DISCLAIMER: Mondo bummer as it is, I do not own anything Harry Potter. Cover art by burdge-bug.

So I was on Tumblr awhile back and I found this list of words with no direct translations to English (I cannot for the life of me find the post to cite the list, so if anyone finds it, please message me so I can give credit where credit is due!).

Each chapter will focus on one of these words/phrases. There will be five short chapters – no more, no less – and they will give you the feels and… Yeah, I've got nothing else to say.

Hope you enjoy!


La Douleur Exquise
[French] The heart-wrenching pain of wanting someone you can't have.


She didn't understand how much it hurt.

She didn't she didn't she didn't she didn't.

And maybe that's why it hurt so much in the first place – because she didn't even notice enough to realize how much it was killing him.

James knew she didn't notice. Because every time he looked at her – and he looked a lot, all the time – she wasn't looking back. She didn't feel the way his heart stopped whenever she walked by, the way it got caught in his throat every time he tried to say something to her. She didn't have the same dreams, didn't wake up in a cold empty bed and wish he was there with her.

At least, he didn't think she did.

She didn't notice the time he'd walked into a wall just because he'd been watching the way she flipped her very red hair out of the way of her very green eyes. She didn't notice the way he'd been pouring sweat the first time he asked her out, or the itchy red blush that crept up his neck every time after that. She didn't notice the way he couldn't do his homework in the library when she was there.

Because when she was there – when she was anywhere – he could only stop and stare and love her, as much as a fifteen-year-old boy can love anybody, and James thought he loved Lily Evans rather a lot.

But she didn't love him back.

She didn't even fancy him.

She liked him as a sort-of friend. A sort-of, arrogant, troublesome, irritating friend.

And that was on the good days. On the bad days she told him to get out of her face, that she never wanted to see him again, that he was such a stupid blighter and he shouldn't talk to her unless he wanted to get hexed.

As it was, James Potter usually wanted to get hexed. Because at least when she was hexing him, she was noticing, and the more she noticed, the closer she was to realizing the total and complete agony he was in. Perhaps, when she inevitably realized – because she had to, she really did, sooner or later, the pain was that palpable – then maybe she'd take pity on him. He'd take a pity chance.

He loved her and it hurt and it made him do extraordinarily stupid things.

It made him paranoid and jealous and obsessive and lonely. That wasn't him – James Potter was confident and level-headed and rational and sociable. Love made him crazy.

No, scratch that.

Unrequited love made him fucking certifiable.

"Hey, Evans." He tried not to mess up his hair, but his twitchy hands got the better of him.

"Hey, Potter." She smiled at him.

She fucking smiled at him.

Oh, God, he was going to throw up.

Because even when she was happy, it hurt. It shot a flaming arrow right into his heart, stuck and burning in his chest, igniting his bones with ridiculous hope that maybe she'd give him a chance.

"D'you wanna go out with me?"

"No, Potter."

She never gave him a chance. That flaming arrow that was stuck in his heart froze, suddenly encased in ice, and his whole soul was cold. His bones were made out of icicles and his muscles were frostbitten and he couldn't move or think because he was piled under a snowstorm, and it broke his heart.

Every. Single. Damn. Time.

He wanted her, wanted her so bad that it hurt. Wanted her so bad that it made him sick and it shattered his heart and sometimes it made it impossible to breathe. Because everything he thought and felt and smelled and saw was Lily Evans, and she was too busy being herself – her wonderful, brilliant, beautiful-right-down-to-her-soul self – to notice, to realize.

He loved her as involuntarily as he breathed.

And she had no bloody idea.