Title: You Can't Love Me

Pairing: Salazar x Helga

Prompts: Alohomora, Accio & The Three Broomsticks.

Word Count: 1, 446

Characters: Godric, Salazar, Rowena & Helga.

Helga was a woman with the ability to rise to the occasion. That is very much what happened with Salazar. He challenged her. He said things that he knew would get on her nerves. Small comments here and there which he believed would eventually cause them to snap. Rowena fell for it. She snapped. She defiantly looked into his amused eyes and objected, argued and even yelled at him for the things he told her.

Helga didn't.

She would look at him with a slight amused smile over the edge of her glass where they sat in their corner of The Three Broomsticks. Rowena sat next to him, Godric sat next to her. Yet Salazar looked at Helga as if she was the only person in the room. His words never got to her. She could see his interest in her for what it was. Fake.

"You should know by now Salazar that you will never get under my skin." Helga replied as she put the glass down on the table.

Salazar shrugged. "That in no way implies that I cannot try to."

Helga looked at Godric. He sat leaned back in his seat with one arm casually wrapped around her waist. Salazar's words made him raise an eyebrow but nothing more than that. Helga occasionally admitted to herself that she was fascinated by the exchange of the two men. Godric did not – like Rowena – snap at every comment made by Salazar but he did not ignore them like Helga did either. He raised an eyebrow, he gave Salazar a smirk, and challenged him to continue talking. Most of the time Salazar didn't. There were so many other ways he could challenge Godric.

"Do as you please Salazar." Helga replied with a smile as she felt Godric's hand lay to rest on her shoulder. She moved her hand and put in on top of his.

"I intend to." The blond man with the sarcastic voice told her without missing a beat.

Helga leaned back into her seat and listened to their discussion with half one ear as she watched the people she called her friends. That term wasn't entirely correct though. Because they were so much more to each other than that. If not currently then they had been more than that to each other. The heart wanted what it wanted and at some point, their hearts had wanted each other.

There was a time when Godric's heart wanted Salazar. When the warm-blooded man favouring gold and red desired the cold-blooded man who favoured silver and green. It had worked until it didn't anymore. They had been pushed together by their differences until their differences became too big and there was nothing more holding them together.

Helga had been drawn to the logical, intelligent and calm Rowena. But that too was doomed to fail. Neither wanted to change and without change there was nothing holding them together other than the flickering flame between them that was only kept alive by Helga's inability to love someone as stable and not impulsive as Rowena.

Rowena and Salazar was drawn to each other. That came as no surprise to anyone other than Rowena. They were both guided by their pursuit of intelligence, arguing and fighting for what they believed was right. Yet there were so many things that they did not agree on. Their relationship could be described as one big heated argument. One could almost smell the passion between the two but most of the time the passion was overtaken by the constant threat of a fight breaking out between them.

Helga glanced at Godric. He had a big smile on his face as he spoke. He was never entirely quiet. When he wasn't speaking then he would be laughing, humming or doing other kinds of sounds in agreement or the opposite. Godric was nothing but impulsive. He was always in the centre where everything happened. He was like a magnet drawing her in and she was the same for him. Her brave man who despite his lack of fear of physical hurt still could not bear to say that he loved her. Even though he did.

Salazar was nothing like him.

He stood not in the centre but at the edge of the room only drawing attention to himself when he wanted to. Helga was not drawn to him but she did like keeping an eye on him. Maybe that's what made him think that there was something more between them. He did not realise, like Helga did, that they could never work. Her heart was maybe as fickle as the rest of her body but she knew that he could never work his way into it. He was everything she did not need. Everything she did not want and he did all the things that Godric would never do.

When she, later that night, heard a soft voice whisper saying alohomora before the door to her room was opened she turned around and looked at him as he entered. It could only be one person. Godric would never walk inside without her permission. Maybe he would tease her and use accio to take things away from her but he did it all with a goodhearted if not teasing smile on his face. But the idea of walking into her room without being let in by Helga herself was a thought that had yet to enter his mind.

"Hello Salazar," she said with a smile as she sat down on the chair. "Is there something I can help you with?"

He leaned against the wall. Casually, as he always did and watched her with that smile that could make any woman or man's heart beat faster. Not Helga's though. "You look very nice."

Helga laughed. "It sounds as if you are mistaking me for Rowena. She would probably fall for that smile you are giving me and the stance."

Salazar raised an eyebrow. "What stance?"

"The I can love you if you let me stance." Helga said with quotation marks. "But I am going to let you know now Salazar that you are wrong. You cannot love me and you don't want to either. You are just here because Rowena grew tired of your fighting, the constant push and pulling thing that you two have going on."

The smile fell from his face. He looked down on the floor. Helga could see his mouth opening and closing several times. There was not a doubt in her mind that he loved her. Salazar was like the friend she never knew she wanted or the brother she did not know that she needed. He was the person who took the battles she did not deem necessary to take. If Godric was her knight in shining armour when she needed it then Salazar was her advocate; he was always arguing for her to make sure that her voice was not ignored or missed by the occasionally loud voices of authorities greater than them.

"What should I do?" Salazar asked after a moment of silence.

Helga shrugged and pretended not to understand the deeper meaning of the question. "Go to bed?" Salazar laughed and stood up straight. "I cannot tell you what to do with Rowena. Whatever happened between the two of you is between you and her; I have nothing to do with it. You need to find out what it is that she wants and then you need to decide if you can be that for her and if you can't then you need to move on."

Salazar wiggled his eyebrows and Helga laughed. "But not with me."

The man opened the door and gave her one last smile. The kind of smile he would give Rowena from across the room to make her agree to disappear from whatever boring party they were forced to attend that time. It always worked.

"Why not?" Salazar asked.

Helga tilted her head to the side. She did not want him to be anything other than the friend, the brother, that she finally had. But that was not the only reason why she gave him the answer that she did. Many looked upon Helga as flighty and confused. They did not go to her first when they were trying to learn something. But she was more intelligent than she let on and Helga could see if things would work or not. She knew that her and Salazar was doomed to fail. They were not meant for each other. Not like her and Godric.

So, she told him the truth with a smile. Because she knew he could handle it. "You can't love me."

The end