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You regret not being concerned when your owl is the first to arrive with mail, much sooner than he is supposed to. You are having a good time, stuffing your face with heavy pancakes and greasy bacon, forgetting about bullies and your brother, and sharing a joke with Rowan when a green envelope drops onto your plate.The whole table goes silent as you look at it, gleaming in the candle light. When no authority figure steps in, you pluck it into your hands and rip it open. It jumps, and in the air bursts with heat, the words writing themselves in green flame, an inch from your face.“Get out of my school!” it proclaims boldly, and your face warms.Merula is all the way across the room from you and yet you can feel her glare as if it’s an invisible pinprick. She smirks, eyes gleaming, pleased that she has embarrassed you. Pleased, that is, until you throw back you head, and laugh, clutching your stomach.You aren’t sure yet why you don’t feel threatened by it, why you’re fascinated and amused, instead of angry, but you accept it and laugh. Maybe you just like the attention? For someone who hates you, Merula spends a lot of time obsessed with you. Where you are, what you’re doing, who you’re with. A strange feeling that you will spend years ignoring and trying to suppress coils itself in your stomach.When you look up again Merula is grinding her teeth together, and trying to snap her fork in half. You can only laugh harder.
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You are far more confident in your second year than your first. So much so that you have no qualms drafting the perfect argumentative essay as to why you should be allowed to wear the boys’ uniform instead of the girls. Despite your mischief making and complete disregard for rules when it comes to your brother, you are still a Ravenclaw. Rowan is only too eager to help, spellchecking, proof-reading and offering suggestions. They want the professors to use their proper pronouns, and like you, they are ready to fight.It took you the whole summer to come to terms with yourself, but your parents offered only love and support when you told them, so now you’re ready to take Hogwarts by storm. You have no problem with any specific gender distinctions, but you cannot abide skirts and dresses. They let you wear pants when you’re out of uniform, but you don’t think you can take another year shoved into the traditional girl’s robes.Penny and Ben encourage you too, clapping you on the shoulders and smiling, distracting your fluttering nerves on the train ride over, and trading glares with Merula when she walks by.The second you have a free moment, you march to Dumbledore’s office with your demands. You place them on his desk, respectful but obstinate, outlining in brief your reasons why they should let you dress like the butch lesbian you know you are. Without a word Dumbledore stands. And completely ignores your perfectly worded essay.He puts an arm around your shoulder to lead you in a walk to nowhere down the halls. You don’t talk about your letter. Instead he mentions the remarkably high empathy you seem to possess, which you blush at humbly. You still don’t think you are very special. After all, you’re still pretty weird and obsessed with your brother, and you refuse this year to hide back in any closet, so you can only imagine how that will affect your reputation.Dumbledore laughs, and says he hopes you’ll continue to develop it, hinting that you will need it more than ever with each passing year. Then you stop in front of the Ravenclaw dorms and without a word he leaves you.Your letter isn’t mentioned, but none of the teachers say anything about your smartly tailored boy’s uniform when you wear it, and that is good enough for you. The headmaster is right though. He was never your biggest challenge. The teachers never say anything, but enough of them glare at you, (Snape especially) that you know not all of them like it. At least Flitwick is okay with it, you rationalize. He tells you himself that he is proud of you for being yourself.Many of the students are not proud of you, and since they are not teachers, have no obligation to keep their mouths shut. Merula is the first to call you ‘dyke’, adding it to her extensive list of slurs that she reserves for you and your friends. She points it out so fast you wonder if there was a betting pool on who could make you react the fastest. The first few times you do react, but then the year goes back to the normal level of teasing, and only Ben seems to still get offended on your behalf.The others are doing it to be cruel, you can tell. Merula is too, but there’s something else there. Not fear, Merula, pureblood, Slytherin and favored by Snape, can do no wrong and fears nothing. It’s jealousy you realize later. The green eyed monster has come to visit Merula, but you don’t see what she has to be jealous of, even if you really do think that green is her color. Second year challenges your empathy because even a significant number of your House mates are against you for leaving the closet. You show them up by winning points left and right. Second year is going to be the start of your years.Second year is also the year Merula almost fails Charms class. After the third spectacular failure where something either exploded or someone almost got hurt, Flitwick tells Merula that she must get a tutor, no buts about it. The tantrum she throws is talked about for a week, but she acquiesces in the end. Until she finds out who her tutor is.Ben is still the best at Charms by far, and has made a name for himself as someone that the second years go to for help; even some of the third years ask him in secret. At first he refuses, but Flitwick tells both of them that it is not up for negotiation. You try to argue on Ben’s behalf – you have no idea what Flitwick is trying to do, but you just know that Merula’s volatility could send Ben over the edge and into a spiral.You are shot down, and after you Rowan and Penny are shot down too. Fine then, you decide, if you can’t stop the tutoring, you can still protect Ben. Even if it means becoming a lightning rod for Merula’s cruelty. And that is how you end up, once a week, studying in the Gryffindor common room, with Ben, Rowan, Penny and Merula. The looks you get when any of the other Gryffindors walk in is priceless. But you don’t dare go to the other common rooms. Slytherin’s Common room would be a nightmare, Merula is definitely without a doubt not welcome in Hufflepuff, no matter what you say, and you have decided that your one selfish desire is to not have an enemy in your Common room, in your home. It is the most selfish thing you act on.The Common room and your friends seem to act like a shield for some of Merula’s cruelty, though she mutters a jab or slur under her breath once in a while, just low enough that only you can hear. The couches are small, and Ben asks you to sit next to her. Your knees touch, and you feel funny, and you deny that feeling for a very long time.It takes two weeks for Merula to get her head out of her ass and start engaging with ‘Mudbloods who couldn’t teach a horse to walk off a cliff’ – whatever that means; Merula certainly has an interesting repertoire of insults.And then it happens. One night while Penny is explaining something to Merula, you ask Ben if you can come to the next chess round robin the Gryffindors are having. Merula scoffs and groans, thankful for the distraction.“Don’t you losers do anything fun? Ran out of courage or something?” She jeered.“Just because it’s not against the rules doesn’t mean it’s not fun!” Rowan jumps in. They take enough teasing from the other houses for considering studying fun.But Ben grits his teeth, and has had enough. Fire burns in his eyes, and you see the lion of Gryffindor embodied in this, the boy who is still afraid of everything. He has had enough.In fact we do, Merula. Poker.” Ben barely stutters, and it is then that you realize that he is still afraid, despite it all, and you’ve never been more proud.“Card games aren’t against the rules, you stupid Mudblood,” Merula spits back.“No, but gambling is. Here in Gryffindor we play for favors.” Ben already has the cards in his hands before you can blink, and they’re crackling as he shuffles them. You gulp, trade glances with Penny and Rowan and feel your blood run cold.“Favors?” Merula’s voice is dull compared to the blood pounding in your skull. You’ve never been so scared for someone in your life. Not even your brother, because you weren’t there to see what he was doing.“Yes. Winner gets ask one thing of the loser, and they have to do it, no questions asked.”Merula’s smile is absolutely wicked, and she pushes you off the couch to sit across from Ben, who deals her in without even missing a beat. “Hope you like being humiliated, Mudblood. Because the things I’m going to make you do when I win, would offend even other Slytherins.”Merula drops the suggestions casually as they play. “Streaking during the next Quidditch game. Risky broom stunts. Stealing potions from Snape. Making you yell ‘I’m a filthy mud-‘”Merula is startled by one of the cards bursting into flames, and she drops the rest, yelping embarrassingly.“Did I forget to mention that the cards are enchanted against cheating?” Ben remarked casually, as he studied his hand.“Yes,” Merula snapped, bending to pick up her remaining cards.“Oh, and Royal Flush.” It’s said so casually you do a double take. Merula’s eye twitches. Penny grabs a pillow to shield herself, as though worried that Merula is about to spontaneously combust. She stomps her foot, screeches, pushes over the table and stalks out of the room.All of you wisely let her cool off before Ben metes out her ‘punishment’.It is devious. It is insane. If asked, even Azkaban would say it is cruel. But they aren’t, so Ben does it anyways. He forces Merula to do Muggle things with him. And she has to be nice while doing them. The first time is hard to watch and you’ve basically suppressed it from your memory - football or some Muggle sport. The second time, also football, is hilarious – Merula can’t get over her defeat at cards and demands a rematch. It becomes even more hilarious when Ben admits that he’s been cheating every time.You don’t believe him until he explains that magical cheating can be detected by the enchanted cards, but Muggle cheating – card counting – cannot. You wish you could rub that fact into Merula’s stupid face, that it's the very thing she hates that is her undoing, but it’s more fun watching Ben keep winning.It happens over and over, until you’ve lost track of the places Ben has dragged her, the things he’s made her do, and the time they’ve spent together. It blurs into something hazy and amorphous in your mind, but that’s okay, because the specifics aren’t important. It’s the result that gives you hope.Merula softens, only a little. The rough, angry edges are smoothed by forced proximity and experience. The more Merula genuinely spends time with Ben and gets to know him, the harder it becomes for her to hate him, you suspect. It helps that no matter how she tries she can never surpass him in Charms. Heck, like the rest of you, she can barely catch up to him.Slowly, the slurs disappear from her vocabulary, until she stumbles over them, and then they are gone altogether. She doesn’t stop teasing, doesn’t jump to your defense, doesn’t stop the other Slytherins from using those words or bullying you. But by the end of the year, you know they will never pass her lips again. It isn’t friendship. It’s barely anything. But it’s a start, and that is what counts for you.
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Third year is, by magical school standards, almost normal. You and Merula fall into the role of rivals. She still mocks you and your friends openly, but now you are all able to throw back everything she lobs at you. And some of it sticks. Merula is seemingly stuck at 5’2”, puberty having not been kind to her. And it is an obvious sore spot. In contrast, puberty hits Ben early, and hits like a train, making him shoot up like a weed to nearly 6 feet, burning away the last of his baby fat. He’s still the same more or less awkward boy you know, but now you have to help him fend off the advances of many girls suddenly interested in him. His demeanor doesn’t seem to match his body, still boyish, gangly, and afraid. Rowan has similar problems with their body, but for the opposite reasons. Puberty hits them hard too, and suddenly they are getting misgendered even more, and you don’t know what to do. You suspect if there was a magical solution that had few downsides Rowan would’ve found it already and used it.You’re a late bloomer, and don’t mind so much, you already have Ben and Rowan to worry about, you don’t need to add your hormones into the mix. Penny and you become closer, mooring each other through the waves of your friends’ pain. Penny is tall, beautiful, and as sweet and charming as ever. She is a stalwart Hufflepuff who lets adversity wash over her, but not change her. She is refreshing and calming when nothing else is. Yes, third year gives all of you ammunition to hurt each other. And you do. This is the year that test all of your bonds. You re-organize, step on each other’s toes, learn your weaknesses and break each other the way only people who have known each other a long time can. You’re so busy with the friend group that Merula fades to a buzz, background noise to your petty life squabbles.The moment you start ignoring Merula is the moment that she escalates her goals, and you wonder if she is trying to get you to notice her again. She takes the lead in House Points, joins the Quidditch team as a beater – which prompts you to never join yours, you like flying, yes, but you dislike pain more, and you have other hobbies, such as helping Penny run a Quidditch gambling ring – and forces Ben to continue tutoring her. Merula is a constant buzz in your life.She comes crashing back in and drowns everything else out when the teachers start talking about the trip to Hogsmeade. The way Merula tries so hard to explain just how much she doesn’t care about the trip and just how dumb everyone is for getting excited about it is all you need to tell you that she can’t go. You remember overhearing your parents talking about how Merula has no family, and is a ward of the state, in as much as one can be in the wizarding world. Due to a technicality she gets to stay in her home at least, looked after by disinterested servants. It must be terribly lonely you imagine. And of course that means there is no one to sign her permission slip. As the trip draws closer things come to a head: the friend group is fracturing, and Merula has turned her frustration outwards to you. Ben gets mad at Rowan for pointing out how ungrateful he is about his body that matches who he knows he is inside, Rowan gets mad at Penny for taking Ben’s side, and neither of them approve of your gambling ring. All three of them are tired of you giving Merula a free pass over and over again when she continues to throw them away.It makes you bitter, and before long you aren’t even sure you want to go on the Hogsmeade trip, because you know Ben will be scared of something, Rowan will lecture you about something unsafe you’re doing, and Penny won’t take any side at all, infuriatingly deferring to neutrality.You decide to do the stupidest thing you’ve done thus far. You brew a Polyjuice potion (recipe courtesy of Rowan) with your own hair, drag Merula by the wrist to the girls’ bathroom and tell her to take your place.She laughs for a solid minute and asks why in the hell she’d want to slip on the skin of the craziest loser in Hogwarts? You watch and hide as Merula, in your body, shuffles at the back of the group to Hogsmeade. You follow safely at a distance. She’s wrapped up in a scarf, and many layers, with her mouth clamped into a tight line. If she doesn’t talk the two of you can probably pull this off.Your heart pounds as you creep through the snow, hoping that if you get caught you can just convince the person who saw you that they had déjà vu or were confused by the snow. And if they asked for the permission slip folded into Merula’s borrowed pants, you’ll just say you forgot it. Flitwick knows you, and knows the slip was signed. You’re in the clear. You hope.Something warms in you as you remember Merula pulling on your tailored pants, and you push it down. It’s just vindication you think, just happiness at the good fortune you were both still short enough for it to work. Merula spends several long minutes staring at herself in the mirror before taking the potion while wearing the pants, and you can see how much she wants them, how much she hates that if she started wearing them everyone would just see her as a copycat of the crazy Ravenclaw girl.You hold a piece of snow to your cheeks until they stop burning, but nothing can calm the trip hammer of your heart. So much can go wrong in this crazy, stupid plan, but if you reveal yourself then you know you’re out of luck. You don’t even know what you were thinking. Let Merula take your place? Whatever the punishment for such a trick, it would not be light.And the things she could do with your face. Ruin your reputation. Destroy your already fragile friendships. Tank your house points. It is terrifying. But also thrilling, and you worry about the fact that you’re enjoying the danger and breaking the rules. It’s the same reason you enjoy running gambling with Penny.Maybe in another life, without your brother’s shadow hanging over you, you and Merula would’ve been best friends who ruled the school with a little bit of crazy. Because you both had to be a little bit crazy to commit to such a plan.You don’t have time for anymore what-ifs, because they’re all coming to a head anyways. Chester, in his 7th and final year, prefect again, claps his arm around Merula, and she flinches so hard you know that everyone has noticed.“Hey,” He says, in that fond way of his. Chester has almost become a surrogate older brother for you, the brother you never had, who would’ve been in his last year too. “You’re finally old enough for Hogsmeade! I owe you a drink for everything you’ve done for Ravenclaw and I.”Merula is frantically shaking her head, mouth clamped shut as hard as she can stand. You know there’s no way she can say something nice enough to sound like you. Snark was as much a part of Merula as her hair.Chester buys it completely though. “Sorry,” he laughs. “Rowan said you were sick, but I see you bundled up and snuck out anyways. Throat trouble?”You let out a long sigh, glad that you had let Rowan drag you to the library all those months ago to study independently about Muggle diseases. You managed to remember that one ailment that couldn’t just be cured with magic, and had to instead be ridden out. The common cold is a nightmare, you remember, but being able to claim a sore throat was the easiest way to make sure Merula won’t have to talk if she gets caught. And it was an easy excuse to give to your friends before they left for the trip. That makes you shiver, even in the warm winter sun, because you just know it’ll be bad if your friends happen upon Merula looking like you.But they’re avoiding each other right now, everyone is raw, fraying, and you think that they’d more likely just duck to avoid you, content to deny that you were there and instead sick in bed.You’re so busy thinking that you missing Chester laughing, still with an arm around Merula, half dragging her off somewhere. You hurry to follow.By the time you catch up they have a glass of butterbeer each and Chester is laughing, and telling stories about you to a group of assembled Ravenclaws, Merula, in your skin, is blushing, gripping her drink with both shaking hands to keep from dropping it. You watch carefully through the window of The Hog’s Head.As their drinks get lower Chester continues to talk, and lavish casual, friendly touches on her. It’s intimate but appropriate, and Merula looks like she’s going to combust. Hiding in her drink only lasts so long though, and soon there is nothing for her to do but look at your prefect.“Bathroom!” she squeaks out suddenly, your voice strange and warbling. You wince from your spot at the window where you are watching, as she slams past Chester, and runs out the back door.For a long moment you are confused, and then horribly concerned, and then you’re being yanked into a bush, and Merula has a hand over your mouth shushing you.“It’s me, dumbass.”You glower as she lowers her hand, and she rolls her eyes.“You aren’t that sneaky,” Merula says. “Of course I knew you were watching.”“Well, what do you want?” You finally ask, frustration sudden blossoming. Even if you were sick, you shouldn’t be taking this long in the bathroom.“What does he want from me?”You’re confused by Merula’s confusion. “What do you mean?”“He’s being so nice, clearly he wants something in return. What is it?”“I don’t know.” You shrug. “Your company. We’re friends, he doesn’t need a reason to be nice to me.”Merula narrows her eyes. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”There’s a tight, sad lilt to her voice, which is yours, and still weird. It hits you then that just maybe, Merula has never had people be nice to her ‘just because’ and you wonder what a life where every interaction is weighed as a transaction is like. It doesn’t sound fun.You don’t have time to ponder it further because your friends are marching towards The Hog’s Head and you know from the vantage point they have that both of you will be spotted in the bushes, and there are some questions you don’t want to answer. You shove Merula hard out the other side of the bushes, where she spends a good thirty seconds planning your murder before realizing what is happening and then rushing around the back of the pub to return to Chester’s side.You casually step out of the bushes, just as your friends reach it.“Hey!” It’s Ben, glowing in the winter sun. His lashes are wet with melted snow – or maybe tears you realize a second later, because his eyes are red and puffy too. Rowan and Penny have also been crying, but they’re panting and smiling too, and it looks like it was a good cathartic cry, the kind that mends instead of breaks.The magic of Hogsmeade has lubricated the atmosphere between them, speeding up the inevitable apology between all of you. The three of them have you in a sweaty hug, and you realize your fights were petty and your frustration limited. You want nothing more than to be involved in their lives again, and a deep surge of affection bolts through you.With a glance you see Merula in the pub, loosening into the role of passive follower to Chester, and with a lighter heart, you let your friends lead you away from The Hog’s Head and towards an apology and further mending of your relationships. Somehow the two of you manage to pull it off and get back to the school before Merula, several potions in, is about to change back. The best part is, that it all worked out. No one is any the wiser, and no one’s reputation is ruined. You stare at Merula until you can only laugh at the absurdity of the situation. It offends her at first, but then she laughs too.“Thank goodness, your stupid face is wearing off soon,” she snarks after, to wipe away all trace of laughter.“I think you liked being me,” you tease in a sing-song sort of voice.“Hardly,” Merula scoffs. “I just did it to stop your desperate whining. And I’m keeping the pants, by the way, you don’t wear them right and don’t deserve them.”You take an appraising look at Merula, who turns red when she realizes what she’s implied. “Only if you tell me where you got your boots,” you counter back.Merula sneers. The two of you, wearing the same boots? She grabs your wrist, yanking you close and you flinch for a punch that never comes. Hot air blows against your ear and you frantically tune back in, knowing that Merula will only tell you once. Then she leaves, both of you looking shell-shocked but pleased. The memory of Hogsmeade stays burned in your head for the rest of the year, and every time you look at Merula, instead of glaring at you like usual she gets the same sad forlorn look she had that day. Something is bubbling between you two, something you dare not name.
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Fourth year is bad. A few weeks in Rowan hands you a crumpled newspaper and walks away without a word. Merula’s parents are dead. Dementors. It says it’s an accident, but even you don’t wish that accident on anyone.For Ben it is a godsend, the first year that he is truly free of Merula’s cruel jeers. Within the months that follow he grows stronger, braver, and kinder, flourishing under the sudden sunlight that has been stolen from him for years.Merula is the opposite, and it hurts to watch. Merula is erratic. Most days she comes to class with her hair disheveled in the way that says she doesn’t care, and not the typical messy look that she actually spends an inordinate amount of time getting perfect every morning. Her eyes grow glassier and heavier with dark circles as the months go by. She lashes out, but not in the perfect, coordinated way she used to. There’s no plan, no bite, it’s just the anger and pain of a cornered animal. Fist fights, pointless arguments with the professors, turning on her house, all of it and more happens without pause. Where the sun is shining on Ben, shadows have overtaken Merula. Dementors got her parents, but it feels like, every passing day, they’re killing her slowly too, even though Hogwarts is as safe as it’s ever been.You start to miss the taunting and teasing. It had become less cruel and more of a game in third year, with you throwing back everything you got. There had been an understanding. And now, there is just normalcy. You study with Rowan, try to set up Ben and Penny, who you know have started liking each other but aren’t acknowledging their feelings, and alternate between obsessing about your brother and watching Merula fall apart day after day.You’ve felt loss before, but even now it is tempered with hope, even now you know absolutely that your brother is alive somewhere. Merula doesn’t even have that. There is simply the giant lonely house with no hope of anything better, and servants who now have no reason to be nice to her because their masters are dead. Despite the empathy you know you possess, you wonder if you’ll ever really understand Merula and what she’s feeling. When Merula’s cauldron explodes in potions class, just before Christmas – a looming benchmark of her loneliness, for there is not even hope of family left to her now – she barely evens reacts. Snape, unforgiving of the monumental tragedy that has happened, docks Slytherin ten points, and she just slides out of her chair, leaving the classroom, listless and sad.You follow her to the grounds, and find her crying on the top step. You move to comfort her, say something, anything. “It’ll be okay.” You cringe immediately, feeling disgusted at yourself. Her parents are dead, how could it ever be okay? Despite your empathy you don’t know how to deal with this.You reach out to squeeze her shoulder; if you can’t find the words maybe you can tell her with gestures. She punches you in the face. What follows next is what Penny later refers to as ‘a straight up bitch fight.’ It is Dumbledore that has the final say, and so he asks you what happened. You open your mouth, but taste copper. Merula got you good. But you got her back. You both have broken noses, and there is blood flowing into your eye from where she scratched your forehead. Merula is clutching her ribs and it makes you want to throw up. You saw red and lost control, and you know how disappointed Flitwick and Dumbledore are, considering the lecture he gave you second year. Your knuckles are bruised and bloody, and you think your ankle might be sprained. You’re certain you got most of the injuries, but Merula still looks worse. For the first time in her eyes you see fear, raw and broken. You tune in to Snape again, who hasn’t stopped glowering and lecturing the two of you since he dragged you both in by your ears.“This is your fifth fight this month, Ms. Snyde. Coupled with your lack of participation, unwillingness to seek help (the word is filth in his mouth, and it is obvious that he thinks she shouldn’t need it in the first place) and your failing grades, I cannot find it in me to look the other way this time.”“We fell.” The lie is easy. You say it with the utmost confidence and Merula’s eyes widen, and you see her dig her nails into the back of her other hand to keep from reacting.Dumbledore nods, and Snape stops talking to glare at you. “You fell?”“Yes. I was being hasty. I was trying to walk away, and I didn’t watch where I was going. Merula tried to grab me, but my momentum carried her down the stairs with me. It wasn’t a fight. We just fell. That’s all.” You shrug and swallow the blood in your mouth. Dumbledore has a twinkle in his eyes, but Snape is furious.The only thing that stops him from going for you is Dumbledore. “You’re both very injured for a simple tumble down the steps.”“Ask anyone, they’ll tell you the same.” And you grin because the only witnesses to the fight were your friends, Ben who cheered you on, Rowan who wisely tried to pull you away and Penny who watched through her fingers, disgusted and enthralled. Snape knows you have him, but he marches out anyways, and drags each of your friends one by one into the room, and asks them to say what happened.He’s smart, he makes sure they can’t see you, so you can’t signal to them, but you don’t need to. You’re not smarter than Snape, but you have more loyal friends than him. They know what the punishment for fighting is, and get around the lack of communication with you with clever words that Rowan coached them on.“It was an accident. Not a fight.” And they leave it at that.“Fine.” Snape eventually snaps out, turning to the chairs where you and Merula are still licking your wounds. “Twenty points from each of you for incompetence, and no magical healing.”Dumbledore nods and leaves. “Consider this your final warning Miss Snyde.” There is a strange warmth to his voice. It holds a secret.Merula crumbles when they are gone, and lets you help her to the Slytherin common room. She doesn’t say thank you. She doesn’t say anything.In fact she doesn’t speak for the rest of the year. But after Christmas she seems to just barely do better. There are no more fights, and though she says nothing, Merula diligently comes to every study session with the group that you invite her to. You don’t ever get mad either when she follows you around, sad and lost, as though you are the last life boat in a choppy sea.Although you suppose you are, Merula’s house has turned on her, her favorite teacher, Snape, ignores her existence and the school in general seems like it’s ready to throw her away and forget her. Merula never goes back to herself, though she disappears once a week, which has you worried, even if it seems to be helping. The dark bags under her eyes seem to shrink, and you want to feel better, but as summer comes you can’t help but be afraid for your fifth year.
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You were right to be afraid of fifth year. It is the worst year by far of your life. You get three days into the school year – three wonderful days – before every shred of hope and joy you had is utterly destroyed. They find your brother, but spirits above you wish they hadn’t.Worst of all you find out first from the newspaper; your parents too distraught to tell you themselves about his body, discarded and left for dead. The newspaper article says that it’s likely that he had been living on the streets after running away, intent on proving himself right, no matter how long it took. Instead he was murdered by a rogue wizard for the little bit of gold in his pocket, and his body was stuffed in a drain, hidden and alone for years.The newspaper is horrible, you decide. All you can do is hold it with shaking hands, tears staining the moving pictures as you stare over and over. You try to replace the horrible picture – he’s too small and shrivelled to be the handsome brother you remember – with happy memories, but they’re hazy and faded, and you can’t do it.The moment before you break you realize with startling clarity that you might finally understand Merula’s point of view, because you want nothing but to hurt someone else. All your hope is gone, and you feel every inch of your body tense to lash out. Then your legs give way.But you don’t hit the ground.The friends that you have been helping for so many years, the ones you have carried through anger and pain, are taking their turn to carry you. Rowan under one arm, Ben stooping under the other, and Penny taking your books and wiping your snotty, teary face without even flinching; together you all make your way into the Ravenclaw common room so you can collapse into your bed. You stay there, crying, covers over your head, and refusing to eat for three days.Your friends do their best to carry you mentally and emotionally, but they too are only fifteen and out of their depths. Nothing works, not gentleness from Ben, not reasoning from Rowan, not tough love from Penny, and eventually they worriedly leave your bedside to find Madame Pomfrey so she can force feed you safely. You cry yourself to sleep at that, ashamed and broken and even lonelier.When you wake up Merula Snyde is there, picking at an apple and looking perhaps as bad as you. She’s been crying too you realize, and she hasn’t noticed you’re awake yet, because she’s staring at her own well-worn newspaper, and you know immediately what edition it is, the one with the last picture of her parents looking dignified.You know you could leave her her pride, but you’re so tired, so you just force yourself to sitting. Merula doesn’t even flinch, doesn’t seem to care about her pride anymore, she lost it all last year, when what was left of the pieces of her heart were snapped and shattered and thrown away.She climbs into bed next to you, forces the half eaten apple into your hands and makes you take a bite. You practically climb into her lap, and she lets you.“Tell me about him,” She manages to choke out.You make it a quarter of the way through your happiest memory with your brother before it hurts too much to keep going, and Merula lets you cry on her shoulder, while she cries too, whispering to you about her parents and how much it hurts, and she knows, she knows you two are the only ones that can understand each other. She forces you to eat the rest of the apple, and you cry yourself to sleep again.You wake up to Penny, Ben, Rowan and Madame Pomfrey fussing over you, Merula having disappeared without a trace. You wonder if it was all a strange dream brought on by hunger. Until you notice the apple core on your bedside table, and a tiny green snake made of broken potion bottles. “It’s a calming exercise suggested by my state mandated therapist.” Merula brings it up casually, and for a moment you are confused, then you catch her gazing at the snake she gave you, the one thing you chose to bring with you.It’s midnight in the infirmary, and you’re the only one there, moonlight is glowing bright and soft across both of you and you hate it because you don’t deserve beautiful things and you don’t want good things. You don’t want to be there but Madame Pomfrey forced the issue when you couldn’t even stand up on your own without falling over. You can feel the magic glowing around you, forcing nutrients back into your body, and you are grateful she has left you your rage and your pain because you know that there is magic to dull it, but you’d rather feel something for your brother than nothing.“Does it work?” You eventually ask, looking up from the book you’ve been pretending to read through your insomnia.Merula looks thoughtful, and removes her feet from where she has them on the bedside table, lowering her leaning chair to its proper place. She turns to look at you, and smirks. “Smashing the potions bottles to get the glass in the first place seems to work.”For the first time in days you feel a smile tug at your face. There’s the snark you know and love. Like. You like Merula. That’s all. But your brother laughs cruelly in your mind, teasing you because he knows you’re lying and hates when you lie to him, because it’s supposed to be the two of you against the world, and nothing will ever take him away and and and –Merula snaps you out of your spiralling by shoving you over and sitting beside you again, laying out some old newspaper over your laps and emptying her bag of glass on top of it.“It’s all magically sanded down, it won’t hurt you,” She mutters gently when she notices your hesitation, snaking past your frozen hands to grab some pieces for herself.You both work in companionable silence, not stopping even when your hands brush over the same piece. Your heart jolts a little every time, reminds you that underneath all of the pain, you are still alive somewhere. Your raven is crude compared to Merula’s precision with picking out the perfect pieces and gluing them into the perfect shape.“It’s called kintsugi.” Merula explains it low and quiet. Her voice is strangely soothing, and you like it. You’re so used to her sarcastic tone that anything else feels weird in comparison. “The therapist says it’s a process to show that the broken pieces are still just as beautiful when put back together or something. It’s a Muggle thing, needing to re-affirm that you don’t suck.”“A Muggle thing?”“Yeah, well, thanks to Copper, I started having an interest in them. And besides the best witch in Hogwarts wouldn’t limit herself for anything. So that means knowledge of Muggle and wizard things.”A swell of pride at Merula fills you, but it barely covers the aching crack and pain from your brother. You can’t even rise up to the obvious ‘best witch’ bait that Merula is throwing your way. Instead you just pick out another piece of glass, put it in the best place, fuse it with magic and do it again.Eventually you have a raven-ish shape and Merula is already on her second object, something different that you can’t figure out yet. You venture your voice, and it is scratchy with your pain. “‘State mandated therapist’?” You try to keep your tone light, trying not to send Merula into the spiral of last year. There is only room in the life-raft you’re barely clinging to for one drowning teenager.Merula smirks, but it’s only half there. “After the fight I was forced to go. But then I decided to keep going.”“Why?” you ask, breathless and waiting, fingers rolling glass between them.“I finally stopped being a stubborn ass and realized there was someone who still gave a shit about me, someone that I didn’t have to be the best witch for. I wanted to get better for that person. I want us to be friends…” Merula side-eyes you when she says it, afraid, but ready to try and be vulnerable.You notice the way she’s trailed off and you’re afraid of where this is going. It was easy to ignore certain feelings when you were enemies, and then rivals, but friends, friends is an entirely new ballpark. A welcome one, but one that you know could end up hurting you even more than you already have been. You take the plunge anyways. “But?” “But I don’t need our complicated relationship and the untangling we’ll have to do to get in the way of her healing right now. She’s in so much pain.” There is guilt in her voice, sharp and wet. You’re both thinking back to when you were eleven, and so good at hurting each other. Chants and jeers about your curse and your brother trickle into your head, and you think about how even this year you haven’t escaped it. Heck, it’s probably going to be worse now that the news is out, you’ve only been shielded from it because of your sickness.You shake it off, literally, and forge ahead, forgoing some empathy for courage. You drop your crude raven and cover Merula’s busy hands with your own, smiling brokenly (because you’re broken inside) at her. “I can’t fight this pain alone, Merula. Everything I’ve done has been with other people. I need my friends. All of them.”You try to keep your eyes dry, but it isn’t working, and Merula is looking down at your hands like you murdered a puppy. Under the murderous look is discomfort, and you remove your hands quickly.“Sorry. I can be really physical. I forget sometimes that not everyone likes to be touched. Rowan doesn’t like their back or shoulders grabbed, but hands are okay. You can just slap them away if I do it again.” You force a laugh and a smile.Merula doesn’t react to that comment, instead looking physically uncomfortable, but touch starved. The two opposing feelings war on her face. Before you can say anything more, the faint light of Madam Pomfrey’s wand begins to melt the dark; she is doing her midnight rounds, seeing if her only ward is asleep or not. With a breath of relief, Merula disappears into the hazy shadows the moonlight does not touch, taking the newspaper, and glass with her. All that’s left is your raven, and you hold it fast, pull the blankets to your ears and try to slow your racing breaths, so you can pretend to be asleep. When you wake, hazy and muddled with exhaustion and hunger there is, as usual a bowl of food enchanted to stay warm, magically steaming until someone comes to take it away. This time, before your stomach can turn itself into knots so tight that you won’t be able to swallow a bite, you notice a note. It is on green paper, crisply folded and sealed with magical wax that you suspect will only open for you. It takes you a long time to find the energy to open it, and that scares you, you’re hurt and angry, and sad, but you don’t want to die yourself. You have a brother to avenge, and a righteous burning rage that can only be cooled when you succeed.The note pops open with only a tiny bit of pressure on the seal, and you close one eye, ready for it to jump up and start on fire, just like first year. Nothing happens, to your relief. Instead you open it to find a single line of text in surprisingly neat printing. When you get better we can go get some more glass from Snape’s potion’s supplies.
-M
It’s the ‘when’ that does it. Merula believes in you. She knows you’ll get better. And the invitation in incredibly tempting – just you, and Merula, alone together and messing with Snape. No matter the state you’re in you can’t deny an offer like that.For the first time in four days you take the tray of food onto your lap. You look down at the bowl – its porridge, plain but filling – and for once you don’t feel like vomiting. There’s still pain in your stomach, but it’s a different pain, the kind you simply carry with you, the kind that sits behind your stomach, unwanted friend to the realities of your life, like eating. You take a bite. It’s warm, with a hint of apple. You manage to swallow.It takes you an hour, but eventually you finish your first bit of food in four days.In three days more, you are declared fit to leave the hospital wing. You are fit. In body at least. Your mind is still in pieces though and you’re afraid of how easily they could be further shattered.
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Rowan is a godsend. They have been taking thorough and diligent notes of everything you have missed, and customized a special study plan to ease you into the year, slowly filling in the gaps that you missed while helping you navigate the new things you’re going to learn. Rowan wants you to take your time, and let you recover, but you want to cram everything in at once, because when you’re busy you’re not thinking about your brother. Rowan wins out in the end.You find other ways to fill your time. You pick back up with Penny, and continue your illicit gambling operation. By this time you’ve diversified into many streams. Students aren’t just betting on Quidditch anymore, now they can bet on almost anything; who will fail out of a game of jellybeans, which Wizard card will come with their chocolate frog, who can make Snape react the fastest.You know you’re playing with fire, and that it’s only a matter of time before you’re caught, but unlike your classes, which you are attending now only to learn the spells necessary to redeem your brother, this game is one you enjoy.Not only do you enjoy the strategy necessary not to get caught, you enjoy balancing the ethics and obligations you have as a friend and business partner to Penny. You two make a profit from the gambling – of course you do, the house always wins, and you are the house – but it’s not really so much in the grand scheme of things. Just pocket change for sweets and other items you don’t want your parents to know you’re buying. You balance winning with keeping your fellow students safe. You don’t want any of them to actually get caught in the throes of a gambling addiction – those students you find outside help for – or bet all of their money or life savings. It’s supposed to be only a light, fun distraction. You intend to keep it that way. Even if it makes a few of the more headstrong and ambitions students annoyed at you.Beyond running gambling with Penny you expect there to be little to bring you happiness, except flying. You may not be a Quidditch player or the star flying student, but it brings you absolute joy to soar through the air and you missed it in the infirmary.Like many things, your greatest joy decides to stab you in the back. Your first day of flying class comes and your broom won’t even shake on the ground. It just sits there, stubbornly, while you yell yourself hoarse trying to get it to come up to you, tears and snot streaming down your face, until Madam Hooch stops you.She explains later, when you’re finally calmer, that while uncommon it is not surprising that your broom is not responding. Grief has dulled and stunted your magic. Flying is joy; you must have both or neither. You decide on neither.It is Ben that saves you from spiralling back to the hospital after that, Ben and the fear in his eyes for you. You try and throw Merula’s letter away, because you can’t bear to look her in the eyes knowing you’ll just disappoint her; you’re never going to get better, you’ll never be the best witch, and she deserves better than you. You can’t bring yourself to burn it though, so instead you crumple it up and shove into the deepest darkest part of your trunk to forget about it.For the first time in a long time you start to believe the things other people have said about you: maybe you are cursed, after all. Your brother is really dead and gone, just another crazy wizard who died in the gutter. You can’t fly, even though Merula was still managing to play excellent Quidditch last year, despite her grief. In every way, you have been beaten down, and you want someone to blame. Because you’ve been trying so hard.Maybe it’s time to stop. It only takes two days after that event for Merula to have had enough of your shit. You’re sitting in one of the few rooms that none of the teachers ever bother to look in, scowling down at a book filled with lines of numbers, and a pile of coins and betting slips. A jab you overheard from a third year as you passed by today – that you’ve started to look like Snape – creeps back into your mind. You scowled at the girl and she ducked behind her friends. It grates at you, the thought, because deep down you don’t want to be Snape, the man who has bullied you all through your school years. But you don’t know how to ease the bitter taste of your own life. So instead you bury yourself in the gambling, spending more and more hours going over figures that are already perfect. Penny, bless her heart, comes with you, as she always does. She is the pretty, kind face of your operation, and keeps watch at ‘the front of the house’ as you like to call it. That only increases your guilt, because Penny should be out there having a life, courting Ben, instead of just talking about his dreamy eyes and piano fingers for the hundredth time. (Penny reads a lot of romance novels.)Ben doesn’t come to the gambling house you’ve made. He never has and never will. As he’s gotten older he’s told you about the wisdom he’s seen in his fear, and how it keeps him safe. He’s not against the operation you and Penny are running, but he still won’t get involved and you respect that. Rowan still disapproves, and is willing to make their objections known, but you two have long agreed to disagree about it. It is something for you and Penny alone, just as you and the others each have something that you do only together.Yelling stirs you from your thoughts and then you’re up in a flash, because you know that angry voice anywhere. In a few steps you’re across the room and poking your head around the corner of the wall that separate the front of the operation from the back.“Listen up, Haywood, you prissy sod, if you don’t let me back there right now I will –“ Merula doesn’t get the chance to end her threat because Penny grabs her casting arm with her non-dominant handing, squeezing with a vise grip, and twisting it to the point of discomfort.Her voice is dangerously low when she replies, “You’ll what?”Merula flinches. Penny herself spread the rumor that your operation has an enforcer behind the scenes, but it’s really Penny herself. You don’t know if she’s the best witch at Hogwarts or not, but you do know that this misdirection catches most students off guard and ends most conflicts before they begin. Merula seems to be no exception.A long ten seconds pass where neither move, sizing each other up, Penny’s wand out and glowing. Merula gives up with a sigh, relaxing her posture and lowering her hands in submission. “Please?”Your eyes widen and your breath hitches. You’ve never heard Merula say please before. Jealously burns within you immediately, because you should be the first person she says please to. Penny doesn’t even like her! At least you have been giving her chances!Your fists clench, you storm around the corner, anger burning brightly in you and then… and then it drains away when you see Penny give you a tight smile. She’s trying to protect she says with her eyes. She thinks your anger is towards Merula, and you suddenly can’t find the energy for any emotion. Penny deserves so much better of a friend than you. Four years and a few weeks of nothing but kindness, care and friendship and you were ready to yell at her for a ‘please’. You’re disgusted with yourself. “Let her in, Penny, it’s alright.” You sigh out, rubbing your suddenly tired eyes. You watch to make sure Penny let’s Merula go before you sag around the corner.Merula looks smug, while Penny snorts in derision. She holds onto Merula for a few extra seconds, giving a squeeze that you notice but don’t comment on to her arm, threatening her. Then she releases Merula roughly, and sits back down with her book, as the Slytherin follows you to your desk.You slump into your chair, push everything to one side, and lazily thumb at a knot in the wood of the table, gazing softly at Merula.“I’d like to place a bet,” she says, smirking at you, and pulling out a bag of coins heavy with Galleons.“No.” Your voice is deadpan and empty.“Why not?” Merula narrows her eyes, tone threatening, but not reaching the same octave as Penny’s. Penny was in a league of her own. “I know it’s not prejudice, you’re not a Death Eater, you don’t care about blood or house. And I have the Galleons.”You open your mouth to say something but find that you can think of no good justification to refuse Merula. Instead you deflect.“I don’t take bets from friends, that’s a conflict of interest. You could ask Penny though.” You lower your voice into your ‘customer service tone’, which Merula does not find impressive.“Really?” Merula asks, raising an eyebrow and glaring at you intensely.You roll your eyes, but give in to her the way you’ve been giving in to a lot of things. It’s too much effort to fight her. “Fine. Minimum bet is two Galleons. No returns, refunds or exchanges.”“What are my odds?” There’s an excited lilt to Merula’s voice that gets your blood going. Not only because you enjoy this part the best – sizing up the opponent, reading their face, throwing a bluff and then getting away with it – but because it’s Merula.“Depends what you’re betting on, baby.” The words slip out fast and easy, and you can’t even be embarrassed about them. You’re a different person when you’re taking the money and in control of the game.Merula licks her lips, and you know the concern will pour in in a cool deluge later, but for now, you are enjoying this game and exchange. Merula dumps the coins on the table before making her bet official. “A hundred Galleons.”Fuck, that’s a lot of money. Your parents aren’t poor, but they’re not rich either. A hundred galleons for a young witch who has few expenses is a valuable proposition.“On what?”“You.” There’s a possessiveness to Merula’s tone, but you dare not interrupt, lest she stop speaking suddenly. “I bet that I can make you smile in front of the whole school by the end of the year.”That makes you snort. No way. You haven’t smiled since before the newspaper, and you only expect your life to get sadder and angrier from here. And in front of the whole school to boot? That’s a laugh. You have many detractors and few friends, and even your friends can’t get you to smile, no way Merula can do it. It seems like a sure bet.“The odds are ten-to-one.”“I’ll take it.”“Deal.” You shake on it, and that is when you realize how completely and utterly fucked you might be. Because Merula’s hand is warm and soft, and all you want to do is smile like a goon and fall into the easy, hazy feelings you get when looking at her. It is comforting, and it make you want to forget. You’re tired of forgetting.The war begins immediately: rage for your brother versus falling into the soft and easy affection you’ve always had for Merula, even when she was mean to you. You’re definitely fucked.
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It should be alarming, but it isn’t, how easily your life settles into a routine after the bet is placed. Your grief begets repetition, makes it easy to do the same thing every day and simply go along where your friends drag you. Later you realize how lucky you are that they dragged you to good places, dragged you to heal.For a while it goes like this: class, then crying, then in the evenings something with your friends. With Ben, you play chess, or kick around his football that he isn’t afraid to take out anymore (the bullies that never went away ran out of insults for his Muggle pursuits years ago) or just sit somewhere on the grounds, talking and watching the sky. During those days you try to lead Ben as organically as you can into asking out Penny, because you know he’s interested too.The next day is always Rowan, who sometimes drags you off to study, because honestly, you enjoy learning, especially with them, but usually the two of sit in companionable silence, sharing one of the giant plush chairs of the Ravenclaw dorms and read for hours. Once in a while you’ll stop and whisper harshly with them, and suddenly it will become a discussion, a debate on the merit of this character or that, the philosophy of a certain person, the representation in their novel and why it is so wonderful. But mostly you are silent, and you like it, like that with Rowan you don’t need to say anything or fill the space with words. They always know just what book to pick too, always know whether you need something sad, or happy, dense or light, vapid or intelligent. They are your best friend, and your rock, and even in these pitch black days you are grateful for them.Penny is always interesting, because of course you have your gambling ring with her, but she’s still the most popular girl in your year, with an abundance of friends and skills. She’s really good at one or two things, but she’s regular good at a whole lot of things, and she makes you try all of them. Especially during slow days for gambling. There is one evening where you spend the entire time taking magazine quizzes with her, a fascinating Muggle past time that you’d never have expected to be so interesting. Another where you do crafts, making silly fragile friendship bracelets for everyone (even Merula). And many where Penny teaches you to cook without any magic, a skill that she insists is essential for everyone, not just Muggles. Penny’s almost as interested in Muggle things as Ben, and you think that’s kind of nice, because there are so many things you didn’t learn about or get to experience growing up in a full wizard household.The day after that is always study night in your common room, with hot chocolate or warm milk, Ben and Penny sitting close and laughing much too loud about soft secret things, you and Rowan sharing fond looks about the two of them. And Merula always comes, even though she has to battle through the glares and awkward stares as she thumps down on your other side. During those nights she rarely speaks, opening her mouth only when asked, or when absolutely necessary to correct something idiotic you’re doing. Merula is too damn smart for her own good sometimes though, and there is more than one night that devolves into an argument between her and Ben over whose method to get the answer (both correct) is better. Those nights end bitterly, with Rowan glaring and dragging everyone out of the Ravenclaw dorms, and helping you to bed. The fighting is always too much for you bear, sending you spiralling into your grief. After, Rowan always leaves you in your bed in a huff, and you know they are going to lecture the others and remind them that they are supposed to get along and be a help, not a hindrance to your healing.On the fifth day… well, on every fifth day Merula slinks her way into the Ravenclaw dorm (she always figures out the password somehow) after class; no matter how the previous evening went; and does her best to drag you off to somewhere better than your sorrow. The first few times it happens is incredibly awkward. Both of you suddenly realize that you don’t really know anything about each other, your bonds are tenuous at best. The two of you always choose somewhere neutral. House is not something you want to worry about in those moments. The first few times neither of you talk, but it’s not like the easy silence you have with Rowan, it is heavy and deep and threatens to smother you. Eventually Merula starts bringing her glass again, and the two of you make things, and slowly over time, you start to open up. You don’t talk about Jacob, or her parents. That comes later.Merula opens up the most at first, offering a surprising amount of vulnerability. You learn the things she likes: flying, punk rock music, and anny-may, strange cartoons from the same country she got the idea of the glass from. She tells you these things with a wild look in her eyes, body tensed for flight. These are the things that make her happiest, the things that she loves the most, and she knows that sharing them with anyone has the chance for ridicule. You smile, and ask her to guide you through each one, the nervous energy in her uncoils and the two of you seem to be finally making progress.You find the anny-may strange but endearing. You tend towards shows where plucky groups of teens save the day with the power of friendship, while Merula seems to prefer romances with a highly empathetic lead breaking through the stoic exterior of ‘the rival’/bad guy and revealing they were just misunderstood all along, and then ending up together. You choose not to think about what that means too hard.Watching Merula fly is a terrifying experience. She likes to fly fast and loose, adding a flip or loop where none is needed just for the fun of it. Reacting in any way – good or bad – only seems to encourage her. She’ll cheer and wobble upright to stand on top of her broom, or hang on only by her hands, body dangling in the empty air, smirking and laughing. Eventually she brings the broom down in front of you, balanced perfectly in a standing position, hovering only a few inches off the ground so that she’s eye level with you. You take her hands when she offers and she pulls you up behind her.It’s not the same as flying yourself, but it’s very close, and you close your eyes to enjoy the wind in your hair. When she pushes the broom faster you can only wrap your arms around her middle and hold on, your scream ripped away in the air. Merula is surprisingly toned for someone who’s still so small and skinny. It must be from years of Quidditch hardening her muscles. You backtrack after that thought, and purposely ignore that Merula is surprisingly toned. You’ve barely become friends after being enemies for years, it is absolutely too soon for thoughts like that.You fall in love with punk rock immediately when Merula shows it to you. It’s loud and open and welcoming. The hair, and the clothes and the fashion statements call to you, and Merula tells you it is the one thing she loved even before Hogwarts, the thing she’s loved since she was five years old and could scream herself hoarse when her mother tried to play proper and appropriate classical music. She tells you about a wizard boy who was their neighbor and whose family was much more liberal about Muggle things. The boy was sixteen, had a bright red and purple guitar, and music poured from his house at all hours of the day. Despite knowing, even at five, that her parents would find her a suitable pure blood boy to marry, Merula had declared that she loved her neighbor with the guitar, and would marry him when she was older. She didn’t understand back then why they moved away a week later, after her father went over there to talk to them, but she does now, and hates it. It was the first time her heart was broken by anyone.Punk rock music seems to caress the bleeding parts of your soul. Merula and you listen entranced, and you always wake up from that trance holding hands, or leaning on each other, until one of you hastily pulls away and breaks it. The music always draws you back together though, seeming to say ‘It’s okay, we’re freaks too. We’re freaks together.’ By the end of the fifth day every week, you feel almost whole and healed, your heart jumping and pattering, tears bubbling at the corner of your eyes, unable to sleep for how alive you feel. You finger your smile in the dark of your dorm, realize how easily Merula coaxed it out of you, and you believe that she might win the bet. During those moments you want her to win the bet.That changes every weekend when you wake up to the sun. The weekends are different. Darker. Angrier. You decline every invite made by your friends, and you growl and yell and force them away. They need to, deserve to, have a life of their own, one not bogged down by you and your trauma. With no classes to occupy your time, and friends that you have chastised away, you are alone, and free to fall apart and drag the pieces to the library.You stay there all day, starting at the top of a stack of books that might be relevant and working your way down. You read every line, absorb every word, because hidden in one of them could be even a faint, tiny scrap that could help you learn about the Cursed Vaults and your brother. You get up only to use the bathroom, and are distracted by nothing else, not even eating.Nothing else, except for hot tears that pool in the corner of your eyes, and make silent tracks down your face, and sudden anger that thrums and washes over you until all you can feel is pounding in your head and heart. It tells you to curls up and scream, and you cast a silencing charm around yourself and then you do, losing hours this way. Most often you fall asleep at the library desk on the 6th night and awaken there in the morning, more exhausted than before. You always feel both relieved and disappointed that no one came to bring you to a bed or even cover you up with a blanket or a cloak.You bury those feelings further in studying, using your exhaustion and hunger as the necessary burn to push, and push and push, long past when you know is healthy. No one comes for you, but the Ravenclaw in you, the little piece that hasn’t died, screams itself raw that you have school the next day, and so, on the seventh evening, with aching eyes, and clammy hands, you put the books away, wobble back to your dorm and collapse into your bed, ready to start the week again. Ben, Rowan, Penny, friends, Merula, break down, forget, and again.This life continues for months, the rhythm of the days repeating and bleeding together. During the week you seem to heal, and yet you tear through the scabs on your soul and reopen the gaping bleeding wound every weekend. You pick at your scab, and your wound waxes and wanes, sometimes so unbearable you want only to die, others almost unnoticeable. The cycle of healing and self-destruction becomes routine, becomes a crutch, becomes a necessity.Soon four months has slipped by this way, with your friends holding their breath, frightened for you, and torn down the middle over what to do. Intervene and risk you pushing them even further away and dangerously alienate yourself, or continue the cycle of dependence and self-destruction?Merula decides for them when she makes the choice to stay over Christmas with you.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Your parents send a Howler when they find out you aren’t coming home for the holidays. You send one back. They reply with two more, before Flitwick gets tired of breakfasts getting interrupted so close to everyone leaving and all communication between you and your family ceases.Good. You can’t stand the thought of your house, warm and empty of Jacob, void of hope that he might come. Every year since he disappeared, you bought him a present anyways, waiting for the day when he would finally open all of them. Now he never would. Five years of built up hope is a lot to have dashed.You equally can’t stand the way your parents have pushed it away, walking on eggshells and pretending that none of it has happened. If you looked at them you’d never even think they had just lost a beloved son. Maybe they hadn’t. You realize suddenly, that perhaps they had given up on him years ago.Your black mood begins early the week that holidays start. Ben and Penny leave on the Thursday, both giving you a long, meaningful hug, whispering comforting platitudes, and then shoving a present into your hands.“Don’t open them until Christmas!” Penny sing-songs out, pecking you on the cheek fondly and then skipping off with Ben, making a move and grabbing his hand, because she knows he isn’t going to do it.Rowan stays longer, lingering with you until Friday, but you can tell that they’re torn, called to go home by the promise of family. You convince them to leave you at mid-afternoon, wistful tears clinging to your eyes, as you exchange wrapped presents, also not to be opened right away.You watch Rowan leave, linger in the cool archway, as soft snow floats down around you, until your fingers are numb. Then you flee to your room, curl up into your bed, pull the covers over you, and await whatever blackness you can find. You extend your usual weekend schedule into the long winter holiday. You are consumed until Christmas morning. Merula is back again, her mouth a sharp line on her face, arms crossed and patience thin. You know you’ve been ignoring her, and she doesn’t like it. She tried to coax you away from the books and grief by any means possible: mysterious notes tucked into your unkempt robes, angry glares from across the library, bribery with the foods that used to be your favorites and arrogant boasts. She even tried to up the ante on your bet, throwing in another 50 galleons and a sword (where she got it, you never find out). None of it works, and you remained stubbornly stuck in your cloud of despair.Merula is done with that. Its Christmas morning and you’re both tired. There are bags under Merula’s eyes, and you know implicitly that it is your fault, you and your stupid grief that she seems determined to help you past. It’s Christmas morning, and there are presents that your aching hands have to open. It’s Christmas morning with no hope of Jacob.You dress slowly. Slower still every time Merula sighs loudly, eyes respectfully averted while you change. When you’re finished, without a moment even to breath, Merula grabs you by the arm and drags you past the Christmas tree of Ravenclaw dorm, with your sparkly presents from your friends, and your parents, you note sheepishly, and, tucked away in the corner, a green box that you know is from Merula. Apparently presents will have to wait.Because it’s down the stairs, out into the courtyard, duck into a dark corner to avoid the watchful eyes of teachers who are supposed to be supervising you, and then behind Merula on her broom, wind shrieking with bright snow as she takes you who knows where away from school.It’s hard to hard to focus with the landscape zipping past you, and the cold crackling deliciously through your bones. Merula leans low over her broom, pushing it even faster, and your breath is stolen as you do the same, trying to help with aerodynamics.You land hard and fast, jolting suddenly into place, and when you finally look up, you realize why. You never would’ve let Merula take you if you had known where you were going.“This is…” You start, swallowing loudly, taking shaky steps on watery legs.“The cemetery where your brother is buried.” Merula finishes the sentence for you, low and reverent, respectful and apologetic.She picks at a splinter on her broom, eyes averted. “Penny says you haven’t been here since the funeral.”“Since when does Penny talk to you?” You wince when it’s out of your mouth, but you don’t apologize for it. You think you might mean it.Merula snorts. “Penny talks to everyone, even me. I used to think that was a weakness. Now, I appreciate it more than I can say.”“Yeah, cause it means you two get to gossip about me.”“Given your overdeveloped sense of empathy, it just seemed odd.” Merula trys to shrug non-chalantly but there is genuine worry in her voice.You almost laugh. It accompanies a giddy, bitter feeling. Your emotions are running hot and high, swinging back and forth between the two extremes. Christmas Day, alone, and suddenly Merula whisks you off to visit your brother’s grave in the freezing cold of early morning.The sky is a strange blue-grey, suspended between happiness and despair. The cemetery is large, being the foremost burial ground for witches and wizards, and beyond a veil, Muggles too, but you know the way easily. Merula lets you take her hand as you stagger by, and she interlaces your fingers together. You don’t think about what that means because you’re so cold, and tired. All you know is that Merula’s hand in yours is the only warm spot you can feel in the world. You both forgot gloves, so it is only your blood, beating under your skin, that is keeping the cold at bay for both of you.You latch onto that thought, that strange poetic fragment floating through the storm of your mind. Your breath is coming out in hot mists as the two of you make your way through the cemetery, and all you can think about is heat, heat from blood and heat from breath. You remember how important blood used to be to Merula, but right now you suspect she is only thinking about breath, the way your’s intermingles with her’s in tattered clouds, and that it is the only indication you are both still alive.It cuts you deeply suddenly. You remember Jacob’s funeral, just after the first frost, the air was crisp, but no warm breath seeped from his mouth the way it did yours. There was only his porcelain looking body, fragile and small in his casket, and the rest is a teary smear in your mind. It was so long ago that you saw the heat of his breath, alive and wet, a snow ball fight the Christmas before he disappeared. You hope that he never got so cold on the streets that even his breath stopped misting, and despair burned in his bones. You hope he had some light left in his soul when he was murdered.You hope and it hurts so badly, even worse than the sweet numbing grief. It is the first time you have felt hope since the newspaper shattered your world three days into school. It burns and it aches, twisting in your muscles and bones. But you hope.And then, there it is. A modest mausoleum that always elicits conflicting feelings within you. Your parents aren’t rich, but your family used to be, as evidenced by the high class burial place your great-great grandfather set aside for the family. You wonder, if your great grandfather hadn’t fallen in love with a witch from a poor family, and your wealth hadn’t been slowly diluted through the years, if you would’ve been friends with Merula, and ended up in Slytherin. You’ve never had the need or desire to reclaim your family’s former greatness, but you wonder if Jacob would still be alive if you had it. Money certainly seems to make things easier, even among witches and wizards.Merula gasps as you push the heavy stone doors open. A blast of dry, musty air hits your nose, and you wrinkle it to keep from sneezing. Merula releases your hand to walk ahead of you, as if compelled forward by some invisible, immutable force. She stops at your great-great grandfather’s place on the wall, brushing her fingers along the snake under his epitaph. You stop a few feet behind her.“Great-great grandpa was a Slytherin, and very ambitious. He wanted only the best for our family.” You laugh. “Of course, his Slytherin son went and fell for a Hufflepuff girl, poor as dirt. They gave great-great grandpa an ultimatum, and when he would not approve the marriage, they ran away together. But time and distance softened both of their stubborn hearts, and great-grandfather returned with a wife, a modest business and triplets. And they were happy. Well, at least that’s the story that grandpa tells.”Merula traces her fingers from your great-great-grandfathers epitaph to his son’s, swirling her finger in the body of the snake beneath his. Then she follows the wall to his sons, all of whom, barring your grandfather, are dead. She laughs when she sees them.“Which house is the other brother?”You join her finally at the wall, lost in memories of your grandfather’s brothers, for it had truly not been long ago that they had died. “My grandpa is a Gryffindor. He is the middle triplet. The oldest was Ravenclaw, and the youngest was Hufflepuff. It was a surprise when all of them got sent to different houses, but they were always like that. Always surprising. And thick as thieves too, they damn near ruled the school, what with one being in almost every house!”Merula smirked. “I’ve never met a family with so many members in different Houses.”You shrug. “Never judge a boy by his House.”The two of you lapse into silence after that. Slowly, you make your way past the blank spots that are for the rest of your family, and down to Jacob’s epitaph. The inscription is short, but the roaring lion beneath more than makes up for it.“Jacob was a Gryffindor?” Merula asks it to herself, but you can’t help but hear it anyways.Everything in you breaks, and you crumple to your knees, confronted with pain and terror and truth. Your eyes burn red with your tears and snot streaks out your nose. It’s gross, as grief should be, you think.“Jacob was a Gryffindor and he was perfect.” You feel like you want to throw up, and you breathe hard, trying not to desecrate such a sacred place with your vomit.“If you think I have an overdeveloped sense of empathy, then you would not have believed Jacob. He loved and cared about everyone. He was a fourth year when he disappeared, and he knew all the student’s in his year, and many from the other years. He remembered their birthdays, saw them through their struggles, protected smaller students from bullies, he even took care of injured animals. He never picked on me, and genuinely enjoyed spending time with me. I was an angry, lonely child, but I would’ve been even lonelier without him. When he was home, we were always together. He took care of me.”You sink further into yourself, nearly hyperventilating, barely aware of Merula awkwardly rubbing your back, unsure how to comfort you, and unused to kind, easy touches. “I failed him.”In a mirror of the year before it is Merula reaching for you, muttering that it will be okay. You don’t punch her in the face, but you swat her hands away, and let the sobs wrack your body. “It’s not fucking okay! I found some stupid ice, and a stupid knight, but still know nothing about the Vaults. I spent so much time fighting with you, and doing stupid things with my friends, when I could’ve been looking for him! People still think he’s a Death Eater! And I went to school and did nothing! And now he’s dead. Been dead this whole time.”Merula drops down beside you. “When I was nine my parents were ripped away.”“I was ten when Jacob disappeared.” You blubber out.Merula continues, not looking at you, but edging closer to your body, curled up on the cold floor, “I always imagined I’d be the best witch ever, and then by myself, I’d storm into Azkaban and liberate my parents. I would save them and make them proud. Everyone would know my name. And then I got to Hogwarts, and my two years of planning fell apart.”“I did the same thing. Antagonizing you was a distraction… until I started to enjoy your company. And then the older I got, the harder it became to deny that my parents were evil.”You sniffle wetly, and take Merula’s arm. “They were your parents.” Even you know that isn’t a good enough excuse.“And they were evil. They killed people. People like Copper.” The bitterness in Merula’s voice surprises you. Any resistance leaves your body, and your limbs go limp. Merula curls small beside you, knees up to her chin, and she intertwines your fingers again. “And I can never reconcile them. I can never ask them why. I can never try to show them that blood doesn’t matter. I’ll never have to worry about what they’d say if I admitted to loving the music of that neighbor boy. I’ll never be able to ask what happened to him. I will always wonder if they’d hate me for liking girls the way I’m supposed to like boys.” Merula takes a long shaky breath, clearly holding back tears. “I can never know those things. I can only do my best at Hogwarts from now on.”“I understand. And I want that too. I just wish I knew the whole story. And that everyone else did.”“Maybe if you’d ask for some damn help, like you used to. God, where did all your stupid sappy-ness go? Don’t you ‘need you friends for everything?’” Merula uses actual air quotations when she says it, and you laugh for real.Then you shuffle to your knees, and take Merula’s other hand in yours, look her hard in the eyes and say, “I know Jacob wasn’t crazy. I know he had a reason for what he did. I don’t know what to do if I can’t show that truth to everyone else.”“Well then you’ll just have to live your truth more fervently than before.” Merula says it sincerely and completely, but grows bashful as you contemplate it in silence. “That was stupid wasn’t it? It’s something my therapist told me – and – and – well, I’ve started actually trying the things she suggests.”You laugh, long and free, fixated on your closeness. You push back the sudden, insane desire to find out whether Merula’s lips are as soft as they look and reply, “It was brilliant.”Your legs start to cramp, and so you pull her to standing with you. Merula staggers, but not away from you. Whatever reservations she’d had before, in the hospital wing, are gone now, and she steps closer to you, and you realize, that it might actually be you that is the touch-starved one. Then she’s hugging you, and you blink through rapid tears, seeing only Jacob’s name on the wall. He’s watching you, and he’s happy for you. You know it in your bones.“Let’s go home,” you suggest, releasing the hug to lead Merula out of such a sad place.“Of course. Before we’re buried by our emotions.”It’s your turn, finally, to roll your eyes and toss out a deadpan look. “You were much funnier when you were mean.”“Oh, so you like it when I’m mean. I knew you were a freak, but I didn’t know you were that much of a freak.” The tease is playful, and you think, also flirtatious. It makes your stomach flip, and you have to remind yourself that you’re in a graveyard for gods’ sake, and you have to respectful.So instead you just snort, and try to ignore Merula’s beaming smirk, and the way she’s making soft circles on the back of your hand with her thumb.Eventually you make your way back to Hogwarts. Merula flies back slowly, and you watch the sun set from her broom, and unabashedly rest your chin on her shoulder. The two of you stagger back in, not even bothering to be discreet; if your absence has been noted you’ll get in trouble either way. Thankfully it hasn’t been, and you both make it back to the Ravenclaw dorm, shivering and damp.Then you continue your strange Christmas by opening gifts, with Merula of all people. You realize how blessed you are as you open each gift in turn. Merula is shy when you finally get to hers. You tear through the sparkling paper in seconds, and then in your hands is a pair of boots very similar to hers.You’re fucked. You’re really fucked. Because the smile on your face is dopey and real, and you can feel it threatening to spread across your face whenever you look at Merula. The aching tight grief in your heart is finally ready to heal too, meaning there is nothing to keep that smile at bay.You’re definitely fucked.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
When your friends find you at the end of break, you are much happier. You’re eating properly, and the dark circles under your eyes are slowly going away. There’s a healthy glow to your cheeks, and you’re getting a bit of Christmas pudge back around your middle. There’s still a darkness buried in your eyes, but it’s healing, slowing. The fractures are being put together, becoming more beautiful than before. Merula is putting you back together the same way she does her glass.You’ve just finished a glass sculpture of a lion to remember your brother when your friends find you. Merula is beside you, cross-legged on your bed in the Ravenclaw dorm, with a nearly empty bag of glass. You keep eyeing it, remembering Merula’s promise, wondering if you are considered healed enough to go with her, and steal some of Snape’s potions and smash the bottles on the floor.You don’t get to ask; you’re interrupted by Rowan screaming your name across the dorm. You have just time to move the glass before Rowan has literally leapt into your arms for a hug, shrieking and laughing. Something amazing must have happened to your best friend over Christmas, you think, because Rowan isn’t known for their spontaneous and outward displays of affection. A silent cup of tea, a bit of chocolate, a blanket when you fall asleep studying – that is friendship with Rowan. Subtle and quiet.You hit the bed with a whump, and push yourself back up again immediately, laughing hard. It’s been a long time since you’ve laughed together about nothing. “Okay Rowan, what did you get for Christmas?”“Guess.” Rowan says it with an impish, playful smile. It must be good, you muse. Rowan never makes you guess. Ever. They’re as giddy as if they were punch drunk on fire whisky.You think for a moment. Rowan moves a little, noticing the way their knee is right in the soft spot of your stomach, and it hurts, thank you very much, but you weren’t going to say anything. They stand instead, beaming at you, fingers drumming excited rhythms on their palms. You squint at Rowan, making sure that you are certain about what you see. You think you have an answer, but decide that teasing is more fun.“Did you get a signed copy of the new Hogwarts History textbook?”“No.”“Hmm. Maybe that new book in your favorite series?” You know that’s the wrong answer, because you’ve been coordinating gifts with their parents and you got that one for their birthday, which is soon.“No.”Merula loses it when you pretend to think even longer. “Are you blind or just being purposely obtuse? Their clothes are Charmed.”You stick your tongue out at Merula, who groans, mumbling something about why she even bothers with you. Rowan joins in, amused enough to forget that they don’t like Merula.Rowan’s too excited to sarcastically reply to Merula, instead bouncing on the balls of their feet and finally explaining it. “Dad’s been working on it for ages and finally figured it out! He created a whole new Charm! I just cast it on whatever clothes I want to wear and it will finally let me present androgynously, like I want to!” Rowan twirls to show you, and you were right, their body is a little different.You give a sincere and crooked grin. “That’s wonderful. I’m so happy for you.”“It is wonderful, isn’t it?” Penny practically shouts it as she skips into the dorm. She throws her arms around Rowan in an act of simple, girlish affection, hugging her from behind.“You look better,” she says to you, raising her eyebrows in a conspiratorial way. “Had a good Christmas?”“Yeah. Thanks to Merula it was… less cryptic than I thought it was going to be.” Merula groans at the joke, burying her face in her hands and it please you immensely.Rowan’s mouth twists. They don’t hate Merula, but they don’t understand what you see in her either. Penny, for her part, giggles and then winks at Merula.“Penny.” Merula growls out the warning, but Penny isn’t fazed at all. It is a much different interaction compared to the one at your gambling house, and you look between the two of them with no small amount of confusion.Rowan answers for you. “Since when are you on a first name basis with Penny, Snyde?” Penny swats at Rowan lightly. “Rowan. Be nice. Merula is trying. And besides, I am going to be prefect next year, which means I need to show everyone that I can represent and exemplify the values of Hufflepuff, by being humble, kind and tolerant.”Hearing Penny brag always gives you hope and comfort. It reminds you of what you told Merula in the cemetery, of what you used to fear the most; not everyone fits perfectly into their house. You think it suits Penny honestly, a little bit of bragging. She’s the nicest person you know, she certainly deserves some credit for it.“Yeah, and by running a large organized gambling ring,” Ben drawls out in interruption, plodding heavily into the room, and practically falling onto the bed next to you. You shift to make room, and that brings you wonderfully closer to Merula.“Oh, don’t be like that Ben. Every prefect needs her secrets,” Penny teases.Ben looks tired, but then he always does after coming home from his family. They are large and loud, and overwhelming for a young man fond of quiet spaces and quiet people. He loves them deeply, but has grown to realize that they love each other better from a distance.Beyond the tiredness in his lean muscles, there’s a shy seed of anticipation and excitement. A hickey just peeks above his collar line, and when you catch Penny’s eye she only smiles coyly at you. Seems like everyone had a very good Christmas.Ben catches you looking at the hickey on his neck, and blushes faintly, but makes no move to cover it up. He looks down pointedly. You’re wearing the snug and comfortable boots Merula got you, dangling your feet just off the ground, and they match with hers so well that it is completely obvious where you got them. The two of you meet eyes, and come to a silent agreement. It’s easy for you. You’re happy for Ben and Penny. Ben is happy for you, but likely not happy about Merula.He says as much when he asks “So are we gonna talk about the elephant in the room?” He looks directly at Merula after saying that so that she knows precisely that it is about her.“You mean the fact that there is a Gryffindor boy in the Ravenclaw girls’ dorm room?” Merula shoots back.Rowan, sensing the incoming storm, and not fond of conflict more than they are not fond of Merula, tries to quip, “Well there’s also a non-binary individual, a Hufflepuff and Slytherin girl, so I really think the painting doesn’t care…” but is drowned out by Ben jumping to his feet.He stalks over to Merula. “I meant you, Snyde.”“Copper.” Merula starts to get up, angry and forgetting everything in the cemetery to old wounds.You grab her arm, slide your hand down to tangle your fingers together, and grab Ben, gently but firmly, with your other. You sigh loudly between them, letting your exasperation and frustration show.Merula nods at you, and stands. With a deep breath she slides her arm out, palm open. The next words out of her mouth sound like they cause her physical pain, but she manages. “Copper. I’m sorry. For my behaviour.” She glances down to her hand and back to him, waiting.Ben struggles with himself for a long moment, fist clenching at his side. The bullies had always hurt him the worst. And though Merula had stopped because of her own trauma in fourth year, he had not forgotten the pain she had inflicted on him.Merula rolls her eyes, huffing. “We don’t have to be friends, Copper. Just civil.”“Just civil,” Ben agrees, finally taking her hand. They shake on it, and something warm wells up in you. Maybe things can finally start turning out right for once.And that is how a new and strange arrangement is formed. Your group has become five, and you’re ready to find the answers about your brother and the Vaults. For the most part, things go back to how they were before Christmas. You still follow a similar routine with friends, the only difference being that you are driven by determination, rather than guilt and grief, and are ready to accept failure. You’re ready to live your life at Hogwarts, even if in that life you can never prove the truth to anyone else. You start living as if everyone already believes that truth though.Weekdays are for friends, and you make that clear, spending time with them individually and together. You all move your study sessions to Fridays so they can bleed into searching for information on Vaults and brothers. Sometimes Merula tags along, and slowly, works up the nerve to make proper apologies and grow proper friendships.Eventually Merula is even willing to kick around Ben’s football with him and you, will read with you and Rowan (although her tastes in books tend to favor the strange and dark) and becomes a secondary enforcer to your gambling operation (she really likes that role).The weekdays become even brighter. But it is the weekends that have changed the most. Gone are your days in the library, cry and grieving over stacks of books. Instead it always starts with Merula dragging you off somewhere or another, to see strange places and meet stranger people. You learn to stop questioning how or who and just go with it, because things are better than they’ve ever been, and you want to steal all the happiness you can. No matter if it might all come crashing back around you.You can tell Merula is planning something, wants to find your brother and the Vaults, maybe more than you do, and will stop at nothing to win the bet. It is very Slytherin of her, and you’re terrified. The bet said in front of the whole school, which means some sort of dramatic display in the Great Hall, you’re certain of it. But for a little while, you enjoy weekends with Merula dragging you around.As promised the first is sneaking into Snape’s potion supplies. It is beautiful. The shelves are lined with dozens of multicolored bottles and liquids, casting a washed out film of color on the bare stone walls. A thousand different smells coat the air, heavy and damp. You feel a little bad to waste so many potions, but after everything Snape has done to you and your friends, you find it hard to feel sympathy for the man. Snape is, strangely, where your empathy ends.Merula is strategic. You follow her lead. Most of the stolen bottles are from Snape’s collection of empty or misshapen items, but Merula carefully lifts a few full potions too, rearranging the shelves so their absence is not immediately noticed. You catch a few of what she’s taken – an aging potion, Polyjuice, Liquid Luck – but the rest you can only wonder about.Then the two of you slip off into the shadows with your ill-gotten gains to find somewhere to break things. Throwing a bottle as hard as you can to shatter on the wall turns out to be incredibly cathartic. You hadn’t realized the lingering stress you still felt. It ends up becoming competitive, with one of you making a trick shot, and making the other try to copy it. By the end, you’re laughing surrounded by piles of glass, as cascades ripple down from above like extremely dangerous snowflakes. You look at Merula, and blush. A stroke of bravery seizes you, and you march over to her, crunching glass under your boots.“Hey, Merula, what are you planning? What are those other potions for, hm?” You try to grab at the satchel she’s brought with her, but she twists away.“I’m going to use my Pureblood status for something good, for once,” she mutters, and your smile drops. You try to take her hand to remind her that her blood isn’t something to be ashamed of either. She anticipates you, and in a mirror of third year, pulls you damn near into her arms so she can whisper in your ear. “You know what Purebloods do when they get together? Never fucking shut up. These potions will help with that.”Then she leaves you there, stammering and blushing. Bending down to begin gathering the glass she carefully asks, “Can you fly again yet? There’s some places I want to take you next weekend.”You don’t say, ‘But I like holding onto you while flying.’ or ‘For you? Definitely.’ or ‘Is this a date?’ Instead you just pretend to nod stoically, and then lean down to help Merula gather the last of the glass. “It’s definitely a date.” Penny declares, braiding Rowan’s hair as they watch you clean your broom, and prepare to see if you’re right or wrong.Ben is lounging on the grass smugly. “Just ask her. It’s disgustingly obvious.”“Rowan, should I be taking advice from the guy who waited two years and didn’t even make the first move on the girl he liked?” You quip, holding your hand out for the broom.“He has a point.” Their reply distracts you so much that you almost get beaned in the face by the broom. But it came when called, which is a start.You mount the broom, clench your toes, and push off, pretending you are a first year again. For a moment you feel gravity’s sharp fingers, doubt claws at your heart, but then you’re floating, and it all washes away as you remember the joy you are relearning. You whoop and holler, your friends doing the same.You’re about to do a practice lap, when Penny chimes in with, “They’re both right. It is indeed disgustingly obvious how much Merula wants to fuck you halfway to Sunday.”“Penny!” You gasp, only a little bit scandalized. You lunge forward as if to stop her from talking, but that only makes the broom wobble and buck. You end up on your ass in the grass. You’re livid. For approximately thirty seconds, and then you’re absolutely losing it with laughter.It takes a while to calm down, as every time your laughter is about to subside your friends say or do something to start it anew. By the time you’ve all calmed down you’re in a tangled, sweaty pile, smiling and giggling, your stomach hurting and eyes teary. That night you’re able to fly far and fast, and your broom doesn’t wobble for a second.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Merula’s idea of ‘dating’ isn’t at all what you expect. Somehow it all works out anyways. That weekend, and every one after until nearly the end of the school year, Merula dargs you off to some new place. You get used to sneaking out of Hogwarts, and off the campus in general. It’s harder than at Christmas, now that there are actually people and teachers who give a shit around, but you manage. And then the real fun begins.Merula never tells you where you’re going, just tells you to pack a bag, bring your broom and meet her outside. You do it without question, and the two of you race to the edge of Hogwarts, wind biting your skin, and tousling your hair, and your life is so good. You’ve spent so long waiting for the other shoe to drop, but in the air, chasing Merula, you can almost believe that the other shoe doesn’t exist. Sometimes she pulls back and lets you win, chases you instead for a while, but it’s clear who the better flyer is; you’re severely out of practice, but you don’t really mind so much, when it’s with Merula.Then you land, wait for Merula to show off with a dangerous stunt before joining you, and then you simply follow her to whatever adventure she has planned. The variety of ways to leave are endless, and stunning. Portkeys that you never expect, Floo powder in the fire place of a dilapidated ruin outside of Hogwarts, straight up Apparition of you both. (Merula brushes it off likes its nothing, but it deeply impresses you that she can do such advanced magic already. Even Rowan can’t just teleport someone, and Merula casts it on you both. But it leaves her weak and tired, even when she pretends it doesn’t. You don’t say anything, and let her lean on your shoulder.) On those days you know that the two of you will be back by dark to sneak back to your beds.Other weekends you bring food and spare robes and fly and fly and fly, through the cool morning, often until the heat of noon, growing warm, hazy, emotional. Those weekends you know will be long, spent flying and flitting from place to place, not stopping for rest until you finally return to Hogwarts late Sunday night, too wired to sleep. Those weekends you do not talk as much, the easy silence burning away under frustration, and the two of you grow short with each other. By the time you’ve settled down to rest the first night, sharing a bed in a cheap hotel – which is strange to you, because Merula has no trouble burning her considerable wealth on everything else – you’re both cross.You start out at opposite sides of the bed, huddled into angry balls of limbs. And then slowly the cold drafts – it seems like there is always cold drafts – and your frigid attitudes fill you both with profound and empty loneliness. Mostly you apologize first. Merula does more rarely, the words foreign on her tongue, still getting used to caring about other people and the things she says, and that she can hurt them, but doesn’t want to. And then the two of you slide closer in bed, not exactly cuddling, more like sharing platonic body heat, because really, if this were a contest in sharing beds then you’ve gotten further with Rowan, and they’re firmly asexual and it was definitely platonic. It’s equal parts frustrating and endearing, because it means Merula is as afraid as you’ve always thought she was of liking you. Afraid the same way you’re afraid. You hope one of you can work up to being brave.Most of the weekends are good, trying new foods, exploring foreign streets, disguising yourselves as Muggles and laughing yourselves sick at how silly they can be. But every weekend has its low points too, and it is in the places that should be the brightest. You learn quickly what Merula needs the potions for and how right she was; Purebloods never fucking shut up. At some point every weekend your laughter stops, and Merula grows deathly serious.She drags you into an alley, fixes your tie, brushes dust off your clothes, casts a spell on your boots that you forgot to shine so that they practically sparkle, and shoves a potion in your hand. You gulp it down as she takes your hand to lead you to a bar, coaching you as you go. The aging potion burns cool and strange, but goes down easy. No one gives either of you a second glance, not even when you sit down at a well-lit table, right in the middle of a bar, and Merula orders you both Fire Whiskeys. It is a wizard only establishment, but everyone is either too pre-occupied, or doesn’t even care that you’re both still in uniform.You meet real bullies that day. People with smug set chins, haughty accents, slicked back hair. Wizards who truly, genuinely and without qualm believe in blood purity. It tests the limits of your patience and your empathy, and more than once, Merula has to grab your knee to keep you from leaping across the table and smacking someone. But you learn quickly, learn how to act, and tilt your chin, and change your tone.You learn quickly because you have to, because Merula, who they know, whose name is the only thing you two have to get to the tables, is herself in a precarious position. No one has seen her in years, she’s severed too many ties with the Pureblood community, and sympathy for how her parents were wronged will only get you so far. She introduces you as a Pureblood from a backwards family, who is trying to regain your House honor back. That gets their attention. Eveyone loves the underdog, loves to try and fix you.You know how lucky it is that they believe you, despite your Ravenclaw blue, and that your real name is barely known in the Wizarding world. You are lucky that you can pretend you weren’t from their year and can just chalk it up to them not paying attention to other students; all of them being older than the two of you. These are wizards that were adults in the war. You know you are lucky, but it still hurts, stills drives you so mad to pretend that you gouge half-moons into your palm from clenching your fists so tight. You know you are lucky, even though you don’t know why you are doing this.After the meal, Merula takes your hand in her own, and you see a boring Muggle movie, no magic, not even to translate if it’s in another language. You do Muggle things and she reminds you that it’s only pretend, but it still hurts, still feels so real. Merula promises that you can egg their houses with her, soon, very soon, but it doesn’t make you feel better.The only thing that does is seeing the faces of one or two of the other Purebloods, quiet and floating on the periphery, aware of the wrong they are doing, but too afraid to speak up and say something. You almost wish you can be mad at them, but even a younger you would’ve understood the fear stopping their tongues. It takes enormous courage to stand against all your friends and family, to have no one for a cause that you don’t know if you believe in. It’s easy for the uncertain Purebloods to brush it off as all talk, to say, oh it’s just words, it’s not like they’re hurting anybody. You know what it’s like to want to forget all the evil and pain in the world, and to think if you don’t look at it, it will go away.For the first three weeks it is those doubting Purebloods that are the only people keeping you sane. Then you figure out what Merula is playing at, and you are impressed and a little scared all over again. When she really, truly wants something, she will get it. (Which is how you know now she never really wanted you out of her school.) It is the finest display of the ambition her House is known for that you have ever seen.As always, everything seems to circle back to your brother. You tried so hard, but Merula has a name, and money, and you soon understand the path she’s uncovering, the connections she’s finding and knitting together. Someone, or rather someones, had to have known him, had to have seen him. His so called friends vanished to the wind when he was expelled, but they still exist somewhere. Hogwarts doesn’t keep an official written record of everyone that passes through its halls, so you must rely on memory, and stories. Merula lets the bullies and the braggarts talk and talk and talk, and you watch her contemplate every thread, every scrap, every word that is said.And then, sweeter even than Penny, she’ll ask for an introduction to someone they mentioned hours ago, while you’re still trying to get your head on straight and understand the conversation itself. There are too many names, and too much etiquette to remember, and bloody hell, do the Purebloods care about everything. How you hold your fork, the way you are dressed (they tolerate it only because you are a Pureblood) how many generations of back your family goes. On and on like a circle, the conversations go.Around the time that you figure out what Merula is doing, things start to move faster, the connections become less tenuous, the people you are meeting less well to do and the places less suffocatingly fancy. You’re dragged through smoky French cafes and strange German cabarets. Your disguises become less put together, less old.The new places are electric, with music, and dancers, and jokes you know you’re not supposed to be hearing at fifteen. You drink, and sometimes even get to dance with Merula at these places, and most importantly you watch. The fancy Wizard bars had been uptight and haughty, these later places served Wizard and Muggle alike, serving Fire Whisky with a wink and sleight of hand, as you converse with a half drunk over friendly Muggle.You watch, and you see. You see witches and wizards cry just as much as you ever do, you see them take their friends hands, you see them dance again, and you are reminded that the adults are not so different from you, and maybe they don’t know as much as you think they do. You see men dance with men, and women with women, hands gliding across each other’s bodies, sweaty lips locking together, and then you shyly glance away. Love is private. And they dance only in the shadows. But they dance anyways, and that gives you hope that one day things might be better. That you and Merula are not anything new or special or exciting. You’re just like them. You’re tired of being special; think it might be nice to just stay in your lane and have a normal school year next year. By the time you’ve worked up your courage to do more than just dance with Merula there is only a month left of school, and the seedy little dive bar you’re in only serves watered down beer. You’re tolerance is up, and it will be no help to you. Neither of you have taken a potion this night and it is nice to wear your real face, and see hers. You’re about to take the chance to kiss her when someone slips into the seat across from the two of you.“You.” You try you’re best to not hate anyone, but for him you’ve long promised to make an exception. “You bastard!”You lunge halfway across the table before Merula can grab you around the waist. You’re taller than her, but she’s stronger. Eventually she forces you back into your seat. “Sorry.” She apologizes for you, and you glare at the man – no he’s still a boy, with soft features, and wispy facial hair that refuses to grow. That calms you down. He’s a boy. Young and afraid.You only met him once, and he was thirteen then, but you haven’t ever forgotten his face. He was always quiet, but never complained about your brother bringing along his ‘kid sister’ the way your brother’s other friends did. Jacob talked about him often, this shy quiet Gryffindor. They were best friends, had something as close to love as possible between them. He was the same age as your brother, so that means he’s only nineteen now, and he looks it – except for his eyes, which seem older than any you’ve ever seen.“You never wrote back.” You say it with as much hate as you can muster. He was the first person you tried to talk to when your brother disappeared. If anyone knew the truth, it was him. Under normal circumstance you would’ve understood, you did sneak into Jacob’s room and go through his things to find the boy’s address, but that letter was about your brother, it was about the truth. It was about shame, and taking it away.“I was afraid.” The boy – you finally remember his name – Fritz, takes out a smooth rectangular package in brown paper and drops it in front of you. He makes eye contact with Merula. “I’m more scared of her though, now. Filthy Death Eaters.”You miss his insult to Merula because you are unwrapping the package, and nearly losing your mind, tears breaking quickly down your cheek. It is the journal you bought for Jacob when you were seven, as his going to Hogwarts gift. To get it back… is overwhelming in ways you can’t describe.“You kept this from me!” You shriek it across the table, and everyone in the bar hears, but you give zero fucks, and lunge again for the boy. This time Merula lets you. “I’m his sister, and you kept this from me!”Fritz says nothing. You ask him, hand tight on the collar of his shirt as you yank him towards you if he read it. He nods. Fire burns in you at his insolence, because he doesn’t even have the decency to look ashamed for any of it. When you let him go, he merely smoothes his shirt back down, snorts, and walks away.And then that’s that. The truth is in your hands, heavy and small. You’re terrified, until Merula takes your hands in hers. You’ll find out the truth together.
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The Truth About Jacob!
An Inter-House ExposeBy: Lone Wolf, Water, Tree and Sunflower Witches and Wizards of Hogwarts,Friends, Enemies,Slytherins, Ravenclaws, Gryffindors and HufflepuffsYou have been lied to.Lied to and failed by the adults that are supposed to be protecting us.Just like Jacob.Jacob wasn’t crazy.He was just a Gryffindor that no one listened to.That no one helped.When his classmates were sick and tired, he was there.And where did that get him?Called crazy.Called a Death Eater.Expelled from school.And then he died.Jacob died alone and cold because the adults didn’t believe him.Because it was easier to cave to the few angry voices that called him broken.Than to stand up for a child that needed it.Students and Faculty of Hogwarts,We will be releasing a chapter a week of Jacob’s journal until a formal apologyfor Jacob and his sister is issued.What happens next is up to you.Choose wisely.
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Your friends didn’t end up releasing a journal chapter a week. They ended up releasing one nearly every day until now, the last day of school. Hogwarts is in a frenzy, and it’s only been a month. You suppose it might be because the school is safe and so everyone is bored, and the gossip is welcome. But it’s not only that. The truth about Jacob has sparked something.The school is divided about you and when you sit down in the Great Hall, half of the Ravenclaws shun you, but just as many scooch closer, as though they can reach out and take some of the sudden magnetism you possess. Even the other Houses have taken notice, and have become similarly divided. You have a small group of followers from every House that seem to trail you and many of them force their way to the Ravenclaw table, breaking the rules to sit near you. Even outside of school you’ve become uncomfortably popular, with Rita Skeeter demanding an interview, and more than a few angry parents calling for your expulsion.Girls sigh dreamily when you walk by them, even while you’re holding Merula’s hand in your own, and you always just grimace politely and duck your head, which just makes them giggle. Getting angry doesn’t work either. Even when you let Merula hex them they don’t back off, and it drives the Slytherin girl insane. The two of you still haven’t explicitly said what you are, and you haven’t kissed her yet, but Rowan says it’s obvious to anyone with two brain cells to rub together. You don’t stop Merula from challenging (and beating them) at duels either. She may be your friend, but she is still Merula, and you never want that to change.As you settle onto the bench for the final feast of Hogwarts, and for the acknowledgement of Ravenclaw as the winners of the House Cup, one of the girls tries to drape herself over you. Merula refuses to have any of that, and shoves the girl roughly aside to take her place beside you, shooting a cocky look at Snape, glaring at her for her transgressions. Flitwick is, as usual, just resigned to let you all be, tired of trying to control a student body that has no interest in any order or sense anymore. Rowan is on your other side, and they wink.The routine is the same as always, and has ceased to be surprising. The pieces of paper, neatly folded, appear in a puff of smoke on everyone’s plate before they dig in to the food. Many students unfold them eagerly, along with the many who crumple them in disgust. For your part, you take yours and open it neatly, already aware of what the words say, but unable to resist them anyways.Your codename, Arbiter, is there too, listed next to all your friends. Everyone knows that it’s you and the rest of your group that is putting out the journals. The problem is, no one can prove it. Rowan and Merula made certain of that. The two of them working together is the most terrifying thing you’ve ever seen. They know exactly which words to take from Jacob’s extensive journal, filled with meticulous notes about the weather, his feelings, and everything around him, turning and twisting them to massage into a gentler truth than what you know.You want everyone to know the truth about Jacob, but it is heavier than you imagined. Jacob wasn’t crazy. But he needed help. You recognize now the anxiety that he always tried to hide so well, and the depression that he slipped into fourth year. You have read page after suffering page of his reaching out, and being rebuffed over and over again. His protective instinct, his need to find the Vaults and keep everyone safe, it was all him, screaming for someone to notice his pain and help him escape.Jacob was born during the war, during darkness so many wizards once knew. His first year of Hogwarts, a small and careful year, was the year that the Dark Lord died and a boy lived, and you wonder what that first year was really like, and if it laid the foundation for the pain Jacob would succeed so desperately at hiding for the rest of his short life.You want everyone to know the truth, but the truth comes at a cost. It destroys so many pedestals, and those who do not want them to fall cloak themselves in denial. Snape hates you because Jacob detailed, as thoroughly as everything else, his abuse and bullying, and it is a clear factor in his wellbeing. McGonagall only looks at you with conflicted eyes and a pursed mouth, unsure if she should feel guilty. At the time, punishing Jacob for the Vaults had seemed the correct thing to do. Excising the notion he was forming quickly and precisely was the necessary step. You still haven’t figured out what Dumbledore’s looks mean. Jacob’s journals grow in anger over the year. Anger and hopelessness. Dumbeldore refuses to let him find the Vaults, but the grown-ups aren’t doing anything either and people are afraid.The brilliance of Rowan cannot be understated. They are the ones who decide to release the journals out of order, so that the conversation with Dumbeldore comes immediately before the hurriedly scrawled pages that detail how afraid and alone Jacob felt, how he worried about darkness in every corner, a darkness he saw in Hogwarts, a darkness that the younger children who looked up to him came to him about. It was the simple and easy darkness that came from doing nothing.It wasn’t the kind of darkness that defeating the Vaults could heal, it was more insidious than that. It was the darkness of blood, of purity and perfection, of tilted chins, and muted sneers, subtle jabs and quiet rage. But for a boy of fourteen, grappling with anxiety and depression, and suddenly realizing that the adults in his life didn’t have the answers he wanted either, grasping desperately at the Vaults doesn’t seem so far-fetched.The journals condemn a great many adults to the simple sin of ignorance. A sin that cost your brother his life. It doesn’t stop with the teachers. It condemns your parents too, who simply accepted his expulsion, accepted that their son was crazy, and didn’t try to fight back.The journals condemn your parents, and they condemn his friends, who trembled and stuttered, and eventually cowed to the weight of the adults in their life. You wish Jacob had picked better friends, you wish they had been stronger. You wish he had been less forgiving, less desperate to fix every broken boy and girl that came to him.You even wish for your own condemnation, because it feels like you deserve it. When he does mention you, it is always kind, and always gentle, as though even in those safe and private pages he knew you needed that kindness, that pull away from the angry child you were. Are. That angry child is still in you, clawing out of the blankets of empathy and understanding that once you were proud to wrap yourself in. That angry child wants to burn everything to the ground, and the only thing that stops her is the knowledge that she and her friends and the one person who is becoming more, would get burned too.All of this courses through you as you read the last page that Hogwarts will ever see of your brother’s journal. You already know what it says, have already gone through this miasma of emotion once, but that doesn’t make it any easier than the first time.The first time you read it, you were alone, in a closet, pouring out your grief. The second you shared it with your friends, Rowan and Merula beside you, Ben and Penny peering over your shoulders, holding you, saving you, immediately and totally knowing what you wanted to do. How they would help you.Ben makes the copies; it is safe, background work. Rowan picks out the words, twists and pulls, makes clever your brother’s pages. Merula gets them where they need to go, into the hands of every student willing to listen. And Penny makes sure that the gossip is good, and memorizes each page as it comes out, arguing in Jacob’s favor with throngs of naysayers, like the brightest most cheerful lawyer ever.And so there you are, crying again, because it’s the last day, and the last page, and Jacob is writing about how he is leaving the castle he loves so dearly, but this time there is no anger. There is acceptance, too wry and old for a fourteen year old. He accepts his expulsion with grace and dignity, vowing that he will find the Vaults and save Hogwarts, and make them believe. Your heart aches when you read that.It aches harder at the next part, because Jacob’s final, last act of truth, before he gives the journal to friend he thinks he can trust, before he disappears forever is to forgive, personally, everyone he had condemned in the previous pages. And that is Jacob, you think, anxious, depressed, screaming silently for help and constantly forgiving everyone and understanding them, understanding their apathy, and their pain and their turned away faces. And now everyone knows.You know some of them will use the knowledge to hurt you. But not all of them. And that is what counts. In the end, you simply fold the paper in half and tuck it into your robes, where it will wait to join all the other copies you have kept, stuffed in between the original pages of Jacob’s perfect journal. In the end, you know you have gotten what you wanted: the truth about Jacob, despite the physical lack of Vaults. There’s always next year of course. Provided you’re invited back, considering the stunts you’ve pulled this year.But Dumbledore is talking suddenly, and you let that thought drift from your mind, because Merula, who was just pressed warmly to your side not a moment ago, is gone.More importantly than that though, is that instead of the standard end of year speech, that you were planning on ignoring because you’ve heard it for four years before, Dumbledore says your name, and then your brothers. You tense immediately, on the defensive, feeling the air crackle and tension weigh down the room. Everyone looks up. All eyes on you.“The older students here will know that on rare occasions, I enjoy handing out surprise points at the end of the year.” Dumbledore chuckled to himself as he said it, and a nervous ripple of laughter rolled across the room. No one was quite sure how to react. “However, I believe this year, something different is in order.”Dumbledore pauses for effect, and looks right at you. You feel disconnected from yourself suddenly, as though you’re just another observer of yourself, watching from afar. You see yourself gulp, and hold steady the Headmaster’s gaze. You watch the slow throng of students look at you. You wait for the rest of the words to leave Dumbledore’s mouth. “As many of you know, a small group of students have been publishing a rather interesting set of papers that deal with the life and expulsion of a certain Jacob. While those events are in the past, and cannot be changed, we can still learn from them. As I have learned the pain I can inflict by not listening to the students, I have decided to tell you all the truth.” Dumbledore’s words fall heavy as he speaks them, and you flash suddenly back into your body. You’re breathing heavily, not daring to believe what is happening is real.“Almost every word of Jacob’s journals are true. There are certain sections of embellishment and hyperbole, as there must be in a young man’s confessional, but the core sentiments are true: many of us failed a sick and angry boy, who we could not hear crying out for help. And the Vaults are indeed real. As I say this, I caution you all not to try and find them yourselves and have faith that those of us at Hogwarts who are qualified will find them and protect you. But I also am aware that many of you will do it anyways, considering the faith you may have lost upon being confronted by these journals. So, instead of working against you, I have decided that with proper procedures and supports, the students of Hogwarts may form teams to try and find the Vaults first. That, and a promise for a more open door, and listening ear, is all that I can offer in light of these new revelations.”There is a murmur in the room, gaining in crescendo, rolling as a wave, rising to hit you. Rowan is the only person keeping you from floating away, because you still can’t find Merula, your anchor. You oscillate between total panic and deep calm. And then Dumbledore raises his hand, silencing the whole room again. He isn’t finished.“Well, almost all I can offer,” he continues, subtle mirth painting his face the way it always does when he knows something you don’t. He calls your name. You freeze until Rowan pushes you up, and then you’re standing, facing the dais that the Headmaster is looking at you from.“A dear friend of yours informed me that an apology might not be enough.” Dumbledore’s eyes twinkle when he says it, and you see him look down to the front of the room.And Merula’s standing there, Snape glaring at the back of her head. For the first time in both of your lives, she looks… shy. You’ve seen a lot of emotions on Merula’s face, arrogance, pride, envy, disdain, disgust, sadness, anger, jealousy, even joy, but not once have you seen her look shy. Merula is biting her lip, and looking right at you, but her shoulders are hunched, her hand is griping her other arm tight, held protectively across her body as a shield, and under the scrutiny of the room, you think she is going to wilt. It isn’t the sort of attention she’s always wanted: emotional and vulnerable. This isn’t hard and powerful, this isn’t her standing victorious over people she is better than, this is softer, more emotional, and it scares her.If you’re honest it scares you too. The whole school is watching, and you wonder if this is some bizarre punishment from Dumbledore to somehow discourage other people from doing some of the dumbass things you’ve done. Merula lifts her other hand and there’s a scroll, soft in the warm light of the Great Hall, sealed in wax, and tied with string. It is clearly Important, but you can’t tell how yet. Rowan gives you a push, with the flat of their palm upon your back, but that only has you stumbling. Snape sighs loudly, and you can feel him roll his eyes. Unlike everyone else, he is not enraptured enough to wait for you to get your ass in gear and take the scroll from Merula.With a puff of smoke it disappears from her hand, and she barely keeps from flinching. You put your hands out just in time for it to pop out above them in a second puff of smoke and land neatly in them. The paper is warm and heavy with promise. You look up to Dumbledore and he nods, just once, slowly. Rowan is by your side.“Read it out loud,” they mock whisper to you, trying to peek at it over your shoulder.Your hands shake, clammy and cold. You break the seal slowly, and unfocus your eyes as you unroll it, desperate to not read any of the words until the last moment. And then, you steel your courage and look.You have to read it to yourself a few times before it really sinks in. Rowan is bouncing on their heels, waiting. They’re joking, you know, totally committed to letting you have your privacy about what it is, but your tears are already rolling down your cheeks, and you wipe them away, your heart heavy but flying with bittersweet ecstasy. You can’t leave them wondering, and since you agreed to reveal the journals you have let the whole school into Jacob’s story. You’d be remiss to keep the conclusion from them.You gulp past a lump in your throat and then you are speaking, voice throaty and hoarse, “Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, in recognition for bravery, kindness, and empathy, on nomination of The Headmaster, Sir Albus Dumbledore, by his authority, hereby confers upon Jacob Ortiz an honorary diploma with all the honors, rights and privileges thereto pertaining.”A laugh. More tears, and then, unable to help yourself, a bright and beaming smile. It’s directed at Merula, but you know the whole school can see it. You know she won the bet and you aren’t even mad about it. Your joy is infectious, and Rowan is throwing their arms over your neck to hug you from behind. Ben is already up, pounding through the hall and around the tables, his the furthest from yours, to join the hug.Penny cares far less for the rules, and since she has most of Hufflepuff on her side, climbs onto the bench and then her house table, the other students moving the food out of her way, and gracefully leaps to the next, and then over. She lands lightly at your side, jumping into the hug at the same time as Ben arrives to lift all three of you off the ground, his long arms and tree trunk like frame lifting you all easily.When you’re finally released back to the ground, Merula is right there standing in front of you. Most of the shyness is gone, hidden behind a smirk and sharp eyes. But her knuckles are white, robes scrunched into her fists. Once again, Rowan shoves you hard with a palm to the small of your back.You think about resisting the magnetic pull, and denying what is obviously about to happen in front of the whole school. It would be like resisting the tides, you realize, caught in Merula’s eyes, smile soft and sappy. Your feet stumble at first, and then catch firm and then you’ve crossed the few steps and are in front of her. Like this, exposed in front of all the school, you realize your apparent height difference for the first time.The tides recede, and you try to break the tension in that small space that has become just you and her. You card your fingers through your short hair in an act of casual indifference, chuckling low. The smile on your face hurts, and you bring a hand up to make sure it’s real. You’re never going to hear the end of it, you’re sure. “You know I don’t have the money to pay you back right?” Your voice flutters high and wobbly, a touch sad, a touch guilty, but mostly just too happy to describe.Merula’s hand snaps out to your wrist, and the look in her eyes can best be described as hungry. The tides crash back in, and she pulls you in the last few inches to her, and stands on tiptoe to kiss you. It’s warm and chaste and over before you can even get your arms around her. But the possessive heat in her eyes promises more, later.“I never said you had to pay me in money.” Merula’s voice is low and husky and you want nothing more than to kiss her again and destroy the innocence of a few first years.Dumbledore clears his throat. Loudly.The spell breaks, and you resurface to hear your friends and half the school cheering. Dumbledore is trying to get things back on track, and the other teachers are trying to keep order and discipline.You laugh again, Jacob’s diploma, his deliverance, in one hand, Merula’s in your other. You drag her back to your side at the Ravenclaw table, Penny, Ben and Rowan joining you. The mirth in your eyes is impossible to contain, and Merula’s warm fingers making circles on your bare wrist promise more.For once you are looking forward without reservation to coming back to Hogwarts. Sixth year is going to be a doozy, you can feel it.