He stares at her across the dinner table. Her golden curls fall in corkscrews around her face. The bright pink of her hooded top contrast sharply with her passionate personality. He wonders if she will ever be his, the bubble-gum pink girl with the tough interior.
They are so different. She is passion, she is the splashes of colour on an artist's easel, and she is the sunset that sets the sky ablaze. She is the heat in an intense fire and the blazing passion behind every argument.
He is the soft woollen sweaters and the gentle breeze in a summer meadow; he is the soft pink sunrise that gives way to the beaming sunshine. He is winter and she is summer. He is maybe and she is perhaps. She ignites his passion, the lion inside him roars to life.
He steps out of his gentle exterior, a passionate, roaring beast. The beast that only roars for her. She has no idea of her true beauty. She hides behind make up and lies, she hides behind giggles and crude comments. She shields her eyes, the eyes that hold her true self from the world. She is insecure; she doesn't like her true self all that much.
His true self is hidden too. Even from himself. He feels he is a coward, he doesn't know that true heroism comes from your thoughts and actions, not just from doing dangerous stunts. He doesn't understand the admiring glances sent his way. He just did what was right.
He watches her stoop, bending and cracking under a crippling, burning, mind numbing depression. Along with the rest of the world, she is grieving. She lost friends, very good friends. She fought along her comrades, watched them fall. Those honey brown eyes speak only of the horror that she witnessed.
He wants to make it better. To take all her pain away, but he doesn't know how to. How can you fix someone when you're broken yourself? But one day, she looks so alone, so vulnerable that he finds himself stumbling over to her. Dull brown eyes brighten a shade as they meet his, and a small, listless smile lifts on the corners of her mouth.
He trips and stumbles through his speech, until finally, proudly, he has asked her out. Something shifts, falls into place with a heavy clunk. Her posture changes and she nods. He can't help the small bubble of hope float within him.
Hogsmeade is beautiful this time of year. Cherry blossom coats the cobbles like pink bubble-gum, her favourite sweet, but he doesn't notice it as they walk up the narrow high street, arm in arm, allowing the warm sunshine to warm their stiff faces. Stiff faces from something they have not done in so many months.
He takes her to Honeydukes, she buys him his favourite Sugar Quills and he her pink bubble-gum. No words need to be said, they just sit back, revel in the other's company. Something has changed, something grand, and it is such a beautiful, yet terrifying thought that he feels his heart may explode.
They become an item. They clash; they bring out the other's passion. They are yin and yan, they are today and tomorrow. Winter and summer. And yet somehow they fit together, like two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
They leave school, but the passion doesn't end. The flame burns on and on. He is there holding her hand as she pushes their first child into the world. Her hair is sweaty and she is pale and drawn, but she is alight with a passionate kind of happiness. Her cheeks are bubble-gum pink, as she holds her tiny baby in her arms, staring down at him with awe.
He proposes to her on a winter's day. Their son is but a year old and is snuggled in an old tartan blanket that reminds him of a certain Scottish professor. He is perched atop the cliffs, clinging grmly to the slippery rocks, as he produces the sparkling diamond, looking up at her with hope.
He hair is blowing around her shoulders. The baby tugs at her curls, demanding her attention but she doesn't seem to notice as he continues to crouch, legs becoming increasingly more painful by the minute. She takes a minute more before squealing, and saying yes.
In true fashion, he gets lost on the way to the registry office. He stumbles over his too long trousers and knocks Harry, his best man, into the flowers display. This earns them a few snickers but he learns to laugh back. He knows they are laughing with him now.
She seems to float down the aisle towards him, graceful and achingly beautiful. She takes away the light in the room and draws his heart to hers like a moth to a flame. Her eyes burn with passion, and as she comes to stand by him, they shine with love, admiration, hope, happiness and wonder.
They say their vows and are engulfed in a shower of everlasting love; bubble-gum pink.
The years treat them well. They grow old gracefully. They lay side by side in their rickety old bed. The passion never rekindles as they make love, only thoughts of the other infiltrates their mind space. The years dwindle but their love does not. Their son grows up and moves out, he has kids of his own.
They sit on the porch and reminisce, a small sherry between them. The rotten wood of the rocking chair knocks against the equally rotten wood of the porch, but they are oblivious to it as they are lost in one another.
In their one hundredth year, they become tired. They go to bed one night, they are engulfed in a warm, passionate light, it carries away their souls, merged as one into the warm serenity.
Bubble-gum pink in colour.