling that no daughter of his would "be allowed anywhere near him and his filthy mudblood ways ever again".

"I know we've talked about this before but, Jade, it really might be safest for you not to be with me right now." He was right, they had talked about this before and she was far from impressed that he had had the nerve to bring it back up again.

"You know exactly what I think about that," she spat out, her grip on his shirt tightening in fury, "I told you that I never want to hear you say something like that again. I love you and we're going to keep each other safe, no matter what happens."

"I know, I know. I just – love, if anything happened to you because you were involved with someone like me I would never forgive myself."

"Nothing's going to happen to me," she assured him with more confidence than she felt, "Or you. Come and get me from my dad's and we'll figure it out. It's just until September and then we'll be back here and safe again, Dumbledore will make sure of that."

"I'll come and get you, I promise." He replied and Jade didn't doubt for a second that he would follow through.

"I know you will. Now, tell me you love me."

"I love you." He replied fiercely, clearly not interested in making her ask nicely tonight.

And then his lips were on hers and everything else seemed to disappear. Her hands slid up his shirt and wound around his neck to pull him down closer to her, kissing him back with everything she had.

Maybe there was a war coming and everything would get turned upside down but she knew that they would be together and that was all she wanted, all she needed, to be okay.