Our first meeting was not our own. I remember you, a waxy, lifeless thing, before I, too, became a pawn in someone else's game. They dropped us in the lake, let us float as bait. I don't remember any of it, of course. Didn't see you there, but I can picture you. Long and slender, your sallow skin tinged blue in the murky depths. Your hair, a halo of darkness.

You were a prize for the Diggory boy – the thing he'd miss the most. I wondered often, even years later, if he was the thing you'd miss the most. If he still haunted you.

When we met again, you did not recognise me. "You were just a girl the last time I saw you," you said.

"That was a long time ago."

You nodded and I knew your mind was somewhere far from me.

We kept in touch. Sent owls. Exchanged books. You'd send me newspaper clippings, odd drawings, notes scrawled on beermats. We met for coffee whenever I came to England. Before long it seemed as if I would come to visit my sister and her family, and meet with you instead. There was something about you, something dark that lurked beneath your smile. It enticed me. It seemed like a promise of recklessness, like you were waiting for someone to unleash some sort of madness in you. I wanted to be that someone.

I kissed you first outside your flat. The rain pounded the awning above us as you fumbled for your keys, and I was so close, and it felt right. You were very still, and then very quiet, and you said, "Gabrielle. You don't want this."

"It's just a kiss."

"You don't want this," you said again, but you kissed me this time.

The next morning, you told the slope of my shoulder two truths: one, that was the first time you'd ever kissed a woman, and two, that was the first time you'd ever kissed anyone at all.

"I've been kissed," you explained. "But that's different. I kissed you. That's different."

I told you a truth of my own: I still had nightmares about your darkened silhouette tied to the bottom of the lake. First still, painfully still, then aware, then thrashing, then still again. Sometimes I was tied up next to you, sometimes just watching.

"I still feel like I'm drowning sometimes," you said by way of response, and then kissed your way up my neck.

The darkness in you bubbled quietly but never overflowed. You told me often that I would regret you and meant it. "You don't want this," you said again and again.

"Why wouldn't I want this?"

Your dark eyes were empty, your face tired. "I'll never be happy. Not really," you said. "There'll be moments, but I'll always slip back under. I'll always be treading water and eventually I'll get too tired and drown."

There were three freckles at the nape of your neck. I named them all for stars. I lay behind you, listening to the soft ebb and flow of your breath, and imagined your whole body as sky. As if I was looking up and up and up into the vastness of all existence – and I was, in a way.

I liked you better this way – imagining you as sky and not waterlogged, not a half-drowned thing.

"I don't want to bring you down with me," you said. "You deserve a happy ending."

"Happy endings bore me," I said, but I meant I love you, and I think you knew that.

A/N: Written for Em's Emporium, 16. "Happy endings bore me.", Sophie's Shelf 18. Cho/Gabrielle, Ami's Audio Admirations - 4. write about something rare (rarepair), Lyric Alley – 6. No one'll love you as you are, Amber's Attic. 2. Loved One's Name: Write about someone important to your main character, Showtime – 12. Baptize Me - (situation) doing something for the first time, Mythology 8, fragile and delicate character, Count your buttons W3 - freckles.