Chapter 37: The New World Order

Once Tobias was gone, time seemed to fly. Or so it felt to Tanith, lost in the run-up to NEWT exams she so desperately needed good grades for, and a whirling maelstrom of distracting emotions she'd rather not be feeling. There were only a few months left until the end of the year, until the end of her schooling, until the end of Hogwarts, and she preferred the idea of surviving it alone.

That was easy enough. Within days of Tobias' departure, Cal was seen hanging around with Nat Lockett again, the two reconciled. Cal was overall in a better mood; more relaxed, more joking, no longer with the clouds of concern that had hung over him. Tanith might have asked him what had been wrong, but he had not opened up to her before, and she doubted he would now; also, she much preferred this cheerful version of her friend.

He returned to being a distraction, a figure of fun in the common room and at lunch, and though his cheer was occasionally forced, and though he scanned the Daily Prophet articles with more determination than most, he seemed to be past the worst. And all, especially Cal, would be distracted within days of Tobias' departure by the run-up to the Gryffindor-Hufflepuff Quidditch match.

Slytherin House would usually only show such a game passing interest, but Urquhart had whipped the snakes into a frenzy of Quidditch enthusiasm, and with Ron Weasley famously and – to Slytherins – fortunately in the Medical Wing, there were high hopes for a Hufflepuff victory. That would level the playing field for all four Houses, giving them each a win in the bag, and denying the favourites Gryffindor an easy run to the Cup.

So there was no question the entire House would watch the match. Cal rose early that day and set out for the stands to go and find good seats, which Tanith thought to be rather ridiculous considering one could never tell in Quidditch where the action would be. Gabriel slumped off a short time after, nose uncharacteristically in a book, and Tanith had only had a chance to blink at the breakfast table before she realised she was alone.

Ariane and Melanie sat with Bletchley, Pucey, and Montague, so she avoided them, instead scoffing down toast and leaving, gut twisting as she did so alone. Tobias wouldn't have headed off for Quidditch so early. This thought was enough to distract her all the walk out of the Great Hall, and so it was only when the echoing of voices from the breakfast tables left her ears and she emerged in the cool grounds that she realised someone was calling her name.

She stopped and turned as Nat Lockett caught up and theatrically wiped her brow. 'Bloody hell, Cole, you were motoring your way out of there.'

Tanith blinked at the Ravenclaw girl, then shrugged and carried on. 'Sorry, Lockett, I didn't hear you.'

'S'fine.' Lockett waved a hand with her usual laid-back air. 'Have you seen Cal?'

'He went down early, said something about getting good seats,' Tanith said. 'He was pretty excited about this game.'

'Oh good.' Lockett relaxed, and Tanith felt a rush of sympathy for the girl who had to cope with Cal's by-now legendary mood swings. 'It should be a bloody good match. But I did see him earlier, and he said something about a letter... any idea what he was talking about?'

'I was barely awake by the time he left the common room.'

Lockett frowned. 'I'm sure we'll find out. I know he's been expecting responses to his job applications, maybe it's that.' A brief silence fell upon them as they trooped towards the Quidditch pitch, amongst the earliest of the crowds. 'Anyway. Cole. How are you?'

There was pointed concern Tanith wasn't accustomed to. 'Me? I'm... why wouldn't I be fine?'

'Since Toby left?' Lockett's gaze locked on her with a shrewdness Tanith's inherent secretiveness didn't appreciate.

'Oh.' She glared at the ground, damning her voice for betraying her. 'It's... I mean, it's weird.'

'Have you heard from him? I doubt he gets much time to write, I mean, but...'

'Oh, yeah. Only one letter so far; training's hard, they're working them hard from the get-go to get them in the field as soon as possible. He reckons he'll be on a beat come April. I might go see him in the holidays.' Even as Tanith said that, she hesitated. What would she say when she saw him again? The letters had been easy, their usual, breezy communication, and not at all mentioning the kiss. Would she be able to avoid that in person? Did she want to?

'Cool. That's a way away, though, and you're otherwise surrounded with Cal, who, bless him, not the most emotionally intelligent of people, and Doyle. Need I say more?' Lockett looked like she was going to say something else, then pressed on. 'We should hit the books together, I mean. Potions, perhaps, I saw you had a bit of a bugger with that Purging Elixir, that's bound to come up in the exam, we could try to crack it together...'

It was a transparent ploy, and for a second Tanith didn't know if she should feel patronised, her sense of academic pride wounded at the implication she needed help. But the offer of social contact – female social contact which wasn't Ariane or Melanie – wasn't one she was sure she could dismiss, if only for her own sanity. Besides, Lockett seemed to have her head screwed on straight.

So she gave a small but not insincere smile. 'Alright. Potions practice it is. I'm sure Professor Slughorn will let us have a bash at the dungeons during revision period.'

'Oh, he's easily malleable on that sort of thing; much more than Snape ever was, he'd have been peering over our shoulders the whole bloody time.'

'Don't worry, he was still up at the Great Hall.' Tanith assured her as they reached the stands. 'I don't see Cal. Joining us in the Snake Den?'

'You bet. I need to watch Gryffindor like a bloody hawk; their last match is usually make or break time. It'll be a disaster or a miracle. Nothing in between.'

There were very few people up top, only the intensely keen, and they passed Urquhart and his friends, sat at the very front, the Quidditch captain poring over charts and maps and player statistics as Talley, Vaisey and Harper looked on with dim amusement.

'Where is he?' Tanith muttered, looking around, before Lockett tugged on her sleeve and pointed up.

At the back, at the highest point of the Slytherin stand and claiming several rows of seats, was Cal. And not just Cal, but Cal with a large picnic hamper, a large blanket propped up across several pews and suspended in the middle, and what looked like a whole case of Butterbeer. He was waving madly at them with curiously over-sized hands.

'He's insane,' Tanith muttered.

Lockett grinned fondly. 'Yeah,' she said. 'He is.'

Only when they reached him did Tanith figure out what was going on with his hands: Cal wore a pair of ridiculously large gloves in the style of badger paws. She choked on a laugh which soured in recollection of the totemic wolf paws Thanatos Brynmor had worn in Derbyshire, before forcing herself to chuckle. 'What are those?'

Cal looked up cheerfully, setting down the open bottle of Butterbeer he somehow managed to hold in his mutant grip. 'Hufflepuff pride runs high today. Rar.' He slashed at the air.

Tanith turned to Lockett, who looked like she didn't know whether to hug Cal, laugh at him, or disown him. ''Rar'. Is that the noise badgers make?'

'I don't know,' said Lockett. 'So I'm going to choose to care about this picnic.' She sat down. 'Butterbeer, cold meats, fresh bread…'

'Cakes.' Cal gestured to the hamper. 'Everything to see Gryffindor get pounded in style.'

Tanith paused, then sat herself down as well, cautiously reaching for a bottle of Butterbeer. It was true that Cal's mood had improved, but this level of jollity was new even for him. 'What did you do, raid the kitchens? And stop making that noise, Cal, you sound like you're dying.'

Cal shamefacedly brought his efforts to produce whatever noise he thought a badger would make to a halt. 'Elves are happy to help if you ask them the right way.'

Lockett's nose wrinkled. 'I still don't get how you can just boss the little buggers around like that so easily... I mean, it's a bit... rude, isn't it?'

'I'm polite!' he said, looking like this was an argument they'd had before, and so Cal pressed on, looking at Tanith. 'Hey, did you have a plan on where you're living in July?'

She lowered her Butterbeer. 'Oh, I'm sorted. Got a flat in Diagon Alley, right above Mulready & Warwick, the law firm. And… it's across the street from the Weasley shop, so with that kind of noise the rent's pretty low. Not so low I won't have to live off beans for a while, mind.' Auror trainee wages were enough so she didn't have to live with her parents, but there would be consequences.

Cal brightened. 'So, I was looking for a place myself, and if you've got an empty room and a need to share the rent…'

Tanith blinked; with his moods, it hadn't even occurred to her to get closer to Cal. 'Live together,' she mused aloud as behind her, the stadium began to fill up. 'I'll keep inhospitable hours, bitch and moan about them and the workload whenever I can, and possibly be away for days at a time,' she warned, but tilted her bottle in his direction.

Cal gave a lopsided smile and lifted his drink. 'And I'll play loud music, not clean up after myself, and probably forget to turn the Floo off.'

'Offer accepted, I'll owl the landlord.' They clinked bottles to seal the deal. 'So what are you doing next year? I hadn't realised you'd had any interviews.'

'I didn't,' he admitted. 'I haven't really figured out what I want to do yet.' Next to Tanith, Lockett rolled her eyes; she suspected this wasn't the first time this had come up. 'So I was fortunate enough to get some admin job at the Department of Magical Transportation. Nothing important, but it'll pay and give me time to figure what training course I want.'

Tanith raised an eyebrow. 'Without an interview? How'd you secure that?'

'At your service.' A shadow fell over them, and they looked up to see Gabriel stood on one of the pews before he gave them a theatrical bow. 'I wrote to my father,' he added in explanation, and sat down. 'Is that shortbread?'

'So what are you doing after NEWTs?' Tanith asked cautiously. She didn't want to blow Gabriel's secret, but people were going to ask.

'Thought I might travel,' he said without making eye contact, then turned to Cal. 'Good news, by the way. Ron Weasley's still in hospital.' Tanith had to admire the move; it'd definitely change the subject.

'Yes!' Fist - or claw - pumping the air, Cal rose like he'd just scored a Cup-winner himself. 'I'll take McLaggen over Weasley's occasional genius any day.'

Tanith laughed, but Lockett smirked. 'We're still ahead on points, you know,' the Ravenclaw warned. 'You'll have to trounce Hufflepuff to win.'

'Ah, they're just a bunch of duffers.'

'Duffers you need to win today.'

'Stop it.' Tanith raised her hands. 'Or you'll explode from trying to second-guess this match. Both of you. Besides,' she nodded at the pitch, 'they're coming.'

And indeed they were, Gryffindor in the crimson and gold, Hufflepuff in their bright yellow and black. Soon the whistle went, and they saw that Cal had, indeed, picked a fine spot. They were high enough to see the whole pitch, though lacked the intensity of being at the front, but it was a fine spot to eat cold meats and drink Butterbeer and enjoy Hufflepuff's three, quick goals. At the third, Cal gave an outright squeak of excitement before shoving his gloves in his mouth.

'Who the hell is commentating?' Gabriel demanded.

'Lovegood,' Nat sighed. 'She's nuts, ignore her.'

'Where did 'nuts' come in with 'wit beyond measure'?' Tanith asked, keeping cheer in the gibe so it remained good-natured.

'Where did 'built like a battleship' come in with 'cunning and ambitious'?' Nat shot back, and Tanith laughed despite herself.

Their end of the stadium was going wild by now, Slytherin viewers next to the Hufflepuff stand that was in fits of excitement. Even Ravenclaw didn't seem too sad at the prospect of a Gryffindor defeat. Cal couldn't stay off his feet, and was whooping and cheering with the rest of them. 'This takes – this is – stay here!'? he declared, then shot off down the pews, hurtling towards the sea of black and yellow.

'Grahams! Grahams!' His voice was hoarse from shouting over the crowd, but he was big, and enthusiastic, and his hands were clawed, so it wasn't too difficult to fight his way past the cheering masses over to his fellow seventh-year prefect. 'You're Muggle-born, right?' he asked her by way of greeting.

Grahams was so busy waving her hands in the air with excitement she almost punched him in the face when he landed next to her. 'What? Oh, Brynmor. Yeah. Great bloody match!' She turned back to the pitch, where the Gryffindors Chasers were desperately attempting a defence against the Hufflepuffs, all the while trying to ignore instructions hollered at them by the red-faced McLaggen.

'Sure!' Cal hollered. 'You know what a Mexican Wave is? Next goal?'

As it would take some explaining to the non-Muggle-born students, they split up, Grahams scurrying down the line of Hufflepuffs while Cal returned to the Slytherins. By the time he'd worked his way across his stand and explained the complex notion of 'when the person to your right stands and waves their arms, you do it, too,' there were at least three more goals in anyway. His last stop was Urquhart at the front, now on his own, and far less excited than anyone else.

The captain stood with his arms folded across his broad chest, his gaze locked on the formation of Gryffindor Chasers. 'Come on,' Cal heard him hiss as he approached. 'Stick together, ignore that tosser - you can do better than that, Weasley…'

'Jack? Not cheering on the enemy, are you?' Cal raised his hands in good cheer.

Urquhart jumped. 'What? No, I just mean - look at them! She - they're ten times better than Hufflepuff, especially with Bell back - they deserve better.'

'Don't go soft on me now,' Cal admonished. 'Now, listen…'

The Hufflepuff and Slytherin crowds were quite taken with their new celebration. There was a brief pause in the cheer – though much guffawing from Tanith – when Potter was knocked out by McLaggen, but this would recover. The match carried on for a good twenty more goals by Hufflepuff, and at least the first ten of those were greeted with the rippling of the crowd as a wave of jubilant yellows and emeralds rose and surged to greet victory. It was undeniably a sight to see, a wave of glee that crossed half the stadium, and in those seconds of unity, few minds in the wave were focused on war, or death, or anything other than the game. Enthusiasm – and tired legs – waned a little after ten goals or so, for with no Gryffindor Seeker Hufflepuff toyed with their opponents, until Summerby finally, mercifully, put Gryffindor out of their misery.

Cal's crate of Butterbeer were empty by then, as the four of them had drunk all they could, and then plied the rather tense Urquhart with some leftovers when Cal dragged him from the front to join them. So by the time of the walk back up to the castle, there was much singing of victorious Quidditch songs, and Urquhart was brimming over with plans for practice and the upcoming games and Cup aspirations.

In the bright sun and the glee of the moment, they almost missed the small group of Gryffindors storming across up to the castle, and almost missed the hulking figure at the front of them with a broom slung over his shoulder. But Cal dropped his arm from around Lockett's shoulder, and a feral grin crossed his face.

'McLaggen,' he said with a firm nod. 'Come on.'

He broke in to a run, Urquhart and Gabriel hot on his heels, and Tanith and Nat exchanged rolled eyes before strolling after them.

'He's not going to do anything cruel, is he?' Lockett asked.

'Very likely,' Tanith said, without the slightest note of concern. 'But you should have seen how McLaggen yanked Cal's chain for months after he was booted from the team in third year. This is just... how do you guys say it... karma?'

And indeed, Cal skidded to a panting halt on the field a mere few feet away from McLaggen, before sinking to his knees, arms extended. 'Cormac! Messiah of Quidditch! You have shown me the true way to play! Teach me!'

McLaggen froze, obviously knowing it would be wiser to walk away as there was by now a small crowd gathering, Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs and Slytherins alike, and none of them very fond of him at that moment. But he stayed, turning to Cal with a scowl. 'Piss off, Brynmor!'

Cal hopped up to follow him, expression one of mock-distress. 'No! Stay! Show me how to be a truly great Beater! Show me the wisdom of how knocking out my team captain is the path to greatness!'

McLaggen rounded on him, dropping his brook to shove Cal hard. Wobbly from Butterbeer and laughter, Cal fell, unharmed and still laughing. Next to him Urquhart clutched his knees to stay upright, but threw McLaggen a warning look which had the Keeper stalking back off to the castle.

'That was mean, Cal,' Lockett said without much conviction.

'He deserves it! He gave me months of shit when I quit the team. I'll leave him alone now, but damn if it's not worth it to give him a taste of his own medicine.' Cal accepted the hand from Gabriel to help him up, still laughing, and he and Urquhart had to lean on each other to stay upright.

But the mood hadn't been broken, the cheer remained, and in that moment of victory, of friendship, of payback, none thought of the war beyond the school walls, none thought of their missing friend, and none noticed Gabriel clutch at his temples when he let go of Cal's hand.