"I don't know them that well," Ford said, a touch defensively. He liked poetry, and obviously Wye did as well, but there was something about love poetry that felt a little riskier. Maybe it was just residual fears from having been bullied as a younger student at Hogwarts, but Ford wasn't sure he wanted to get a reputation as the sort of person who read a lot of love poetry. Particularly since Wye had already demonstrated he had no qualms about sharing what he learned in their conversations, in song and verse if the opportunity arose.

He opened the book and scanned the title page to refresh his memory. He'd read all of these before, on a few occasions, but it had been a while. One stood out, though, from just the first line, and he flipped to the relevant page in the book. He read, with enough feeling that the poem flowed but otherwise taking care to keep his tone level:

My letters! all dead paper, mute and white!
And yet they seem alive and quivering
Against my tremulous hands which loose the string
And let them drop down on my knee to-night.
This said,—he wished to have me in his sight
Once, as a friend: this fixed a day in spring
To come and touch my hand . . . a simple thing,
Yet I wept for it!—this, . . . the paper’s light . . .
Said, Dear I love thee; and I sank and quailed
As if God’s future thundered on my past.
This said, I am thine—and so its ink has paled
With lying at my heart that beat too fast.
And this . . . O Love, thy words have ill availed
If, what this said, I dared repeat at last!

Ford liked it, particularly the link its ink has paled with lying at my heart that beat too fast, and there were echoes here of what he'd been feeling as he and Macnair exchanged letters earlier that week. He didn't want to make any comments before he'd heard Wye's judgement on it, however, so instead of saying anything he merely raised an eyebrow at the spirit: Well?

---