A/N: Hey! So this is my first ever fanfic! It's not much, but please read and review!
He couldn't help but remember the time that he promised.
It was two years ago and he had only just begun to see her as more than "his best friend's girlfriend's best friend".
She liked him, everyone knew it and so did he. But he never thought he liked her back.
Sure, she was hot. She was undoubtedly the hottest girl in school. Tall, with long black hair and eyes that reminded him of that time he and James had made the water in the Black Lake turn to chocolate. He was always aware of that. But he didn't see her in that way. Not until that day, two years ago.
It sprung upon him suddenly. He just looked at her one day, and she was different. She was just...different. She was more than she had been before.
Over the course of the next month, he tried hard to get her to go out with him. She always refused. He didn't know why. No one in their right mind would refuse him.
The day he made the promise was the day she was truthful as well.
"Come on, Mary! Please!"
"I already told you! I'm not going out with you!"
"Why?"
"If you ask me one more time, Black, I swear to Merlin I'll dye your hair the brightest shade of fuchsia..."
"Why won't you just tell me?"
She hesitated, biting her lip in an adorable way. Finally, she sighed.
"I â I'm scared."
He didn't understand.
"I don'tâ"
"All these years I've done nothing but fancied you, and you never even gave me a second look. I'm scared you'll just hurt me."
It was then, when she looked so vulnerable, with tears threatening to escape from her chocolate eyes, that he made the promise.
"I would never let you get hurt."
And now, when she was lying in his arms, battered and bloody with no hope of surviving, he remembered what he promised to do. She was hurt. He had failed her.