November 1894 - By letter

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To Millie,

These words have been tricky to find but I felt it important that I share my thoughts on what happened at the Halloween party. Let me begin by saying that any social fault is mine and I apologise for any discomfort I might have caused you.

What I cannot apologise for is my decision to kiss you as it would not be a sincere apology. Given the same set of circumstances, I probably would have made the same decision again. I did not kiss you because of the alcohol, nor because that is just what Gryffindor boys are like, I hope you know I am not some cad. I kissed you because I care for you and I wanted to know what it felt like to kiss you, and now I have, I would quite like to find out what it is like to kiss you again.

Do not think your reaction offended or upset me, your bashful nature is one of the things I find endearing about you, and your laughter is never a sound that I am sorry to hear.

I adore you Millie, the friendship you have granted me during the last year is very special and unlike anything I have shared before, I hope that whatever future form it takes, we will remain friends forever. If a reset in our friendship to what we had before my faux pas is what you wish for then I will respect that and look forward to enjoying what we already have. If you wish to continue down the path of my obvious intent I will promise to be nothing less than a gentleman, I will take no action that might harm your reputation or lead you to disrepute, a fact that I think your friend will also be quite keen on enforcing should we continue.

I will not press you for a response, nor will I seek to bias you decision, but I needed to put my thoughts on to paper. I look forward to seeing you at our next meeting to discuss the book club.

Forever your friend,
Ben

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Millie Potts

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   Millie Potts

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Also November 1984

Mr. Hunter,

I must thank you for the candor in your letter. If there was an abruptness in the manner in which we first consecrated our lips with the other's, I fear it was of my doing. I must confess that I had, until that moment, never considered the warmth and affection you had shown me to be anything more than the mark of a true and trusted friend. The idylls of fantasy in romance and matters of the heart, those were the domain of other girls. What you know of my books pertain more to worldly things, of history or mystery. Yet, seemingly, I could not recognize the mystery unfolding in front of my own eyes.

This seems a rather wistful manner to write back to you and it may come off as rather foolish. I feel rather the fool myself, for now ever since that night of Halloween I have been faced with a truth that now stands naked before me. No amount of effort will cover it again, nor any sum of reason will account for why I could not see it staring me in the face. Or rather, looking up at me, for you see the truth was in my heart this whole time.

My odd confession still feels quite odd to me as well, and I will assure you that I have written and rewritten these words a number of times to sort out the truth among truths inside me. I neither know, nor can determine at this point, whether one is more honest or deceptive than another. All I can do is be honest in revealing that my thoughts have dwelt upon that fateful night, and in those there is one continuous theme.

I believe I could write an entire volume on a theme such as this, and on the first page of each chapter would be a retelling of our solitary kiss. Any soul that might chance to read my book would think it quite boring, perhaps unbelievable. What a terrible romance writer it would make of me, nor a very adventurous one either. And there lies a further truth that I have been a fool to keep from myself. For the kiss we shared once is far too rare to even become a collectible for adventurous seekers such as ourselves.

There is only one remedy I can imagine for such an issue, and in reading your letter it is clear that you have reached the same conclusion yourself. In the hopes of avoiding the calamity of our last kiss, a second could simply be one of mutual agreement between ourselves! We need only find a time and place in a school full of eyes painted, live, and jarred, a simple manner indeed.

Wanting for input in your gentlemanly fashion, I will simply sign this.

Yours, more recently true,
Millie

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   Benedict Hunter

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