Effie Love
Brighton, England
1 September 1933
8:30 a.m.
There are bits and pieces of her missing, scattered along the path from Brighton to Kent and she's never felt more metaphorically ridiculous. Her mother tells the neighbors it's a bit of old-fashioned, how-do-you-do heartbreak and that she'll be over it in time, but Effie knows better; a broken heart requires a certain degree of hopelessness that she's too idiotic to surrender too, and if she was heartbroken then she'd be on the mend—and that isn't the case. No, Effie likes to fancy that she's shattered, numb and catatonic and holding on to dreams with both hands; it's worse than brokenhearted because it's so completely overwhelming. You see where the ridiculousness comes in? It's in the way that she sat by her window for days, waiting for a reply and the way she slaved over the letters and dissected every detail of his promise: his inflection, the handshake instead of a hug, and had she been so naïve?
He'd promised to write she told herself, sticking it to the edge of her elbow and writing it across the bits of her heart that were left.
"You'll promise to write, Effie?" Mrs. Love asks her on September 1st over their last breakfast together before Effie leaves her alone with Mr. Love. Effie shrugs her shoulders because yes, she might promise to write, but hasn't he shown that promises don't mean much, especially when it comes to correspondence? She might follow his example and never write, let the rift grow between herself and her parents, let their bitterness bloom with every letter sent without reply; after all, isn't that what's done?
"But not too often, you'll need to focus on revision…especially now that you're not Prefect." Her father says around his toast and it's accusing because her Hogwarts letter didn't contain the Prefect Badge he'd been expecting. Her father had been so disappointed and she'd gone and written to him about it, put all her desperation into the letter, practically begged him to write her back this one time. But he didn't and she can hardly blame him.
Her mother snaps something and her father replies and Effie wonders at her life. "She can date if she wants to, Frances!" her mother trills and Effie looks up in surprise.
"No, I can't."
Before she leaves, she stares at herself in the mirror, pulls at her short, auburn locks and narrows her eyes. Her uniform doesn't fit the way it once did, hanging loosely on her shoulders and it's so bourgeois. "I am what I am." She says it solemnly, pulling her trunk and cat cage down the stairs. She likes playing the angst-ridden teenager.
Sax Felby (Susie Fitzgerald and Max Belby)
Platform 9 ¾
9:20 a.m.
1 September 1933
Susie enjoys kissing her boyfriend, Max Belby, when they are quite alone on her front porch, she likes kissing him at the lake by his manor, she relishes kissing him after a date, but she loves kissing him when they are on a crowded platform and she can feel the prick of curious eyes on her back.
"Hello, love," he says once she's pulled away, making an unnecessary smacking noise with her lips and he notices again how entirely fit she is. She wraps muscled, chocolate arms around his neck and bites her lip, makes an appreciative humming noise.
"Let's not go that long again, yeah?" She smells like honey, sweet and intoxicating, and it's nice but it doesn't drive him wild, not like the smell of ink and pumpkins and burning leaves. He nods in the affirmative, leaning his forehead against hers.
Sometimes, when they are walking hand-in-hand through Diagon Alley or he has blown-off his friends to have tea with her folks, Susie thinks she could love him. She tells herself that no one else would put up with her parent's constant fighting or the ever looming threat of the D-Word that hangs over her house like an ominous cloud, and it's at these times that she wonders, but then she remembers Careen and her parents and she knows.
"Are we sitting together, then?" He's learned things about Susie in the two months they've been together, like that she scrunches her eyebrows when she reads, she's afraid of toads, she doesn't ask questions that she doesn't already know the answer too.
"What's in it for me?" She doesn't like games, either, won't tolerate them usually; it's something he should admire, but he's always been a bit of a gamer.
"You'll still have a girlfriend tonight." She leaves him there, walks towards the train with purpose and he lugs both her trunk and his to the luggage car.
A small part of her is afraid that he won't follow, will decide he's had enough of bossy witches and sleek locks—decide he's more into auburn curls and a passive attitude. No one can blame her when she turns her head a bit to the left, to see if he's following; he hasn't failed her yet.
He runs into Charlus Potter at the luggage car, casually leaning against the door, his fags peeping out of the top of his pocket, his hair artfully mussed.
"Belby, have you seen Abbot yet? She's gotten fit under our noses."
"Mate, you're blinder than I realized—if you think Amy Abbot is fit then Dumbledore must be a wet dream."
"Always knew there was a reason you got so dopey in Transfiguration…look, I promise you Abbot's a twenty out of ten. And she's already guaranteed me a snog tonight. But, see," here he leans forward to whisper in Max's ear, as if they are sharing some great secret, "I'll let you have her when I'm done, yeah?"
"Don't be an arse, Potter. I'm dating Susie." Charlus gives him a strange look while digging in his pocket for a cigarette; it is not until he has had a drag that realization dawns upon his handsome face.
"How is the ol' ball and chain?"
"Right unpleasant if I keep her waiting." He maneuvers around Potter and brings the luggage into the car, stashing it in two empty racks above the door, coming face to face with Potter's back when he tries to exit.
"Hey! Potter, move you great, big prat." Charlus moves stiffly to show Ophelia Glasgow and Emily Fern walking towards them with trunks in hand. Potter throws his cigarette on the ground and puts it out with the heel of his boot. Emily spots them first and she nudges Ophelia who looks up in mild interest, which quickly turns to a look of surprised distaste.
"Max…Potter," she says in way of greeting, not stopping on her ascent into the luggage car. Emily gives them each a tight smile, following her mate. Charlus stares at the bottom of the steps, his mouth hanging open in a spot-on resemblance of a goldfish.
"Alright, Potter?" Max asks, shifting uncomfortably and intently studying the crack on the pavement.
"Fine." Charlus shrugs, and shakes his head like a dog before stalking down the platform. Max hurries after him, not wanting to be nearby when Emily and Ophelia exit the luggage car.
Susie settles into a compartment near the front of the train, settling back into the faded green cushions to wait for Max to return from the luggage car. She is tempted to change into her uniform before he finds her but is afraid that he might think her a bit of an overeager keener if she does—anyway, it's something Effie would do and she likes to stray away from anything that might remind him of her. She's loathe to admit it, but a large part of her is insecure in her relationship—something that has never happened to her with previous beaus, and she finds herself obsessing over everything Max says or does. She stays awake nights worrying that she might do something that will turn him off her forever. She thinks this is what Careen must have felt like with Michael Corner and she almost sympathizes. Almost.
She hears Charlus Potter's voice in the corridor and crosses her legs, attempting to appear casually confident, to appear very Susie-esque. She is flipping through Witches' Weekly when he enters the compartment, flopping down in a great huff. She raises her eyebrows at him but doesn't speak…anything but caring and sympathetic, Susie Fitzgerald does not bother with other people when they choose to be in foul moods.
"Why are birds such wankers?" He asks, and for a moment she thinks it might be rhetorical, but can feel the power of his eyes on her through her magazine. She almost ignores him, but thinks better of it in case he decides to tell Max that she is a heartless bugger or something of that nature.
"I assume you're speaking of Ophelia?" The exasperated expression on his face tells her that she's got it in one.
"I can't stand it—it's like she's not even affected and I'm dying and she doesn't even care. I mean, she won't even talk to me—like it's my fault. And she's so…so…"
"Self-righteous and frigid?" Susie supplies helpfully.
"Yes! Exactly, she's a self-righteous, frigid bitch and I don't get her. She was supposed to love me, you know?" Susie doesn't know and she'd rather not know, thank you very much.
"Uhuh, real bitch." Susie doesn't really think so; in fact, Ophelia is her favorite of all her dorm mates and she remembers last year—Charlus had been a rotten boyfriend, forgetting dates and flirting with other girls. And then, during the break-up, he had turned into a child constantly hanging on to her skirt, practically stalking her, scaring off the dates that Susie arranged for Ophelia. If that was love, then sign Susan Marie Fitzgerald out.
Charlus gives her an ironic smile, pushing his glasses to the bridge of his nose. "You don't mind if I smoke in here?" Already opening the window a crack and Susie shrugs nonchalantly even extending her hand in lieu of asking for a fag; his eyebrows reach his hairline, but he hands over his last cigarette, mind…and lights it for her with a quick flagrate, watching the flames shooting briefly out of his wand with interest.
"Have you seen Max?" She takes a shallow puff of her ciggy, trying not to inhale, watches the smoke form a snake above her before slithering out the window—in that moment, she is aware, that she looks like an African Queen lounging lazily against the seat, with her wrists delicately pointing outwards in a subconscious effort to appear feminine before Potter. Her almost too short neck is turned to the side to give the illusion of length and her lips pout playfully as she peers at Potter through the smoke. He watches her through lidded eyes, his familiar smirk firmly in place, and his right foot is inches from her extended calf; it is tantalizingly wrong. Susie feels in control for the first time in a very long time.
Potter takes another long drag on his cigarette, hollowing his cheeks before pouring the remaining smoke out in a rush, it washes over her face. "Can't say that I have, pet." He then returns to the window.
Max Belby is a pureblood hailing from a very influential family in the wizarding world and is aware of the fact. He is also aware that coming from a prominent wizarding family means multiple relations are guaranteed to be found wherever he may go, useful for achieving goals but detrimental to keeping secrets from his mother—the latter aspect once again rearing its prying head in the form of his Uncle's twin daughters: Janet and Janice.
With flaming red hair, sea blue eyes, lanky limbs, and a plethora of freckles Janet and Janice are trademarks for the black sheep branch of the Belby family—that cluster who live their lives in near poverty, so different from the rest of the Belby clan, with six children and a father who has never bothered to rise in position at the Ministry, though his connections would allow him to do so. Georgius, though, has always been a slacker. In school, he had shown no ambition beyond winning Quidditch and chasing girls, a lifestyle that did not change when he graduated and was chosen to play keeper for the Appleby Arrows, meeting Martha Weathers: half-blood barmaid whose muggleborn father made his living by farming. Georgius impregnated Martha causing quite the scandal and married her three months later.
They moved into a ramshackle cottage left behind by an eccentric great-uncle, where they continued to live through the end of Georgius' career as Quidditch player into his stint at the Department of Magical Games and Sports, where he works as Head. Julius, Max's father, had tried several times to get Georgius on with another, more well-paying branch, but Georgius had been firm in his refusals every time. However, despite Georgius' lack of ambition, he is still a Belby and his family is still considered to be aristocratic, and is on good terms with the other branches of the Belby clan, especially that of Georgius' brother, Julius. Due to this, Max has spent most of his childhood playing with his cousins, Janice and Janet, and until recently had maintained an intimate friendship with both. He wasn't sure when said friendship had begun to unravel, but was certain that it had, which made their accosting him on the platform very odd.
"Janet, Janice, lovely to see you both. How's the family?" He asks with infected curiosity, his mother has already told him the distasteful news. Cecelia, their older sister, is pregnant and unwed—another embarrassment to the Belby family.
"We saw you," Janet says, she's always been more upfront than Janice, a trait that Max begrudgingly admires. His cousins stand united before him, blocking his path to freedom, coppery eyebrows drawn in; he decides to play innocent.
"And I saw you." He smiles winsomely.
"With Susie, Max, we saw you with her—and after you promised poor—" here Janet is cut off by her sister, who stomps on her foot. Max wonders at whom she could be speaking of, there is a bit of fluttering in his chest, but no…it's not possible.
"Susie is your friend," he says defensively, thinking of his brilliant girlfriend, who is so full of life, so similar to him.
"You're a dunce, Maximus Alexander Belby. Don't talk to us until you've straightened out your priorities." With that they exit stage right, executing a purposeful flourish onto the train. Max follows them, keeping a wary eye out for his Aunt and other cousins.
Janice Belby
Compartment 122, Hogwarts Express
1 September 1935
10:12 a.m.
"Hiding from us, Effie?" Janice asks, shoving her way into a smallish compartment, her cat cage bumping painfully against her legs, she has to push carroty hair out of sea blue eyes as she maneuvers her way in. "No matter, we found you, you little bugger." She says cheerfully, perching Tock the cat on the seat opposite her as she turns to face her fellow Gryffindor. "Janet will be here in a moment, made a pit-stop at the food trollies; amazing that they're already selling, yeah? It seems like we had to wait longer in previous years."
"I always bring snacks from home," Effie replies, holding up the tin of home-made biscuits her mother made her every year.
"Aye, I know you do." She pulls a cat treat out of her pocket and shoves it in Tock's cage—hissing can be heard and the treat is batted out. Janice huffs and stuffs the treat back in her pocket. "How's Angelou then? She asks pointing to the cat nestled in Effie's lap.
"Alright, I think he misses the castle though. Mum always bats him around at home due to her allergies, can't stand to be in the same room with him."
Janet joins them only to promptly declare that the compartment is too small and that they must move.
"You don't have to sit here," Effie says. There is something about her that is much more solemn than Janice remembers and she wonders if—
"Do you think she's heard?" she asks gravely, talking over Effie's head.
"More importantly, do you think she's seen?" Janet says.
"I don't see how she couldn't, everyone else has," Janice replies bitterly, cutting her eyes out the window.
"What are you two on about?" Effie asks in frustration and the twins observe her closely.
"Definitely hasn't heard." Janice says pityingly, patting Effie consolingly on the leg.
"Do you think we should tell her?" Janet is inching towards the door as she says this. She's never been fond of confrontation.
"Tell me what?" The twins share another look, orange hair puffing about them; it is Janet that speaks.
"Ophelia got prefect." Janice rolls her eyes behind Effie's back and turns to her cat. She doesn't like lying to good people, like Effie, but she also doesn't like watching good people have their hearts broken.
"Oh," her relief is palpable, "I'm not surprised. She was the likeliest choice, after all. I suppose that she's at the meeting right now? Do you know who her partner is…Potter?" Janice feels her face flush at the sound of his name, biting her lip. Potter.
"'S not Potter," Janet says, "we saw him right before we found you, he's buggered about it too: the first Potter in twelve generations to not make Prefect!"
"Serves him right, he needs to be knocked down off his stupid, Potter pedestal," Janice says teasingly. "Anyway, we think its Nimitz. Who else could it be?"
"There's always Max," Effie puts in quietly, she's too busy staring at her shoes to notice the forlorn look that passes between the twins.
"That ponce?" Janet spits, ignoring the gasps that emit from Effie and her sister, "he didn't stand a chance." And neither does Effie.
"I think he would have done very well," Effie replies weakly; it says more than her sad eyes ever could and all three look away uncomfortably.
Janice experiences a strong sense of déjà vu.
(Flashback)
She likes to fly in the morning—before the house is awake and angry and screaming and complaining—it's what she's doing on a Monday in the second month of summer break. Her new Cleansweep is slung over her shoulder (she's taken to leaving it in her room since Cecelia started hinting at selling it to buy the bassinette) and her brother's trainers are laced up tight, when she opens the door to welcome the misty English summer. He's leaning against the railing in his usual unbearably arrogant way and a fag is left dangling neglected from his fingertips. If she was that type of girl she might say he looked a bit tragic, but she's not and so she hops down the steps and calls to him without looking back.
"Come on, then." He borrows Davy's broom and it's not the caliber he's used too but he still flies like a dream and if she's being honest—it's the best flight of her life. They land in a meadow by a brook and again, if she was that type of girl she might call it fairytale-esque.
"Ophelia ended it." She could state the obvious: that Ophelia called it off in March, but she doesn't really want to talk about Ophelia.
"My sister is back." There, conversation diversion at its finest.
"I don't think she's going to take me back." Merlin, she hates drama and for all his boasting of superior masculine traits, Charlus can be awfully whiney.
"She showed up the day after break started, knocking at the door. I'm the one who let her in and she's never left…acting like the Minister, she is. No matter that she's pregnant—I suppose you'll have heard about that by now."
"I don't know what went wrong, Belby. I thought we were happy and then one day we're not."
"She's transforming Kitty's room into a nursery and poor Kitty has to sleep in the attic. She wants Mum to sell mine and Janet's brooms to buy a bassinet and I know she's my sister but I sort of hate her."
"If she had given me one more try; I could have been better. I think I would do very well at playing boyfriend, if given half the chance." Janice studies him in the early morning dawn, the way his glasses are eternally off-center, his untamable hair and his limbs sprawled before her; the picture of exasperation, and it's adoration she feels as she reaches out to smooth his hair and watches his grey eyes shutter close. Besides Janet, he might be her best friend, which is why there is only one thing to say.
"I think you would have done very well, Charlus. I really, really do."
Ophelia Glasgow
Prefect's Compartment, Hogwarts Express
1 September 1933
11:00 a.m.
"Augusta Smethwyk, Head Girl?" George Marconi, fifth year Ravenclaw Prefect, says incredulously to Ophelia and her best mate, Emily Fern. Ophelia studies the Head Girl as Harfang Longbottom, a Head Boy badge pinned to his chest, scoffs from the corner where he is slouching dejectedly.
"It could have been worse," Richard Barbary, a sixth year Ravenclaw, interjects jovially, "it could have been Calladora." He jabs his thumb towards the huddle of Slytherins in the corner of the compartment. The girl in question turns bright red and snaps something at Barbary, who infamous for loving a good goading smirks and says, "Everyone knows what a stuck-up hag she is—probably would have deducted points from a bloke for being muggleborn. Wouldn't touch that inbreed with a ten-foot pole." Calladora gives an unladylike squawk and stands to her feet, wand extended. Barbary raises his eyebrows in surprise but chooses to recline against his seat, arms behind his head and challenge in his eyes.
"Go on, then." Longbottom says, looking up, "I'd like nothing better than to deduct points from you, Black." She looks between the two Ravenclaws, her normally pretty features scrunched up—everyone waits for her to sit down, but her Black pride will not allow it; she has already been denied her rightful title of Head Girl, she will not be embarrassed by an inferior. Ophelia watches her scan the room, eyes resting on Mary Potter, who matches her gaze with cool grace.
"Dippett's a blundering fool for making Smethwyk Head, but at least he's intelligent enough to not give a blood-traitor like you the position, Potter." Everyone turns to Mary. "Tell me, how did Mummy and Daddy take it when neither of their precious darlings received a badge, how does it feel to know that some people realize you're worthless?" Ophelia tenses. The Potters are close friends of her own family, they had been vacationing together on the Riviera when Mary received her badge-less letter and she had seen the disappointment in the elder Potters' faces when neither of their children was given the honor that they felt they so deserved.
"You might notice Calladora that you are also not Head Girl; I suppose Dippett isn't overly fond of prejudice harpies." Mary retorts. Silence falls heavily over the compartment and Black turns a bright red, lips pursed and knuckles turning white from her hard grip on her wand; Mary notices and rolls her eyes. "Oh, stop it. You're boring me, Slytherin," Mary says, lazily twirling her own wand. "We all know you're too much of a coward to use it." And Ophelia wonders when Mary became so cruel—what has happened to all of them?
And what choice does Calladora Black have but to act? Decades from now, when she is old and frail, Ophelia will think back on this moment and wonder at how differently her life might have been if Calladora had sat down and not hissed that curse that sent Mary into raging boils. It is a blur from there: Alastor Moody hits Calladora with a successful stunning spell—it might be important to note that no one bothers to catch her as she falls—and Ophelia finds herself sending a jelly-leg jinx in the direction of Marco Zabini, while spells catapult off walls. She finds herself in the middle of the room, facing her childhood rival, Cedrella Black, and it's nothing but adrenaline—it's with hatred that she casts curse after curse.
"Enough!" Augusta Smethwyk bellows, a sonorous charm causing her voice to carry as she speaks for the first time that day. "Enough or I'll deduct a hundred points from each house." There is a pause, a ceasefire of sorts, and Augusta yells, "Now!" However, it is not until the threatening figure of Harfang Longbottom appears behind her with badge gleaming that Prefects lower wands and pass insults, while returning to their side of the compartment, joining those that did not partake in the duel.
Only Ophelia and Cedrella remain with raised wands, staring each other down, and though she wants too, Ophelia cannot wave the white flag—this is her childhood tormentor, her worst enemy besides her stepsister, Marlene. "I'll have you both in detention for the rest of the year, if you don't lower your wands." Augusta continues, her tone matching her tight bun and Ophelia thinks her voice sounds old—like the last, muggy breath of a dying something. For the first time, Ophelia thinks that maybe Augusta is better suited for the job than Mary or even Calladora because she is nothing but order and rules and right.
She feels someone gently tugging on her arm and turns to find Teddy Martin, a sixth-year Hufflepuff, looking at her pleadingly. Her heart lurches. Teddy had been a frequent at La Cœur—her family's manor—a regular of Marlene's summer tea parties that often lasted well into the night, whenever their parents had not been at home. Ophelia had spent that time writing to her sister, Susanna, who was living in Paris awaiting her marriage to the son of the French Prime Minister and sometimes, Teddy had joined her. He had teased her, mostly, about her devotion to her sister or her disastrous relationship with Charlus, a mate of his. Though he also gave her advice and listened as she ranted about the changing dynamics between her and the Potter family now that she and Charlus were no longer together. He knew everything about her and here he was, telling her to lower her wand, her defenses. But hadn't he been unable to do the same thing when she had wanted him to in the summer-washed rooms of her home, where they had kissed…and then he had run away
"Ophelia," he murmurs. And she looks away from him into the eyes of Ash Wood, fifth-year Slytherin, who is watching them with a calculatingly cold eye, his hand holding onto Cedrella's lowered arm. His eyes are deep and endless and it freezes her insides because she can see exactly what he thinks of her and it isn't pleasant; she can see into his soul, all the power and potential—he's not in Slytherin for nothing. He's an elitist, probably, and has he always commanded such power? How has she never noticed him before? "Ophelia, lower your wand," Teddy says again and she does, but not for him. The meeting continues without further incident.
"I hope all the meetings are like this," George says amiably, lightly clasping Ophelia and Emily's arms as they file out of the compartment "Tough luck for you, though, Ophelia; it's bloody awful they picked Felix as Gryffindor's other Prefect. At lease Em and I are great mates, but you've never spoken to Nimitz."
"At least she won't have to deal with jealous roommates, Marlene is going to murder me when she finds out I got Prefect." Emily says, wholly ignored by both companions.
Ophelia watches Ash's head bob ahead of her in the crowded passage and she wonders why it took her so long to notice him, wonders how he's managed to swallow her up so wholly with one look. Her life has changed and she's only begun to realize it.
Emily Fern
Girl's Loo, Hogwarts Express
1, September, 1935
12:40 p.m.
Margaret declares she tastes like freedom. Emily would like to think that she tastes like wrong and forbidden and clandestine, but as Margaret runs her hand up Emily's side, stopping before she can brush the younger girl's tit, Emily finds that she doesn't much care what she tastes like.
"Do you love me?" Margaret asks, kissing up her neck, and Emily gives a shaky nod of the head. Liar—but now Margaret is slipping off her top and oh bollocks. "Say it."
Emily doesn't want to fucking say it, she wants to shag Margaret and then she wants to join her friends for a game of Exploding Snap, but no one has ever cared much for what she wants and now Margaret's hand isn't paused. "I love you." And does it really matter if she's saying it to Margaret but thinking of someone else? This way everyone wins.
"You can shag me now." Like it's the fucking end-all, but Emily does it anyway. Pushes the seventh year against the wall and kisses her and threads her fingers in silky black hair. She pushes shirt and bra straps off slender shoulders and thinks of softly freckled skin and brown, brown eyes. And a leg is wrapped around her waist when the door opens.
"Oh, my." Emily turns to come face to face with Briony Mansfield. Fuck. Margaret buries her head in Emily's shoulder and Emily thinks of her mother and her father and how it's going to come crashing down on her—the jig is up. "I—I won't tell anyone, Emily. I promise." And then Briony is backing out of the bathroom, face as pale as a ghost.
Margaret pushes Emily off of her and hurriedly puts on her shirt. "Bugger, do you think she'll tell David?" And Emily looks at the seventh year Hufflepuff, whose hair is mussed and whose eyes are shining with worry and she feels disgust. This girl, who behinds closed doors demands love, is ashamed of herself in the garish light of reality.
"She won't tell anyone." Emily says, buttoning up her shirt. Exiting the bathroom, going in search of Ophelia.
Briony Mansfield
Compartment 78
Hogwarts Express
2:00 p.m.
Briony defines herself through Lucy: Lucy's best friend with darker hair, eyes a lighter shade of brown, less freckles, not as intelligent, pleasanter singing voice. She tells Lucy everything and does everything with Lucy and she hardly ever hates it, because who is she without this girl that she's known her entire life? She lives through her best mate who has a supermodel mother and has lived in Paris, who has had tons of boyfriends and who lets Briony share in the fun, sometimes. Most importantly, Briony Mansfield never-ever keeps secrets from Lucy—that is until she had the misfortune of finding Emily and Margaret Li in an incriminating position, and she promised not to tell a soul. She's a Hufflepuff, after all—extremely loyal that Briony Mansfield.
That loyalty is what brings her to the end of the train, staring out a window across from Arnold Swott and pondering at the sacrifices she makes to be a good friend to both Emily and Lucy. Arnold doesn't talk very much, and Briony assumes it's because he has nothing to speak of. She tried asking him his opinion on Susie Fitzgerald and Max Belby, asked if he liked Amy Abbot's new look, whether he thought Virginia Smith looked a bit bigger but he didn't answer. Some people don't know how to socialize.
Sitting with Felix gives her a lot of time to think about things—only, she doesn't have much to think of that doesn't segue into a question for Lucy. "Do you know my best mate, Lucy Carmichael?" She asks, hoping Arnold will maybe answer her this one time.
"I'm aware of her existence," he says, but Briony swears she can see the hint of a smile and maybe a blush.
"She's the catch of Hogwarts, ya know. Dating the Harfang Longbottom, she is," Briony says, and she doesn't think that he likes that very much.
"Fascinating." Silence falls and Briony thinks he's like her brother, Alistair.
"You're a seventh year, yeah?" He has his tie on, she feels bad for him.
"Yes."
"Why do you reckon you're not Head Boy?" she asks, for the sake of asking. He squints his beady eyes and brushes his thin, white blonde hair off his forehead, scowling.
"Why can't you be alone with yourself?" Maybe he meant to shut her up, but she's not even shocked into silence for a moment.
"Why can't you be with anyone else?" She's told you, she's not a Hufflepuff for nothing.
"I hardly count you as anyone else, my dear. You're hardly a person, are you? After all, there's only one Lucy Carmichael." What Arnold Swott does not understand is that Briony knows that she's nothing without Lucy and she doesn't mind. She likes being a part of something bigger; it's manageable and not scary. She doesn't need independence—except sometimes, when it bubbles up her throat like lava, searing a trail into the atmosphere around her and it is strong and good and she doesn't feel ashamed. Though mostly, it lies dormant somewhere between her lungs and her liver, slowly eating her inside out, while she chokes on it.
Careen Vance
Corridor, Hogwarts Express
1 September 1933
3:00 p.m.
"Hello, Michael." Calm, cool, collected though his eyes are still electric blue and his hair still thoroughly tousled; his tie hangs from his fingertips and she wonders if the hands are still callused.
"Careen." He replies, making to move past her, and she can smell his rich cologne—everything she has done wrong in her life is embodied in this boy and he's moving on.
"How was your summer?" she asks, hand almost reaching out for him, before she remembers and pulls back like he's a snake that's bitten her in her grandmother's backyard.
He exhales frustration, and it fills up the entire train before he turns to fully face her, she traces the edges of his shoulders with her eyes. Remembers when she used to run her hands along the blades. "Stop, Careen. You're making a fool of yourself." She remembers he tastes like tea and crumpets on the days that Mother pulls out the good china they'd found buried in the piles of trash in Great Grandma's attic.
"You're my best friend—I just miss you." She's read the romance novels and the fairy tales, real love is when you sacrifice everything, including yourself, to be with the one you want; that's how you know it's true and right and good. She smothers her pride and bears it before him as a gift: here, I have destroyed everything, myself, for you. Love me, now.
"That's not true, you've got Susie and loads of other girls. Look, I did care about you but now it's done and you've just got to get over it." Only, she doesn't have Susie anymore, she gave her up for him. She's got to make him understand.
"I don't have anyone, Michael." She realizes she's crying and he does too because he swears and wraps two arms around her and lets her cry on his robes in the middle of the corridor, and that's when she knows he loves her. She falls so easily down the rabbit hole.
"I can't love you, Careen." He whispers into her hair, when she's stopped crying but that just sets her off again and he doesn't let go, which must mean something. She doesn't see Susie stalk past them on her way to change into robes, doesn't see anything but the blacks of her eyelids and the smell of him suffocates her. She's going to give him all she has.
"I can love you enough for both of us, Michael." And when he doesn't pull away, she knows he doesn't mind.
Lucy Carmichael
Great Hall
6:40 p.m.
1 September 1935
Lucy Carmichael is in a mature, adult relationship—the type where her boyfriend calls her when he says he will, where they discuss their feelings, the kind where her boyfriend apparates her to Platform 9 ¾ because she is a mature adult who doesn't need her parents anymore. She has Harfang, after all, who tells her when she is being silly or vain but who always kisses her goodbye and tells her that he loves her after they make love. And Lucy is in love, she really is. A mature love, where she doesn't have to be with Harfang at every moment, a love that is steady and assured, a love that is never jealous, which is why she isn't envious at all to see Fang enter the Great Hall with Augusta Smethwyk.
She can still feel the imprint of his hand on her lower back, from where he'd held onto her a moment more before saying goodbye on the train—they had agreed to separate before arriving at Hogwarts, to reconnect with their friends—and she can still feel his lips on her neck, where he always lingered at the climax of their love making. "Lucy, I love you," he'd said. She feels her heart swell with love and tries to catch his eye as he makes his way towards Ravenclaw Table, but he doesn't notice her he is so busy taunting Smethwyk. Lucy doesn't like Smethwyk; she is pretty but her features are spoiled by her constant expression of displeasure, she is known but not popular or sociable, intelligent but lacking in humor, which is why Fang taunts her so. People like Lucy and Harfang can't understand duds like Augusta, who spend their time scowling at others and never making an effort to be kind to those she considers beneath her, which Harfang hates, he hates everything about Smethwyk.
Lucy knows this because he has spent the last nine months derailing Augusta whenever possible, the only immature aspect of their relationship, and Lucy loves to hear him viciously attack Smethwyk from every angle for reasons unknown to her. She is not usually a cruel person, but she wholeheartedly agrees with her boyfriend, Augusta is a bird that needs to be knocked down a peg or two. So she is not jealous when she sees her boyfriend practically on top of Augusta as he whispers something nasty in her ear, because she is in a mature, adult relationship—and besides, he loves her.
"I think Arnold Swott fancies you," Briony says from her left, and Lucy gives her a sharp look. Briony, who had been strangely quiet on the carriage ride to Hogwarts and noticeably absent on the train, chooses now to tell Lucy something she considers both obvious and trivial.
"We live next door to one another; it's not unexpected." She replies, thinking of the hermit's paradise her father lives in and where she sometimes summers; only a few short feet from the Swot's manor that looms over Mr. Carmichael's cottage like an ominous cloud. She hadn't been there in years though, not since she'd begun to resemble her mother, Caroline, and her father had become jittery and depressed whenever she walked into the room. Her mother was infamous for breaking men's hearts, her poor, Ministry-Ant father was no exception.
"But he's so odd," Briony says, pushing her peas around and occasionally glancing at the pale Gryffindor in the corner. Didn't Briony understand that Lucy knows? She knows that his skin is milky pale, that he prefers potions to Quidditch, that he despises her boyfriend—and she doesn't care, Arthur Swot is entirely unimportant to her.
"Shut it, Briony." She says, pulling on her black and gold tie, giving the Great Hall a cursory glance, smiling blithely when she sees Ophelia Glasgow at the Gryffindor table, winks when she catches Harfang's eye, sticks her tongue out at George Marconi. Briony says something under her breath but Lucy doesn't hear her, doesn't care to know. She's got everything she wants: beauty, Harfang, friends, and an excellent feast that's going to appear as soon as the sorting ceremony ends. Really, she thinks as she relaxes in her seat, who cares about Augusta Smethwyk?
Janet Bellows
5th Year Gryffindor Girls Dormitories
1 September 1933
9:33 p.m.
George Marconi isn't her mate; he's just a bloke that she plays Quidditch with, talks with, strolls through Diagon Alley with, just a bloke that she tells all her secrets too—so there you go, they're not mates but sometimes she needs him. And if you ever tell him that, she'll beat you to a bloody pulp.
Maybe it's because they're not friends that she asks him to meet her at the Owlery, 9:00 and he shows up without question, denying a fag like he always does.
"What's the dish, Tish?" he asks and she gives him a look—the one that says 'shut up, you impossible tosser' and he grins. "No? I thought it was clever." He's not nearly as awkward as he seems, she promises. (He knows he is, but he likes her to think he's more than what he is.)
"Susie Fitzgerald is dating Max," she leaves off the Belby because he's her cousin and it feels weird and George knows who she means, anyway.
He gives her an odd look. "Never took you for the incestuous type, Belby. I know it's common in the wizarding world but…" he trails off, eyebrow cocked.
"What?" she says confusion clear, cigarette burnt down and only her cloak to keep her warm.
"You brought me up here to tell me that you're upset that Max Belby is dating Fitzgerald because you're in love with the bloke." She socks him in the arm; he doesn't admit that it hurts. Boys are dumb like that but Janet is the sort to understand.
"It's Effie who loves him, you prat." He sighs in relief—his muggle upbringing would have made it hard to accept a Belby/Belby alliance. "There was a huge blowout after dinner, between Ophelia and Susie and Effie won't leave her bed; it's never been this bad between all of us." She could tell him about how they're the only family she counts, how she loves them, but she doesn't because that's not her and he knows anyway. "I need you to help me."
The inhale she takes is like breaking glass because there's nothing worse than asking for help, but she's glad it's him she's asking and not someone else. He just understands, you know?
"Ask Effie out," she says, when he doesn't answer, only scuffles worn-out boots. "Take her on a date, make her forget Max." He sees a shining pair of green eyes, a light smile, the smell of ash and he shakes his head; pulls her close into a hug he knows she'll never allow.
"Why not?" she cries, letting him hold her for a moment before pushing off with instinctive disgust.
"I'm going steady with Astrid Pratt." For a moment, Janet tries to remember who that is and then the pretty seventh year Gryffindor enters her mind: friends with Janet's Quidditch Captain, bit of a loon, smells like incense and fire and destruction. She'll eat him up, Janet thinks for a moment, before she decides not to care.
She pulls into herself, into the easy smile and brazen laugh and shrugs her shoulders. He doesn't like her half as much when she's like this.
"Yeah, knew it was a longshot." And then she's gone and maybe there could be tears and a sense of hopelessness once she's alone, but there's not because it's not who she is. He knows this because he knows her better than anybody, excepting maybe Janice. Knows enough to wait by the window while her footsteps fade and the owls begin to calm to his presence and Astrid fills his mind; then, he makes his way down to Ravenclaw Tower and listens to the silence of Hogwarts.