A/N: No update tomorrow. Daily updates should resume on Saturday.

Rating: This story contains bad language, clear misuse of Harry Potter references, and allusions to sexy funtimes between the ladies. Rate accordingly.

Disclaimer: Nothing you recognize is mine.


I Put a Spell on You
by: Hayseed

Chapter Seven

"Mitchell and Beale," Professor Palmer said, not looking up from the notebook he was making notations in. "You're up."

The spring midterm score consisted of two parts. The first was a pitched mock-duel where full marks would only be awarded for non-verbal shielding from both participants, and the second was a demonstration of six spells they'd covered over the year, including the Patronus that Chloe had been freaking out about for the last week.

Beca wasn't especially worried, but she could see the panic in Chloe's expression as they faced each other on the little platform the professor set up at the beginning of class.

To be fair, many of the other students hadn't fared well. The class had to take a break ten minutes ago because a shield absolutely failed to hold, sending a kid crashing into the back wall with an overenthusiastic Expelliarmus. The kid's nose was shattered beyond what a basic Episkey could fix, but he seemed more worried about the grade than the blood. Not that Beca could blame him – anyone on the Auror track who failed Intro Defense probably wasn't going to continue on the Auror track for much longer.

Which was why she was probably the least anxious student in the room right now. Next week, though, when she had her Potions midterm on Tuesday and Bellas' Regionals on Friday? Different story entirely.

She'd worry about that later and instead offered Chloe a sly wink. "We've got this," she said quietly.

They'd agreed while practicing that Chloe would cast the first hex, and she lunged forward, snapping her wand in an impatient gesture. "Stupefy!" she cried.

Silently, Beca moved her hands downward, speaking the Shield Charm in her head. Stunner deflected, she began to raise her wand, but Chloe surprised her by twirling her wand again, "Conglaciare!"

"Shit," Beca squeaked, raising another shield and dropping to a crouch, just in case she wasn't quick enough. Fortunately, the Freezing Spell dissipated over her head – she'd blocked in time, so her grade was still safe. That didn't mean she wasn't pissed at Chloe, though.

From her position on the ground, she leveled her wand at Chloe and cried, "Incarcerous!" Not the nicest spell to cast in the middle of what was supposed to be a friendly sparring match, but she was beyond nice at this point.

Chloe's hands flicked and the spell shattered against her shield. "Stupefy!" Chloe tried again.

Shielded and done. "Tantellegra!" A bit kinder this time.

Nothing. "Expelliarmus," Chloe countered, throwing in a second wand flick and a Bat-Bogey Hex for good measure.

After blocking both, Beca managed to scramble to her feet and give Chloe a glare. "Really? Are you ten?"

The class tittered and Chloe threw back her head, practically cackling with glee. "Gaudio beo," she chanted.

"Seriously," Beca said, blocking the Cheering Charm with a hand wave as she spoke, "can we not?" But as she was trying to mislead Chloe with her banter, she turned her palms over and cast her best nonverbal Stunner.

Something must have been broadcast in her face, though, because Chloe grinned and swept her hand forward. "Ha!" she shouted, blocking Beca's hex.

"And time," Professor Palmer said lazily, scribbling a few notes in his book. "Well done, ladies. Are you ready for the individual portion, or do you need a moment?"

"I'll go," Beca replied.

She cast her spells without much thought, except for that final Patronus. Even though it wasn't technically required, she wanted to see if she could manage it nonverbally. In her practice attempts, her memory of her first successful Patronus hadn't worked, and it was probably stupid to try a spell she'd never pulled off before in the middle of a midterm exam, but her adrenaline was high.

Closing her eyes, Beca thought about the night before, the energy pulsing back and forth as she and Chloe sang together, and the absolute pride and joy she'd felt when Chloe managed to summon her Patronus.

Expecto Patronum, she thought triumphantly. Expecto Patronum!

The class gasped. Obviously, something had come of her spell.

With some apprehension, Beca opened her eyes and gaped at her new Patronus. A huge wolf stalked around the room, silver and deadly, coming finally to Beca's side and looking up at her with all of the obedience of a trained dog.

"Show off," Chloe murmured.

Professor Palmer had dropped his pen and was openly staring at her. Eventually, he seemed to recollect himself and offered her the briefest of nods. "Nice work, Miss Mitchell. Miss Beale, are you ready?"

"I'm not sure if I want to follow her," Chloe said with a grimace. But the whole class laughed at that and the tension was broken.

Although not as quickly as Beca had, Chloe ran through her required spells with efficiency if not elegance. When it came time for the Patronus, she gave Beca a nervous look. She made a silly face in response, sticking her tongue out and crossing her eyes. Chloe giggled and her entire body relaxed. "Expecto Patronum," she said relatively softly, twirling her wand.

It was the same panther from the night before, doing that same circling motion before sprawling in front of Chloe in a lazy-yet-protective gesture. "Excellent, Miss Beale," Professor Palmer said, and there was genuine warmth in his tone. He knew as well as anyone how much Chloe had struggled with this particular charm.

"Thanks," Chloe said with a proud grin.

Beca couldn't help leaning toward her as they walked out of the classroom. "I said we had this, didn't I?" she said quietly. And then, recalling the duel, she frowned. "But what was that earlier? Did I offend you or something?"

"The professor looked bored," Chloe replied. "I thought I'd get his attention. It wasn't like you couldn't handle it, and I bet he gives you extra credit for deflecting everything."

"Doubt it," she said. "I mean, what's the worst that would have happened if my shield went out because of a stupid Cheering Charm? Besides, you knocked me pretty flat on my ass with that Freezing Charm, even if I shielded it. I probably lost points there."

With a smile that took the edge off her words, Chloe shook her head. "Poor, pitiful Defense prodigy. Does that mean your grade drops from a hundred to a ninety-eight? I weep on your behalf. It's a really good thing that Palmer doesn't curve, you know. The whole class would be out for your blood."

"You too?" Beca teased.

"Who would help me with my Patronus if I poisoned you?" she asked matter-of-factly. "That was a nice one earlier, by the way. I didn't know you could do a wolf."

"I didn't either," she admitted. "I tried a different memory this time."

"Keep it," Chloe said, patting her arm. "A wolf Patronus is way sexier than a dog. Even Palmer was impressed. I don't know if you noticed, but the guy looked absolutely shocked."

She grinned. "Really?"

"Oh, totes," she said confidently. "What was your wolf-memory, anyway? It must be something you really love."

Beca's smile froze.

You.


"Jesse, I have a serious problem," Beca said desperately.

He held up an empty LP sleeve and waggled his eyebrows at her. "And I have a serious cash flow problem. Things suck all the way around, Sparks."

She sighed. "Chloe's coming over at three to talk about Aubrey," she told him. "Satisfied?"

Her original plan had been to just pay him back, but she was running short right now and faced with a choice between borrowing the money from Chloe or just asking Chloe for a favor, she chose the lesser of two evils. Because Chloe would insist that the money was just a gift and the ensuing guilt wouldn't be worth it.

He grunted and dropped the album cover. "Immensely. What's your problem, best friend o' mine?"

"You can't make fun of me," she warned.

Placing a hand to his chest, Jesse made a protesting noise. "Moi? Make fun? Why, Beca, I am positively insulted at the insinuation that I'm not capable of—"

"IkindofmaybehaveathingforChloeIthink," she said quickly, before she could come to her senses and keep her mouth shut.

He blinked. "Come again?"

"Crush," she said in a strangled voice. "Chloe. Problem."

"She likes you," he said, shrugging. "You like her, apparently. I don't see a problem, Becs. Go forth and have fun." He made a shooing motion with one hand and picked up yet another of the eternal stacks of CDs with another.

This was why having a guy for a best friend wasn't always a great thing. "But, Jesse…" she whined. "I have feelings. Like, significant ones. What if she—"

"You aren't going to know unless you get off your ass and tell her, Sparks," he interrupted. "You two hang out all the time. And whining is seriously unattractive, you know."

"That's my point!" she cried. "Now we hang out all the time, and it's… it's…" She trailed off, knowing she had a stupid smile on her face. "But if I tell her, and she doesn't feel the same way, and I've screwed it up, and then I've lost… I've lost Chloe," she exclaimed in horror. "I can't lose Chloe!"

Jesse finished the stack and moved on to the next without skipping a beat. "I think you're angsting over nothing," he told her. "Now, let's say you were – oh, let's pick a random example – totally in love with a girl who is only peripherally aware you exist and only notices you because she's convinced she hates you. That would be a problem."

"Fuck you," Beca retorted. "At least when Aubrey blows you off, you won't be any worse off."

Looking up from his work, he used a CD case to point at her. "You're kind of cute when you're freaking out like this, Sparks. It's like the tin man realizing he had a heart all along. And I didn't even know you were gay, either."

She paused to give it a moment's thought. "I… I didn't either," she said thoughtfully. Did liking Chloe make her gay? Did she need to, like, come out to people before she was allowed to like Chloe? How did these things work?

"I guess you don't have to be," Jesse replied, dusting his hands off on his pants and coming over to sit on the desk that Luke had repeatedly warned them not to have sex on. "I mean, labels are kind of last century, right?"

"Right," she said, not quite believing it even as she said it. "I mean… no. Maybe?"

"Well, as long as you're sure about it," he said with a snigger.

"Shut up, asshole. I'm having a personal identity crisis right now. You're supposed to be supportive and stuff," she said, lip curling up in a sneer.

Shaking his head, he slid back so he could prop himself up against the wall behind the desk. "I am," he said earnestly. "You say you like Chloe, and I say that's cool. You say you're not sure if you're gay or not, and I say that's cool, too. In what way am I being unsupportive, Becs?"

"I think I am gay," she heard herself say desperately.

His eyes rounded. "Okay…"

"No, dude," she persisted, "let's think about this. The couple of guys I dated in high school mostly because they asked. I've never particularly had a crush on anyone—"

"Until now," he interrupted.

"Until now," she agreed with a nod. "And the stuff I've done, like, physically with boys…"

"Ew." Jesse covered his eyes with a hand. "Sister zone, creep factor level twenty and rising."

She threw a pencil at him. "Anyway. That stuff wasn't anything earth-shattering. I've never really thought about girls, but I don't think I'm all that into guys."

Uncovering his face, Jesse glanced down at his watch. "Great. You're gay, happy, and ready to taste the rainbow. What time did you say Chloe would be coming over again?"

Shit. She'd forgotten that. "Three."

"It's five minutes past," he said. "What are you going to tell her?"

Her stomach promptly knotted with fear. "Nothing." It was one thing to acknowledge her feelings to herself, but to tell Chloe was something entirely different.

He raised an eyebrow. "Nothing?" he echoed.

"Nothing," she confirmed.

"I would argue, but I'm too focused on Operation Date Aubrey to fight you on it," he said.

"You named it?" Chloe's voice floated into the room. "That's so sweet."

Beca made a face at him before Chloe came around the corner. "That's one word for it," she said dryly. "We're over in the shelves, Chloe."

With her newfound self-knowledge, Beca felt like she was looking at Chloe for the first time. She was wearing a dark blue shirt that matched her eyes almost perfectly, and her hair curled around her face so prettily that Beca wanted to bury her hands in it. She was gorgeous and she was smiling at Beca as if she were the only other person in the whole world. Beca had never wanted to kiss someone so badly in her entire life.

Apparently, she had fallen totally head-over-heels in love with Chloe Beale without noticing it.

When the fuck did that happen?


Aubrey was a tightly wound coil of energy to her left, Fat Amy's usually comforting exuberance was currently less than comforting, and Chloe, uncharacteristically, looked like she wanted to vomit.

Mostly, Beca wanted this ordeal to be over and done with. Regionals may have been critically important for the full Bella experience, but Beca had better shit to do.

Like go talk to Luke, who had only just recently noticed that her interest in music might stretch beyond stacking billions of CDs and records.

And beg for clemency from Professor Tyson, who was less than impressed with Beca's midterm potions practical. She might not have melted a cauldron, but her Brain Elixir, which was supposed to be an orange-ish potion that smelled faintly of roses, turned out closer to charcoal-colored and reeked of dried beetle paste.

Or even agonize over her freshly identified feelings for Chloe and what to do about them.

Standing on a stage dressed like the world's frumpiest flight attendant and doing stupid jazz hands while singing background for songs that were popular before she was even born? That shouldn't register on Beca's radar.

And yet, here she was. She offered Chloe a thin smile, but it went unreturned.

Probably because the Trebles had been their usual talented selves, and some group Beca didn't care about that had costuming even lamer than theirs (Blue hoodies and sweatpants on a stage? Really? Who did that?) kicked some serious a capella ass right before the Bellas were called onstage.

They shuffled into position, most of the girls pasting on large fake smiles. As they launched (for the zillionth time) into The Sign, Beca could actually see the judges' faces falling. Inwardly, she sighed.

The whole audience was bored. Even the kids watching from the wings of the stage looked bored.

And Beca totally had better shit to do than this.

Stupid Bellas. Stupid Potions class. Stupid romantic feelings.

She gritted her teeth and forced herself to keep pointing at nothing.

Stupid choreography. Stupid boring songs. Stupid everything.

It was too much.

As she continued to sing, she felt the usual build-up of magic that she always did whenever singing a capella. It wasn't a big deal, though, because the routine was so uninspired that the accumulation was minimal.

Not now. Somehow, her frustration and embarrassment and worry were all making her feel sort of jittery. She turned to the right instead of to the left like she was supposed to, and Fat Amy gave her a concerned look.

Beca swallowed. It felt like something was stuck in her throat. And her fingers were tingling.

They were supposed to bring their palms together now for Chloe's solo, but Beca's hands sparked as soon as her fingers touched. She hissed at the sensation, and Chloe turned slightly, still singing, but staring openly at Beca.

Her hair was practically crackling with energy, and even Aubrey was giving her a strange look.

Beca couldn't move. Her feet felt frozen to the stage. A murmur ran through the crowd, and she heard someone scream.

Before she blacked out, Beca realized that the scream she heard was her own.


Despite several magical accidents in her childhood, Chloe had never needed an Obliviate Squad. She learned in school that they usually only showed up when such a large-scale inappropriate use of magic had occurred that the fear of exposure practically required Muggle memories to be altered. They were the wizarding equivalent of bogeymen, and plenty of her teachers used to warn them that if they didn't learn to properly control their magic, the Obs men would come and lock them up forever.

The reality, in many ways, was more terrifying.

This had little to do with the Obs squad themselves and more to do with the preceding events, which would haunt Chloe for the rest of her life.

The routine was… well, it was Aubrey's routine and the rest of the girls were going through the motions, and even Chloe knew that they weren't going to get to Lincoln Center the way this was going.

But Beca… something was seriously wrong. She'd seen a few magical sparks leap off her hands at the start of 'Eternal Flame,' and it only got worse after that. When they were supposed to move away from each other, Beca seemed stuck in place, arms jerking in a horrible marionette-like motion.

Chloe remembered dropping the microphone, and then Beca was on the ground, flailing and throwing off magical energy in huge bursts. The audience went into panicked hysterics, but Chloe's only concern was getting to Beca.

Which was why she was currently folded up on the stage, cradling Beca's head in her lap, watching as wizards in striped robes rounded up the throng of Muggles, casting Memory Charms en masse. Aubrey, Jesse, and Fat Amy were all up on the stage with them – the rest of the Bellas, except (oddly) Cynthia Rose, were all standing in the orchestra pit, blank-eyed from the fresh Obliviate that had just been cast on all of them.

Cynthia Rose hovered a good distance away, alert but worried, looking at Beca with something approaching panic. "Is she okay?" she asked quietly, voice carrying despite the noise of the audience.

"I don't know," Chloe admitted in a tear-clogged voice.

Fat Amy tilted her head, studying Cynthia Rose closely. "You're not a wizard," she told her matter-of-factly.

"No," she replied. "But my brother is. He's still in high school, but I know about magic and stuff, so the dudes in the candy-cane bathrobes left me alone."

Aubrey giggled inanely at the description but fell silent when Chloe glared up at her.

All of a sudden, Jesse cleared his throat. "Chloe," he said, "is Beca's breathing normal?"

She watched Beca's chest rise and fall. She felt Beca's strong heartbeat under her hand. "I think so," she said.

He said something into a cell phone, and Chloe wondered how she hadn't noticed the phone before.

Tentatively, she ran her fingers down Beca's cheek. Her eyelashes fluttered, and Chloe smiled a bit at the motion. If not for the stage lights and the noise and the fear, she maybe could have fooled herself into thinking they were in her dorm room, Beca taking a nap after complaining about homework.

"Moya lyutishka," she whispered, touching Beca's face again, a realization dawning as gently as a breath against her cheek.

She was in love. And had been for a good, long while.

"Chloe, what…?" Aubrey asked, something in her expression telling Chloe that maybe she'd guessed at the same truth that had only just made itself obvious.

A single tear slid down her face, dripping off her chin and landing on Beca's forehead.

This time, her eyelashes did a fair bit more than just flutter. With a loud groan, Beca shifted in Chloe's lap. Alarmed, Chloe put her hands against Beca's cheeks. "Stay still, Becs," she muttered. "You might have hit your head when you fell."

"Wha…?" she moaned, eyes opening to slits. "Chlo…"

"I'm here," she replied. "We're all here. It's okay."

"Jesse…" Beca whined.

He dropped to his knees. "Sparks," he said warmly, taking one of her hands in his.

"What happened?"

"You made Regionals more interesting," he told her. "Apparently, you really, really wanted to meet an Obs squad. Congrats on achieving your life goal."

Her eyes flew open. "Shit!"

Chloe shushed her and tried to keep her from sitting up, but Beca was clearly determined. Even Aubrey looked concerned as Beca forced herself to a seated position, paling as she took in the spectacle that was the Obs squad charming the audience into forgetting what they'd witnessed.

"Oh, no…" Beca sighed. "Aubrey, I'm—"

"You couldn't help it, could you?" Aubrey asked, and Chloe winced at the sharp note in her voice. "If you couldn't help it, it's not your fault."

Beca was silent, staring at her hands in her lap.

The familiar 'pop' of Apparition echoed across the stage, and there was suddenly an older, bearded man that Chloe had never seen before pulling Beca into a gentle hug. The poor girl dissolved into tears as she fell into his arms, and Chloe almost intervened, afraid he was upsetting her, but a hand on her shoulder kept her in place.

"It's okay," Jesse said quietly. "That's my dad. I called him as soon as I realized what happened. He'll take care of her."

Not like I could, Chloe thought, wondering simultaneously what it was she was missing about the situation. Because as she watched Jesse's dad stroke Beca's hair, it became clearer and clear that there was something larger at work here that she didn't know about.

"You're okay, Beca," Jesse's dad said, making Beca cry even harder.

"I—" she hiccupped.

He eased out of the embrace, placing a hand to Beca's forehead and muttering what could only be the words to some sort of spell.

For a second, Chloe was worried, but then she remembered what Beca had told her before. Jesse's dad is my mom's doctor. She relaxed, but not much.

What the hell was happening here?

TBC