Disclaimer: Everything worth owning belongs to Rainbow Rowell or Taylor Swift.
BAZ
I leave most of the showing-Snow-around to Bunce, of course, but there's plenty she's not around for. Just by virtue of being Snow's roommate, there's a lot of time when it's just him and me. Like the first time he sees a Stay put charm, which I naturally use on my hat even before anyone officially teaches it to us. Or like the time he spills smuggled hot chocolate on my trousers and I sort them out with a simple Good as new.
Snow practically eats out of my hand when I do a new spell around him, for all that we officially hate each other. "Wow," he says. Or, "Oh my God!" Or, "I didn't—I mean—how did you—what?"
"Use your words," I tell him when he stutters like that.
"Never mind," he usually growls. But once, when we're both very tired, he just breathes, "That was amazing."
It's fourth year, and I have no way of accounting for the tingling I feel when he says that to me. I wrack my brain to see if there's anything I might have done to set off the anathema recently, but I draw a blank. It takes until the following year, when I realize that I'm in love with him, to understand that I feel tingly when he looks at me like I've done something, well, magickal, because he's complimenting me and I can't handle it.
It's not me he's complimenting. Not really. It's magic itself, and I just happen to be his window into magic every now and then, when we're in our room or Bunce is out of class sick. Snow thinks magic is so entrancing because he grew up without it, which has nothing to do with either of us. So really, neither do the compliments. They're just a result of him growing up with Normals and me being one of the first competent magicians he's come across.
That's not how it feels, though. It feels like he's complimenting me. And it also makes me feel like I'm showing him something incredible, rather than something desperately ordinary that I've done nearly every day of my life since I was old enough to talk. My mother taught me spells—she taught as naturally as she made fire, almost—and so I've grown up doing magic, grown up with spell-weaving representing the intersection of the ordinary, the sacred, and the nostalgic. The ordinary, the sacred, and the nostalgic, but almost never the incredible. Not until Snow, anyway. And even though I'd never tell him, I'm almost grateful to him for showing me a new way to look at the power I've exercised for so long.
And then he goes off, and I think, Snow, you fool, you could have shown me something more incredible than my magic all along.
