This is an OC work of fiction set in the world of Harry Potter, but not involving any of the main characters at all, just the magical elements that come with them. I do not own any rights to Harry Potter, those belong to JK Rowling. Lucas and Piper belong to me. Enjoy. New chapters to be up soon.

Her hands fumbled around the loose string of the hat Lucas had given her on her sixteenth birthday with nervous anticipation. It was a horrid lime green color, complete with hand stitched eyes and a pink woven tongue, both which landed right on the forehead of the wearer. His most prized possession at the time, for as he was keen to point out repeatedly, he didn't just let anyone have his hats. That was the night Piper thought maybe she wasn't just an anyone. Maybe Lucas St. James saw her as more of a someone; a someone he would have liked to have been with more than just sexually and it was that thought that brought a smile to her face, not the expected sex that was shared between them afterwards. Yes it was Piper Dish that had broken the first of their many spoken rules about the given situation they had placed themselves in: Thou Shall Not Fall In Love. But she had, and even though through out the years she managed to hide her feelings well, times had changed. Seeing him with Emma had soured her heart. Watching them flirt, and laugh and knowing they shared a bed - the same bed she was so accustomed to sleeping in - had left Piper with no other clear choice. If she didn't tell Lucas now, there would be no other chance. He would marry Emma and Piper would be left watching as her soul broke in two.

Maybe he would still marry Emma after her confession.

Perhaps this was all for naught.

Piper stood before him, silenced, fingers still lacing between the strings of the frog hat as her eyes struggled to meet his own. He wasn't going to like hearing what she had to say, and as she lifted her line of vision into Lucas' blue eyes, her voice seemed to sink to the bottom of her toes. Unconsciously she wiggled them in her flip flops as her body weight shifted side to side in a skittish teeter. This was so opposite Piper, the normally sharp tongued, sassy girl was at a terrifying loss for words, alarming Lucas to the point where his face actually bore a look of genuine concern. The words were at the tip of her tongue, dripping out in obnoxious stutters before a true string of consciousness could be streamlined. It was strange the room they stood in, Lucas' childhood bedroom, seemed so confining and small, when only a few months ago it was the perfect place to sneak off too. It encompassed the two twenty some odd year olds beautifully back then, hiding their bodies in the darkness, keeping them close between the sheets. He may have loved her then. Perhaps Lucas had loved her forever but never took the time to figure it out. Or of course, maybe he knew he never loved her and Piper was about to make the most embarrassing mistake of her life, to her best friend.

Her throat cleared.

"I came to give you back your hat. It's yours after all," she offered the gift with trembling outstretched arms, her teeth biting down on her bottom lip as she continued on. "I know how it was your favorite and, well, it belongs with you."

Lucas pushed her hand bearing the returned gift lightly, reading her face with a serious undertone of his own, "What are you doing, it was a gift, don't give it back."

"But I..." Suddenly the will to speak faded and tears welled up in the creases of her eyes. Piper didn't want to cry, she was tougher than this, "I can't keep it Luke." A second time it was offered towards his chest, but again he pushed it aside, stepping closer to his friend with a wide eye fear of the unknown. Against every fiber of her being, Piper stepped back from him as he advanced, her hand holding the frog hat dropping to the side of her body as her eyes became fixated on the tips of his shoes. Converse. Blue. So typical of him, even now well past the prime of his teenage years.

"Paper-"

"-do you love her?" A hard sniffle choked her, and she found the back of her free hand wiping away fallen tears that streaked the sides of her face. "That was a stupid question, don't answer. I mean, of course you love her. You wouldn't be with someone if you didn't love them." That line caught her. They had been unofficially together for years before Emma and never once did he utter in true seriousness one sentiment of love. Sometimes she wondered if he was even capable of having a real emotional connection to anything asides from his soddening hat collection.

"Please, take back the damn hat," she insisted, grasping the sides of the knitted frog with both hands before shoving it over his blonde hair, pulling the ear flaps down so it fit snugly over his rather clueless head. This motion brought them closer together again, and as her hands lingered over the sides of his face a touch too long, she felt Lucas reach up and put his own hands over hers, pulling them down so they rested beneath his on top of his chest. He went to speak again, "Paper-"

Again she cut him off.

"-Ten years we've been sneaking around and never once did I ever really kiss you. Since kissing showed affection and we were on strict no affection rules but... just once," leaning closer Piper relished in the small moment her lips pressed tightly against his, allowing the scene to ride over her fully in crashing waves, pushing harder into the forbidden embrace for all it was worth. And Lucas didn't knock her off, he didn't withdraw from the moment or lead her to believe that for one second he was regretting anything that was happening. Actually she felt his arms wrap securely around her body, giving into the kiss she was leading without any upheaval. He was softer then Piper had imagined, his tongue was velvety and his lips knew exactly what they were doing; so it pained her greatly to pull away when she did.

Forcing a pleasant grin, she felt another tear streak down the side of her face and she causally wiped it away with the back of her hand. "You know, you're so stupid St. James," a scoff played off in the air as Piper lifted her eyes towards the small pieces of hair that stuck out from under his hat, tucking them in as her thumb casually stroked the side of his cheek. "For as bloody brilliant as you are, you are the dumbest guy I've ever met. I don't know why," her voice stumbled for a second time, cracking under the weight of tears that filled her, "...I don't know why I love you as much as I do. But I do. I love you, Lucas."

Piper tried to smile, but it hurt. And as she watched him stare at her as if he had just been bludgeoned at the back of the head, she knew that spoken rule number four had just been demolished: If Thou Does Fall In Love, Thou Shall Never Speak Of It.

"Do you," love me? was next to fall from her lips, but there was no way she could form the words. He was with that pixie girl, the same girl which read Tolstoy and Faulkner for fun, spoke french and german fluently because she wanted a hobby, who challenged him intellectually at a rate that even as a former Ravenclaw, Piper could not. But Emma was slow in the wit department, she couldn't keep up with the sass that Luke and Piper could dish out in under five minutes. She couldn't make him laugh so hard that his one cheek dimple formed underneath his right eye like Piper could. Surely that had to count for something, didn't it? Instead of following up with the question she'd originally planned, she continued forth on a different path, "Do you know all those times at school, when you would run off with other girls and I would supposedly run off with other blokes?" Merlin it was so hard to keep her cheeks dry. "I didn't run off with other blokes.

I said I slept with Finnigan, but I didn't. I said I hooked up with Sheldon, but I lied. I played the part well, didn't I? It never did look like I was just waiting for you to come back to me. How bloody pathetic is that?" A mixture of laughter combined with sorrow filled the room, and Piper found it hard to hold his gaze for the rest of the one sided conversation. "I waited for you my entire life and you didn't even notice, did you? And it doesn't even matter now because I ... I didn't get you anyway." How she wished he would say something, anything, even if it was painful to hear. But he didn't. Instead he just looked so utterly confused that if the moment had been something different Piper would have found his expression quite hysterical. Yet some how confessing her heart didn't seem so funny. "I have to go."

Without another word she turned her back on him, lunging for his door before racing down his stairs with blurred vision. Piper Dish did not cry, and yet here she was bawling her eyes out as she reached the backdoor of the St. James residence, passing his father, Ethan,as she stumbled onto the back porch in haste.

"Hey Piper," He started in, completely obvious to her weakened state of being, "Tell your Dad I'll be over around six tomorrow to watch the game, we were aiming for earlier but there are a couple of things-" but the crack caught his unaware attention, and suddenly Piper was gone.

He wasn't the only one that noticed her sudden disapparation, because no sooner had she dissipated had his son appeared, slightly winded, on the porch behind where she had been, shouting her name in urgency. Even through the settling dusk Ethan could tell Lucas was strangely pained, a distinct air of confusion embodying his posture.

"Dad..." Luke turned to his father with a bewildered stare, reaching up to pull at the roots of his hair only to remember Piper had shoved her hat back upon his head. Slowly he removed the once birthday gift, fondling it much as she had been when she had greeted him in his room only an hour before. He had given her this present for her sixteen birthday, one of his most prized possessions, and if that wasn't saying 'I love you' in Lucas language, he wasn't sure what was. After all, he wasn't breaking any of their rules, and at sixteen such things as love and affection were the furthest things from his mind. Now though, he was caught in a mix of emotions which all seemed to swarm in and take over every ounce of his being. Lucas had found Emma, his pixie girl who made him feel as though there was someone on this earth that was an intellectual challenge for him but then again, Paper was just as smart, and she was funny, the funniest damn bird he'd ever met. He knew her, inside and out, between the sheets, what made her tick. Piper was his comfort zone, where as Emma was his inciting new adventure. This entire situation had the magical timing of a death at a wedding. "Dad. How do you know when you're in love?"

Ethan stirred from his spot near the window, putting down the measuring tape as he looked towards his eldest child with a half smile. He'd been waiting years for his son to realize what everyone else had seen all along. "I thought you'd figured this out by now."

"I'm being serious. I mean, I thought I knew but now," his eyes drifted off to the spot where Piper had disapparated and he sighed, "I'm not so sure anymore."

"Go to sleep."

"Your advice is sending me to my room? Really?"

"No, my advice is sending you to sleep," Ethan said reassuringly, "You see it's quite simple Luke, she'll be the girl you last think of before you fall asleep, the girl you dream of while you're there, and the first girl you envision when you wake up. That's when you know you're in love. I still get that way with your mother."

"That's adorable and yet some how very, very disturbing but," Luke forced a smile, starring down at the neon green frog hat with a rosy expression, "thanks. I mean, I don't think it'll work, but, hell, I have nothing else to go on right now."

So begrudgingly Lucas accepted the advice with half a heart, and waited until the lids of his eyes could no longer stay open to test the theory.

Wouldn't you know, his old man was right.